Maruman heaved a sigh and I lifted my head for a moment to look at him. He ought not to have been very tired since he had ridden the whole day on my shoulders, but ever since telling me the truth about Atthis, he had been calm and amenable. Instead of being relieved, I found his serenity unnerving and even unnatural. Almost, I could wish that he would wake up and snarl at me to stop gnawing. Laughing at my own contrariness, I stroked his head tenderly and a brief dim image floated from his mind into mine of my windowsill at Obernewtyn, bathed in sunlight.

I was struck by how little he weighed and how many scars he bore, for all the new shine to his coat and the youthful spring in his step. For no matter what the Agyllians had done to him, age was not a thing that could be healed. I thought of the terror that had burned through me when Rheagor had been about to attack him, and of the way I had used the spirit sword to strengthen the part of my mind and Talent that I needed to hurl boiling water into the wolf’s face. I had never used that power in such a way before.

It was fear that had enabled it, and I realised that it had been fear that had made me use my Talent in the first place. I had been very small, perhaps five, playing a thrilling game of hunt with my brother. I had crept into my mother’s cupboard, which had a lock, pretending to be a fox. I had always pretended to be a beast when I played this game, though I had not then known I could communicate with them. I had been unable to lock the door from the inside, of course, but when I heard stealthy movements in the room outside approaching my hiding place, a hot surge of terror filled me and instinctively I pushed it into the wish that the door would be locked. Then I had heard the soft turning of the mechanism inside the simple lock.

Jes had been beaten, I remembered, when my furious mother had found me an hour later locked in the cupboard and weeping hysterically, for she thought he had shut me in as a nasty jape. I had been too distraught by then to defend him, even if I had known what words to use. I had not clearly understood that I had locked myself in until much later.