It was almost dark outside, a grey, misty Sulien twilight that dulled the roseate pink of the old stones to a sombre carnelian. The cobbles glistened with rain; one or two people hurried past, heads down beneath umbrellas. Orial stopped in the doorway to pull her hood up over her hair – and saw that someone was watching her. He drew back into the shadows of the doorway of the next house but not before Orial had recognised the tell-tale glint of watchful eyes, blue as polished steel.

CHAPTER 3

Khassian lay watching the raindrops slowly trickle down the unshuttered window panes. Beyond, a rainmist hid the distant green hillside from view. Did it always rain at this accursed spa? It had been raining since before dawn; he had lain awake listening to the drops pattering against the windows until the first wet light illumined his room.

Sleep eluded him. Whenever he drifted into a doze, images of flame and fire scored his dreams and he woke, sweating, terrified. There were other dreams too, drugged dreams, poppy-drowsed and darkly narcotic. Teetering on the edge of a black abyss, a stinking pit from whose smoke-wreathed deeps shrouded things crawled, clawing at him, threatening to pull him down into the depths.

Better to stay awake than to dream these terrors. Better to watch the dawn bring in yet another day.

I am twenty-five – and my life is over. All I have ever known, all I have lived for, is music. What use is a musician who cannot play? What use is a composer who cannot write down the music he composes?

He looked down at the burned ruin of his hands. He forced himself to try to move his right thumb, then the left. The new skin cracked and groaned. He bit his underlip until he tasted blood.

Nothing happened. He was willing the damn things to move – and the message was somehow not transmitting itself from mind to hand.

Fear. That was it. Fear of pain.

He must make himself endure the pain. It must be possible to make the mind triumph over the flesh, to learn to concentrate on the act of movement itself, not the sensation…

Exhausted by the effort, he slumped back, overcome by a sense of self-loathing. His physical frailty disgusted him. How could he be so weak-willed?

There was so much he still had to do. The opera. The burned opera. His most dearly cherished work. He had devoted a whole year of Ms life to the writing of Elesstar. It had become an obsession. It had not merely been a statement of his personal philosophy, it had become something of far greater import. It had become a plea for freedom, an anguished cry against the repression of personal liberties and the loss of free speech. It had been a single torch burning against the oncoming night.