At length, Mar’athoin halted and the three of them gathered on the huge rotting trunk of a wind-thrown tree. He pointed ahead and then at his ear. Cynyn and Sithvyr frowned in concentration, cocked their heads at an angle. After a few heartbeats they both nodded. They could hear the na’kyrim ’s laboured breathing, a few dozen paces away. She was no longer moving.

A part of Mar’athoin – the larger part – hoped that this might be the na’kyrim ’s end. He was glad to have walked in the Hymyr Ot’tryn, and glad for the story he would be able to tell when they returned to their homes, but each step further into the forest’s dank heart felt like trespass. He felt unwelcome here. It was not a giving land such as the marshes where the Heron dwelled; it was unknowable, belonging only to itself.

Sithvyr was signing to him. She thought they had come far enough, seen enough. She thought, as Mar’athoin did himself, that they were unwanted here. Cynyn would be disappointed, but the time had come to turn back.

A faint crack turned all their heads. It was a soft-edged sound, as if some rotten bough had been gently snapped. In its wake there came a vanishingly quiet rustling: the sound of leaf-heavy twigs in a breeze. Yet there was no breeze.

Mar’athoin rose. He began to move towards the source of the sounds. He could no longer hear the na’kyrim ’s breathing. Cynyn and Sithvyr looked unsure but they followed him, hanging back. In this land of clouds he could see no more than a few paces ahead. The mist hung thick amongst the trees.

He smelled broken earth; a sharp, green hint of new leaves; a hard edge of water sprung from underground. It all spoke to him of a rising, a breaking of buds, a stirring of insects among the loam. None of it belonged here in the winter.

With each step his heart beat faster and a new prickling wave of unease ran through his skin. He risked a glance back over his shoulder. Cynyn and Sithvyr had stopped. He saw in their faces what he felt in himself: hesitation, uncertainty, the germ of fear. One more step, he told himself, and then again, and another. But his throat was tightening, his chest aching as if the very mist was squeezing him. The scents assailing his nose grew stronger and more potent until he could almost see their colours. And was there a sound? A wet shifting, a slithering of mud?

One more step and there was something at the limit of his sight: a slow roll in the undergrowth as if some great slumbering beast had turned over in its sleep. Mar’athoin paused, feeling the cold sweat across his forehead. His mind was reeling, spinning. At the base of a great tree there was a thickening of creepers and twisted bushes, a swelling in the moss-covered earth. He narrowed his eyes. The mists thinned. He saw a forearm, wrapped in a thorny bramble stem that tightened its twisting grip as he watched. He saw a face held between two sodden pillows of moss that pressed slowly, slowly together. He saw the grey eyes of the na’kyrim drift towards him, and the minute movements of her lips.

“Help me,” Mar’athoin heard K’rina whisper. And even as he heard the words, he saw a coil of dead, brittle creeper unfurl itself and flex bright leaves.

He fled. He ran without care or caution, back the way they had come. Only one thought was clear and hard in his mind: their journey was done, for here in the Hymyr Ot’tryn they had come to the very extremity of the world a Kyrinin could know. Nothing remained now but to fly back to the safety of the vo’an.

Cynyn and Sithvyr sped after him, silent. They must taste the horrors on the air as well as he could, but they had not seen what he had.

“Anain,” Mar’athoin shouted to them as he ran. “The Anain have taken her.”

“I’ve lost her,” Eshenna murmured.

“What do you mean?” Orisian asked, frowning at the na’kyrim.

“She’s… gone. I can’t feel her mind any more.”

Orisian shot a questioning glance at Yvane, who shrugged.

“I can’t tell. The Shared’s become too loud for me to think straight. I barely know where I am, let alone anyone else.”

“You can’t lose her now,” Orisian snapped at Eshenna in exasperation. “We’ve come too far. You said we were close; within reach.”

They were sitting in the open, on the northern slope of a ridge of high, grassy ground that hunched up above the surrounding forests. Chains of low hills stretched off into the distance. The Karkyre Peaks, distant and cloudy, thronged the western horizon. Torcaill and his warriors were tending to their horses, and to their own wounds. Twice in this long afternoon they had been beset by the arrows of invisible enemies. Three men lay dead somewhere back along the trail they had followed through the forest and out onto this bare ridge. All of it in answer to Eshenna’s insistence that K’rina was so close that they need press on only a little further.

The na’kyrim had an anguished expression on her face now. Her eyelids were fluttering, her head rocking back. Orisian was suddenly afraid that she was going to faint away. He seized her arm, holding her upright.

“Eshenna! What’s happening?”

“The Anain,” she breathed. “There’s terrible power, all around. I can’t see anything else. Gods, we’re too small to be in the midst of all this.”

Orisian shook her, overcome by a surge of fear and frustration.

“It’s too late! We’re here! Tell me where the woman is, Eshenna.”

She recovered herself for a moment, met his gaze steadily, then grimaced and closed her eyes. She gestured towards the summit of the ridge behind them.

“Over there. She was close, beyond the rise, but then… I don’t know. She disappeared.”

There was a chorus of shouts. Orisian glanced round. Men were hauling themselves onto their horses. Others were pointing back down the slope towards the treeline.

“It’s a false alarm,” Yvane muttered.

For a moment Orisian did not know what she meant, then he saw the two lean figures jogging out from amongst the trees. He recognised them at once: Ess’yr and Varryn.

“It’s all right,” he shouted at Torcaill.

The warrior had already reached the same conclusion himself. He calmed his men, stood expectantly watching the two Kyrinin coming up the slope towards them. Ess’yr and Varryn passed him by, ignoring every curious gaze as they made straight for Orisian. He stood up to meet them. Ess’yr had a bow again, he saw at once. Someone – some White Owl – must have died to give her that.

“The enemy fill the forest like deer,” Varryn said curtly. “We could not kill so many in five days of hunting.”

“Where?” Orisian asked. He could not take his eyes off Ess’yr. She was breathing deeply, a faint flush of exertion colouring her cheeks. She looked alive, full of renewed energy. There was dried blood on the arm of her jacket, but it looked to be someone else’s, not hers.

“Behind you,” Varryn said, “and beside you. All around. They are searching.”

“For K’rina. As we do.”

“Perhaps for her. For us, now. And for you.”

Torcaill and Rothe came striding up, urgent questions evident in their expressions.

“They will be on you here very soon,” Varryn continued.

“How many?” Torcaill demanded.

Varryn did not look round at the warrior, but down at the spear he held lightly in his hand.

“As many bows as you have swords,” he said. “Perhaps more.”

“At least in the open we can see them coming,” Rothe muttered.

Orisian knelt again at Eshenna’s side. The na’kyrim was more composed now, though she still seemed distressed.

“How close is she?” he asked her gently. “Can we reach her? We have no more time.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps. She was very near, before I lost my sense of her. If we could find her trail, or some sign of her… perhaps. Your Fox are good trackers, aren’t they?”

Orisian looked up at Rothe, and then at Torcaill.

“We have to try. There’s still a chance to do what we came here to do.”