Restless, I lifted the sleeping Maruman gently from my lap onto my pack and walked back slowly to look up at the bluff we had climbed to inspect the Observatory. Once again the clouds had closed over, turning the red of dusk to a rusty brown so it was hard to see the building as much more than a white shape. But I could visualise it in my mind’s eye very clearly. Odd how, from below, it did not look near as high, and yet I could remember vividly the dizzy terror I had felt looking down. But in the end the danger had come from the deceptively easy-looking mound of stone and rubble at its hem. There was a lesson in that, I thought. I looked up, wondering if the stone really had been a bridge, as Swallow had speculated. Then I shuddered, recollecting that this had been the very question in my mind when I had stumbled.

I heard a step behind me and turned to see Dameon approaching. I did not wonder how the empath knew where I was. He had always been able to map the world by the emotions of people around him. I took a step towards him and stubbed my toe hard enough to make my eyes water. Dameon winced at my muttered curse and when he came to me, he gently drew my hand through his elbow. I was surprised at the hard muscles I could feel in his arm. Truly his journey to the Westland and his riding lessons had hardened him.

‘How is it that you are blind but I am clumsy,’ I demanded with mocking ire.

He smiled. ‘The difference is that I can not rely on seeing things,’ Dameon said, ‘so I must be aware at all times and keep a constant sense of the people and obstacles around me.’

‘But how does any of that help when you are in a place where people are moving?’ I could not help but ask. ‘I have known you to look at me across a crowded room and know me for who I am.’

Dameon grinned. ‘My dearest Elspeth, you emanate emotions as loudly as Matthew used to do. And people’s emotions have what I can only describe as a flavour, which is unique. So I can … taste you in your emotions. There is no better way to describe it,’ he added, with his usual grimace of frustration at the limitations of a language that did not encompass more than the five senses ordinary unTalents possessed. Then he shrugged. ‘When you enter a chamber I am in, my senses know it as if cymbals had been struck.’

‘Speaking of Matthew, have you had any dreams of him lately?’ I asked.

The empath nodded slowly. ‘Only snatches of things that might or might not have been true dreams. You?’