So as Ahmedri quenched the torch, we arranged ourselves in a line, hand to shoulder, and set off again, this time with Dameon in the lead and the horses behind us. Darga and Rasial were to flank Gavyn, who would not hold onto any of us, though so far he had shown no inclination to lag since we had entered the pipe.

‘Let’s go,’ I said.

To move through utter blackness was strange, and my extreme weariness made it feel as if I were walking in a dream. I kept my hand on Dameon’s shoulder, and it took me some time to realise that as well as leading us forward at a far better pace than I could have managed, Dameon was empathising reassurance and calm to all of us. The fact that we were in physical contact with one another made it easier for him to empathise all of us than if we had been walking separately.

Then Dameon stopped, saying softly to me that he sensed rhenlings ahead. The torch was lit and we continued for some minutes before I smelled rhenling musk. Once we had passed the pipe, the others lavished praise on Dameon’s perception, but Swallow asked softly if I had noticed that the pipe we had just passed had been damaged in the same way as the first one. I said nothing, but when we reached a third pipe joint, I saw that it, too, had been wrenched to the side and had split open at the seam. But what showed through was not solid earth and stone as with the last two pipes, but a long rift going deep down into the earth.

I bade Ahmedri hold the torch closer and stifled a gasp as the light fell on hundreds and hundreds of rhenlings clustered on the roof and walls of the rift as well as in the pipe. No wonder the reek was so strong. Some of the creatures were close enough for me to see that their misshapen bodies were quite small but that they had very long, thick, oddly jointed legs, which they kept folded against them, small pointed heads with large tattered-looking ears and long slitted mouths that twisted into a snout. They looked like a grotesque merging of spider and rat.

Once we had got well past the pipe, and the torch had again been extinguished, Dameon asked what they looked like. No doubt he had felt my fear and revulsion, but it was Analivia who described the rhenlings to him, displaying a facility with words that reminded me of the way Matthew had used to describe things to the empath. I lacked their skill of rendering what I saw into words.

‘What do you suppose damaged all of the pipes?’ Swallow asked me.