‘There,’ Lann said, nodding ahead. ‘We should leave the horses here and proceed on foot.’

‘Do you have any idea what an asghoul looks like?’ Astrid said in a low voice as they walked down to the edge of the woods.

‘No, but I think we are soon to find out.’ He nodded at the bow in her hand. ‘You should stay back a little and use that. Just try not to shoot me in the back by mistake, eh?’

‘You’ve seen how good I am with this, Lannigon Gudbrandr. If I shoot you in the back, it will not be by mistake.’ The serious expression on her face gave way to a broad grin, and the pair shared a smile at this gallows humour. As he turned away she considered her feelings for him – how he stirred up conflicting emotions and feelings in her. Sometimes he was infuriatingly innocent, at others wise beyond his years. She shook her head, telling herself to concentrate on the matter at hand.

Trees, their trunks wet with moisture, loomed out at them as they reached the bottom of the slope and made their way into the wood itself. The sound was all wrong, distorted and muffled with strange echoes that tricked the mind as to the direction of noises. The temperature was different, too: it was a good deal lower than it had been in the foothills.

Astrid unslung her bow and drew an arrow from her quiver as Lann passed her, walking fearlessly ahead towards an unknown danger. He was hardly recognisable as the boy she’d bested at sword skills. Was it purely the black sword’s influence? Or was it something else? Something that had been there all along, but hidden somehow?

Just then, the forest suddenly went quiet; unnaturally so, as if everything in it were holding its breath and waiting to see what would happen next. She’d almost forgotten the black bangle she wore around her upper arm, but it seemed to tingle and tighten a fraction in that moment.

The asghoul appeared out of nowhere. One second it wasn’t there, the next it was, materialising out of the mist behind Lann. The thing was hideous. Horned antlers protruded from a misshapen head that looked as if it had been made from melted wax. Its eyes were deep set and blank, and like its head, the creature’s body and limbs seemed too long, as if grotesquely stretched. The thing’s elongated hands ended in black and wicked-looking claws, and she watched as the creature pulled back its arm, ready to thrust those deadly daggers through the flesh and muscle of the boy before it.

‘Lann!’ she managed to call out. But he was already moving, swivelling on his heel, the sword moving round in a deadly arc that should have scythed the creature’s body in two.

But the blade cut only mist. The asghoul had disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.