‘You have spoken. Therefore you will lead. If you do well, you will be rewarded. If you do not do well, the punishment will be on your head. Now take this carrion out of my path.’ She touched Ch’iel’s flanks with her heels, and the slender white mare moved forward, delicately avoiding the puddles of blood on the ground.

‘Leadership among the Zemochs appears to have certain hazards,’ Ulath observed to Tynian.

‘Truly,’ Tynian agreed.

‘Did you really have to do that to him, Lady Sephrenia?’ Bevier asked in a choked voice.

‘Yes. A Zemoch who offends the Priesthood is always punished, and in Zemoch, there is only one punishment.’

‘How did you make the picture of the snake move?’ Talen asked her, his eyes a little frightened.

‘I didn’t,’ she replied. ‘It only seemed to move.’

‘Then it wouldn’t really have bitten him, would it?’

‘He’d have thought it had, and the results would have been the same. How far did Kring tell you to go into this forest, Sparhawk?’

‘About a day’s ride,’ he told her. ‘We turn south at the eastern edge of the woods – just before we get to the mountains.’

‘Let’s ride on, then.’

They were all a bit awed by the apparent change in Sephrenia. The soulless arrogance she had displayed during the encounter with the Zemochs had been so radically different from her normal behaviour that she even frightened them to some degree. They rode on through the shadowy forest in a subdued silence, casting frequent looks in her direction. Finally, she reined in her palfrey. ‘Will you all stop that?’ she said tartly. ‘I haven’t grown another head, you know. I’m posing as a Zemoch priestess, and I’m behaving in exactly the way a priestess of Azash would. When you imitate a monster, you sometimes have to do monstrous things. Now, let’s ride on. Tell us a story, Tynian. Take our minds off the recent unpleasantness.’

‘Yes, little mother,’ the broad-faced Deiran agreed. Sparhawk had noticed that they had all, unconsciously perhaps, taken to addressing her in that form.

They camped in the forest that night and continued the following morning under still-cloudy skies. They were climbing steadily through the forest, and as they progressed, the air grew colder. It was about midday when they reached the eastern edge of the wood and turned south, staying perhaps a hundred yards back under the trees to take advantage of the concealment they offered.

As Kring had advised Sparhawk they would, they reached an extensive grove of blighted trees late in the day. The stark white band of dead trees spilled down from the mountainside like a leprous waterfall, foul-smelling, fungus-ridden and about a league wide. ‘This place looks – and smells – like the outskirts of Hell,’ Tynian said in a sombre tone.

‘Maybe it’s because of the cloudy weather,’ Kalten told him.