I was blundering through a fog, arms outstretched, feet stumbling, not knowing left from right or up from down. My head swam. Everything was dark. Where was I? What had happened? Had I gone blind?

“It’s all right. You’re all right. Take it slowly.” Grim’s familiar voice, and now Grim’s arm lifting me to sit, and someone putting a cup in my hand. “Take a sip of water, here.”

There was light after all; a lamp in a corner, and the glow of a fire. I was in bed, with Grim sitting on a stool beside me. There was someone else in the room too. A monk.

“Wha . . . ?”

“Drink the water, Blackthorn.”

The water was cold. It brought me out of the fog. I was in our quarters at Lady Geiléis’s house, and it was getting dark outside. I started to remember. Oh, gods . . . When Grim had carried me out of the tower, we hadn’t found Onchú and Donncha waiting on the island. Only two heaps of ancient bones. Two piles of clothing. Two pairs of boots. A scatter of weapons. Those things were of our own time; there was no magic in them. But the men had been old. Old beyond old.

“They guessed,” I whispered now. “Her men. They had an idea of what would happen to them when the curse was broken. Donncha . . . There was a woman he was looking after, when he could, on one of the farms. The way he spoke about her, he didn’t think he’d be coming back.”

I sipped the water, remembering. We’d arrived at the house, Grim still carrying me, and all the rest of them had been here. One in the kitchen: Dau, I guessed. One at the high window in Geiléis’s quarters: Senach, without a doubt. The other household servants in the dining chamber, all together, with one extra: that must have been Caisín’s husband, Rian, for the bones of those two lay entwined where they had fallen. A fresh jug of ale and part-full cups on the table. Every person in the house had been not only dead, but reduced to bones and dust. All gone.

What had happened in the tower had left me weak. Not just fuzzy in the head, not just sad and confused and angry, but tired to the bone. So Grim had put me to bed, saying he’d bolt the door from the outside, and that I should yell if I needed him. I’d fallen into a sleep so profound I was still finding it hard to wake up properly.

“The guards?” I asked. “The rest of them?”

“Up in their quarters,” said Grim. “Gone, like the others. Horses were loose in the field. Water trough filled, fodder provided. Fellows from St. Olcan’s will look after the animals, see they go somewhere safe.”

“Mistress Blackthorn.” It was the monk, a small man with cropped white hair and a practical manner. “I am Brother Marcán. I look after our sick and injured at St. Olcan’s. Sadly, Father Tomas will not allow us to house you in our infirmary, but I’m here to help. To provide any assistance you require. This has been a difficult time. I hardly understand what has occurred, but at the very least, you have suffered a grave shock.”