But he couldn’t tear his eyes from the scene before him, his body just as unresponsive.

Upon the blackened timber a body lay, curled like an unborn bairn still in the womb.

‘Behold,’ Fritha cried out in a voice that did not sound like her own. ‘The first Revenant!’

Slowly, as all watched in hushed silence, the body moved, a twitching that became a ripple of limbs and wings, and it stood. Gulla, but different. He seemed bigger, for one, more muscular, a strength barely contained within his frame. And his veins pulsed with a dark light. His head twitched, raptor-like, as he looked about, long fangs curling from desiccated lips.

‘Who shall be my first-born, the first disciple?’ Gulla said, even his voice changed, deeper, more resonant, though more bestial, too.

‘You?’ He pointed at Fritha.

She stared back at him.

‘I am promised to another,’ she said and, bowing her head, stepped back.

A man leaped forwards from amongst the acolytes that had followed him into the clearing, shrugging off his cloak. Drem recognized him immediately: scar-faced Burg, Wispy’s leader.

‘Choose me, Lord, I beg you for the honour,’ he cried out, voice laced with hysteria and wonder.

Gulla’s wings unfurled with a powerful snap, spreading wide and then curling inwards, wrapping around Burg, pulling him closer to Gulla, whose head dipped down, and then Gulla opened his mouth wide, long canines glinting red in the firelight, and he was biting into Burg’s neck.

Burg screamed, a terror-filled shriek that gradually subsided into a weak mewling, slowly overcome by a new sound, a hideous, child-like suckling that echoed around the clearing, making Drem’s skin crawl as if a thousand spiders were scuttling over him.

Burg’s legs buckled and he slumped, Gulla taking his weight as easily as a corn doll, though Burg was still conscious, his eyes bulging and rapturous.

With a shudder Gulla disengaged from Burg’s neck and lifted his head. He raised Burg up and placed him upon the table, the shaven-haired acolyte twitching and shivering as if he were caught in the grips of a fever. A single drop of blood ran from the puncture wounds in his neck.

‘Drem,’ Sig whispered. ‘We must get back to Dun Seren. Byrne must hear of this, the Order must be warned,’ she said. ‘We cannot search for your friend Ulf, this is too important, too dangerous. The fate of the Banished Lands rests upon others knowing of this.’

Drem nodded, but a new hush had fallen over the clearing as Gulla beckoned another acolyte forwards.

We need some noise to cover our departure.

‘Is he here?’ Gulla called out to this new acolyte.

The figure pulled his hood back, another shaven-haired zealot, though this one was older.

It was Ulf the tanner.

‘Yes, my Lord,’ Ulf said.