I thought of a Beforetime phrase that Garth sometimes used – The blind leading the blind – but I did not say it aloud out of courtesy to Dameon.

‘Have any of you dreamed of where I will go from this valley?’ I asked evenly.

They looked at one another and then Swallow said slowly, ‘You do not know where to go?’

A crucial question, I thought. ‘Up until recently I was convinced that Sentinel was in the Red Land, and the fact that I was supposed to travel there with Dragon and the others seemed a confirmation of this. But I was summoned to the high mountains at the last minute and told I would never return to the Land, and the ships left without me. It may be that I will come to the Red Land in some guise, ere the end, but I do not know how. What I do know is that the same voice that summoned all of you bade me come here to the mountains to seek out a pack of winter wolves so that I might convince them to accompany me. I know not why I need them, nor where I am to go with them, and yet I have been told that my quest will fail if they refuse me. I spoke to the pack leader yesterday and he bade me come here to await his answer. I think he meant to seek a vision that would give him guidance, and it may be that he will vision of where we are to go. Indeed, it must be so, for the voice in my dreams promised that I would have the answers I needed from those I met here in this valley.’

I sighed and shrugged. ‘I thought when I found all of you here that you must have the answers I sought. But having heard your tales, I am back to pinning my hopes on the wolves.’

‘Maybe the voice from our dreams now speaks to the wolf,’ Dameon suggested. I said nothing for the moment, incapable of imparting the news that the dream speaker – my guide and theirs – was dead and we were on our own.

‘Perhaps the answer will come from putting all we know together,’ Swallow said.

‘I thought that Sentinel must be in these mountains at first, else why come here and why would I have dreamed of the Beforetime women talking about it?’ Analivia asked. ‘But after I had spoken to the others about Sentinel, Swallow told us of seeing the ancient promises that were made by his people in the Red Land, about you, and how he had long ago seen a vision of himself there with you. Thus did it seem to me that Sentinel must be there.’

‘We will go there, ere the end, I think,’ Swallow said. ‘Yet there must be a reason why we have come to these mountains, unless it was solely to seek out these wolves.’