‘She stirred as I bathed her wounds and once she cried out in pain when I sewed a deep gash on her leg, but she did not come near to waking. None of her wounds is fatal or poisoned and I would not say she has been exposed to a dangerous level of taint.’

She went out of the hollow towards the weeping stone arch and I went down to sit on a stone beside the travois, thinking of my dream of the dragon flying with the wolfman that was the merged spirit-form of Gavyn and Rasial. Had they been flying with her spirit-form in the night? I had thought they were healing her but there had been something joyous in that mad flight, swooping down to touch the waves and then flying up on a tide of song. But it could not be that Ari-noor had flown with them.

Dragon’s face and arms were clean now, but her hair was still a draggled tangle. I got another bowl of water from the fire and carried it back to wash her hair as best I could, then I towelled it dry. She did not stir as I combed out the snarls and tangles, but I told myself that her heavy sleep was a natural enough consequence of the terrifying ordeal she had endured at the hands of the taint-sick Moss. Aside from being battered, she was very thin, and I reckoned the deranged man had not fed her for days on end. Unfortunately, there was no way to fatten her until she woke and could take food of her own free will. Until then, we had no choice but to coerce her to drink and eat, just as we had done when she had last fallen into a coma. Her mind would not let me in but fortunately it was possible to coerce her body without touching her mind.

‘I have never seen hair that colour,’ Ahmedri said, coming to stand by me.

‘The Red Queen,’ I said.

‘It is strange to think that my brother’s woman lies in an enforced sleep and now it is the same with this child. It is like a plague of sleep,’ he murmured.

I looked at him. ‘Why do you never speak her name?’

‘She never gave me leave,’ he said, and turned away.

I went to the fire and Swallow handed me a bowl of porridge dribbled with honey and studded with a few dried berries, saying that was my share and that Analivia had cleaned the pot before going to bathe. He rose then, and said he was going to begin preparing the packs to be loaded on the horses, for everything would need rearranging because of the travois.