I saw Maruman leap up onto a large Beforetime machine sitting on the side of the black road. Parts of it were rotted to black lace but I guessed by its shape and position at the side of the road that it was one of the machines the Beforetimers had used to ride along the ground. Horseless carriages, as Garth named them.

Sitting neatly atop the immobile hulk, the old cat looked utterly at home in the deserted city lit by its many reflected moons, yet his ears pricked and twitched and his eye was dark and there was an alertness to his bearing that told me he was in the midst of stalking something.

But what? I wondered, as the dream slipped away and once again I floated in the vast darkness. I could not find the levels of my own mind. I did not know which way was up or down. A great heavy stupidity seemed to possess me.

I drifted down, deeper than I had ever gone, and yet there was no mindstream. I tried to rise, but a great hand seemed to press me gently but inexorably down into a void of shadows. I grew afraid at the realisation of my powerlessness, but I could do nothing to fight it. I thought of the spirit-force I had for so long feared as a murderous power that had taken up residence in me.

It is part of you, Rushton had told me just before I chained my secrets in the great inner vault that was his Talent. To pretend it is not is as foolish as binding your eyes and pretending to be blind.

Rushton, I thought, with a surge of grief and longing so potent that it disrupted the dreadful downward drift.

Then I was lying on my back beside a greatship driven up onto a sandy shore. The mast was broken and the sails hung in tatters. People stood around me talking.

‘There had better be water here or we’re done for even if the storm did spit us out,’ said one. I recognised the voice of the seaman Reuvan. Above him the sky was the colour of tarnished metal streaked with sickly yellow.

‘Can’t you help him?’ someone asked. ‘He won’t last much longer like this.’

‘He has lasted longer than I thought he would, but we need to gan the heat out of him,’ said someone else. A woman?

‘Dunk him in the waves and ye might as well drown him in this state,’ said a man. ‘His heart won’t take it.’

‘He’s awake,’ said another voice. ‘Surely that’s a good sign.’

‘He is not truly awake, poor lad,’ said another voice I knew; Gwynedd who was high chieftain of the Westland and king of the Norselands.