‘To help you,’ Straaka said. ‘They told me that if I could help you, you would be able to free Miryum from her unwaking sleep. I asked what help I could give, trapped in this realm. They bade me wait, for they had foreseen that you would come here in spirit-form, and when you did, I must tell you about Miryum. They could not speak to you because you cannot go high enough without risking your survival.’

‘Before, when I saw you …’

‘I would have spoken of these things to you then, but the dark mad spirit which seeks you came. The oldOnes had spoken of it and bade me warn you to avoid the dreamtrails, but they had not foreseen that the one who seeks you would be able to rise so high. In truth, they told me later that it could not have done so unless the flesh to which it was linked was dangerously ill.’

‘Ariel is ill,’ I echoed, and heard the disbelief in my tone. I wondered why it was so hard to think of Ariel being ill or hurt like any other person.

Straaka went on. ‘Fortunately the oldOnes’ powers enabled them to see your danger and even as I strove to make you wake, they sent another spirit-form that flies in these high realms to help you. The oldOnes told me this when I returned to confess that I had failed to speak to you of Miryum. They bade me wait, and you would come again, and this time you would rise too high for the Destroyer to find you. I waited and watched. And you came.’

‘I was summoned,’ I said.

The tribesman frowned. ‘I did not summon you, nor would the oldOnes be able to do so directly.’ His expression cleared. ‘They might have used the spirit they had sent to help you before.’

‘Whose spirit was it?’ I asked, thinking of the red and violet wolfman spirit-form that had called me a fool and snarled at me to wake.

‘I do not know,’ Straaka said. ‘It was too strong not to be linked to life, but none come here who are not near to death, save those with unusual spiritual power.’

The black sword brought me here, I thought. I dismissed the unknown spirit-form from my mind. ‘So, the oldOnes wanted you to tell me that Miryum is the captive of Beforetimers in their city on the white plain, and that they are keeping her asleep and that I need to find her and wake her. Did they say anything else?’

He hesitated. ‘They did not say she had been taken captive by Beforetimers or that she was in a city. Miryum told me that,’ he said.

I frowned. ‘But you said you walked through it with her.’