She was furious. It was not to be borne. Laiharth flung the mirror at the far wall, hoping in vain for it to smash. It didn’t, as it was made of indestructible dragonscale, and it clattered harmlessly off the wall and exacerbated her headache. Her feet itched to march her over there and kick it.

Arnoth stirred in his chair behind her. ‘Count to ten, Laiharth. Any more of that stamping and this tower's going to fall down. What is it?’

He sat in his plush green chair, the velvet worn so thin in places that the horsehair stuffing poked out and made her itch if she sat in it. She'd left it to him for his reason, and brought in her own, a smooth fat thing in beige linen. Like the magazines, she thought. All rustic pottery and rough wood and oatmeal colours, like North seas and skies. She did as he said and counted to ten, trying not to hate the blot on her landscape that had told her to. 

She was up to eight before she realised she was using the Tethiri sheep-count. 

'Fuck!' Laiharth drew several deep breaths before she dared trust her voice not to shake. ‘I have miscalculated. Two of the mages are on the grasses, Arnoth. And they know how to get onto the High Roads. Obviously, they are young and untutored and can't do anymore than piss about by the Riverstone, but if they can't go between Worlds, they can still...well, I don't know. I assume they can still travel to other parts of this one, if they have a reference.'

‘Hmm? Well, who are they?’

'Try and at least pretend to be interested, Arnoth.'

He put his book aside and rose and went to retrieve the mirror. ‘Does this show them?’

She shrugged, still testy. ‘Well, how else do I know where they are? Obviously they’d be those damn Tethiri wanderers! Which god decided to give them magic?’

‘Who knows?’ He, ever literal, called up the information from a mind that had filed away half a universe-worth of pointless  knowledge. ‘Most of the old tales say it was the Sky Forger. A few say it was the Archer. Either way, if they’re Tethiri mages, they’ve got a fair bit of power. And you say these are the rare ones?’

‘Of course they have power! I wouldn’t be tearing my hair out over a couple of idiot Rune-casters, would I? I think…I think there is something strange about them. I can’t work out what. Nor do I know if…if he knows who they are! I hate this. I fucking hate this!'

'Well, let me see.' Arnoth smiled benignly - a look which irritated her no end, because it wasn't endearing or soothing, only patronising. She could do without being patronised. 

'I need a drink,' she muttered.

'You finished off the rest of the bottle of port at breakfast,' he said, his smile freezing at the edges. 'And you haven't let me out to go and fetch more. Shall I do so? Or do you want me to look at these mages for you?'

'Look, then go out.'

She folded her arms and tried to look bored as Arnoth set the mirror upright against a stack of books, and cast Ána, for sight, at it.

Nothing. Colours flickered under the moonstone surface but there was nothing else of any use to see.

‘It responds only to your touch,’ he said after a moment. ‘Give me your hand.’

‘I can’t. Not any more tonight. And I am sick of…’

‘Well, then. Wallow in your own bad temper, and leave me out of it. Did I not say I would make no effort to help you? I’ll only do what it is easy to do, and nothing more. I’ve paid enough for your schemes, woman. No more!'

Laiharth closed her ears to that. The old fool would do what she wanted, one way or another. He always did. He had to. Just like that stinking, wayward fisherman.

He refused you, though, didn’t he?

She brushed that doubt aside. Morien had only refused her when…when he’d become selfish, ego-driven, a typical male desire to dominate overriding his love for her. Yes, that was it. He’d refused her because he was a selfish, arrogant man. She smirked. Arnoth was also a selfish man, but he was weak too, unlike Morien, and dependent on her for his power-fix.

‘You did say that we would lose, if we don’t kill him,’ Arnoth reminded her. He sat down again and took up his book, signaling that he was done rambling on with her. ‘Do not let your curiosity about these mages tempt you from that path. Deal with him, and then deal with them. They are young, did you not say?’

‘They are.’

‘And also untutored, untried, and weak. And alone.’

‘For now. What happens when they each find their...other half? Their soulmate?’

Arnoth looked up again and huffed, flinging his hands wide in exasperation. ‘There’s no guarantee they will, Laiharth. You waited a lifetime for me. The ones you destroyed before now spent their lives alone too. Even if that other person has been born, who’s to say they’re both adults now? Who’s to say they’re even in the same World? And even if they are, who’s to say they’ll find each other? This World is big enough; they could be thousands of miles apart! Best leave them for now, and concentrate on sealing your unrepentant elf-man back in his prison.’

‘I don’t want him imprisoned any more, Arnoth. I want him dead.’

Arnoth shrugged and raised the damn book once more, sticking his nose pointedly in it. She noted with some exasperation that it had come from the Serenthyr, before the Rift.

She snatched it from him and thumbed through it, losing his place. ‘The Travels?’

