I looked at Analivia. The old bird had told Maruman before she died that I would learn what I needed to know from those I met in the valley of the Skylake. I had assumed it must be knowledge I would get from the wolves, but now I was not so sure. ‘Tell me about your dream of Sentinel. Did you see where it is and how I am to go there? Did it speak of what I am to do with the devices and messages I have gathered?’

‘Better to call it a nightmare than a dream,’ Analivia said in a sombre tone. ‘I dreamed it a lot of times for a while when I was young, and there was more to it each time. That first time, I saw only a terrible vision of a land laid waste, everyone dead, all of it Blacklands. I thought I was true-dreaming of the Great White but the next time I dreamed it, I flew further and saw other lands, and they were all burnt and blackened and dead, too. Night after night I dreamed of deserts of black sand and lakes burning with witchfires; I saw forests of trees made of black glass, bare hills littered with bones that lay bleaching in the sun, oceans black and gelid with foulness. Night after night, whichever direction I took, I saw death.’ There was a long moment when she visibly drew herself from the dark vision she had woven for all of us, and then she met my eyes.

‘I did not have the nightmare for some years after that, but it came to me again when I found out my father and Moss had not died escaping from the Councilfarm. I was not surprised, for men like that do not die meekly. I wondered if there was not some connection between my father and my nightmare. Since the time the nightmares started when I was a child, I had heard him talk with his cronies of finding Beforetime weapons powerful enough to strike terror into the hearts of Herders and rebels alike, the threat of which would ensure obedience and stabilise the power of the Council, which is to say, his power, since he was its master.’

I nodded to her to continue.