Louen didn’t much like the sound of that – laying bare his innermost thoughts and feelings wasn’t high on his list of fun things to do. Usually, too, people only wanted to know so they could use it against him, or compare themselves to him and then loudly declare they came off worse, as if it was a competition. He didn’t care for that kind of competition. So, he brusquely declined, and accepted a draught from Sarath’s flask. He still had no idea what Lord Karon really saw in him. He thought it best to keep it that way.

‘I guess you’ve heard that the princess Meliane is missing from the castle,’ said Sarath. He brushed the moss from a rock and sat. ‘Do you know anything about that?’

‘I’ve been sequestered inside a brothel, Lord Sarath. How should I know anything?’

Lord Karon gave him a look. His mother gave him a pinch.

He spread his hands. ‘If I were a betting man, I’d say she found her way to me, but before I could be sure…all this happened.’

‘It’s unlike you not to see anything like that coming.’

‘I did see it coming. How do you think I’m here, and not swinging from a rope?’

Lord Karon inclined his head. ‘You didn’t see it coming fast enough.’

‘Even if I had, I couldn’t save the entire house.’

‘You saved yourself! If Meliane made it to you, then did she survive?’

Louen swallowed hard. That was something he’d cursed himself for many times over the last few days. If…

If, if if. I didn’t see it fast enough. If she’s dead, it’s because of me.

He rubbed his palms over his face. ‘I failed. I apologise.’

‘I don’t care.’ Lord Karon leaned forward and took back his flask, then gripped Louen’s forearm. ‘Find out if she lives. The peace between our countries rests on it. Because if she’s dead, I will bring such an agony of destruction to Verana that she’ll beg me for death before I’m done.’

……………………………….

Menys stepped out of the bath, poured rose oil into her hand, and smoothed it over her hair. Then, a comb in her hand, she proceeded to tease out the tangles. Bit by bit – and even with a magic comb, it took a while. Her arms began to ache before she was halfway through.

Rosa came and took over, tutting in exasperation. ‘Why’d you let it get in this state, girl? You could have been much more than a pathetic little scamp if you let your hair out properly.’

Menys shrugged.

‘Hmm. Well, it’s long enough to let a man down the mountain on. Shall I cut a little off?’

‘No,’ said Menys. ‘I like it long.’

Tea-Master Louen’s hair was longer. She couldn’t shake that image of him, swaying gently in the breeze, his blood soaking his boots, his beautiful hair snarled in the rope that killed him.

She snatched the comb from Rosa’s hands. It was all she had of him! No-one else should touch it.

Rosa backed off, her hands in the air. ‘Very well, chit. Suit yourself. But I want help with the sheets, and then you can come and clean the conies Haniven brought in. I want to make a rabbit stew for supper. Hurry up!’

Menys ignored her, and continued combing, hunched on the little milking stool that was all there was to sit on in the bathroom. As she combed, she began a song, an old seer song she’d learned as a child.

She didn’t notice the shadows crowding through the door, as if summoned by her spell. She didn’t notice the sparks the comb drew out of her hair, that pooled and glowed on the floor at her feet.

She didn’t hear the raven’s screech of rage that echoed around the Forest. It shook down the leaves and broke branches, a gale blasting across the land.

She stood up and let her towel fall to her feet.

‘Ye Gods,’ breathed Adharan. He sank to his knees, tugging Laurentus down beside him. Neither could look at her.

‘What’s going on…’ Rosa elbowed her way into the room. Then she stopped dead, her face white as a sheet. ‘Menys…’

‘Meliane’.

……..

Louen heard the howl as it swept through Tarnbreck. It shuddered through him and shook the ground under his feet, rattling leaves off the trees and snapping the weaker branches.

He brushed himself off and unleashed a string of ungentlemanly language into the air.

‘What was that?’ Bresgion’s arms made a protective circle over his own head. ‘Sounded like a large wolf…’

‘Not quite,’ said Louen. He bent and hauled Bresgion up. ‘We need to move! This place will be crawling with soldiers! Can you run?’

‘Of course, I’m not some old man to hobble along the…’

‘Shut up and run, then!’ Louen set off along the path, not caring if Bresgion followed or not. The nuisance could trip and dash his head open on tree roots for all he cared. At least, he told himself he didn’t care. In reality, he knew he’d turn back and carry the idiot himself. The knowledge made him snarl.

They ran along the twisting, winding paths of the Forest, footfalls silent on a floor made soft with pine needles and rich earth, ears out on stalks for any sound of sudden pursuit. There was none. Nothing but the faint susurrus of wind slipping languorously through leaves, and here and there the faint sounds of chatter as they passed a charcoal-burner’s hut. A pig herder and his snuffling pigs watched them fly past with his mouth open, his pigs grunting in surprise. There was only the whip-crack of branches snapping back as they leapt along, only the beating of startled wings, horrifyingly loud in the lull of Tarnbreck.

Soon enough, the land began to rise, and Louen knew they were close to the Eyrie. He turned to Bresgion. ‘Hurry up!’

‘I don’t know what the hurry is for,’ grumbled Bresgion, winded, his hands on his knees. ‘Are we running for our lives? Because it feels like it!’

‘We are,’ said Louen grimly, and set off again.

‘What did you do?’

‘It isn’t what I did! It’s what is waiting for me at the Eyrie!’ Louen could answer no more, his lungs screaming at him now as he sucked in great gulps of forest air. There was a dustiness to it now, as the shale and rock of the mountain began to show. Too bad the door he wanted was around the other side. He couldn’t risk going for it. For all he knew, that bastard Erwillian was already there, sitting on his horse like a harbinger of doom and waiting for Louen to drop by so he could swing him for real this time. Or swipe his head off. Louen had the strangeness of humour to wonder how far down the slope his head would roll, if that did happen.

He almost choked as Bresgion grabbed his shoulder and pointed upwards.

‘What’s that?’

A long column of green smoke was undulating from the top of the mountain. ‘It’s…smoke…’

‘Green smoke?’

‘…yes…’

‘And you want to go there?’

Louen shook the vampire’s hand off. ‘Now’s the time for you to put your unique killing skills to good use,’ he said. ‘There’s a door round the other side of the mountain. You won’t be able to see it: you’ll need a key, which I have. But I want you to see who is there, waiting.’

‘And I don’t get the key?’

‘No.’ Louen glanced anxiously at the column of smoke, which, now that he looked closer, seemed to be going into the mountain rather than out of it. This puzzled him: only in his short time knowing Menys had he ever had to deal with anything so perverse.

He gave Bresgion a shove, and hunkered down to await the all-clear.