‘Tell me.’ Tom gripped the windowsill. ‘Tell me what’s going on. I saw one of them at school. He told me to stay there and not to disturb the past. Why? Why would he want me not to come here?’

‘You’ve seen one before?’ Zita glanced at Jack, who paused and nodded slightly. She yawned and patted her mouth in an arch manner. ‘Well now, how long have you got? Oh, silly me, you’re not going anywhere. Come up to my room and I’ll tell you.’

Kit said, ‘He maun do the rounds. We maun strengthen the wards.’

Jack grunted. It was clear to Tom that both Kit and Zita were in thrall to him.

‘Well, if you must, darling,’ said Zita, drawing herself up. ‘But don’t keep him all to yourself, will you?’ Kit reddened, all the way down his neck. She grabbed the front of Tom’s shirt at the neck and said, ‘Come straight up afterwards.’

They got ready to walk the bounds. Jack disappeared back to his rooms. The glass pendant which Kit had been using to see the Samdhya was now useless. Kit hung it carefully on a hook in the kitchen.

It was ten o’clock. Outside, the land looked drained and grey, the sky washed out, the sun shining feebly through a thick mantle of cloud. Even the horse in his field seemed quiet, staying close to the fencing and his stable.

Walking itself was difficult, as if they were wading through mud. There was no sign of any movement. There were few birds. Leana did not come with them, and Tom wished for her gentle company. He noticed the drabness of the land around even more keenly, how no flowers grew.

This time, as they walked the bounds, Tom could interpret Kit’s laconic commands more easily, and he found that the wards came faster. When he held Kit’s hand and closed his eyes, again he saw the silver wall, pulsing with strange, dark energy. There was now a hole in it. And as he spoke with Kit, he added his own, new words, sounds which came to him from somewhere he did not know, and he was able to pour some of his own self into the space which had been broken.

He knew that when he finished it was stronger than it had been before, stronger than it had ever been, perhaps. When he felt along the silver wall, he could somehow trace back the power. He could feel Kit there and Jack and some other threads that he knew were Zita’s. But her power was of a different sort, warmer and loamier. Kit’s was hard and cold. And as for Jack’s – it was wild and strange and terrifying, and when Tom touched it, he drew away as fast as he was able to.