‘It bade me go into the high mountains beyond Obernewtyn at darkmoon, for there I would find someone who would also be seeking you, and who would lead me to you. So I came back and told my brother that we were going to Obernewtyn for the moon fair. I knew I could not leave him without protection where our father could find him so I convinced him to go ahead with servants, the makings of a stall and produce from the orchards to sell and a missive for Garth. In it, I asked that he be housed at Obernewtyn until I returned. I sent all of our coin in a sealed pot, saying to my brother that it was a gift to Garth. The missive asked Garth to use it to set my brother up in some small business in the new shire and to watch over him. In payment for his trouble I offered a scroll I had found which he had desired since I first showed it to him.’

‘You can imagine my surprise,’ Swallow said, taking up the tale smoothly, ‘when I rode away from Obernewtyn, headed for the high mountains, to come upon a woman who turns out to be the very person Rushton believed you had gone seeking in the lowlands. I asked where she was bound and she gave me the sharp edge of her tongue for my impertinence and bade me be on my way.’ He laughed and gave Analivia a teasing smile.

She shook her head but laughed softly. ‘We talked at odds and in riddles for a little, until I got sick of it and demanded to know if he knew where you were.’

‘It was cleverly done,’ Swallow approved. ‘For it could have been merely an ordinary query, but to one who had dreamed of voices, it suggested she might be another dreamer.’

‘So you came here together and found the others?’ I asked.

‘We arrived first but it was not until the others came that I had the nightmare again, only it was part of a different dream,’ Analivia said. ‘There was a young cat in it very like to the old cat that you brought here with you, but the dream was not about you. It was a past-dream and the cat was sleeping in the arms of an older woman with very pale skin. It must have been hurt because its head was bandaged. With them was a gypsy girl but both of them had long dark hair and they wore Beforetime clothes. They were in a small dim room looking at a computermachine that was showing them visions of the very same desolation I had seen, over and over in my nightmare.