“You will not turn your back on me!” cried Aeglyss from Tyn’s throat. “You will not!” The words were ragged, but the fury that informed them was real. And it burned not only in that voice; in the Shared, it was a howling storm of ire.

The world lurched sideways beneath the Elect’s feet. Or was it she who veered and swayed? A wind blew through her mind, so loud and hard that it snatched away her thoughts and sent them swirling off into nothingness. The door for which she reached, the wooden peg that would lift its latch, receded, rushing away into the distance. The floor snapped up and crashed against her knees. Then it twisted itself, slammed against her head. The world had turned itself on its side. The bottom of the door stood vertically before her eyes. In the narrow gap between door and flagstone flooring, she saw the warm glow shed by some torch out in the passageway beyond. It looked safe, comforting and immensely distant. Someone was whispering in her ear.

“Don’t turn your back on me. This is a sanctuary, isn’t it? For my kind? For all our kind? That’s what I’d heard. You can’t cast me out. Never again.”

Billowing white cloth – the hem of Tyn’s gown – brushed over her face. Naked, near-skeletal feet were walking away from her. She heard the creak of the door on its ancient hinges and then it was closing, and the hunched, frail figure had passed out into the passages of Highfast.

“Cerys. Cerys.”

Someone was speaking her name. Why? Could they not see that she was asleep? She was so tired.

“Elect.” The voice was more insistent now. Someone was lifting her, sitting her upright. She wondered why her bed was so hard, so cold.

She opened her eyes. She was on the floor of the Dreamer’s bedchamber. Amonyn knelt in front of her, holding her arms, gazing at her with an expression of such pained concern that she wanted to cry and cup his face in her hands. She did not, because others stood behind him and, whatever there was between Amonyn and her, it was a private thing.

“Are you injured?” he asked her. She had always loved his voice.

“I don’t think so,” she murmured. “Only bruised. Help me up.”

He did so, and her dizziness was such that she might not have managed it without his help. She leaned against him. She felt sick.

“What happened?” she asked.

Amonyn shook his head. “We don’t know. Tyn came out, you did not, so we came looking for you.”

“Tyn. No, not Tyn. Where is he?”

“In the keep’s kitchens. Mon Dyvain and Alian are watching him, but he will not speak to them. We know it’s not Tyn, though. Is it.. . Mon Dyvain claims it is Aeglyss.”

Cerys could only nod.

“How?” Amonyn asked.

“I have no idea,” she sighed.

“Everyone is frightened. He trails fear behind him. Bannain has gone to fetch Herraic and his warriors.”

Cerys forced herself to stand up straight. She breathed deeply, building walls against the pain and terror that were echoing through the Shared.

“I doubt whether swords can help us with this,” she said. “It would be Tyn they struck, not Aeglyss. I don’t know if the Dreamer is truly lost to us, but I’ll not see his body harmed until I am certain his mind is gone. Come, help me to the kitchens.”

“He has refused to speak to anyone.”

“He will speak to me. I am the Elect.”

They went down the stairway in silence. Fear and anxiety went with them, as present and immediate to their minds as heat or cold would be to their skin.

The na’kyrim had their own kitchens, deep down in the rock of Highfast’s foundations. Those at the base of the keep served the castle’s human inhabitants only. Normally, Cerys imagined, there would have been some maids or cooks milling about. Now she found them deserted, save for Mon Dyvain, Alian and the unnatural intruder over whom they watched. The servants must have fled at the sight of this grim, corpse-like figure.

Tyn – she could not help but think of it as being the Dreamer still – was hunched over one of the kitchen tables, gorging himself on scraps left over from whatever meal the garrison had recently taken. He gave no sign of noticing the arrival of Cerys and the others who followed in her wake. Mon Dyvain glanced at her. He said nothing, but his confusion and distress were obvious.

Cerys drew closer to Tyn. Instinctively, she put the table between her and the gaunt figure. It was not, after all, Tyn.

Aeglyss looked up, fragments of meat protruding from between his lips.

“This body starves, yet no food seems to assuage the hunger,” he said indistinctly.

“He… it… has not left the chamber you stole it from for thirty years. You tax it beyond its limits.”

Aeglyss chewed and swallowed, all the time staring at Cerys. He held a stub of bread in one hand, but made no move to tear at it.

“What do you want here?” Cerys asked, as calmly as she could. Now, being so close to him, being the focus of his attention and thought, the nausea was returning. She rested a hand on the table top, partly to steady herself and partly to ensure some connection with the real, tangible world.

Aeglyss made a strangulated, choking sound. It took her a moment or two to recognise it for laughter.

“Isn’t it sanctuary that any of our kind coming here always want?”

“It is intended to be a place of safety, yes. The one whose body you have stolen thought it so.”

Aeglyss threw down the hunk of bread angrily. “I stole nothing! Are your ears all blocked up with dust? I told you, he had abandoned this shell. Gone. He was almost gone.”

“And what is he now? Does he still live?”

Aeglyss leered at her. “Do you want him back? Is that what you want?”

Cerys gasped as sudden pressure encircled her head, like bands of steel or hard hands seizing her skull. Diffuse spots of light danced across her vision. Behind her she heard a thump. She looked round to find that Alian had collapsed, and lay unconscious on the floor. She was capable of no more than that quick glance, for the pain redoubled itself. Her knees trembled and she had to lean on the table to prevent herself from falling. Then, just as abruptly, it was gone. Light-headed, she blinked and breathed deeply.

“Yes,” Aeglyss murmured. “It’s what you want. Of course it is. You should be glad for him, to have sloughed off this carcass. But no. You’d have him back here. Very well, Elect. Should I call you Cerys? I have your name, you see. I pluck it out of the air, out of the Shared.”

When she made no reply, he shrugged Tyn’s bony shoulders. He took a step – slightly unsteady, frail – away from the table.

“I did not mean to come here, anyway. I was seeking someone else entirely. She… well, no matter. There’s time. But it wasn’t sanctuary I sought, not here or anywhere. Not any more. There’s to be no sanctuary for me. And I need none. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes.” She saw no point in trying to conceal the obvious from this creature. His presence filled the kitchen, echoed from the blank stone walls, gazed out from behind her own eyes just as she did herself.

“Yes. I’ll make this bargain with you, Elect. Cerys. You can have this sickly thing back. I’ll take myself away and leave it empty for him to reclaim, if he has the strength or the desire to do so. But first, but first… you’ll show me what you have here behind these famous walls, and you’ll tell me what it is you think I am. You’re supposed to be wise here, the wisest in all the world, when it comes to the Shared. If you can prove that to me, you can have your precious Dreamer back.”

A sudden commotion made them all turn towards the doorway. Bannain rushed in, and behind him came Herraic, the Captain of Highfast, and half a dozen of his warriors. Herraic already looked alarmed. Cerys wondered what Bannain had told him; whatever it was, she feared how the Captain would react. She held up her hands to the warriors as they arrayed themselves on either side of Herraic.