He smiled for the first time. “You needn’t think you’ll escape quite freely. I’ve a use for you and this Sight of yours, be sure of that. Ambrosius is not the only one who uses men for what they are worth, and I intend to use you. You have told me you were led here tonight; it was the Goddess herself who led you, and to the Goddess you must go.” He dropped an arm round my shoulders. “You are going to pay for this night’s work, Merlin Emrys, in coin that will content her. The Goddess is going to hunt you down, as she does all men who spy on her mystery—but not to destroy you. Oh, no; not Actaeon, my apt little scholar, but Endymion. She will take you into her embrace. In other words, you are going to study until I can take you with me to the sanctuary, and present you there.”

I would have liked to say, “Not if you wrapped my guts round every tree in the forest,” but I held my tongue. Take power where it is offered, he had said, and—remembering my vigil by the ash tree—there had been power there, of a kind. We should see. I moved—but courteously—from under the arm round my shoulders, and led the way up into the grove.

If Ulfin had been frightened before, he was almost speechless with terror when he saw me with his master, and realised where I had been.

“My lord . . . I thought he had gone home . . . Indeed, my lord, Cadal said—”

“Hand me my cloak,” said Belasius, “and put this thing in the saddlebag.”

He threw down the white robe which he had been carrying. It fell loosely, unfolding, near the tree Aster was tied to, and as it dropped near him, the pony shied and snorted. At first I thought this was just at the ghostly fall of white near his feet, but then I saw, black on the white, dimmed even as it was by the darkness of the grove, the stains and splashing, and I smelt even from where I stood, the smoke and the stale blood.

Ulfin held the cloak up mechanically. “My lord—” He was breathless with fear and the effort of holding the restive horse at the same time—“Cadal took the pack horse. We thought my lord Merlin had gone back to the town. Indeed, sir, I was sure myself that he had gone that way. I told him nothing. I swear—”

“There’s a saddlebag on Cadal’s mare. Put it there.” Belasius pulled his cloak on and fastened it, then reached for the reins. “Hand me up.”

The boy obeyed, trying, I could see, not only to excuse himself, but to gauge the strength of Belasius’ anger. “My lord, please believe me, I said nothing. I’ll swear it by any gods there are.”