Mappo found his heart slowing. Just do not again think of that lone, surviving artefact, Icarium. Sweat dripping in an uneven patter on the sand, he shivered, drew a deep breath. He glanced back at Crokus. The lad’s attention was elsewhere in such a studied pose of casual indifference that the Trell was left wondering at his state of mind.

‘Ninety-four thousand years – that must be an error,’ Icarium said. He turned from the structure, offering the Trell a weak smile.

The scene blurred in Mappo’s eyes. He nodded and looked away to fight back a renewed surge of sorrow.

‘Well,’ Fiddler said, ‘shall we resume our pursuit of Apsalar and her father?’

Icarium shook himself, then murmured, ‘Aye. We are close ... to many things, it seems.’

A perilous journey indeed.

The night of his leavetaking all those centuries ago, in the hours when the last of his old loyalties was ritually shriven from him, Mappo had knelt before the tribe’s eldest shoulder-woman in the smoky confines of her yurt. ‘I must know more,’ he’d whispered. ‘More of these Nameless Ones, who would so demand this of me. Are they sworn to a god?’

‘Once, but no more,’ the old woman had replied, unable or unwilling to meet his eye. ‘Cast out, cast down. In the time of the First Empire which was not, in truth, the first – for the T’lan Imass claimed that title long before. They were the left hand, another sect the right hand – both guiding, meant to be clasped. Instead, those who would come to be Unnamed, in their journeys into mysteries—’ She chopped with one hand, a gesture Mappo had not seen before among the tribe’s elders. A gesture, he realized with a start, of a Jhag. ‘Mysteries of another led them astray. They bowed to a new master. That is all there is to say.’

‘Who was this new master?’

The woman shook her head, turned away.

‘Whose power resides in those staves they carry?’

She would not answer.

In the passage of time, Mappo believed he had found the answer to that question, but it was a knowledge devoid of comfort.

They left the ancient island behind and struck out across the clay plain as the day’s light slowly faded from the sky. The horses were suffering, needing water that even Icarium and Mappo’s desert craft could not find. The Trell had no idea how Apsalar and her father fared, yet they’d managed to stay ahead, day after day.