At this the old woman threw back her head and laughed. “Still you do not know me!” she says. “Still you do not recognize your own great-grandmother!”

He looked at her in amazement. “What does this mean?”

“Just as I said. I am Emptiness, and your father was one of my grandchildren. You could pour all the oceans of the world into me and still not fill me, because Emptiness cannot be filled. You could bring every creature of the world and still not lift me, because Emptiness cannot be moved. Why did you not go around me?”

Crooked got to his knees but bowed low, touching his forehead to the ground in the sign of the Dying Flower. “Honored Grandmother, you sit in the middle of a narrow road. There was no way to go around you and I did not wish to turn back.”

“There is always a way to go around, if you only pass through my sovereign lands,” she told him. “Come, child, and I will teach you how to travel in the lands of Emptiness, which stand beside everything and are in every place, as close as a thought, as invisible as a prayer.”

And so she did. When Crooked was finished he again bowed his head low to his great-grandmother and promised her a mighty gift someday in return, then he went on his way, thinking of his new knowledge, and of revenge on those whom had wronged him.”

It was strange, but Vansen was wondering if being lost again behind the Shadowline was not stealing his wits. Even after the raven’s harsh voice had fallen silent Vansen could feel words in his head, as though someone was muttering just out of earshot.

“Foolishness,” Barrick said after a long pause. “Gyir says the bird’s tale is foolishness.”

“All true it is, on our nest, us swears it.” Skurn sounded more than a little irked.

“Gyir says that it is impossible that the one you call Crooked would not know his great-grandmother, who was the mother of all the Early Ones. It is a foolish raven story, he says, told from between two leaves.”

“What does that mean?” asked Vansen.

“From where a raven sits, in a tree,” Barrick explained. “We might say it is like groundlings discussing the deeds of princes.”

Vansen stared for a moment, wondering if he were being insulted, too, but Barrick Eddon’s look was bland. “The fairy talks in your head, yes?” Vansen asks. “You can hear him as though he spoke to your ears?”

“Yes. Much of the time. When I can understand the ideas. Why?”

“Because a moment ago I thought I heard it. Felt it. I don’t know the words, Highness. A tickling, almost, like a fly crawling in my head.”

“Let us hope for your sake that you did indeed sense some of Gyir’s thoughts, Captain Vansen. Because there are other things behind the Shadowline, as you doubtless already know, that you would not want crawling around in your head, or anywhere else on you.”