My curiosity was as strong as a command to my spirit, and I turned and began to move in the direction of the golden cord. An image formed in my mind, which I recognised as the cobbled yard the coercer-knights used for training bouts. I saw Reuvan, Gevan and Linnet watching two coercers, only it seemed to me that they were practising acrobatic exercises. Then one of the coercers doffed a red cap and I realised they were practising for the magi performance.

Suddenly Rushton turned his head towards me, frowning and looking puzzled, and it gave me a jolt to realise that he might be able to feel my presence because of the cord.

Unnerved by the thought, I turned my mind again to the twins and the vision faded along with the golden cord as I glided once more towards the Healing Hall. Soon I was in the small chamber looking down at the twins, whose bodies lay unmoving as waxen dolls. To my spirit-eyes, their flesh was dark, but their spirits hovered above their bodies, connected to them only by the silver cord that links all spirit to its flesh. I had never seen such a thing before. The spirits of sleeping people and beasts usually overlapped their bodies, or drifted, moved by echoes of waking events or thoughts, or deep-seated compulsions, but it explained why Kella and her team had been unable to find the twins’ minds. In a way, Roland had been right, their spirits had travelled too far for the healers to reach them. Obviously the spirit-forms had been unconsciously created because they had no true shape or definition.

I moved closer to examine their spirit-forms and saw that, unlike Miky’s, the silver cord running from Angina’s body to his spirit-form was dim and thin, a skein of smoke that would break up the moment a hand or even a breath of air disturbed it. Indeed, it seemed to me that it had no substance; what held him was the lavender spirit link that connected his spirit to his sister’s.

Angina’s spirit-form was mostly yellow and a livid, sickly green in colour, but Miky’s spirit was violet and blue, except at the edges, and around the place where the lavender cord was bedded. Here the colour had faded badly and the blue had a greenish tinge. I studied the cord again and noticed flecks of violet and blue being drawn into the lavender cord from Miky’s spirit-form like leaves being carried from one pool to another by a stream that linked them. Obviously the link was enabling his spirit-form to draw on hers, and clearly it was sapping her vitality.