The Leafless Forest

by Douglas Hill

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

In his magical stronghold at the heart of a petrified forest Lebarran Magister gathers the surviving loyal members of the Order of the Apotheosis and plans for his coming triumph over the free peoples. And in the Void, waiting hungrily for Lebarran's call, is the monstrous Unformed; malign, implacable. Unaware that the far-reaching eye of the evil sorcerer is resting on him, Red Cordell joins those allied to Prince Phaedran to face the shadow of Lebarran's ambition. Red's friend, the dwarf-giant Krost, travels to his homeland to enlist the strength of the giants; Aurilia gathers the Sisterhood of enchantresses; Vallawn marshals his fellow wizards; the militia are called to arms. Only the enigmatic healer, Hallifort, refuses to lend his powers. And so the army marches: towards a hopeless war; towards bloodshed and heartbreak; towards the growing evil that threatens the whole Continent from its fastness in the Leafless Forest...

Release date: July 31, 2014

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 302

Sample

A young actor named Red Cordell, having come upon an unusual sword with a glowing blade, is plucked from his familiar world into a land of barbaric violence and magical powers. Upon arrival he finds himself defending a beautiful blonde against an assassin; befriending an immensely strong man named Krost; and having a wound miraculously healed by a small stranger called Hallifort. Afterwards, he learns that the blonde woman, Aurilia, is one of the Circle of Nine that rules a community of enchantresses known as the Sisterhood. It was Aurilia who summoned the luminous sword to her aid and caught Red up in her summoning. For the sword, which cannot be broken or blunted, was made by the Sisterhood for a hero of that land, now dead, named Corodel. And Red Cordell has a strange, timeless correlation with his near-namesake.

He also learns that his bulky new friend, Krost, is a dwarf-giant, born of a race of beings twice as tall as normal humans. And finally, he is told that Krost and Aurilia have both been called to the city by the ruler of the Four-Cornered Continent, Prince Phaedran, whose daughter, Evelane, now a lovely young woman, has been mysteriously abducted.

Later, restlessly exploring with Krost, Red sees and pursues the assassin Vanticor, who had earlier attacked Aurilia. Red finds that Vanticor’s henchmen are inhuman beings from distant swamps, the Barachi, and he is saved from the Barachi by, again, the strange healer Hallifort. His news about the Barachi confirms for Phaedran that his daughter’s abductor must be his old enemy, Talonimal – a power-hungry and sexually insatiable sorcerer whom Phaedran had banished years before. Soon the prince’s wizards discover an impenetrable magical barrier on the coast of the Western Woodlands, where the Barachi come from and to which Talonimal is thought to have fled.

The prince puts together a mobile force to travel westward and rescue the princess. Aurilia and Krost go along, as does Red. But when the force is attacked by the Barachi, on the river, only six survive, thanks to Aurilia’s magic: Red, Aurilia herself, Krost, the prince and two others. Before long, deep in the Woodlands, more Barachi attack, led by Vanticor, and capture the prince. Red, Krost and Aurilia survive, mysteriously aided by demonic creatures called Zhraike – and the three pursue Vanticor and his Barachi, hoping to free the prince.

They are led to the coast, where they find an immense, shiny-black Dome – the protection raised by Talonimal. With Aurilia’s veiling, they enter unseen. But within the uncanny darkness of the interior, Red is separated from his friends. Alone and prowling, he comes upon a young woman who is Princess Evelane herself, not the sorcerer’s captive, but his accomplice and lover. After that Red overhears a long-range magical confrontation between Talonimal and an immensely powerful mage named Lebarran Magister, apparently the one who sent the Zhraike to attack the Barachi. But then Talonimal becomes aware of Red, and flings him into a magical dungeon where he finds Aurilia, Krost and the prince.

Soon they are visited by the sorcerer and the princess, where they learn the truth about Evelane’s betrayal of her father – how she was seduced by Talonimal’s promise to confer on her the gift of magic she has always yearned for. Aurilia tells her it cannot be done, but Evelane maniacally asserts that Talonimal will achieve it when he has enhanced his own powers to the utmost, which can be done by the dire evil of sacrifice. And Red and the others are about to become the next offerings.

At the appointed time, while the captives are guarded by Vanticor and some Barachi, Talonimal reveals what is to happen. He relates how Lebarran Magister first made contact with a monstrous, supernaturally powerful entity known only as the Unformed, which dwells in the Void Beyond. Lebarran then recruited others, including Talonimal, to help find a means to control the Unformed and to give it the true life-force and stable form that it craves. Thereby it and they together would achieve the powers of gods – an Apotheosis. But Talonimal broke away from Lebarran’s Order of the Apotheosis, seeking to gain supremacy on his own behind his protective Dome, by sacrificing to the Unformed.

