He knew that he would have to talk with Sephrenia, but there was something he wanted to find out first. He rose and went out of the house where they had set up their camp the previous day. Two doors down the street was the stable where they had put the cart in which Kurik lay. Sparhawk gently turned back the blanket and touched his friend’s cold face.

Kurik’s face was wet, and when Sparhawk touched his fingertip to his tongue, he could taste the salt brine of the sea. He sat for a long time, his mind reeling back from the immensity of what the Child-Goddess had so casually dismissed as mere ‘impossibilities’. The combined might of the Younger Gods of Styricum, it appeared, could accomplish anything. He decided at last not to even attempt a definition of what had happened. Dream or reality or something in between – what difference did it make? Bhelliom was safe now, and that was all that mattered.

They rode south to Korakach and on to Gaka Dorit, where they turned west towards Kadum on the Lamork border. Once they reached the lowlands, they began to encounter Zemoch soldiers fleeing to the east. There were no wounded with the soldiers, so there did not appear to have been a battle.

There was no sense of accomplishment or even of victory as they rode. The snow turned to rain as they came down out of the highlands, and the mournful dripping of the sky seemed to match their mood. There were no stories nor cheerful banter as they rode westward. They were all very tired, and all they really wanted to do was to go home.

King Wargun was at Kadum with a huge army. He was not moving, but sat firmly in place, waiting for the weather to break and for the ground to dry out. Sparhawk and the others were led to his headquarters, which, as might have been expected, were in a tavern.

‘Now there’s a real surprise,’ the half-drunk monarch of Thalesia said to the Patriarch Bergsten as Sparhawk and his friends entered. ‘I never thought I’d see them again. Ho, Sparhawk! come over by the fire. Have something to drink and tell us what you’ve been up to.’

Sparhawk removed his helmet and crossed the rushcovered tavern floor. ‘We went to the city of Zemoch, Your Majesty,’ he reported briefly. ‘As long as we were there anyway, we killed Otha and Azash. Then we started back.’

Wargun blinked. ‘That’s right to the point,’ he laughed. He looked around blearily. ‘You there!’ he bellowed at one of the guards at the door. ‘Go and find Lord Vanion. Tell him that his men have arrived. Did you find somewhere to lock up your prisoners, Sparhawk?’

‘We didn’t take any prisoners, Your Majesty.’