I am no child to need such soothing, she cast against the presence in her thoughts.

Regardless, I am here should there be need.

‘It comes,’ Pran breathed, and he extended a skeletal arm, all bone and desiccated flesh, pointing.

Silverfox sought out her own powers as a Bonecaster, a shaman, in her own right.

A head broke through the waves, its owner obviously walking the rising shore, approaching. Patches of long hair clung here and there over the bare dome of a tannin-stained skull. Dark empty sockets beneath thick brow-ridges, full wide cheekbones over lipless jaws that still carried strips of muscle and tendon. Next came chest and shoulders of bone beneath a ragged hide shirt, coarsely sewn, with sleeves all torn and stained.

At her side Pran Chole made one faltering step forward, as if half moving to greet the newcomer. A dry breath, like a sigh, escaped his throat.

‘What is it?’ Silverfox asked.

The newcomer approached, bowed on one knee to her. ‘Greetings, Summoner,’ he murmured in the T’lan voice that was the mere brush of falling leaves. ‘It is an honour.’

Pran Chole took another hesitant step closer. ‘I am Pran Chole. We of the Kron salute you.’

‘I am Tolb Bell’al,’ the newcomer answered, ‘Bonecaster to the Ifayle T’lan Imass. And long have I been absent.’

And to Silverfox’s utter astonishment, the two Imass embraced. For a time they held one another at arm’s length, seeming to study each other. Ifayle, she marvelled, amazed. According to the Kron they’d been lost long ago. Some even claimed they were lost here, on Assail.

‘Long has it been since the steppes of the Has’erin, Pran,’ said Tolb.

‘Indeed. That was a parting of many tears.’

‘Yet we meet again.’

Silverfox stepped up. ‘Pardon, Tolb of the Ifayle, but I must know … have you been here before?’

The two relinquished their grips. The newcomer turned to face her. She felt the full power of his regard, and it was potent indeed. This one may be the last and only shaman of the Ifayle, she thought. He carries their fate upon his ravaged shoulders. ‘No, Summoner,’ he answered. ‘But the Ifayle are here and I have searched everywhere to know the answer to their fate. I found it nowhere, and despaired. Until your arrival. I see now that we merely had to wait for you to come to us.’

Merely! Silverfox felt her knees weaken at the ages of weight that one small word carried.

‘So … you know.’

‘Yes. I alone escaped and have spent all this time in search of an answer. And now here you are.’

‘I?’

‘Yes.’ He bowed once more. ‘Summoner, we must travel north. The answers are there. In the far north.’

Pran Chole also faced her. ‘Summoner? What say you?’