Unless Sentinel was not in or beyond the Red Land as I had always supposed, but in the city of Jacob’s dreams. What if, in seeking Cassandra’s key, I found Sentinel?

I shivered at a vision of myself arriving in that city, near devoured by taint and the healing powers of my body, having to locate Cassandra’s key and face Sentinel before I died. My heart grew cold as I realised that remaining alive and healthy was not the aim of my quest. Nor was it my quest to keep my companions safe. My task was simply to bring to an end the threat of the weaponmachines that had destroyed the Beforetime. What happened to me after that did not matter.

Was that the meaning of Rheagor’s vision?

I felt a hand on my shoulder and then Dameon was empathising warmth and calmness into me. I let it flow through me, unknotting the snarls and thorns in my mind even as I had unknotted my hair. At length he stopped and sat down on a stone by me, telling me I had been emanating gloom enough to sink a ship. Before I could do more than thank him, Analivia pressed bowls of soup into our hands. Realising that I had not eaten since the morning, it was no wonder that I was suddenly ravenously hungry by evening. I had already devoured the soup when she offered a steaming chunk of campbread that had been cooked around a green stick. I was startled to find a small dollop of stewed plum in it, for that had been my father’s trick.

‘All right, tell us about the wolf,’ Swallow said, coming to sit by me with his own bowl of soup. Analivia sat down beside Dameon and Ahmedri came to sit cross-legged on the bare ground on the other side of the fire.

‘The pack leader saw a vision of us all travelling to a Beforetime city that stands on a white plain,’ I began.

‘It sounds like the city that the Beforetimer Jacob Obernewtyn sought,’ Analivia observed, to my astonishment. Then I realised she had probably heard Garth and the other teknoguilders discussing Jacob’s journal.

‘I believe it is,’ I said, and ate my campbread, leaving the others to talk about the journal and Jacob, until Swallow turned back to ask me what else the wolf had said.

‘There were some things I did not understand well enough to relate, but I will question him further as we travel,’ I said.

‘Did he at least say why we have to go to this Beforetime city?’ Analivia asked.

‘He did not, but I know why,’ I said. ‘Jacob took something there with him when he left Obernewtyn that I will need to deal with Sentinel. Until I read the journal, I always expected to find it at Obernewtyn or somewhere in the valley about Obernewtyn.’