He then begins to prepare for that further offering, invoking a tall misty threshold and the equally ethereal image of an endless bridge, on which the immense and horrifying being, the Unformed, appears. But when Aurilia is chosen to be first into the sacrificial flame, she uses all her beauty and her magic to entrap Talonimal with his own lusts. Like a mindless rutting beast, blind to all else, Talonimal struggles with Aurilia while Red and Krost do battle with their guards, aided by a destructive poltergeist outburst from Evelane. Though severely wounded, Red kills Vanticor while the prince flings Talonimal into his own sacrificial fire, to be destroyed by the Unformed.

Fleeing the Dome, trying to keep Red alive, the survivors are astonishingly met by Hallifort the Healer, who instantly restores Red and tries also to ease the damaged mind of the princess. And although he claims sadly to have no real powers beyond healing, Hallifort also warns them that the fall of Talonimal has not put an end to the great peril that menaces the land.

All that day, as during nearly all the days preceding it, a thin weak drizzle – more mist than rain – had fallen steadily upon the valley. With the arrival of twilight, the permanent cloud cover that mantled the valley seemed to settle lower, thickening the rain-mist into something approaching the density of fog. As it collected, it drifted in floating banks just above the ground, leaving the gleam of its moisture on the boles of the trees that loomed like ghostly pillars in the dimness.

They were ancient and massive, those trees, their tangled branches reaching high to disappear in the descending clouds. They stood rank upon irregular rank to form a mighty forest that covered most of the valley floor. Yet in that forest the trees drew no sustenance from the near-endless fall of moisture. They were beyond all natural processes of nutrition and growth, beyond life itself. No leaves grew on the trees’ uplifted branches, no leaves lay on the bare earth at their feet, no leaves had sprouted in that forest for centuries. Every one of the trees was dead. And in death, through all that time, they had slowly undergone petrification, trunk and root and branch inexorably altering into hard grey stone. Amid the enveloping mist and descending darkness, they stood like crude misshapen statuary, eerie mockeries of life and nature.

None the less, some life did exist in that place of stony tree-trunks and empty ground. Here and there on the trees or on rock outcrops grew sickly yellow smears of lichen, patches of pale moss, puffs of corpse-white fungus, all looking like the outward symptoms of some unknown pestilence. And also among the trees lived other things – beings that moved, upon two legs.

The beings were not beasts, yet neither were they human. Just as the petrified trees looked like sculpted images, so those beings resembled badly carved but mobile statues. They were squat, heavily built, with small heads sunk deep between mounded shoulders. Their hairless skin, a sickly grey, looked as creased and weathered – and as solid – as the trunks of the petrified trees, as if the flesh of the beings had somehow also turned to stone.

Roaming the forest in their hundreds, the creatures were foraging among the trees, moving in a shuffling lurch as they tore up handfuls of fungus and moss and stolidly ate it. At the same time they all seemed to be making their slow ways towards various dips and hollows in the ground that would serve them as lairs for the night. But though their wanderings seemed mostly aimless and random, it was clear that they all kept themselves well away from the heart of the petrified forest. There, at the centre of an expanse of ground that was entirely free of trees, stood a structure that was itself more grotesque than anything else in that unnatural valley.

It was enormous, containing more than half a hundred chambers of varying size, with linking corridors. And all of it had been formed from the petrified trees of the forest. Yet those trees had not been felled and shaped for the purpose. They still stood upright, still rooted. But somehow they had been rearranged, by an unimaginable force – gathered into straight ranks and rows, pressed tightly together side by side, to form the walls, outer and inner, of the structure. Above the walls the branches of the trees were interwoven and overarched to form the semblance of a ceiling, while the bare earth served as floor. But higher above it all, almost hidden in the clouded darkness, loomed something that was neither stone nor earth nor cloud. It was an immense canopy, shaped like a flattened cone, made of darkly shiny metal. High above the topmost branches of the trees, it reached out over the entire breadth of the huge structure, as its uppermost covering. Yet despite the canopy’s size and incalculable weight, it hung motionless above the structure without apparent support of any kind.

The structure’s interior lay mostly in darkness and also mostly empty, save for the mist that drifted in unopposed through the outer doorways. Only one chamber was occupied, one of the largest, at the centre, bright with the glow of a strange pale light that seemed to have no visible source. There the structure’s only inhabitant, and its creator, sat in a hard high-backed chair and stared down into a large stone bowl at his feet.

He was a short, stocky man wearing a robe of thick fur. His head and his blunt-featured face were entirely hairless, though thick black hair sprouted on his wrists and at the base of his throat exposed by the robe. Indifferent to the dank fog or the darkness that were trying to seep in at the door, he sat with his gaze riveted on to the glimmer of light from within the bowl, like a reflection of the almost phosphorescent glow that flickered around the man’s fingers. The bowl was filled to the brim with a shiny black liquid, its unmoving surface offering a darkly perfect mirror. Staring into the bowl as if peering through a window, the fur-robed man was watching a scene like a portion of a drama, depicted in miniature on the shiny surface. A scene of six people together on an empty beach, by the edge of a glistening sea.

