There was a distant ship, a bireme from its shape and size, approaching from the south as it gave the rocky isle and its cliffs a wide berth. It was too far away for her to make out its colors, but she could see the pale little lines that were its oars and the square sail opened up to catch the wind. For a moment she thought it was going to skirt the island completely, but then the sail shifted and the vessel began to turn, until its bow was facing Seer’s Cove.

The ship was heading to Athos!

Trade on the Maltherean Sea always came to a halt during the winter storms, and with the Xanthian outpost of Fort Liberty in the sea’s center now a thriving port of call, it had been months since a ship had come to Athos. In all the time that Chloe had been here, not a single ship from Xanthos or Phalesia had visited.

She gazed at the ship for a moment longer, and then she left the cliff behind and started to run.

Chloe was panting, standing on a hillside that divided the island into two halves, screened by a grove of trees. She leaned against a trunk as she caught her breath, watching as the huge warship, eighty feet long, with two decks of oars and a towering mast, coasted slowly into the placid cove, running aground before the rowers leaped out the sides and hauled the vessel up onto the soft sand of the beach.

Disappointment sank into her chest.

She could already see from the ship’s orange-and-yellow flag that it was Ilean, and the swarthy skin of the sailors and the whip marks on the shoulders of the grunting oarsmen confirmed it. There was little chance that she could pass a message to her sister in Phalesia or to Dion in Xanthos, letting them know she was alive.

The sailors lowered a gangway, until the stepped wooden plank stretched from the topmost deck to the shore. A gray-bearded man in a bright-yellow robe disembarked with a chest in his arms. His face solemn, he climbed up the shore until he reached the low stone wall that separated the beach from the bank above it. Two of the magi met him at the wall and they exchanged words, but no one stepped onto the path. As the Ilean emissary set down the chest, Chloe could see that it was heavy.

She jumped when a soft voice spoke beside her.

‘A gift from Kargan, king of Ilea.’ Turning, she saw one of the four magi standing beside her; he’d approached without a sound. ‘We receive many offerings, but few are brave enough to step onto the path.’