‘Rushton has survived a lot worse than this bitty storm an’ a wee flux,’ said Brydda Llewellyn stoutly, but when he leaned over me, his face was haggard with weariness and worry.

I am inside Rushton again, I thought, and then my heart leapt for if that were so, then this was no mere dream! He lived.

‘The trouble is he was sick and then the storm came,’ said Gwynedd. ‘One or the other he might have managed.’

‘He nivver says owt but Elspeth,’ said an older man. ‘Who’s that I’d like to ken.’

There was a profound silence.

‘That is the woman he loves,’ said Brydda at last. ‘Elspeth Gordie. Guildmistress of the Farseekers of Obernewtyn Shire, and a stronger woman I never met. If she were here, she would nowt let him slip away. Once before he near died and she held onto him and forbade it and he lived.’

‘Ask me an’ I’ll tell ye he dinna hold to life because she dinna be here,’ said the old man. ‘Ye ken he asked her to bond and she left him, or so his ravings’d have it.’

Another silence, then Brydda growled, ‘A man’s ravings ought not to be spoken of, and the way I heard it, she left only because there was a task she had to do. A matter touching on many lives.’

I have to help him, I thought, fighting the stupor that sapped my will by imagining the black sword. This time, I felt its weight. Gathering myself, I summoned it into me more strongly than I had ever dared to do before. It was as if I had swallowed a hive of dark, furious bees. I rose up from Rushton’s body and felt the steady muscular beat of the wings of my spirit-form as the world of matter faded into vague shapes and silence. I lifted my hands to look at them. They were greenish white, though I had no memory of creating a spirit-form or of transferring my consciousness to it.

The black sword is me, I thought, just as Rushton said.

Sometimes even funaga speak wisely, said Maruman. Maybe that is why Marumanyelloweyes troubled to hold him to life. The cat stood before me in his greatcat spirit-form of gold slashed with black. His long snaky tail lashed and his two eyes flashed, one gold and one diamond bright and white glittered fiercely. Now it is up to Elspethlnnle, he said, and vanished.