She understood how important this was. She wasn’t really trying to stop him. He kissed her fingers, then her trembling lips. “We’ve a little time yet. I’ll work hard ’til then, I promise. I’ll make this up to you, Bene. I won’t leave you wanting.”

Her laugh had weeping in it. “Jervale, you always leave me wanting. Too much of you is never enough.”

Suffocated with love for her, he crushed her close to his chest. And then they joined their friends and neighbours in the hamlet’s struggling fields, where they foraged and toiled and charmed survival from the weeping land.

Three days later, the hamlet’s elder, Merrin, called everyone to the hall.

“Something’s happened,” the old man said, his voice quavering. “There’s word come through the stone.” His gnarled fingers touched the chiming crystal that kept Lur’s far-flung hamlets and villages connected. “Strangers have come into Lur, from over the mountains.”

Theirs was a small community. One hundred and twelve folk didn’t quite fill the meeting hall… but they made a lot of noise when they were taken by surprise. Seated two bench rows from the front, Jervale took Bene’s callused hand and dropped a kiss to Tilly’s dark head.

“Settle now, settle,” Merrin said, waving them quiet. “And I’ll tell you what I’m told. They’ve travelled a long way, these strangers, from far, far to the north. Their homeland fell into a sickness, worse even than our drought. If they wanted to live, they had to flee. So they did. Now it’s our help they’re asking for.”

Murmurs and mutterings as the hamlet’s folk shifted restless in their seats. Lur was a land apart, and the Olken liked it that way.

“Are they saying there ain’t other folk beyond the mountains to lend a hand?” That was Mag, ever the first to speak. “Sounds odd to me, that does. And how did they cross the mountains, Merrin? Everyone knows they ain’t passable.”

Troubled, Merrin rubbed his chin. “Seems these strangers found a way. Seems…” He shook his head. “They call ’emselves mages.”

Blank stares around the hall. More lively discussion.

“What’s a mage?” said Tam, whose baby was going to die. “And who’s telling us all this, Merrin? D’you say these mages speak our tongue? How likely is that?”

“I’m told this by Elder Chaffie of Gribley village, in the Black Woods. As to how she knows their story, I couldn’t say. But she ain’t a liar.”

And neither was Merrin. Since they all knew that, Tam said nothing more.

“Chaffie’s sent a call to every hamlet and village,” Merrin added. “There’s decisions to be made, she says. So one of us’ll have to go.”

“To the Black Woods?” said Mag, shocked. “Are you sunstruck?”