‘I will come with you,’ Darga sent, as if he heard my thoughts. Perhaps he did, for unlike many beasts, his mind was strong enough, like Gahltha’s, to read unshielded thoughts forming in my mind as well as those I projected as beastspeech.

‘To the ken?’ I asked.

Instead of answering, Darga cocked his head and pricked his ears. I listened, too, but could hear nothing other than the chorus of birds greeting the dawn. Gahltha butted me gently and bade me mount. There was urgency enough in his mindvoice that I did not do as I had intended and take out the webbing to attach the sword to his back. Yet my burdens were heavy enough that I had to ask him to draw close to the boulder so that I could climb up on it to mount.

Once I was seated, I arranged a small towel I had taken from my pack as a cushion for Maruman, who leapt up onto it and settled with his head on my thigh. Gahltha moved across the clearing and back into the trees. I looked back to see Darga following in our mist-swathed wake. Behind him, sunlight gleamed and glittered on the dewy foliage in the little clearing, but when I looked ahead again there were shadows and mist and no clear path.

We had been pushing through the wet dank undergrowth under the close-growing trees at a snail’s pace for over an hour when I ventured a shielded question to Gahltha.

‘I know only that we go into the high mountains,’ the black horse responded.

‘The oldOnes sent me back to guide you safely where you must go,’ Darga sent, for Gahltha had not shielded his answer.

His words suggested that it was his task to guide us through the parts of the mountain where there were patches of tainted ground, for Darga had the ability to scent tainted ground or water. I looked back at the dog. ‘You were at the ken?’

‘I wandered long after the fire that killed the boy/Jik, anguished to madness and lost,’ Darga said, yet queerly the heart-rending words were said without emotion. ‘I did not care about my life. It was slipping from me when the oldOnes sent the fliers. They carried me up to the ken and they healed my body and my memories of the funaga child.’

‘How could they heal your memories?’ I asked.

‘I was needed, they said. I told the oldOnes that I could not serve them while grief crippled me. Thus were the memories of my feelings for the funaga child sealed in the depths of my mind, so that they cannot ever break free. I know there was a funaga child that died in the firestorm, but I cannot remember the time I spent with him or what made me feel for him, so the knowledge of his death no longer has power over me. It is better thus.’