The news depressed me for Angina’s sake, as both he and his sister continued their decline, but on another level the terseness of the missive from Rushton roused ugly doubts in me. Rushton had never been a man to say two words where one would do, but the stiffness and lack of emotion in his note was so much at odds with the passionate tenderness of our parting in Sador that I was beginning to fear I had been mistaken to leave him so soon after he had remembered the hurts done to him by Ariel. Perhaps I had given his battered mind reason enough to decide I had never loved him, even as Ariel had tried to make him believe. The thought that Rushton might turn from me again made me feel physically sick, and yet what else could I have done? Maruman had insisted the Agyllians wanted me to return to Obernewtyn and I had obeyed.

Yet it seemed I was required to do nothing but wait.

One night, after visiting the Healing Hall to gaze helplessly at Angina and Miky under the imploring gaze of Hannay, I went back to my bedchamber and trimmed the wick of a fresh candle so that I could work my way through a pile of coercer dream-books which Tomash had brought up earlier that evening. I had assigned him, and the older woman, Wila, to work with Sarn on the task of producing a book of information about the Red Land. There was a note from Wila inside the first page of the top journal, directing me to a pair of fragmentary dreams that referred to Straaka, saying that it was the only mention of him or Miryum she had found. I had asked the threesome to make note of any mention of Straaka in the dream entries. I did not have to explain my interest since by now everyone at Obernewtyn knew that Ahmedri was on a quest to retrieve his brother’s bones.

I read the entries Wila had flagged, both of which had been penned several months after Miryum’s disappearance. Both dreams had the tribesman walking across desert lands and I guessed they had been sparked by the stories Straaka had been wont to tell of his homeland. His tales had always been full of his love for the desert, and the tribesman had possessed a gift for storytelling that made those who heard him remember his words.