Her blood burned hot as lava. Her skin grew cold as a corpse. She sweated rivers and murmured ceaselessly in her delirium until Gerutha almost wished her torment would reach its inexorable end. And all the while, Lilla was trapped inside the caverns of her mind. She saw pale horrors there, lands of fire and ice, awesome skies the colour of blood and scalded wastelands that stretched to every horizon. All of which seemed to presage some great day of doom, some awful rending in the skein of existence, as if all the wrongs ever done must be paid for and that some great god would one day demand blood for all the evil of mankind. Phantom gales blew in her mind. She dreamed of flying vast distances on the wings of eagles. She heard the crash of thunderous torrents so wild they could wash away the world, then the grind of wood and crack of timber. Once she heard her baby sister’s voice and was drawn by its sweetness to her ash tree in the Kingswood where little Katla sat singing, singing and twisting the horrible rope that hung from her neck as if it were a plaything. Once she saw Valrik. He came to her bed. He bent to her ear and whispered, ‘What’s mine is yours. What’s mine is yours now,’ and she didn’t understand. Another time she walked the paths of the dead, far beneath the ground in darkness, where souls were nothing but murmurs and footsteps. She heard Ringast’s voice, he called her onward into the darkness, called her to trust him when all around her hissed their sibilant lies. And then his steady footsteps faltered. She heard Thrand’s insidious laughter behind her and tasted iron in her throat. Whatever you have, I will take from you, he said. The footsteps changed. They became laboured, slowing into a lurching rhythm leading her into a black so thick she felt it brush her cheek. There was a sudden, shocking blaze of green fire, a lightning crack, and in it, for an instant, she saw his face. . .

Saw Erlan’s face.

It was the taste of salt that brought her round. She ran her tongue across her lips and heard the call of gulls high on the wind. She opened her eyes. Above her was an orange awning, rustling and ruffling in the breeze. She watched shadows ripple over its surface for a long time, mesmerized. They were beautiful. Her body felt hollow as a reed but her mind was clear. She lay listening to the soft whistle of the wind and the sigh of the waves turning over and over.

‘I’m thirsty,’ she said. It didn’t sound like her voice, more like an old crone’s fractured croak. There was a movement nearby and then a face loomed over her. She hardly recognized it till she saw the streak of white hair and a smile she loved.