He’d come to this place after leaving Stromgard, drawn here by its solitude and inaccessibility. It held many memories from his childhood; not all of them good.

Vissergott had been his mother’s sanctuary, a headland she visited whenever she needed to escape the pressures that a queen to someone like his father felt. She had brought Kelewulf here on a number of occasions, letting him explore the shoreline down below while she watched him from this window …

*    *    *

It was the same window he’d watched his mother throw herself from.

The memory of that day was burned indelibly into Kelewulf’s mind.

His mother had brought him here following a terrible row she’d had with his father. Before that day, Horst Rivengeld had always let the two of them go off. But this time he followed them from Stromgard. In a fit of rage, he’d confronted his wife.

‘You will return to the palace with me,’ he had bellowed.

‘I will not,’ Kelewulf’s mother had replied, her voice calm in the face of her husband’s wrath. ‘And you cannot make me, husband.’

‘I am your king! You will return and you will bring the boy. His place is in Stromgard. Where, by the gods both old and new, he will learn the Volken ways. Not here, where you fill his mind with useless books and talk of majik!’

On and on he’d raved while his wife stood, calmly staring back at him, a serene ocean before his raging storm, until he’d told her she could go to hell.

She’d smiled back at him then. ‘Perhaps, my lord, I shall do just that.’

Kelewulf had watched her as she turned to the window. He’d screamed out for her to stop, but to no avail. He would have followed her out of this opening and into the night, had his father not grabbed him and wrestled him to the ground …

He shivered, now. What must it have felt like, launching herself from this height and plummeting down into those unforgiving rocks below? Had she thought of him, or had escape been the only thing inside her head that day?

Crossing the room, he lowered himself into a chair. He was exhausted. Occasionally it was necessary for the lich to return to the phylactery, due to the tremendous strain its occupation of him placed on Kelewulf. This was one of those days, and the young necromancer was glad for the brief respite.

You need to look after our body, the lich would tell him. Do not push yourself so hard that we cannot complete our work here.

Tired like never before, it occurred to him he was unable to remember the last time he’d slept or eaten, and this last thought made his stomach growl angrily. ‘Get something to eat, then rest,’ he mumbled to himself.