I descended until I reached the vast empty cavern deep inside Rushton that was his Talent. It was dark, but the darkness was velvet soft, and even here, I could perceive faint strains of the music that permeated his spirit. Was it always so between two lovers, I wondered, or was it only when the two who merged were Talented? Or was it only because of who and what Rushton and I had for so long been to one another?

I let myself be drawn towards a brightness at the centre of the cavern. It came from the pool where reality was reflected, or Rushton’s memories or dreams when he slept. In it now, I saw myself in Rushton’s arms and watched him pull the hair back from my neck and kiss it. I shivered and shifted my gaze to the bear sitting beside the pool watching me. It was the shape Rushton’s spirit took here in his deepest mind, and in the green eyes looking out from the beast’s face I saw my reflection and understood that, once more, he had transformed me into the idealised goddess-Elspeth.

I became aware of a weight in my hands and looked down to see that I was holding a large golden bowl brimming with a brightness that was neither liquid nor solid but some combination of both. The bear Rushton rose up on his hind legs and lumbered around to me. Instinctively I offered the bowl to him. He cupped the sides of it and my hands with his enormous paws, and bent his great shaggy head to lap at its contents. When he lifted his head and straightened, he towered over me, dark muzzle and sharp fangs glistening gold.

Chapter 13

13

‘Seeker,’ he rasped, ‘I know why you have come.’

I recoiled a little, for there was a savage undertone to his voice. ‘I must ensure the knowledge of my quest, which you have seen in my mind, will remain hidden here.’

‘You drove the Destroyer from me,’ said the bear. ‘It is your right to do as you wish here. But you know that if you would bind your secret to this keeping place, you must use that which you fear most.’

I wanted to ask what he meant, but even as he said the words, I knew. Of course I knew, for where had Rushton got the knowledge but from me? I had kept it hidden from myself, but he had seen it in the greater truthfulness of our merging. To bind my secrets inside him, I would have to draw on the fearsome black power that I had evoked to kill Madam Vega when she would have slain him; the same power that, the last time I had evoked it, had exerted its own terrifying will so that I had barely been able to control it and I had sworn never again to waken it.