‘We’ve been looking for you everywhere,’ Brina hissed, as if it were his fault that she couldn’t find him.

‘What time is it?’ Corban asked.

‘Late. Time to talk,’ Brina said.

‘It feels more like bedtime,’ Corban muttered. ‘Can’t this wait until daylight?’

‘No,’ Brina said. ‘We need somewhere private to talk.’

‘My chamber, then,’ Corban suggested. ‘It’s close, and I will not have to walk far to my bed afterwards.’

Brina tutted but did not argue so they made their way through Drassil’s stairways and corridors to Corban’s chamber. Storm was curled asleep at his door. She was starting to spend a little time away from her cubs now, and they were becoming braver and more adventurous, wandering from their den for short spells. Haelan, Swain and Sif never seemed to be too far from them.

Corban opened his chamber door, lit a candle, though a glance at the window showed the darkness turning to grey.

Dawn, then.

Brina pulled her book out and thumped it onto the table.

‘A book?’ Corban muttered.

‘Ban, it’s important,’ Cywen said. The look on her face quelled the protest forming on his lips and he pulled up a chair.

‘All right then,’ he said. ‘Let’s hear it.’

Brina turned to a marked page, almost the last page, and pointed to a scrawl of old runes.

‘Cywen, read this for me; my old eyes . . .’

Cywen bent over the book.

‘Is e an coire an ghlais,’ she read.

She was always good with her letters, but now she actually sounds like a giant – the tone, inflection. If I closed my eyes she could be Laith.

‘The cauldron is the lock,’ Brina translated.

‘Is iad na se seoda eile an,’ Cywen continued.

‘The other six Treasures are the key.’ Brina spoke in a flat voice, her eyes never leaving Corban’s.

‘Na aris cheile is fiedir leo a bheith, go deo seachas nior clans aontu.’

‘Never again together can they be, forever apart did the clans agree.’

‘Uimh nios mo taobh le taobh faoi bhun an cran mor.’

‘No more side by side beneath the great tree.’

Corban sat back in his chair, a frown creasing his face, a sick feeling squirming in his belly.

‘Forever apart,’ he murmured.

Brina and Cywen stared at him, waiting.

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Corban said eventually. ‘Why would Balur bring the axe here?’

‘It has always niggled at me,’ Brina said, ‘but not as much as this. Why has Meical not ordered the starstone axe and spear taken to the far corners of the Banished Lands.’

Corban blinked, images filling his mind. Of a red-leafed maple, a high cliff, a dark tunnel . . .

Meical.

‘It is as if he is using them,’ Cywen said, ‘but for what?’

‘Bait,’ Corban muttered. He stood and strode to the door, Storm following him.

‘Where are you going?’ they both called after him.

‘To have a talk with Meical.’