Dath said it was half a day’s rowing, at least, so the decision was made to make camp and approach the hold in daylight.

And so here she was, sneaking off in the dark to take a look at the book that seemed to be leaching Brina’s enthusiasm for life.

Carefully she turned pages, knowing how fragile it was, moving steadily to the back of the book. The part that Brina had forbidden her from looking at. In the moonlight the pages took a silvery hue, the writing like black shadows crawling across the pages. Things began to change, as she’d seen before, more diagrams and runes. Occasionally words she recognized.

She paused, mouth working, brain aching as she tried to translate what she was seeing.

‘An dorcha sli,’ she breathed. She blinked and stared harder, the words seeming to be clawing out of the page at her, the flesh on her arms and neck goose-bumping as the words appeared in her mind.

‘The dark way.’

Suddenly she felt scared, a creeping terror filling her, as if eyes were watching her, crawling over her. The darkness around her abruptly felt ominous, the silence malefic.

Almost against her will she turned more pages, eyes glued to the runes scrawled before her.

‘Ghloigh gheasa,’ she murmured. ‘The spell of summoning. Fuil de namhaid, blood of an enemy.’

This is not Elyon’s way of faith. What is this? And why has Brina been spending so much time poring over this?

A twig cracked behind her and as Cywen was turning she felt her ear gripped and pulled, hard enough that she either had the choice of following the ear or having it ripped off.

She staggered upright and came face to face with Brina, angrier than she had ever seen her before. Her lips were twisted, noises spluttering from her mouth, but rage seemed to have taken her beyond the use of speech.

Cywen felt truly terrified.

‘I’m sorry,’ she blurted.

‘Not as sorry as you’re going to be, you thieving, back-stabbing, soft-footed, plotting little witch,’ Brina hissed. Cywen tried to take a step back, but found that unfortunately in her anger Brina hadn’t loosened her grip on Cywen’s ear.

Escape was out of the question, so Cywen resorted to the next option.

She screamed.

Immediately footsteps were thumping and voices calling.

Brina grabbed the book from Cywen’s hands and tugged it out of her grip, slipping it into her cloak just as the first people reached them. Two guards from the first watch – Cywen recognized one of them as Akar, the Jehar captain.

Close behind them but from the other direction Meical and Corban appeared, Balur striding out of the darkness from another direction.

‘What is going on?’ Meical asked.