Thinking of Agayla, the brushing of her rich embroidered dresses and her thick mane of auburn hair, brought a tingling to Kiska’s neck. She slowed, dizzied for a moment, then jerked to a halt as one of the images before her rippled like the surface of a pool. It shifted, darkened into a likeness of a woman sitting at a shoreline, lashed by punishing wind and threatened by low clouds. The woman raised her head and Kiska saw Agayla such as she had never known her: exhausted, haggard, her face drawn and pale, her hair wind-whipped and soaked. Agayla looked up, confused then alarmed. ‘Not here, child,’ she said, hoarse, distracted.

Kiska lunged forward. ‘Agayla!’ But the image rippled away and instead Corinn re-emerged. The look she gave Kiska made her feel as if she’d sprouted wings. The filigree of tattooing at her brow seemed to pulse.

‘What in the name of the Elder Ones do you think you’re doing?’

Kiska stammered, ‘I thought I saw someone. Someone I know. She’s in trouble. I have to go to her!’

Corinn muttered, gestured curtly. All hints of her earlier mischievous smiles had gone. ‘I don’t sense a thing. Stay with me. This is no place for games.’

Stung, Kiska opened her mouth to explain, but the woman started off without waiting. Kiska hurried after, struggling to stay close.

‘We must leave before our goal,’ Corinn said over her shoulder. ‘Something blocks the way – do you see it?’

Kiska’s vision went no further than the image of herself just beyond Corinn. It was as if she walked towards herself, though each step brought her no closer. ‘I don’t see anything different from before,’ Kiska said. But Corinn didn’t reply. She had disappeared.

A cry died on Kiska’s lips as the reflective silver of the Warren dulled and thickened to an opaque fog. Her training closed her mouth to still any betraying shout, for she recognized where she now stood. It was her third visit to Shadow Realm.

She stood upon a flat plain of dust and wind-scoured dirt. A sky of pallid lead arched overhead. From a great distance rose a low drawn-out moan, the wind or a hound.

In front of her towered a rock outcropping such as she had never seen before. It resembled a jumbled pile of enormous crystalline blades, black and smudged like frozen smoke. She thought of the stones Agayla possessed in her shop, the clusters of quartz and salt crystals. Smoke-quartz! That’s what it reminded her of! And it was changing. While she watched, individual blades altered, rotated, disappeared or changed translucence. The entire structure seemed undefined and shifting. She could not even be certain of its size. It was beautiful, seeming to speak to her, and she felt that it must hold the solutions to every mystery she had ever wondered about, all the answers to any questions regarding Agayla. All she had to do was enter and she would know how Agayla fared this very moment. Even where Tayschrenn was right now. Any question at all. The fate of her father. Who would be her lover. Kiska took a step towards it.