I had no idea why I dreamed of Cassy or why I only dreamed of her life before the Great White. That was no less a mystery than why I was the Seeker. I had always assumed it must be because of the unusual range and strength of Talents I had been born with, which would be needed to find the clues that Cassy would leave. Certainly, much of my time since my first encounter with the Agyllians had been spent trying to decipher her instructions.

My task had been complicated and occasionally aided by upheavals in the Land, some of which Cassy must have futuretold. The previous year had seen an invasion of warrior priests, the overthrow of the Council and soldierguards on the west coast, and of the Herder priests in the Norselands. Despite being intimately involved in these events, I had found two of Cassy’s signs during this period; one had been a phrase scribed upon a memorial cairn to Cassy’s son Evander, and the second had been a small device called a memory seed, secreted inside a computermachine in the Sadorian Earthtemple.

I had three things yet to locate. The first was Cassandra’s key, which I had always thought to find at Obernewtyn. The second was on or within a sculpture created by Cassandra to mark the safe-passage agreement she had negotiated with the Councilmen who had then ruled the Land, so that the Twentyfamilies and their descendants would be able to travel freely about the Land and watch over the signs left for me. It was my belief that the final sign lay in the Red Queen’s land.

I pictured the much-crumpled paper upon which Fian had scribed a rough translation of the gadi words Cassy had carved, referring to the final sign.

[That which] will [open/access/reach] the darkest door lies where the … [lies/sleeps]? Strange is the keeping place of this dreadful [sign/key] but there is no other, for all who knew it are dead save one who does not know what she knows. Seek her … past … Only through her may you go where you have never been and must someday go … danger. Beware … dragon.’

I had been baffled by the clue until I discovered that Dragon, who had lost her memory, was the missing daughter of the murdered queen of the Red Land.