‘But if these merged minds communicated with Straaka, it cannot merely be that they are memories,’ Analivia protested.

‘Before Straaka’s spirit spoke to me, I believed that when the body died, the spirit was drawn into the mindstream from which all spirits come and into which all spirits go at the end. But it seems that a spirit can live on in some guise when its flesh dies, and I now believe that it is not the memories of the previous Elders Atthis carried inside her mind, but their spirits or part of them.’

‘Can it be possible?’ Analivia muttered to herself.

I looked at Ahmedri. ‘Until Straaka spoke to me, I believed that Bruna had misunderstood the overguardian’s words.’ I hesitated. ‘There is one other thing I would tell you, but I lack the strength for another long tale right now.’

‘Then sleep,’ Analivia said decisively. ‘The rest of us can set up camp and make a meal. When we wake you to eat, you can tell us whatever needs telling then.’

Analivia helped me to lie down and covered me with a blanket. I closed my eyes and relaxed as completely as I could, and then I unwove the coercive net and let the pain in it wash through me. I did not try to resist it, knowing from experience that this would lengthen my suffering. I lifted my mind above my body in the way that I had learned to do, which allowed my body to feel the pain, but my mind to perceive that experience as if from afar. When the pain ebbed away, I felt exhausted but light. I was wide awake now despite a fatigue so deep that I felt light-headed. I opened my eyes and gazed up at the scatter of stars above. There was no trace of the heavy cloud cover that had filled the sky as we headed for the graag. The storm must have broken when we were under the earth.

That brought me to my dream of Rushton in a storm at sea and a different pain washed through me.

‘I wish that our paths need never diverge in even the smallest way,’ he had said after loving me, but then he had kissed me gently and gone on along the path away from me. He had been able to walk away because he had believed we would see one another again. So we had, but then I had crept away from him in the night like a thief, and though hidden within him was the knowledge that I had not had any choice, I had done it, knowing I would never see him again.