He stopped, staring at her as she began to laugh. ‘Look at you,’ she said. ‘You funny little man. Making a lot of fuss over a stupid sword. The secret to Vorneland’s continued power, my lord, relies on its queen and her long reign of unopposed strength. On her health. On her happiness.’ She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘And right now, I am not very happy.’

Glaeverssun recognised the danger. He knew exactly what this woman had done, the people she had made disappear. How she had plotted and schemed for years before her husband’s untimely death, and he knew that he would have to walk a delicate line to avoid the same fate.

For now, at least, he told himself again.

Forcing a smile on to his lips, he made his way over to the bed.

The three captives sat in cramped wooden cells with their hands and feet bound. There was no chance of them escaping their confines, and even if they could, the prison’s only entrance was guarded by a huge, heavily armed man.

Lann occupied the centre pen with Fleya on one side and Astrid on the other. He still had not uttered a word since their capture.

‘Lann? Are you all right?’ Fleya asked. She sighed. ‘I warned you. I told you the sword could betray you. And it has done so. Betrayed all of us and allowed us to be taken captive.’

‘It knew we would be captured,’ he said slowly. ‘It wanted this to happen.’

‘What?’ said Astrid. ‘Why on earth—’

‘It knew Glaeverssun was here. It also knows how much the man desires to own it and use it for evil. It knows what terrible crimes the queen has committed – she murdered her own son for the throne.’

‘You’re certain?’

Lann nodded. ‘Glaeverssun knows it too. The Dreadblade told me.’

‘Such terrible deeds come at a high cost,’ Fleya said in a small voice. ‘Her fixation on power, even if she had to pursue a path of death and destruction to achieve it, has brought madness on her. No person, not even a queen, can commit such vile acts and remain unchanged. And Glaeverssun is using her frailties to fulfil his own ambitions.’

‘If all that is true,’ Astrid said, ‘why would the black blade allow us to be captured like this? Why would it put us in the hands of these evil people?’

‘It must do what it was created for,’ Lann answered. ‘It cannot shy away from that.’

It was Fleya who finally seemed to realise what her nephew was trying to tell them. ‘The Dreadblade … It is compelled to eradicate evil.’

Lann nodded. ‘I am the wielder of the sword, and it is sworn to protect me. But it is also sworn to eliminate evil wherever it finds it. It knows I am not capable of carrying out what it judges necessary here, so it will do it without me.’