‘No. I see the weight of a curse upon you, priest, as surely it is upon us all. You close your eyes and dread the waiting dream. While here I pace in my room, longing to open my eyes and so discover all this to have been a dream. So here we face one another, as if to contest wills.’

Abruptly, Endest began thumping his thighs, swinging down upon them hard with his fists, in growing ferocity.

Rise stepped closer, alarmed. ‘Hear me! You are not asleep, friend!’

‘How can I know?’

The cry, so filled with despair, silenced the historian.

Endest ceased punching his thighs, his head shifting as if he was looking for something on the floor, and then he spoke. ‘I step into the hearth chamber. They have been arguing – terrible words, cutting like knives upon kin and loved ones. But she is not right, the woman dying on the hearthstone. I see her in the robes of a High Priestess. Of course,’ he added with a weak, dry laugh, ‘they are women who like to spread their legs. They do not fight, and would make of surrender a gift, even if one of little worth for its easy ubiquity.’

Rise studied the young priest, struggling to understand the scene Endest Silann was describing. Yet the historian dared not ask a question, although this prohibition seemed in itself arbitrary. The man before him had no answers.

‘I walk up to her, numb, unable to stop myself. She is already wed – though how I know this I do not know – but I see her as Andarist’s wife, and a High Priestess, beloved child of Mother Dark. She is not yet dead, and I kneel at her side and take her hand.’ He shook his head as if refusing an unspoken objection. ‘Sometimes her husband is there, sometimes not. She is badly used and dying. I watch the life leave her, and then I hear Lord Anomander. He is saying something, but none of the words make sense – I do not know if he speaks another language, or if I simply can’t hear them distinctly. When I grasp her hand, I am whispering to her, but the voice is not my own – it is Mother Dark’s.’

‘It is but a dream,’ Rise said quietly. ‘Do you recall, there was a banquet, Endest, which we attended. Two years ago. It was before Lord Andarist met Enesdia – before he saw her as a woman, I mean. Scara Bandaris was there, as guest to Silchas. The captain was telling a tale of when he was offered hospitality in House Enes on his way down from the north garrison. He had been amused by Lord Jaen’s daughter, who walked with the airs of a High Priestess. That was the title Scara gave Enesdia, and this memory has twisted its way into your dream. Nor, Endest Silann, were you there in the time of her dying. No one was but her killers.’