Incredible as it seemed, Cassandra must have foreseen that a descendant of the Red Queen would come to the Land in the time of the Seeker, and she had to have foreseen it when she was in the Red Queen’s land. How else could she have given information to the Red Queen to pass on to her daughter and to her daughter’s daughter, so that Dragon would hear or see whatever it was that was locked in her memories, waiting for me to discover it? And how else could Cassy have left a sign or a key for the Seeker in the Red Land before she had ever come to the Land and created the clue referring to it?

Unfortunately the clue had not told me how to acquire the knowledge hidden in Dragon’s suppressed memories, but the healers had assured me that her memory would return in time.

Sadly, a chance encounter with Herder priests had forced me to break into Dragon’s mind to prevent her falling into their hands. This had caused the girl to sink into a long coma where she had relived over and over the brutal betrayal and death of her mother. When she finally woke, it was with no recollection of the Red Land or of the time she had spent at Obernewtyn, but with a violent aversion to me because she associated me with the pain she had experienced, though she had no conscious memory of it.

During my time in Sador I had resolved to try to establish a new friendship with Dragon rather than seeking to revive the old one, but when I returned to Obernewtyn, I learned that she had disappeared. The only thing that kept me from despairing was the fact that the Futuretell guildmistress insisted Dragon was safe. I made the difficult decision not to seek the girl in the hope that, wherever she was and whatever she was doing, she would eventually return to Obernewtyn of her own accord, with her memory intact.

It troubled me that I had never told Rushton that Dragon was the daughter of the Red Queen, and that taking her aboard one of the four ships that would sail to the Red Land would ensure that her people would rise against their oppressors, thereby preventing the course of events that would lead to the foreseen invasion of the Land. Right now, Rushton and the others were planning the journey Maryon had said must be made, without having any idea how four ships could thwart an invasion.

I might have scribed of the matter to Rushton, but until now, he had been travelling from Sador to the Norse Islands and to the west coast, and besides, sending a letter about Dragon when she was missing had seemed pointless.