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blow and the man slipped forward on to my sword. As he fell, his ram’s-skull helmet grazed my cheek, which was not a good omen. Jason and the others were already running along the narrowing, blue-walled corridor in pursuit of the fleeing woman and the boys she dragged with her. I fled after them, watched by the sinister dark eyes of golden rams, painted along the length of the passage. The boys were shouting, alarmed and confused by what was happening.
    A rank of warriors, lightly armoured, helmeted and with wide shields, barred our way and Jason flung himself into the fray, fighting with a frenzy that I would more normally have associated with the tribes of the keltoi in the west. We broke through, scattering the grim-faced men, leaving Tisaminas and Castor to finish the slaughter.
    Medea had fled to the Bull Sanctuary, and as Jason led us towards the bronze-barred gate, now closed and locked by the desperate woman, so we realised our mistake.
    Behind us, across the narrow passage, a stone slab fell and trapped us. Ahead of us, the towering bull effigy, before which Medea stood triumphant, split in two, revealing itself as a doorway. There, outside, was the road to the north. A chariot and six horsemen were waiting, the animals impatient and frightened as their riders struggled to control them. I recognised the armoured charioteer as Cretantes, Medea’s confidant and adviser from her homeland.
    The poor little boys struggled in her grasp, suddenly aware that their fate was destined to be a greater terror in their mother’s arms than the one she had told them to expect from their father.
    Jason flung himself against the bars of the sanctuary, begging the black-shrouded woman to release the boys.
    ‘Too late. Too late!’ she cried from behind her black veil. ‘My blood can’t save them from the ravages of your blood. You betrayed the ones you love, Jason. You betrayed us brutally with that woman!’
    ‘You burned her alive!’
    ‘Yes. And now you will burn in Hell! Nothing will change in you, Jason. Nothing can! If I could cut you out of the boys, and still let them live, then that is what I’d do. But I can’t. So say goodbye to your sons!’
    Jason’s howl was vulpine. ‘Antiokus! Use your magic!’
    ‘I can’t!’ I cried. ‘It isn’t there!’
    He flung his sword at the woman but the throw went wide. And at that moment, Medea did the terrible deed, moving so fast I saw only the merest glint of light on the blade with which she cut the throats of the twins. She turned away from us, covering their bodies with her robes, stooping to her work as Jason screamed. She wrapped and tied the heads in strips of her veil, tossing them to Cretantes, who put them in pouches at his waist. Then Medea dragged the bodies to the horses where they were flung over the blankets and tied into place.
    A moment later, the troop had gone, leaving dust swirling into the sanctuary, and the smell and sight of innocent blood, and two cruel Furies taunting the argonauts, trapped in Medea’s lair.
    Jason slumped, fingers still gripping the gate. He had battered himself unconscious against the bars of the temple; his eyes and face were bruised, his mouth raw. Orgominos was pushing against the stone door behind us, trying to find the lever that would release us from the trap. I felt helpless: all power in magic had drained from me from the moment I entered the palace, an impotence which astonished and confused me, and I assumed had occurred because Medea had used her own sorcery to ‘numb’ me for the moment of the deaths. Now I felt that familiar tingle below the flesh again, ability returning, saw at once how to open the door and persuaded it to do so. We dragged Jason’s body outside, through the fires, and into the fresh air.
    Medea’s surviving Colchean guards were nowhere to be seen. They had certainly slipped away to join her in her flight.
    ‘Find horses,’ I said to Orgominos. ‘Get the others, wounded or