L’oric sank back, struck mute by the horror. Not simply a wounded creature, then. A mind clear enough to weigh, to calculate, to put itself aside ... ‘She will know, lass – she can’t help but know.’

‘No! Not if you help me. Help me, L’oric. Just you – not even Heboric! He would seek to kill Bidithal, and that cannot be.’

‘Heboric? I want to kill Bidithal!’

‘You mustn’t. You can’t. He has power—’

He saw the shudder run through her at that.

L’oric hesitated, then said, ‘I have healing salves, elixirs ... but you will need to stay hidden for a time.’

‘Here, in Toblakai’s temple. Here, L’oric.’

‘I will bring water. A tent.’

‘Yes!’

The rage that burned in him had contracted down to a white-hot core. He struggled to control it, his resolve sporadically weakened by doubts that he was doing the right thing. This was ... monstrous. There would be an answer to it. There would have to be an answer to it.

Even more monstrous, he realized with a chill, they had all known the risk. We knew he wanted her. Yet we did nothing.

Heboric lay motionless in the darkness. He had a faint sense of being hungry, thirsty, but it remained remote. Hen’bara tea, in sufficient amounts, pushed the needs of the outer world away. Or so he had discovered.

His mind was floating on a swirling sea, and it seemed eternal. He was waiting, still waiting. Sha’ik wanted truths. She would get them. And then he was done, done with her.

And probably done with life, as well.

So be it. He had grown older than he had ever expected to, and these extra weeks and months had proved anything but worth the effort. He had sentenced his own god to death, and now Fener would not be there to greet him when he finally stepped free of his flesh and bones. Nor would Hood, come to that.

It did not seem he would awaken from this – he had drunk far more of the tea than he ever had before, and he had drunk it scalding hot, when it was most potent. And now he floated on a dark sea, an invisible liquid warm on his skin, barely holding him up, flowing over his limbs and chest, around his face.

The giant of jade was welcome to him. To his soul, and to whatever was left of his days as a mortal man. The old gifts of preternatural vision had long vanished, the visions of secrets hidden from most eyes – secrets of antiquity, of history – were long gone. He was old. He was blind.

The waters slipped over his face.