‘You’ll have to ask Jasmine, when we get back to town. We aren’t carrying anything that might link us to the Invisible College.’

‘What about the sermon? What did Landwalker have to say after he had been set free?’

‘That the authorities could fetter a man but not the truth. That it would not be long before the visitors revealed themselves and everything would change. The doubters would be cast down and the righteous lifted up. According to Jasmine, it wasn’t so much what he said but the way he said it. I suppose we’ll see for ourselves soon enough. When we watch him preach, and when you meet him.’

‘I’ve been thinking about those lights. If they really are some kind of manifestation of the visitors, Foeless Landwalker might not need or want to meet me.’

‘It won’t be easy, but I know you’ll find a way,’ Poppy said. ‘You possess a kind of admirable stubbornness.’

‘More often than not, it seems to lead me into trouble.’

‘It also led you to us,’ Poppy said. ‘And here we are, in this thing together.’

Easy for her to say. She and the others would be observers, but Pilgrim had to offer himself up to the dubious mercy of Foeless Landwalker and his followers. He wanted to meet the man, but he feared him, too. Landwalker had been a bear trapper before he had become a prophet, was no stranger to killing, and Foeless was not his birth name. He had chosen it for himself, and not to signify that he was the kind of good-natured fellow who had no enemies. It was instead a boast about how he had vanquished everyone who had wanted to harm him, and a warning to anyone else who might think to try.

And now they were riding amongst his true believers. People who wore orange scarfs and chanted his name as they walked in a procession half a hundred strong. And there would be many more like them at their destination, all at his command.

Pilgrim knew that he had been short-tempered with Poppy because of his growing trepidation about the task that lay ahead, and tried to make amends when they stopped at an overnight camp of Foeless’s followers. Gentle made flatbreads which they ate with cheese and sour apples they had bought in Ogres Grave, and afterwards Pilgrim asked Poppy if she would help him carry out a brief survey of the people in the camp, asking them why they were here and if they had ever seen the visitors or knew anyone who had.