‘Her voice was beautiful,’ he eventually said. ‘Like a river to a parched man. At least, it was to me.’ He smiled to himself. ‘She laughed a lot, cried little. She liked a good jest, did your mam. Ach, she would fall off her chair she laughed so hard.’ He shrugged, finally looking at Drem. ‘She loved you fiercely.’

As I love her.

His memories of his mam were vague and half-formed, like figures in the mist.

Long, dark hair, laughing eyes.

Fractured memories flickered through his mind. A song, hummed in his ear, a tight hug. Another face, a woman, tall, blonde, a stick in her hand, bending down to lift him up. A tower on a hill.

Drem had only been a bairn when his mam died, three or four summers old, but he remembered how she made him feel: a warm glow in his chest, edged with the melancholy of loss.

Safe, and loved, that’s how I feel when I think of her.

‘I hate the Kadoshim,’ Drem growled.

Olin just stared into the flames, his eyes glistening with reflected firelight.

‘Why did she have to die? Why did the Kadoshim kill her?’ Drem said, more to himself than to his da, but Olin looked at him.

‘Because this world is a hard and cruel place,’ Olin breathed. ‘That white bear, nothing else you have ever faced matches the malice that the Kadoshim bear towards us, towards mankind. They are wickedness made flesh.’

Drem thought about that awhile; the silence grew between them.

Kadoshim and Ben-Elim, ancient enemies waging their eternal war against each other.

An ember crackled and popped on the fire.

‘If it was the Kadoshim that murdered my mam,’ he eventually said, ‘why is it that you hate the Ben-Elim so much, when they hunt the Kadoshim?’

‘Aye, I suppose it would not make sense to you.’ He scowled into the darkness. ‘I do not like to talk of these things, have tried for years now to leave them behind, to carve a life for us free of their stain and influence. Talking about it only digs up the hurt that I’ve spent a long time burying.’ Olin sighed. ‘But, always the questions.’ He drew in a deep breath. ‘So. An answer for you, and then maybe you’ll give me some peace. The Ben-Elim do hunt the Kadoshim, are their ancient enemies. But it was the Ben-Elim who plotted and schemed for the Kadoshim to enter these Banished Lands in the first place. The Ben-Elim used the Kadoshim to open a portal between the Otherworld and the world of flesh, and then the Ben-Elim followed them through, their spirit-bodies becoming flesh in the process, just like the Kadoshim.’

Drem frowned at that. ‘Why? Why did the Ben-Elim do that?’