I had not known until afterwards that the central panels around which the doors had been built had been brought up to the mountains by gypsies and sold to Marisa, nor that they incorporated a list of instructions from Cassy – a list of directions that, once unravelled, were to lead me to all I would need to destroy Sentinel. I had been forced to revisit the doors on the dreamtrails to learn what they were. In retrospect it was a pity I had not taken a rubbing of the border where Marisa had concealed her directions to Sentinel, as well as the markings on the central panels, because all I knew for sure about its whereabouts was that it was far from Old Scotia in what had been a remote part of the world in the Beforetime, and that it had been close to or at least on the same landmass as another Govamen complex called Eden. This, according to my most recent Beforetime dream, was where two of the last flamebirds had been sent, who were distant ancestors of Atthis and the Agyllians.

I marvelled at this for a time, and then my thoughts returned to the White-faced Lords as I wondered if it was possible that Sentinel was situated in their distant land. How strange if, instead of being isolated and abandoned as I had always imagined, Sentinel lay at the heart of a thriving community, unrecognised for the deadly force it was!

Following the play of firelight on the curved roof, I thought about Cassandra’s key. I had no idea of the role it was to play, given that the memory seed Cassandra had left in the Sadorian Earthtemple was supposed to contain all I would need to get into the Sentinel Complex. Perhaps just as the memory seed was not truly a seed, Cassandra’s key was not truly a key, after all the word key had possessed a number of meanings in the Beforetime. The letters scribed upon the little blocks in the control panel of a computermachine, which were the means of communicating with it, were called keys, and the process of tapping instructions with them had been called keying. The chart of symbols and distances that made sense of a map was also called a key, and maybe there were other meanings as well.

Irritated by the fact that I was now thoroughly awake from thinking about my quest instead of advancing it by speaking with Atthis on the dreamtrails, I had to remind myself that I had abandoned the idea of attempting it this night when I had found Cinda in my chamber, knowing it would be too late to seek out the dreamtrails when I had to get up before dawn. Besides, I had no desire to disturb Gahltha when doubtless he was with Avra.