‘Nevertheless this Ahmedri is to remain and so perhaps I had better have a talk with Linnet,’ I murmured. ‘It was under her command that the knights searched for Miryum after the massacre in the White Valley and I need to refresh my mind about what they discovered.’

‘Nowt much, as I recall,’ Ceirwan said. We had reached the entrance hall to Obernewtyn, and the farseeker smiled to see Freya waiting for him. He gave me an apologetic glance and said, ‘I promised to eat midmeal with Freya but she will nowt mind if I put her off …’

‘Go,’ I sent, smiling, and I watched them depart hand in hand with a stab of envy before I went on alone.

Chapter 4

4

The Futuretell guilden opened the door too quickly and I felt myself growing tense as I followed her down the bare little passage that led to the small chamber that served as Maryon’s audience room. Christa opened the door and stood back to let me go in before her. The chamber was simply furnished with a thick, sound-muffling rug on which two chairs faced one another over a small, exquisitely carved table. A circular room, like my bedchamber, it was built within a turret that rose above the roof of the Futuretellers hall, but neither this nor the fact that I had been here on other occasions eased me.

Christa invited me to sit down and I obeyed, trying to quell the babble of doubts and anxieties overwhelming my thoughts by concentrating my attention on my surroundings. The audience chamber was smaller than my bed chamber because the turret it occupied was higher and narrower than the one above the Farseekers hall. There were other differences, too. The windows that rose long and narrow either side of a small fireplace had insets of violet-coloured leaded glass that gave the grey light streaming in a bruised tinge, and made it hard to see outside. Indeed, there was no open window and so the sound of the rain was barely audible. Instead I could hear the pleasant crack of logs in the fire and I shied away from the thought that it had been heated in anticipation of my visit.