She watched as the stream of horses and riders slowed to a trickle and stopped. She watched as the rain eased slightly and a hint of watery sunlight brightened the cloudy sky. In her mind she heard Blackthorn’s voice. Don’t act unwisely, Cara. Think it through. Hadn’t she promised she wouldn’t try to run away again, at least not without telling Blackthorn first?

She didn’t want to think it through. Her feet needed to go. They itched to walk, to stride, to run for home. It was Blackthorn’s fault, and practical, cautious Emer’s, that her mind filled up with all the reasons not to go. Getting there and back on foot would take up most of the day. She might get Gormán in trouble. Her father’s guards might see her, and then Father would be angry and do something even worse than making her stay at Winterfalls. Send her to court, for instance, where there wouldn’t even be Blackthorn and Emer and Dreamer’s Wood. Anyway, the truth was that soon enough someone at Winterfalls, probably Mhairi with her wretched yappy little dog, would notice she wasn’t anywhere to be found. And then there’d be a stupid fuss, and they’d ask Blackthorn, and Blackthorn would guess where she’d gone.

‘A pox on it,’ Cara muttered, closing her eyes and resting her forehead against the tree. ‘A pox on being sensible. I’m going home and I’m not letting anyone stop me.’

Chapter Fourteen: Bardán

14

~Bardán~

Wet. Wet and cold. The floor of his hut is a quagmire. His bedding is clammy. The wind pokes chill fingers through every crack in the place. Him, a master builder? Hah! Can’t even mend the holes in this miserable hovel. Fingers don’t work. Hands don’t work. Useless cripple. His father’s years of patient training, wasted. That lost time among the Others, that crushing, silent time, all for nothing. What in God’s name is the point of this? Or is the point that there’s no point, no ending, only the dark and the cold and the stone of dread deep in the belly?

In the dark, trembling and wretched, he can’t stop thinking of that story, the tale Grim was telling him, about the Red Giant. Never finished it. Had to be a sad story. Had to be. But he wanted the ending now. Needed the tale to finish.

‘Is it gold?’ he whispers. ‘No, it is not gold. Is it silver? No, it is not silver, nor jewels, nor land nor animals nor a fleet of ships nor a kingdom. It is a treasure far more precious than any of these. It is . . . it is . . .’