He started climbing. His life was over. He had never thought it would come to this—after so long he had come to believe that the Mages were dead—but now that it was happening he had purpose, meaning, a mission to fulfill before he died. Death was not a frightening prospect for Jayke. He had been here alone for so long, and he saw enough life and death in nature to know that it was an important consequence of existence. Not even the manner of his death worried him unduly; however unpleasant, the death moon would take him to itself and give him to the Black. The only thing that terrified him was failure.

He had spent his whole life here for one purpose: to give Noreela warning should the Mages return this way.

He was halfway up the cliff when he first heard the screams. Perhaps they came from the hawks, he thought. Or maybe the Krotes sitting astride their necks were calling out in glee at the prospect of spilling blood. Either way, Jayke ignored the noise. To turn around now he would have to stop, and that would admit defeat.

If only I’d stayed at the house, not gone for breakfast.

But he had to eat.

If only I could have enjoyed sitting and watching as much as I enjoyed walking!

But he had been here for forty years. He could not punish himself with thoughts of disgrace. Whatever happened now, he had already fulfilled his charge.

Jayke kept climbing, wishing himself higher and closer to the house. There were weapons in there, but first he had to free the doves. There were a hundred birds in all, fit and healthy, trained from birth to fly east and south until their message was delivered into human hands. And that message, tied ready in leather pouches on their legs, was stark and simple: The Mages are coming.

That scream again, assaulting his ears and echoing from the cliff face. He could not help glancing back, and he saw that the hawks had spread out just above the water. There were dozens of them—maybe a hundred in all—and Jayke could not help comparing that number with those messenger doves he was desperate to release.

The Krotes started shouting as the hawks approached the beach. There was no meaning to their words, no language other than bloodlust.

Jayke was almost at the top of the cliff. He was exhausted, but fear kept him moving. Thirty paces, that was all, thirty paces to the house, and then he could do his best to give warning to the land. He looked back again in time to see the hawks sweep up from the beach and rise above the cliff, a living wave breaking violently against Noreela’s shore.