He lifted his head slowly and looked across the gloom at Calvin. The old man’s eyes glittered with the reflection of the embers, indicating that he was awake and staring at him. The sweat that was drying on Sam’s forehead suddenly chilled him as much as Calvin’s steady gaze, and he lowered his eyes, selected a handful of small dry twigs from the pile and placed them carefully in the heart of the glow. Smoke funnelled from the twigs, then orange flames danced into life, rekindling the fire. He threw two larger branches on and watched as they hissed and smoked and joined the twigs in lighting up the tunnel walls.

He could think of nothing to say. It was Calvin who broke their silence. ‘You fled a second time.’

‘I saw.’

‘What did you see, Hunting Wolf?’

Sam looked into Calvin’s eyes, jarred at the formality of his address and the ancient tongue with which it was spoken.

‘That which I cruelly released.’

‘So tell me now. Did you murder your father?’

Sam bent his head again in shame and horror and struggled with the question.

‘Not in the way I thought. But you saw as well as I. Yes. I murdered him.’

‘The weapon?’

Sam paused, then spoke the name quietly, but with rancour. ‘The Trickster.’

Calvin slapped his knees with a ferocity that made Sam snap his head up. ‘NO! Do you learn nothing?’

‘But the thing … the thing that Moses became …’

‘What of it?’

Calvin sounded disappointed, almost petulant. Sam was dumbfounded, and yet at the back of his mind he knew why Calvin’s voice was weary. He had fled a second time. And he was still fleeing. He was not telling himself the truth.

Sam choked back a tear. ‘Calvin. What did I do?’

The old man leaned back. ‘Where is the Isksaksin, Sam? You do not wear it.’

Sam didn’t even pause to wonder how Calvin could know that, dressed as he was in his thick plaid jacket and another three layers of cotton wool and fleece. He merely bowed his head and replied. ‘At home.’

‘Then you must fetch it. Quickly. You know that now. Do you not?’

Sam nodded, then spoke in a small voice, still in that ancient formal Cree they used so often in the past, ‘Tell me first. Tell me what you saw.’

Calvin sat back and Sam watched the firelight make canyons of the lines criss-crossing the old man’s face as he waited for a reply.

‘It was impotent. The keeper had not summoned it and so it was trapped in its fury, able only to destroy the impostor who called it, and by doing so, destroy itself. It is so old, so powerful, that none can hold it and it waits its centuries for a chance to break free from one who calls it and who can liberate it.’

Sam breathed his question. ‘But it is not the Trickster?’