Elkar frowned, gathering his thoughts. ‘Well, there are many shadows and novices and more than a few priests and soldierguards whose minds were damaged by what was done to them, and by what they saw or did during the time the Faction ruled. As Sover’s healing abilities work best with mental wounds, the healing of the mentally damaged fell to him. He discovered that a combination of empathy and coercive skills used in tandem with traditional healing Talent would serve where any of those things alone would fail. What he would like, though, is to have healers who are both coercers and empaths.’ He grimaced. ‘I am putting it too simply but I am not an empath or a healer.’

I shook my head absently, somewhat startled to realise that, despite the slightness of his empathic talent, Sover had developed enough control over it to be called an enthraller. I wondered if he really meant to try to teach empaths to be coercers and vice versa and if it were possible. That he had begun to use what had always been a Talent so slight he had barely acknowledged it, suggested it was possible. We had always tended to see Talents as fixed, and the combination of coercion and empathy was rare, but coercion did use the same root Talent as healing and futuretelling. Was it possible that Sover would suggest Talents possessing that root ability should be trained to use it in two ways? Certainly this was what enthrallers did, though I had never quite seen it in that light before. It had been suggested at one long-ago guildmerge, but we had all agreed the usages were too different to allow a mind to encompass both.

‘What of Mouse?’ I asked, my thoughts shifting to the little bright-eyed boy whom the mine shadows had hidden from the brutal Herder priests.

The Norselander looked sad. ‘The lad will not grow to manhood, of course, but he is content to be with his father and with Terka, who cared for him and hid him from the Herders. He tells me without fear that Terka will go ahead into death before him, and wait for him in the darkness with a lamp to light their way. He has a great capacity for happiness.’ Elkar’s eyes were bright and he swallowed before he could go on. ‘It is very hard for Sabatien, I think, because he believes he ought to have found some other way to protect the boy. I think I would feel the same, were I him, but I doubt there was any other way, truly.’

Elkar began talking of the shadows well enough to live outside the Healing Centre. Surprisingly, most had chosen to remain within the city, where they dwelt in the same cottages that had once housed the inner cadre of the Faction.