The stairs seemed endless, but at least the tunnel hadn’t deteriorated too much. In places the walls or roof had given way and she had to push through carefully. The air was growing damp when she heard a faint echo of sound from behind her.

She cursed again. That tunnel had been her secret for over a hundred years. She should have chased off the smugglers when they had first arrived, but she had rightly feared that news of a fearsome sorceress living in the lighthouse would attract unwanted attention. Now she was being driven out of her home by their descendants.

A fierce anger gripped her. It was tempting to ambush them in the dark. So long as the priest didn’t see her, she would be safe. She could kill him, and the rest, before they knew what had happened.

“Nothing stays the same. All you can be sure of in life is change.”

Mirar had said that. He had faced the final change: death. One mistake and she would join him. It was not worth the risk.

She ran down the rest of the stairs.

At the bottom was a stone door. No point in persuading the mechanism to work. It was probably rusted shut. Extending her hands, she channelled magic through them. Force struck the stone and it shattered with a deafening boom. She stepped out onto a narrow path to the left of the door.

It was not a path so much as a fold of rock in the cliff. She extinguished her light and continued by moonlight. Her old body was already aching from her flight down the passage. Now she felt unsteady as she hurried along the path, one hand touching the cliff side for balance.

She did not dare pause to look behind. When the pursuit reached the end of the tunnel, she would hear it. The cliff curved around, so she was probably out of sight already.

The path narrowed and she was forced to press herself flat against the rock and edge along it, balancing on her toes. Finally she felt a break in the rock face. She shuffled to it and hauled herself into the cave.

Cupping her hand, she created another light. The cave was shallow and most of the space was filled by a small boat. She examined it closely. It was made of a single piece of saltwood, a rare and expensive timber that was difficult to work but took hundreds of years to deteriorate. The name she had painted on the prow so long ago had flaked away.

“Hello again, Windchaser,” she murmured, running her hands over the fine grain. “I haven’t got any sails for you, I’m afraid. I’ll have to rig up a blanket for now.”