Rachaela slowed her pace but did not stop. The cat eyed her. It was sleek, its ears raised not flattened. Did it know her still or would it turn on her now she was an outcast? Was it some supernatural sentinel of the Scarabae?

She came level with the cat, stretched out her hand, and the cat sniffed her. She smoothed its great barbaric head.

‘You’re a beautiful monster,’ she said, ‘are you going to let me by?’

The cat withdrew from her like a sooty ghost and stole away along the slope towards the standing stone.

From a distance of thirty feet she heard it clawing the earth. It was not concerned with her. She was through all the ordeals now, and had only the journey to accomplish.

There was a kind of separate fear on her as she walked.

The vast heath was full of stillness and life. Noises were continuous, chirrups of unimaginable creatures, the sudden flush of something in a bush, the beating of wings. Once three night birds rose into the blue-black of the sky.

She disturbed the pattern of the nocturne.

There were stars, brilliant and manufactured, so many of them, ridiculous to believe that they were suns and planets. The cloud formed the shape of a skull beneath the moon, huge eyeholes of sky glaring down. Anything might come out of the sky.

Or off the ground.

Rachaela walked stolidly, the weight on her back like the sins of the pilgrim in some religious tale.

What were her sins? Incest, for one. But the word meant nothing. Do what you like so long as you don’t get caught. But there—

Perhaps the long hard walk would help her. Shake loose the sin.

Silly to hope for that. She had acted unthinkingly and was punished.

Was it a sin to leave the Scarabae?

Were they still standing like statues in the garden? Had Anna and Stephan led them in?

She must forget the Scarabae. Forget Adamus.

Her mother had never managed it. She would have to be different.

It was not difficult to recollect the route Carlo and Cheta had taken. Certain landmarks had been unconsciously remembered. She had turned inland at the right spot she was sure. Yet where was the road now?

Out of a stand of pine a slim grey beast emerged. It checked and looked at her. The markings about its eyes made it savage, wolf-like, but it was only a fox, more discomposed than she at the meeting. It trotted briskly away.

Beyond the pine trees the road ran, desolate and haunted black.

Rachaela did not like the look of it by night. She walked carefully to one side. Some colossal thing might come from the dark, storming down on her.