Beyond, the character of the walls changed. No longer smooth, they bore bas-reliefs of half-height figures. Calenne ran her fingertips across the stone, tracing faces and the outlines of shields.

No two were the same. Some wore the short tunics and banded armour of early Tressia. Others the precursor to the robes and scales she’d seen too often that day. Then there were thicker-set figures, decked in furs and plaited beards. And through it all, the same stylised motifs. The sun and the moon. A blazing fire and a foam-flecked wave. A thorned rose and . . . and a raven.

Calenne suppressed a shudder. Still she caught no sign of the light’s source, only the reflections it scattered across the polished black stone. She gave no thought to turning back. Better the perils of the light than the uncertainty of the dark.

The passageway opened into a high-vaulted chamber, twice the size of her room at Branghall. At the very centre, a ring of iron-caged torches blazed – not with fire, but with golden light. Within the ring, there was only darkness. A darkness that was somehow more welcoming than the light.

The darkness swirled like windblown smoke as Calenne drew closer. Though it never broached the threshold of torches, the turbulence revealed a little of what lay within. A soot-blackened plinth, and atop it a twisted, scorched skeleton whose mouth gaped wide in a silent scream. Ash lay thick about the plinth’s base, shot through with gobbets of silvered metal. Bindings rendered molten by flame.

Instinct screamed at Calenne to flee. Her legs didn’t respond. She felt a sense of belonging she couldn’t place, much less explain.

The darkness guttered, then billowed. A womanly shape coalesced. Black vapour trailed behind in a windswept mane. She hammered at the torch-lit boundary, her thin, sharp features contorting in a voiceless scream. The air rippled like water beneath her fists. Shards of golden light flashed with each impact.

Her face flickered and reformed, likeness bleeding into likeness. Dozens Calenne didn’t recognise, and others she did, faces from her childhood. Then her own. It was gone as soon as glimpsed, replaced by the sharp-featured face first worn. Then the woman swirled away, her body collapsing into formless darkness again.

At last, Calenne’s legs responded. She staggered away, a hand thrust to her mouth to stifle a scream. A name echoed through her thoughts. A name from legend.

Malatriant.

The icularis attacked in a whirl more dance than war-craft. The folds of his cloak disguised his dirk’s lunge until it was too late to parry.