She had fled from the west coast with her young charge after discovering that Gavyn’s stepmother intended to report him to the Herder priests as a Misfit. I had discovered them hiding not an hour’s ride from Obernewtyn. That was the first time I had witnessed Gavyn’s use of his Talent, exerted in an attempt to keep me from finding them. The second time he had used it to transfer the disruptive maternal fixation of an orphaned owl from the healer Kella to himself. His nursemaid was one of the few humans the boy had communicated with willingly, and after her departure to the west coast with a Teknoguild expedition, he had withdrawn so deeply into himself that it had given me some concern, until he had formed his mysterious bond with Rasial.

Remembering how intently he had looked at the she-dog, I wondered suddenly if they had found some new way to communicate. At Obernewtyn, we were always alert for new Talents, or for new ways of using old ones. I would have given much to be able to discuss what I had seen with an empath, but the Empath guildmaster had yet to return to Obernewtyn, and the twins who mastered the guild in his absence were ill.

Thinking of the twins reminded me of my dream of a spirit-formed Angina. It was no surprise that I had dreamed of the Empath guilden. The boy had been ailing ever since he had been wounded during the rebellion that had seen the fall of the oppressive Council that once ruled the Land. The wound had long since healed, yet somehow Angina had not. His decline had been inexorable, and for weeks now he had lain in a coma, unreachable even by a healer drawn deep into his mind by a futureteller. Only the previous day, the Healer guildmaster had told me that he had expected Angina to die long since.

‘It is as if he clings to life,’ Roland had growled. ‘I cannot think why, when he is aware of no one and nothing now.’