‘An explorer in the future days of the Starlands,’ he said, and took it back. ‘A man who travelled far and saw many wonders. Or rather, will do, depending on which World you have your watch set to. But not, I think, as far as our two travellers that you have uncovered.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

He smiled. ‘I mean, my dear Lady, that you are not the only one who tempted a man away from his own world.’

That brought her up short. Her full leather skirt swished angrily around her slender knees as she stormed to the window on towering red heels, made by an eye-wateringly expensive designer in a Serenthyrian city sometime in the future.

Their tower was high: she could see across the burned land to the sea beyond. Beyond that were her targets. She just didn’t know exactly where. Finding them would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Or would it?

‘Do you mean to say these mages are not of this world?’

‘Precisely that. I’m willing to bet that’s what you think is odd about them, in fact.’

‘Oh? Then who tempted them away? Who brought them here?’

There was a displacement in the still air as he moved, lightning-fast. His arms came around her and she leaned into his body, feeling the familiar surge of power at the contact. Without him, she’d have been dead long ago, through use of her own magic.

And the same would be true of the new mages. Without their soulmates, they’d overreach, and slowly die.

And not too slowly, at that. It would be a matter of a few years, if they used their power without another to not only amplify that power, but mitigate its effects too.

She’d already started one of them on that destructive path. He would not be able to resist using that needle. He wouldn’t be able to resist the lure of infinite power, the ability to evade enemies, to trap them and bind them between Worlds.

And in so doing, he’d kill himself.

If he didn’t find his literal soulmate, he’d die. She knew it wasn’t just a fancy poetic term, knew what it really meant for a mage to find their soulmate.

Or not.

She licked her lips, forgetting she'd plastered them with her favourite brand of lipstick, bought on a rare shopping trip long ago to a couture store in the future. Or was it really the past? She could never keep track. She hadn't bothered to, when she'd smashed the Riverstone and rendered the Worlds rifted from one another. She had only meant to sunder the Marwaithyr from the Eiddilthyr, but had cut all three of them loose. 

Despite Arnoth's soul-presence, that had almost cost her too much.

One body isn’t enough to hold that much power. One mind can’t cope with the terrors.

A pang of regret made her swallow as she remembered her cruelty to him when she’d taken the fisherman mage to bed. But Morien’s strange power had been as addictive to her as hers was to Arnoth. She couldn’t have helped it. She’d said sorry a thousand times, and whether he believed her, or forgave her, didn’t matter – he needed her.

She hated having to admit she needed him in return.

‘I believe…perhaps it may be easier to find these soulmates and destroy them first,’ Arnoth said now, in between gentle nips at her ear, the kind that sent crackles of electricity down her spine.

‘How?’ She twisted away from him, not in the mood. ‘If they don’t exist yet then the mage will die anyway. If they do, then how are we to find them first?’

‘You didn’t die,’ Arnoth pointed out, and conveniently forgetting she’d been at death’s door when they had finally found each other. When he’d finally been born. He figured that was her fault for causing the Rift in the first place, but he had always been wise enough not to say so, not least because he had no way of knowing if it was true. ‘No reason to suppose any one of those mages aren’t as strong. In which case, you’ll have to face them. I wouldn’t worry – if you do, you are still stronger, because you have me.’

She shook her head, her hands flat on the sun-burned windowsill, still staring across the red rocks of Sanctuary. He was right…and he was wrong.

Morien had not found his soulmate.

And he had steadfastly refused to die. What the fuck he held his body together with, she couldn’t begin to imagine, but held it together he did, and his sanity too, defiant in the face of her hatred.

If there were just one mage as strong as he, then they were truly doomed.

If there were more, they may as well slit their own throats now, and save bother later.

And if they all found their soulmates then the Worlds would burn.

No. That is the most defeatist crap I’ve ever heard!

‘I can tell you’re being internally dramatic again,’ said Arnoth, his voice bright with amusement. ‘Why don’t you look on the bright side for once? If they do find each other, they’ll light the sky like a beacon, and you can swoop down and pick them off before they’ve even got a grip on each other let alone their power. After all, at first they won’t know what to do with each other. That power will go off like a bomb.'

‘Yes. You’re right, of course. It will take them time to work out what’s going on…’

‘…even if they do find their soulmate,’ he added, encouragingly. ‘They’ll be no match for our practiced power.’

That didn't fill her with the confidence it should have done. Arnoth was too blasé for her liking. He lounged in his old chair and procrastinated and waited to see which way the wind blew and assumed things would sort themselves out. She preferred direct action. It hardly mattered which way the wind blew if it was going to raze your house anyway.

But still, something needed done. If she was going to die, she'd die trying.

She spun away from the window and smoothed her bodice, brisk as ever. ‘Put that bloody book away and get dressed. We’ve got work to do.’