He was right, we realised, though this did not do anything to answer the mystery of its owner or purpose. I listened to the others speculate for a time, and then I got up, murmuring that I needed to relieve myself. I moved away onto the grey earth behind the mound of stone at the end of the lake, since it offered the only privacy, noting how the white sand blazed so brightly in the early morning sun as to dazzle the eyes. Glancing behind me, I saw that the ground merely looked dull, for of course it would not glow in daylight, no matter how badly it was tainted. Squinting, I thought I could just make out the hazy black outline of the mountains. I turned back towards the water, knelt to wash my hands and splash my face. Someone had taken my boots off the night before, and the sand felt cool and soft under my bare feet.

‘Greetings ElspethInnle,’ Darga sent mildly, and only then did I notice him lying in the shadow of the mound of stone from which the spring welled. He was stretched out on the sand beside the water.

I dipped in a hand and found it cold but far from icy. All at once I felt filthy and sticky and no doubt I stank besides. The thought of swimming was suddenly irresistible. I knew the lake was lightly tainted, but if it was clean enough to drink from it was surely clean enough to bathe in. Making up my mind, I stripped off my outer clothes and went to the narrow end so that I would not dirty water the horses would drink from. I eased myself in, being careful of my broken arm. The water was cold enough to make me gasp, but it was utterly delicious once my skin became accustomed to the chill. Fully immersed, I rubbed the dirt from my hair and face and neck and body. Then Analivia appeared and offered me a small ball of lavender-scented soap.

‘Won’t the soap foul the water?’

‘Not if we stay down this end, for the water flows straight into the stream and away,’ Analivia said, and then she was stripping off her own clothes to enter. She slipped into the water with a sigh of bliss that was almost a moan. ‘I have been longing to do this since I set eyes on it,’ she admitted.

In the end we all bathed, and it was a strange and lovely few hours we spent in the tear-shaped lake, where the desert lapped against the barren Blacklands.

‘How do you suppose it happened?’ Swallow asked, gliding up beside me as I gazed along the vanishing line between white and black to the north. His hair hung loose and wetly sleek about his broad brown shoulders and it was much longer than it looked when he wore it clubbed back in gypsy fashion.