‘Follow?’ Torvald repeated. ‘Where?’

To that Silgar simply shook his head.

Karsa abandoned the oars and made his way to the stern, taking the tiller in both hands.

They rode the tumbling, churning sea of wreckage towards the breach. Where the wall had given way there was an ochre cloud of mist as vast and high as a thunderhead. Beyond it, there seemed to be nothing at all.

Silgar was making gestures with both hands, snapping them out as would a blind man seeking a door latch. Then he jabbed a finger to the right. ‘There!’ he shrieked, swinging a wild look on Karsa. ‘There! Angle us there!’

The place Silgar pointed towards looked no different from anywhere else. Immediately beyond it, the water simply vanished – a wavering line that was the breach itself. Shrugging, Karsa pushed on the tiller. Where they went over mattered little to him. If Silgar failed they would plunge over, falling whatever distance, to crash amidst a foaming maelstrom that would kill them all.

He watched as everyone but Silgar hunkered down, mute with terror.

The Teblor smiled. ‘Urugal!’ he bellowed, half rising as the dory raced for the edge.

Darkness swallowed them.

And then they were falling.

A loud, explosive crack. The tiller’s handle split under Karsa’s hands, then the stern hammered into him from behind, throwing the Teblor forward. He struck water a moment later, the impact making him gasp – taking in a mouthful of salty sea – before plunging into the chill blackness.

He struggled upward until his head broke the surface, but there was no lessening of the darkness, as if they’d fallen down a well, or had appeared within a cave. Nearby, someone was coughing helplessly, whilst a little farther off another survivor was thrashing about.

Wreckage brushed up against Karsa. The dory had shattered, though the Teblor was fairly certain that the fall had not been overly long – they had arrived at a height of perhaps two adult warriors combined. Unless the boat had struck something, it should have survived.

‘Karsa!’

Still coughing, Torvald Nom arrived alongside the Teblor. The Daru had found the shaft of one of the oars, over which he had draped his arms. ‘What in Hood’s name do you think happened?’

‘We passed through that sorcerous gate,’ Karsa explained. ‘That should be obvious, for we are now somewhere else.’

‘Not as simple as that,’ Torvald replied. ‘The blade of this oar – here, look at the end.’

Finding himself comfortably buoyant in this salty water, it took only a moment for Karsa to swim to the end of the shaft. It had been cut through, as if by a single blow from an iron sword such as the lowlanders used. He grunted.

The distant thrashing sounds had drawn closer. From much farther away, Damisk’s voice called out.

‘Here!’ Torvald shouted back.

A shape loomed up beside them. It was Silgar, clinging to one of the water casks.

‘Where are we?’ Karsa asked the slavemaster.