Excitement and trepidation built up in Lann at the thought that he might finally discover the whole truth about his birth. ‘My mother was Fleya’s sister, and her name was Lette. I know she, too, used to be a witch but that she gave up her powers to give birth to me. I know that my aunt left me at the Fetlangers for protection.’

‘Protection from what?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘What is it that you needed protection from? And why?’

‘I don’t know.’

The god gave a sniff, as if he were less than impressed with the boy’s sketchy knowledge. ‘Lette was a great witch, did your aunt tell you that? Fleya is powerful and wise now, but it was her sister who most fascinated those who knew them both. Her grasp of majik and the control she had over it was matched only by her beauty.’

‘That is what Fleya told me.’

‘Powerful and beautiful. What kind of man could tempt such a woman to give everything up, hmm? Since discovering these things, have you stopped to wonder that? Or maybe you have considered that it might not have been a man at all. Maybe only a god could woo such a woman?’ That mocking look was in the god’s eye again, and the smile he gave Lann sent a shiver running through the youngster.

‘Enough of such things,’ the god said, waving the matter away. ‘Right now they are unimportant. I promised I would return to the reason I am here, so let us do so. Tell me, Lannigon, how did you come to be blind?’

The boy’s head was still spinning from the god’s words, and he wanted nothing more than to return to the matter of who his father might be. Despite this, he answered the god’s question. ‘I … I fell from a tree. When I hit my head I lost the ability to see.’

‘And what were you doing up this tree?’

‘I was trying to get away from something.’

‘Something?’

‘A creature, a thing that was at the same time both man and a wolf.’

‘But it was neither of those things really, was it?’

‘No.’

‘Then what was it?’ A long, uncomfortable silence followed, the god sitting perfectly still as he studied the boy. ‘What do you know about the one your people call Lorgukk?’