‘Where is he?’ rasped the gang leader, leaning over Ori, staring at him through the slits in his black mask. ‘Where is that blood-thirsty dog?’

‘He’s not here,’ Ori Reuven replied calmly. ‘You can see for yourself.’

‘Where is he? Talk! Where’s Dijkstra?’

‘Am I,’ coughed Ori, ‘hem, hem, my brother’s keeper?’

‘Die, old man!’

‘I’m old. Sick. And very weary. Hem, hem. I fear neither you nor your knives.’

The murderers ran from the chamber. They vanished as quickly as they had appeared.

They didn’t kill Ori Reuven. They were paid killers. And there hadn’t been the slightest mention of Ori Reuven in their orders.

Oribasius Gianfranco Paolo Reuven, master at law, spent six years in various prisons, constantly interrogated by various investigators, asked about all sorts of apparently senseless things and matters.

He was released after six years. He was very ill by then. Scurvy had taken away all his teeth, anaemia his hair, glaucoma his eyesight, and asthma his breath. The fingers of both hands had been broken during the interrogations.

He lived for less than a year after being freed. He died in a temple poorhouse. In misery. Forgotten.

The manuscript of the book Men from the Shadows, the History of the Royal Secret Services vanished without trace.

The sky in the east brightened. A pale glow appeared above the hills, the harbinger of the dawn.

Silence had reigned by the campfire for a long time. The pilgrim, the elf and the tracker looked into the dying fire in silence.

Silence reigned in Elskerdeg. The howling phantom had gone away, bored by its vain howling. The phantom must have finally understood that the three men sitting by the campfire had seen too many atrocities lately to worry about any old spectre.

‘If we are to travel together we must abandon mistrust,’ Boreas Mun said suddenly, looking into the campfire’s ruby glow. ‘Let’s leave behind us what was. The world has changed. There’s a new life in front of us. Something has ended, something is beginning. Ahead of us—’

He broke off and coughed. He was not accustomed to speeches like that, was afraid of looking ridiculous. But his accidental companions weren’t laughing. Why, Boreas positively sensed friendliness emanating from them.

‘The pass of Elskerdeg is ahead of us,’ he ended in a more confident voice, ‘and beyond the pass Zerrikania and Hakland. There’s a long and dangerous road ahead of us. If we are to travel together… Let’s abandon mistrust. I am Boreas Mun.’

The pilgrim in the wide-brimmed hat stood up, straightening his great frame, and shook the hand being held out towards him. The elf also stood up. His horrifyingly disfigured face contorted strangely.

After shaking the tracker’s hand the pilgrim and the elf held out their right hands towards each other.

‘The world has changed,’ said the pilgrim. ‘Something has ended. I am… Sigi Reuven.’