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‘What are you doing?’ I called out. ‘Get the hell out of that place—’

I could see Corrigan’s jaw was clenched tight. It took a real effort, but at last he managed, ‘I can’t seem to move.’

I pushed with the recruitment spell, commanding his legs to walk him towards us, but nothing happened. It wasn’t his will resisting me, but the inability of his muscles to follow the dictates of his mind. The lightning struck again, and this time his scream was hoarse, barely more than a whimper. He looked as if his body wanted to collapse, but the storm wouldn’t allow it.

‘We’ve got to get him out of there!’ Galass shouted.

I ran back to the edge of the storm and prepared to grab him by the belt and haul him through.

‘No,’ he said, ‘not you!’

‘What? Why not?’

‘Make one of the others do it.’

‘Why?’ I couldn’t believe he didn’t trust me enough to get him out of there.

‘I don’t want you touching me.’

‘We don’t have time for this,’ Alice said, shoving me aside, then she stood there, doing nothing.

‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’ I demanded. ‘Pull him through!’

‘Not yet,’ she said, staring at the roof.

‘Why. . . ?’ I suddenly realised what she was doing: if she grabbed him when the next bolt hit, she’d be killed and he’d still be stuck in the corridor.

Counting the seconds, watching the fear in Corrigan’s eyes, was a whole new kind of hell– then the lightning struck, and just as the flash faded, Alice grabbed hold of his belt and yanked him out of that corridor, away from the storm. I slammed the door shut, but Corrigan had already collapsed onto the floor; he would have crushed Alice beneath him, had she not rolled nimbly out of the way.

She stood up and stared at her hand. The skin of her palm was charred black.

I dropped to the ground to examine Corrigan, searching for some sign that he was breathing, but Aradeus placed a hand on my shoulder, preventing me from touching him.

‘Cade,’ he said, his voice kind, ‘we have other duties right now. We need to figure out how to get through that final door. It’s too strong to break, and neither my spells nor Shame’s will be able to get through—’

‘In a moment, damn it! I’m trying to—’

The rat mage knocked my hand out of the way before I could touch Corrigan. ‘Look at him, Cade! His body’s glowing: all the lightning he absorbed is still inside him– and he’s a Tempestoral! You’ll burn to a crisp the instant you touch him.’

Stupidly, I tried reaching for him again– maybe this is what your mind makes you do when you’ve betrayed your best friend and don’t want to watch him die in front of you. But Alice and Aradeus had taken hold of my arms and were pulling me back.

‘Cade, we need to get through that door!’ the rat mage shouted in my ear. ‘The brothers are on the other side—’

‘Shut up!’ I said, trying to listen for Corrigan’s breathing, but I couldn’t hear anything– until his body spasmed and he coughed so loudly it was like a thunderclap. He spat out blood, and when he lifted his head, his eyes were bright red where the blood vessels had burst. The rest of us watched in awe as he pushed his hands against the roiling stone floor and slowly, agonisingly, rose to his feet. He stumbled towards me and I wondered whether he’d absorbed so much lightning that he’d broken the recruitment spell and was now coming to kill me. I watched as his trembling hands rose up above his shoulders, sparks dancing across his forearms. Alice yanked me out of the way just as a bolt of lightning so massive it was like every bolt he’d absorbed had come out of him all at once struck the door Aradeus had told us was impregnable.

We all turned to look.

There was nothing was left but smoke and tiny embers floating in the air.

As Corrigan stumbled past me into the final corridor, he croaked, ‘Have I pleased you, Master?’

Chapter 48

Doorways

The chamber we entered was seven-sided, with twenty-foot-high walls curving together at the top like a cathedral dome. At first I thought we must be in one of the towers, then I realised the shape had been altered for whatever use the brothers intended to make of this place. There were windows on three sides, tall as a man but only the width of a hand. The glass undulated as if it were a slow-moving waterfall. The high-pitched crack of panes shattering every few seconds was followed by a sound like the grinding of teeth as they reformed once again. But my attention was drawn to the walls: every inch of stone from floor to ceiling was covered in esoteric sigils, the kind used for ceremonial magic, although I couldn’t recognise any of them. This was a ritual utterly beyond any I’d ever witnessed.

All the while, the walls and floor continued to undulate around us, rippling this way and that as if following the tides of an unseen ocean. So unstable had physical reality become in this temple to their Pandoral masters that even our exhalations echoed around the chamber in such odd ways that I could no longer tell whose breathing I was hearing.