It seemed the templar from the Pinnacle had been accurate in his judgement of the old man's mental state. He was hunched in a corner of the cell, cowering awkwardly. Drool ran down the pilgrim's chin, and a feeble grin tugged at the corners of his lips. He had intense blue eyes, eyes that now squinted against the shine of the nightlamp. Ragged white hair tufted from the top of his head, and a scraggly grey beard flecked with ginger covered his chin.

He looked quite mad.

"You," Primate Melovar Aspen said to the old man. "Answer my questions or you will die a slow death."

The pilgrim looked up at him, and then hurriedly looked away. "Salvation," he muttered.

"You're from Salvation?" the Primate asked.

"Salvation. When you die. That's what you say."

"That's correct, old man. Yet answer my questions or the Evermen will grant you no peace, I assure you. What happened when you were at the Pinnacle?"

"Came to see the light. Heard rumbling sounds."

"Did you see anyone?"

"Saw a shape, like the shimmer of a hot day. A cloaked shadow. Primate, what was it?"

Melovar was growing increasingly frustrated. If the second intruder had also been cloaked, there was little the old pilgrim could know. Then the Primate saw something, hidden by the old man's body.

"What's that you're hiding there?"

The old man cowered further into his corner, but the prison guard came forward and kicked him until the pilgrim took the thing he was hiding and scampered along the wall, holding it in his hands.

"He had it with him when we brought him in," the guard said. "He won't let it go, and it doesn't look like much, so we left it with him."

The old pilgrim was once more trying to hide the object with his body.

"Bring it to me," the Primate said.

After some scuffling with the pilgrim, one of the Primate's templars brought Melovar the object. It was mostly destroyed, curled at the edges and withered like a flower left in the sun, but Melovar immediately recognised the metallic fabric.

It was a book of the Evermen. The pilgrim must have found it in the wreckage at the Pinnacle.

Primate Melovar Aspen took the book in his hands, cursing that it was so badly damaged, but fascinated nonetheless.

"Keep the old man here, see that he's fed. I don't care when I come back, or if I never do. I want him here in this cell."

"Yes, Your Grace," the guard said.

Melovar would see what Templar Zavros had to say about this.

~

AS SOON as he was alone again, Evrin put his head in his hands. The act had been hard to keep up, as weak and in pain as he was, yet it had come to nothing.

The knowledge he had been trying to destroy, or at the very least protect, was now in the very hands he had tried to keep it from.