Abruptly Galen caught up his stick; Raffi jerked back but the Relicmaster gave a sour laugh. ‘Come on.’

They walked all morning, quickly, not speaking. The track climbed the smooth slopes easily, the grass green and short, spattered with rabbit dung. Distant flocks of fat sheep grazed.

On the top of the ridge they lay low, till Galen was sure no one was near; they crept over, not straightening till they were well below the skyline. The stone they had seen from the valley leaned beside the white track, glinting with quartz.

‘Sekoi,’ Raffi said, seeing the carved spirals.

Galen grunted, walked round it. Then he touched it, feeling for the bands of energy, but Raffi knew by the way he turned away he had failed.

‘What’s that?’

It was a small red flower, lying propped against the stone. Galen picked it up. ‘Not from here. It’s been brought.’

‘Alberic’s Sekoi! He’s come past here – and not too long ago. It’s still fresh.’

Galen nodded, then tossed it down. ‘Then I hope the creature puts on speed. I want Tasceron, not him.’

It was a bare place, green to the world’s end, and the sky blue and empty. Trudging, Raffi felt exposed, open to attack, and through the eyes of the one circling hawk high up he managed to see himself briefly, a tiny dusty figure, hot and tired and thirsty, moving with infinite slowness over the green hollows. The bird swooped and swerved; giddily he came back to himself, stumbling over a stone.

Then they came to the tombs. A few loomed up, huge, on each side of the track, smooth humps of grass, some with ditches round; one with a rowan tree sprouting from the top. For each Galen spoke prayers, chanting under his breath, mile after mile. It was a dry country, incredibly still, with only a sudden arrowbird darting up to break the crisp silence.

Raffi trudged on. The tombs oppressed him; their silence was a weight on his shoulders. He wondered if Galen felt it. Unlike the cromlech, these kept their dead, and passing one he saw for a moment the hidden dark chamber under the grass, the scrawled spirals on the long bones.

Ahead, a ridge rose up. To the left of it a single tree-clump stood, dark tops moving in the breeze. Rooks flapped and cawed above it, a black, restless colony.

Galen stopped. He looked up at the trees, his face stern. Then he stepped off the track. ‘This way.’

Raffi stared. ‘Why over there?’

‘Where I go, you go.’ He hadn’t slowed. Raffi had to hurry to catch him.

‘But why?’

‘Because I say so.’