‘One more elegant in its irony than the other, Hunn Raal. The dogs of my children, or their wild brethren. Found on the plain, yes?’

‘Yet another of my commands that left the scouts bemused, but they found what you asked for, goddess. But is this all we are to have? A thigh bone to make the Sceptre of Light? What need for a forge?’

‘Light’s essence dwells in fire.’ He sensed her amusement. ‘You have recovered your arrogance, Hunn Raal. Your sly superiority – the drunk’s first and only game. But you remain utterly ignorant. He kept you all children, and that was a mistake. And in your isolation… when at last he offered you all a mother, it was too late.’

‘Enough of your insults. Bilikk waits – guide him in what must be done.’

‘I am not the one to guide your blacksmith,’ she replied. ‘Here, the will of the First Forge commands. It chooses whom to use. If you had come alone, your lack of talent, the dearth of your knowledge and skill, would have yielded a poor result. But this one, I imagine, will prove a worthy source.’

Bilikk had remained kneeling, motionless, his head lowered with his chin on his chest.

Proffering the thigh bone, Hunn Raal said, ‘Here, take this.’

But the man made no response.

Tapping his shoulder with one end of the thigh bone elicited nothing. Crouching, Hunn Raal leaned close to peer at Bilikk’s face. ‘Abyss take us, the fool’s dead.’

‘Well, yes. You have need of his skills and experience. I think we are ready—’

As if he had been punched, Hunn Raal’s head snapped back, and in the stunned confusion filling his mind, he was assailed by a sudden rush of memories not his own. Fragments, shredded and momentarily nonsensical, images flashing in his thoughts, igniting behind his eyes – the village was little more than his extended family. He knew them all, and there was warmth, and any child – every child – was safe. In those years, had he known it, he had lived in a paradise, in a realm where love abounded, and even the common petty rivalries and disputes as might plague any large family proved rare and quick to wither on the vine.

There was something there. The commonplace was made somehow sacred. There was no reason for it, nothing he could point to, and dwelling in its midst felt wholly natural, and in those early years he had no sense that the world beyond the village was any different. He – I—

How we lived was how we were meant to live. How we lived was, I soon discovered to my horror, what others only aspired to, or dreamed of, or cynically dismissed as impossible.