His touch slowed my hammering heart. His steady voice told me I had been on the brink of behaving in a manner not befitting a druid. Perhaps there was another way to do this, a better way. “I can keep her calm,” I said, looking at Cathal. “Please ask Gareth if I can untie her bonds. She has a link with me. She’ll listen to me.”

“No, Sibeal, I won’t ask him. You didn’t see her. No seafaring man wants to risk a madwoman on his vessel. And that was what she was, laughing, singing, screaming, climbing in the rigging, leaning over the side with waves like mountains crashing all around. What if there had been a reef? The crew were so distracted that we’d have sunk with all hands. I won’t ask Gareth, and I won’t untie her. And you won’t either. In a matter like this, you don’t go against the captain’s orders.”

A slap in the face. My authority as a druid counted for nothing. I stood silent beside Felix. To restrain Svala was to mock the gods. My chest ached with the wrongness of it. Standing beside Felix, with his body touching mine, I felt his pain. How could he be so stoic about this?

“What was it you came down to say?” Gull asked Cathal.

“We can’t sustain this pace much longer,” Cathal said flatly. “The toll on men and boat is too great. I’m starting to have doubts about the course. Could we have sailed right past the place?” He looked at Felix.

“I can’t tell you,” Felix said. “The conditions feel the same, the wind, the seas, the light. This part of the journey was shorter for Freyja. But you must allow for a different vessel, almost certainly a different starting point, the speed of the wind, and . . . ” His voice faded away.

“That is the question. Is this an ordinary storm, a phenomenon that is perhaps quite common to this particular place? Or is it something more? What great hand stirs the seas? Whose fell breath drives Liadan onward?”

“I take it you’re not referring to Manannán,” I said. I was furious with him, with Gareth, with Gull for allowing this to happen to Svala. That did not take away all my common sense. We were in danger. The situation was perilous. If Cathal needed my advice, I would give it.

“No, Sibeal, I do not refer to any godly power. It is in my father’s nature to toy with folk, to play tricks, to exercise his particular form of cruelty. We might sail on and on, and . . . ”

“And never reach land?” put in Gull. “The wind doesn’t blow in the same direction forever. Sooner or later it will change. If it’s later rather than sooner, Gareth will have no choice but to turn and head for home, our supplies being limited.”