‘What interests me is how the boy stopped the rhenlings,’ Ahmedri said, and we all looked at Gavyn who was now romping with two of the wolf cubs who had been running at the rear of the wolf column streaming ahead. I had noticed earlier that several of the cubs had come sniffing and nudging at the boy when he emerged from the crack, and for the first time the adult wolves had done nothing to drive them back, perhaps because Rheagor had told them what Gavyn had done. I could see no other explanation for their sudden tolerance of the enthraller, though I had noticed it did not extend to Rasial. The wolves stayed well away from the injured ridgeback and the cubs cringed and lowered their tails between their legs when she came close.

I turned my gaze to the white dog to see how she regarded the desertion of her soul mate, and saw that she was still limping but seemed otherwise unperturbed.

‘My pain is not your affair,’ Rasial beastspoke me suddenly, and I flushed in shame at the realisation that my curiosity had fashioned a probe that had been groping towards her.

‘Gavyn is what we at Obernewtyn have begun to call an enthraller,’ Dameon was explaining to the other three. ‘That is a person with the rare ability to combine the Talents of coercion and empathy.’

‘The pack leader warned that the touch of a mind would bring the rhenlings down on us,’ Swallow said.

‘I suspect Gavyn was not attempting to coerce or to communicate with the rhenlings,’ Dameon said slowly. ‘What I felt was … well, the boy was directing his full attention at them.’

‘But how could that stop them attacking us?’ Analivia asked.

‘The best way I can explain it is to say that it is as if a man absentmindedly held off a flock of chickens so he could pour seed into their bowl,’ Dameon said, after pondering a moment. ‘The hunger and rapacity and the desire of the rhenlings to swarm would have got in the way of Gavyn’s curiosity about them.’ As ever, he sounded dissatisfied with his explanation.

‘You mean he stopped them eating us because that would have distracted him?’ Swallow asked incredulously.

Dameon laughed. ‘I suppose that is one way of putting it.’

‘The power it must have taken …’ Analivia murmured.

‘Is great,’ Dameon said. ‘The strange thing is that I never felt his interest in anything before this moment. It is as if something drew his attention to the rhenlings when usually he would not have seen them. Indeed, he showed no interest in them at all when we passed them earlier.’

‘That’s true,’ Analivia mused.

Rasial, I thought.

Chapter 30

30