“All right if we come along?” I raised a polite hand, trying not to laugh at Rosarn’s distinction between the two men, which was clearly familiar to all the mercenaries. “This is Naldeth, a mage who would like to help.”

Rosarn nodded. “You’d better come with me, wizard. You’re a sworn man, aren’t you, Ryshad? Then you can pick your own path, but watch your step.”

We followed the mercenaries out of the crumbling circle of the walls and looked at a seemingly impenetrable mass of plant life smothering the remains of the colony, more shades of green than I could have imagined were possible. To my relief my vision stayed steady, firmly rooted in the present.

“You two, over there.” Rosarn looked back and waved us to the far side of a creeper-covered hummock as the rest of her troop spread out to examine similar anonymous shapes shrouded in vegetation. Livak drew her sword and slid it under the knotted stems, slicing away a great swath of glossy green to expose the dull gray of weathered stone. At home I would have called it ivy, but here the leaves were long and smooth, dark and secretive. I reached for my own blade then thought better of it; I could do without making any more contact with Temar’s imprisoned mind than I had to.

“We’re doing this at the wrong time of year,” she commented. “It’d be a lot easier if we could wait until all this died back.”

“The growing season goes on well into Aft-Autumn here,” I said absently as I reached for a stick to poke into a tangle of orange flowering bushes.

“Oh.” Livak glanced at me, her eyes uncertain again, before she hacked down another snarl of smothering leaves. I tried to reassure her with a smile and made myself a silent vow to talk to Mentor Tonin when we returned to the encampment. Dast’s teeth, I simply had to get this under control for the sake of my own sanity and any lasting relationship I might have with Livak, never mind Planir’s arcane schemes.

A strange little slate-colored bird with an odd, fluting cry came fluttering out of the bush, startling us both as its calls of alarm roused its fellows from their perches and the air was suddenly full of flapping bluish wings.

“Do you think this is a building?” asked Livak when the commotion had died down, her voice determinedly matter-of-fact as she looked at the largely smooth stone face she had uncovered, shockingly pale against the dark green of the vines.

I rammed my stick into the leaves and it rapped hard on rock. Moving along, I repeated the strike until I was rewarded with a dull, damp thud.

“I’d say that’s a door or a shutter.” I nodded.

Livak began cutting away the dense creeper as I looked around to see how the others were doing. Several groups were trying to uncover stonework in much the same way as we were, and the simple sight of decent, dressed masonry, albeit stained and deeply weathered, was starting to make the place look as if there might have once been a town here, even without the benefit of Temar’s memories.

“It’s a door all right,” said Livak with some satisfaction.

I tapped the ancient and wormy wood with my stick and felt it give slightly. The handle and hinges were dark stains of corrosion on the wood and windblown soil obscured the bottom edge of the door. This was never going to open again, not while Dastennin was ruling the oceans. Taking a step backward, I lifted my boot and kicked it in, bracing myself on the stonework on either side, not wanting to enter before anything else chose to leave.

“Shit!” Livak leaped to one side as a flurry of blackbeetles scurried in all directions and I stamped hard on something with far too many legs for my peace of mind.

“What’s the problem?” shouted Rosarn abruptly from somewhere beyond a nearby thicket.

“Crawlers,” I yelled. “Nothing to worry about.”

Livak and I exchanged a rueful grin and peered cautiously into the dim interior, blinking at the contrast to the bright sunlight.

“There’s a shutter over there,” observed Livak, and I walked around the outside to hammer the crumbling wood inward with my useful stick. This gave some more light, enough to see the ominous downward bulge of what remained of the ceiling and the massive crack running down the back wall.

“Stay by the door,” I warned Livak as she moved cautiously inside. “That lot could come down at any time.”

“It’s been there a while. I don’t suppose it’ll choose to fall down today,” she said scornfully as she poked her sword inquisitively among the debris thickly littering the floor.

I tried to see what she was prodding. “What have you got?”

“Barrel staves, I’d say, hoops, nails, something that might have been hinges a handful of generations ago. I’d say it was a store of some kind.”

I frowned and looked around again at the lie of the land. Surely the warehouses had all been closer to the sea as well as to the docks?

“Anything of interest?” Rosarn appeared at my shoulder and I stood back to let her peer in through the window.

“Not really.” Livak coughed and a passing breeze carried the damp smells of rot and decay out to us.

“How about you?” I asked.

Rosarn held up a small spotted animal, blood clotting its frozen snarl. “Well, if I find a few more of these, I might get a new pair of gloves out of this job, but no, all we’re finding is empty walls and rubbish like this. What I came to tell you is that wizard reckons there are caves in that outcrop over there.” Rosarn looked at me with the faintest suggestion of a teasing smile. “They don’t seem to be big enough to be this cavern you’re looking for but I thought we might make sure there’s nothing dangerous lurking in the bushes. Why don’t you two come with me and we’ll do a little reconnaissance. Maybe I’ll find some more of these,” she added, hanging her scrawny prize on a handy branch.

Livak grinned at her and after a quick look at the crumbling stonework of the window took the longer way out of the door and around to join us.

I had no option but to draw my sword to cut down the burgeoning plants as we worked our way beneath the cool shadow of the crag, but to my relief Temar remained locked quiescent in the back of my mind.

“Here’s something,” Naldeth ducked under a low branch and vanished into a hollow of darkness, Rosarn following him hastily with an oath. “It’s certainly a cave of some sort,” the mage’s voice came back to us, muffled and echoing.

I pulled the branch aside impatiently, cursing as it sprang back, lashing me with thorny tendrils. “How far back does it go?”

Livak was ahead of me, slipping past the obstructive tree and reaching into her belt-pouch for her firesteel and a stub of misshapen candle. The yellow light flared in the blackness and showed us a shallow cavern in the rock face. I slapped down Temar’s dislike of such places with an irritated thought.

“What’s this?” Naldeth spun a ball of magelight around his hand and moved to the far side of the cave where the reddish illumination struck a whitish gleam out of the gloom. “Bones?”

My heart started pounding in my chest despite all my efforts to tell myself this could be nothing of significance. I closed my eyes and suddenly saw the last dawn of the colony again, people running, screaming, fleeing the pitiless blades of the Elietimm as they came out of nowhere, gold heads catching the faint sunlight, cutting down the hapless colonists like corn beneath a sickle. Had we left someone behind, taking desperate shelter in a hidden cranny in the rock face, only to die of wounds or thirst?

“It’s an animal, but I couldn’t tell you what kind,” said Rosarn, mystified.

My eyes snapped open and the image of slaughter faded into the darkness of the cave.

“Look at this,” Livak’s tone was one of wonder as she lifted a broad, bulging skull in both hands, as wide as a bull’s but far more rounded. I looked more closely and ran a tentative finger around the one, huge hollow in the middle of the brow.