Angina’s mysterious decline was tragic enough, but as if their fates were connected, as some superstitions about twins suggested, Angina’s sister Miky had recently fallen ill too, and now she lay in a bed alongside her brother. No doubt it was my visit to the Healing Hall the day before that had sparked the dream of Angina begging me to save his sister. I had gone chiefly to see if there was any improvement in the girl’s condition, but I went first to her brother’s bedside. Seeing Angina lying so frail and white, shadows under his eyes as dark as bruises, it had been hard to remember that this was the same young man who had competed so gallantly alongside me in the Sadorian Battlegames. Yet the sight of his sister moments later had shocked more than saddened me, for Miky had been ill only a sevenday, yet she looked near as wasted as her brother.

‘Hannay believes she is dying of grief for Angina, but although she loves the lad as maybe only one twin can love another, I do not see Miky as the sort to die of love,’ Roland said, after we’d left their chamber. His voice had been tight with anger, which I knew sprang from his powerlessness to help the girl. He had put the twins in a small chamber away from the main hall because initially Angina had been disturbed by the emotions of the other patients. Neither he nor his sister would now be disturbed by anything, I thought bleakly, as we returned to the large Healing Hall where most patients lay.

‘How long does he have left?’ I asked.

Roland scowled, telling me he had no idea but that however long it took he doubted Miky would long survive her brother.

It was the healer’s bleak words coupled with my dream of Angina asking me to help his sister that had prompted me to scribe a letter to Dameon that morning, despite my headache. I had asked the Empath guildmaster to return to Obernewtyn as soon as possible. It was not a decision I had made lightly. Dameon and the master of Obernewtyn were in Sutrium, meeting with the two high chieftains of the reunited Land, and with representatives from the Norselands and Sador, concerning the expedition that was to be mounted to the distant Red Queen’s land before wintertime. According to the futuretellers, the expedition was vital to the safety of the Land, and Rushton relied upon Dameon’s counsel, but the empath had a right to know how things were with his guilden. I did not think he could help Angina but he might be able to discover what ailed the boy’s sister and save her.

I had sent Hannay to the lowlands with the missive, knowing it had been killing him to sit helplessly by while the girl he loved mysteriously faded away.