“A stretch of forest, not far from here. One of the places, some say, where the Anain come a little nearer to the surface of the world.” Yvane glanced across at Eshenna. The younger woman was tight-lipped, staring at her pony’s neck.

“Even the Kyrinin get shivers down their backs thinking about that place, for all that they imagine the Anain are more or less benevolent,” Yvane went on. “They’re not stupid enough to think you could ever call them friendly. Even in the best of times.”

In places, the surface of the old road was slick with wet, rotted leaves. Too few wheels and feet had passed this way, in recent decades, to clear the detritus of each autumn. In the cracks and crevices and ruts, soil was accumulating. Grass had taken hold between and across cobblestones. The deeper they went into the wooded landscape, the more and more the road they travelled came to resemble little more than an overgrown grassy track. Where the turf was thickest, there were sometimes bulbous anthills dotting the sward, and swathes of mushrooms bubbling up. Saplings, some more than twice the height of a man, grew in the middle of the highway, straggly things straining thinly upwards in search of light. Their hidden roots had lifted the road’s surface, tilting the stones up on their shoulders.

Orisian grew ever more uneasy and doubtful of his choices. The further Highfast fell away behind them, the more remote seemed his reasons for coming this way. As the wilderness swallowed up the road before his eyes, so he felt as if it was drawing him into itself, distancing him ever more completely from the world of strife and conflict that lay beyond these narrow, tree-crowded horizons. A part of him – he wondered if it might be the honest part – accused the rest of cowardice. Did he secretly prefer to be Thane of just this small company, lost in this wild place where none could require great martial deeds or weighty decisions of him? Did he fear marching at the head of an army, facing the challenge of Aewult nan Haig and the Shadowhand, more than he feared whatever threat the forest, the White Owls, rumours of the Anain, could offer? Every step along this crumbling road was beginning to feel like flight. The trust he had placed in Eshenna, Yvane and the other na’kyrim seemed less certain with each passing moment.

As night began to fall, a rough wind shook its way through the treetops. Torcaill turned the column off the road and chose a small clearing for a campsite. His warriors were silent and subdued. They disliked the forest, its suffocating density. Orisian wondered how much longer these men would follow his lead without question. The wind was rising, rocking the trees and rustling through the undergrowth. Those who had tents struggled to stake them into the ground. The men who must sleep without shelter were casting about for places where they might find some small protection from the elements.

Rothe tried to light a fire. The wind kept swirling down into the clearing and scattering the flakes of bark that he had cut for kindling. The shieldman muttered under his breath as he set down his flint and scooped the bark back into a little pile. Orisian squatted beside him.

“There’s a lot of unhappy men here, aren’t there?” he said softly.

Rothe glanced at him, then concentrated on striking sparks.

“It’s not of much consequence, whether a warrior’s happy or not. He does as he’s commanded. You needn’t worry about that. However much any of them grumble, they’ll follow you.”

Orisian wished he could share Rothe’s confidence. He glanced round, to find Ess’yr standing behind him. She was watching Rothe’s hands as he methodically chipped spark after spark out of the flint.

“We heard the enemy,” she said. “Before. They call like birds.”

Rothe looked up at that. Orisian stood, feeling the stiffness in his legs and back as he did so. His body had still not reconciled itself to so much time spent on horseback.

“White Owls?” he asked her. “Are they near?”

She gave the slightest, most delicate of shrugs. “Cannot say. Perhaps not. They moved…” she stretched a graceful arm out, a little south of east. “But others might be near. The weather favours the hunter.”

As if to emphasise her words a violent gust of wind rushed through the clearing, tumbling twigs and dead leaves along. Orisian ushered Ess’yr to one side, putting a little distance between her and the closest of Torcaill’s warriors. He might have touched her elbow, or her back – applied a gentle pressure to indicate his desire to move – but there was something in the simple thought of such contact that made him nervous.

“Yvane and Eshenna were talking about the Anain before,” he said, once he was confident that none could overhear them. “They say they’re awake. Moving. And that we’re close to places… to their places.”

Ess’yr gazed back at him, waiting for a question. In the half-light of dusk, her face seemed to him like a soft mask; the gentle curves of her tattoos like some pattern impressed upon pale silk. It was too dark for him to see her eyes clearly. They were shadows.

“Is it true?” he asked. “Do you think they’re here, around us?”

“Always,” she replied, and he heard her voice quite clearly even though the trees all about were roaring and creaking in the wind. “We walk on their backs. When we touch a tree, we touch their arm. The roots are their bones.”

“They’re waking, though. That’s what all the na’kyrim say: they’re moving closer to the surface. Why? Do you know?”

“Such a thing is not to be known. They are not like us, not like Huanin or Kyrinin. You do not ask why the river flows, or why the fire moves as it does. If the Anain rise, they rise. If they act, they act. That is all.”

“Yet your people seek their favour. Your anhyne, the catchers of the dead. They guard you, don’t they?”

Ess’yr regarded Orisian inexpressively. She blinked, sheathing and then unsheathing the deep, dark pools that her eyes had become.

“My thought is that the Anain favour none and nothing. Some of my people say they ended the war between Huanin and Kyrinin to end our suffering. I think not. It think they ended it because it disturbed the balance in their world. If we are beneath their gaze, if they wake, we will not choose the ending. The seal pup does not choose if the storm takes it out to sea. The storm does that.”

Later, as Orisian lay in his tent, his mind sank down into a half-sleeping fog. The rushing of the wind through the trees was transformed into the breaking of waves. He saw himself standing on the shore looking out towards Castle Kolglas. The sea was high, far higher than he had ever known it. Huge foaming breakers roared in and pounded at the isolated castle. It was breaking apart beneath the onslaught. He felt an awful dread churning in his chest.

He woke once. The gale had fallen away. Cold prickled across his cheeks. He could hear Rothe breathing. He closed his eyes and slept.