‘I’ve got Emer coming over, and maybe this girl of Flidais’s. It seems an odd coincidence. Flidais’s girl is from Wolf Glen. The daughter of the house. She sounds difficult. But she may just be homesick.’

‘Give her a job to do,’ Grim said. ‘Work for her hands. Helps, most times.’

‘A long day for you,’ I said, thinking that if he decided to take on this building work, he had a lot of long days ahead. Perhaps more time apart would be good for the two of us. ‘I’d been thinking of a writing lesson.’

‘I can catch up after supper.’

‘If you say so.’ He’d likely be so tired he’d fall asleep the moment supper was over. Building a house would be hard work. A hall, even harder. On top of that, there’d be an hour’s ride each way. ‘We’ll see how it goes, mm?’

Chapter Four: Bardán

4

~Bardán~

They’ve given him a shelter. Not in the house. Not in the barn or the outbuildings. But not too far away. That man would leash him if he could, that man he cannot look in the eye, the one whose words sting like a scourge. That man would treat him like a vicious dog. The master. That’s what he calls himself. Master Tóla. The name sticks in his craw.

Gormán has found him the old hut among the pines, a place where the foresters store bits and pieces. Cleared it out, got him some blankets, a few pots and pans, shown him where the stream is and where he can safely make a fire. As if Bardán knew nothing at all. The past is misty, true. This place, this world feels not quite real, something he’s wandered into by mistake, somewhere he doesn’t belong. He’s been here before, he knows that . . . but the rest . . . Where’s it all gone? He remembers the master, and Gormán, and the heartwood house. There was a howling grief; he wanted to plunge a knife into his own belly and cut it out. There was a night of running, running, the trees flashing past like tall ghosts, the monsters closing in, his throat raw with shouting. Running to the end of the world.

The heartwood house is a wreck, too far gone to save. The master has let it go, let it sink back into the earth. A sad ruin. Like himself. But the master wants it built again. Wants him to finish the job he started long ago.

They told him that the day he first came back; the day he saw the girl in the tree. It made him laugh, though the laugh came out as an animal sound, a grunting bray that made them flinch. He showed them his hands, the clawed fingers, the joints stiff and knobby as old juniper.