Descantra immediately rounded on the older male, snapping furiously at him, and when I heard her curses I understood that, in jeering at me, Gobor had once again opened a way to the wolves’ minds for me. It might have been a small triumph, but at once I felt their rage and murderous intent, and too late it occurred to me that maybe in saying the wolves would have to hear me, Atthis had meant more than the simplest and most obvious meaning of that word. Perhaps she had meant that I needed to get through to the wolves, and whether or not I had got through to Rheagor, it was clear that I had failed to reach the rest of his pack.

‘Where is Rheagor?’ I demanded again, speaking my thought directly to Descantra and knowing the others would hear it because of the link they shared.

‘Speak not the name of the pack leader,’ she snarled.

‘What am I to call him if not his name?’ I asked.

‘Tha might as well call that one dead,’ Gobor said.

‘Dead to the world,’ Descantra added bitterly. ‘That one went seliga and has not returned. Such paths do lead near to the longsleep and those that do walk them be half in love with death.’

I felt sick knowing that Maruman had wandered long and far when he had gone seliga, and it might be days or sevendays before the wolf woke. But I said, ‘That one said he would return to give me my answer and I believed him.’

‘Nor is that one liar or oathbreaker,’ Descantra growled. ‘But all who do walk seliga do risk losing themselves.’

‘He has walked seliga only three nights,’ I said. ‘The feline that was with me in your valley has walked longer by far and returned to tell the tale.’

‘The pack leader did walk seliga only once before and that did near kill him. You made him go where he had sworn he would never venture again and that one will not return any more than will this one’s brothers, slain by tha brethren, dinrai,’ Descantra answered. The intensity of her focus on me was so great that her muscles were tensed to attack. I longed to step back and put the fire between us, but even if I could have broken the power of her musk, it would have spurred her to attack, not to mention drawing the wolves to notice the others. So far it was as if they saw only me.

‘The funaga who trapped and tortured you is no brethren to me, but a deadly enemy,’ I sent, then something prompted me to add, ‘As to your brothers that perished at his hands, how is it that you left them to die?’