I clenched my teeth and told myself it had been only a nightmare, for if I let myself believe that he was dead, I would be crippled. He lives, I thought fiercely. He must live else all that remains of life is duty without hope.

‘Elspeth?’ Dameon asked.

I turned to him and said as calmly as I could manage, ‘I was thinking of Obernewtyn.’

The empath’s expression grew sombre, reminding me that I was not alone in leaving all that I loved. I said softly, ‘Atthis always said I would have to leave Obernewtyn, and later Dell futuretold the same thing, only she also said I would never return.’ I frowned. ‘Mind you, she also said I would leave all I loved, and yet I didn’t, for I love Dragon and I love you.’

‘But you did leave us,’ Dameon reminded me gently. ‘It is only that the foretellings said nothing of what those you love would do, after you left them.’ Despite everything I smiled at that, but the empath went on, ‘I have been thinking about Oldhaven. It was a strange place. It made me feel how it might have been to live in the Beforetime; the ease of being surrounded on all sides by machines that would do as you wished. I think it would affect you.’

‘Pavo always claimed that was where teknoguilders’ Talent originated,’ I murmured, ‘from the Beforetimers living so intimately with the machines they made, relying on them and communicating with them.’

‘It was the scale of Oldhaven that staggered me,’ Dameon said. ‘To build such a vast, deep, intricate place as a shelter, with a forest and machines capable of nurturing it so deep under the earth.’

‘What I can never understand is that the Beforetimers built those places because they saw that the things they were doing might lead to the Great White, but for all their abilities and brilliance, they did nothing to stop it.’

‘Perhaps they tried,’ Dameon said. ‘Perhaps the people who built the shelters did so because they could not stop those who were building weaponmachines.’

‘Pavo always said it was the fatal flaw of the Beforetimers that they were like the Janus head.’

‘I remember. Two faces on the same head, looking in different directions,’ Dameon said. ‘Still, there might have been those who opposed the weaponmakers and users. They cannot all have been the same. After all, Cassandra and Hannah Seraphim were also Beforetimers.’

I felt a surge of love for the blind empath and said impulsively, ‘That you are with me is one of the few things I can be glad about, Dameon, though that is a truly selfish thought.’

‘I am glad to be with you, too,’ Dameon said gravely.