‘Why?’ Analivia asked suddenly. ‘Why on earth would he want to use Sentinel and turn the world into a wasteland such as I saw in my nightmare? He must truly be mad.’

‘He is mad, and he has a defective hunger for causing pain, but no doubt he imagines, even as the Beforetimers who created Sentinel did, that he can control it, or even that he need only ever threaten to use it to gain power.’

‘Truly he deserves the name of Destroyer,’ Swallow said grimly.

I nodded. ‘I did not tell you when I spoke of meeting Straaka in the realm above the spirit trails, but Ariel found me and attacked me there in spirit-form. I have told you that injuries taken on the dreamtrails can cause injury to waking flesh. They can also kill. If Straaka had not acted quickly, Ariel would have killed me.’ Again I baulked at speaking of the part that the merged spirit-form of Rasial and Gavyn had played, because I did not know if the dog wished the nature of his relationship with the boy to be known.

‘You said before that he knew he could not kill you because he needs you,’ Analivia objected.

‘He knows it with his conscious waking mind, but I do not think the spirit-form that attacked me was capable of rational thought, nor any thought at all,’ I said. ‘When Ariel was in the Land he came to my dreams as the beautiful, cruel boy he was when first we met at Obernewtyn. That was because he was entering my dream unconsciously and he took the form that I remembered. No consciously created spirit-form exactly resembles its fleshly form unless the spirit is severed from that flesh, as with Straaka. But an unconsciously created spirit-form is most often vague and indistinct in shape. These days when Ariel comes to me it is as a cloud of devouring darkness. I cannot feel his mind or purposes at all, nor does he speak. I only feel a killing rage that is utterly centred on me.’

Analivia said, ‘Mayhap he cannot control his rage in spirit-form as easily as in flesh.’

‘That is what I feel,’ I told her. ‘The irony is that he likely has no idea he can reach me or attack me. If he remembers anything when he wakes, it will seem to him a dream.’

‘But how can a spirit-form travel so far?’ Swallow asked.

‘The movements of a spirit-form are not those of flesh,’ I said. ‘Distance is no barrier to a spirit, nor even the great sea, though those things affect Talents. Not so spirit-forms, however it is almost impossible for a spirit-form to go where it has not ever been, unless there is another spirit to whom it is linked.’

‘Are you saying you are linked to Ariel?’ Dameon asked, sounding appalled.