It was not the first time that the fur-robed man had watched that scene in his scrying bowl, for its events had taken place in the fairly recent past. Yet he studied the six moving figures with intensity, as if hoping that in this viewing something new might be revealed. And his deep-set eyes seemed to shine with a light of their own, bright and yellow and feral, as they stared at the six people on that faraway shore.

Two of them were women, one of them beautiful and full-bodied with a mass of tawny blonde hair, the other one younger, slim and dark and strangely vacant-eyed. From them the fur-robed man’s gaze shifted to two of the other figures – a tall man with grey hair and a lined, grim face and another man only slightly shorter but disproportionately large in breadth and girth, vast muscles rolling with his every movement. Again the man’s glowing eyes shifted, to fix unblinkingly on the last two of the six people on that shore. One was a rangy young man, lean and athletic-looking, with a tangle of russet-red hair, carrying a sword whose blade shone as if the metal contained its own source of multicoloured light. And the other, the sixth of the group, was small, round-faced, with receding white hair, dressed all in blue with a tall hat, who would have looked quite harmless and almost comical if not for his eyes, with their irises of startling purple and pupils of a pure, inhuman white.

The fur-robed man raised a finger, with its phosphorescent glow, and the image of the small man in the bowl was held still. ‘Hallifort,’ the fur-robed man muttered, his eyes flaring. ‘Hallifort the Healer. What are you, Hallifort? Where have you come from? And, in all the Realms and Spheres, where are you now?’

The muttering became an angry roar in the last four words, and the man’s hand gestured sharply. At once the images in the bowl blurred, shifting from one scene to another in a sequence of dizzying speed. Rigid with concentration, he stared as the images passed before him, as his scrying sight swept across great distance and through passing time – over woodlands, plains and mountain ranges, into farmsteads, villages and city streets. And throughout it all, wherever his sight ranged, not once did its focus stop and settle again on the image of the little man with the weird eyes.

The fur-robed man’s eyes blazed as he ground his teeth with rising anger. ‘Where are you, Hallifort?’ he rasped. ‘What are you? What manner of healer is it who can hide himself from a Magister’s scrying?’

Then he paused, becoming as still and rigid as one of his petrified trees, struck by a sudden thought. ‘Can that be it?’ he snarled, staring up at the blackness above him. ‘Is that what you are? Could it be …?’

For a long moment he remained unmoving. Then another gesture cleared the surface of the scrying bowl, and placed upon it the still image of the young red-headed man holding the luminous sword.

‘Three times,’ the fur-robed man growled to himself. ‘Three times Hallifort the Healer has come unbidden to the aid of the outlander who now bears the sword of Corodel. Does it mean that the outlander is fated to play a central role in events to come, as he has played in events just past?’ A mirthless smile formed on his thick lips. ‘If so, he might be prevented. While at the same time he might provide a means to lure Hallifort from his hiding-place, so his mystery may be plumbed.’

He lunged to his feet, the high-backed chair vanishing abruptly behind him. As he stalked away from the scrying bowl, shaping complex gestures with his glowing hands, a bright circle of energy materialized, like a large golden hoop, suspended horizontally some feet from the floor near the centre of the chamber. The fur-robed man spoke a few harsh syllables, and within the hovering golden circle a darkness began to gather, deeper than any of the shadows that had descended on the forest around that dwelling.

In a few moments, as the man spoke more of the ugly phrases, the darkness within the circle began to take on solidity and shape – the hideous shape of embodied horror. It was a monstrous creature, rearing taller than the fur-robed man though it stood on all fours. Its forelegs or arms were long and powerfully muscled, its massive shoulders and upper back tapered to narrow hindquarters and short, thick hind legs. Huge talons sprouted from its paws, huge fangs glinted in its gaping mouth. The matted black fur that covered it stank like a mass of nameless corruption, and in the sockets where its eyes should have been things like tendrils of red smoke ceaselessly twisted and writhed.

The monster turned its head this way and that, as if listening rather than looking, baring its fangs in an evil, croaking growl.

‘Be still,’ the fur-robed man ordered, seeming quite undaunted. ‘I have invoked you, demon …’

But the eyeless monster growled more loudly, drowning his words, and lunged forward – until its snarling face almost touched the glowing circle that enclosed it. Then it jerked back, its growl altering to an eerie, pain-filled howl.

‘Be silent!’ the man snapped. ‘Do you not know me, demon? I am Lebarran, the Magister, and you will not overcome my constraints!’

The monster cowered in the centre of the bright circle, its howl diminishing to a choked whine.

‘Take note, there,’ the man named Lebarran went on harshly, indicating the scrying bowl that still presented the image of the red-haired man. ‘There is the task to which I have invoked you. Find this man, this outlander who bears another’s sword, and bring him to me – alive.’

The demon, still whining, seemed to stare at the bowl with the writhing red tendrils of its eyes.

‘The outlander is presently with the witches of the Sisterhood,’ Lebarran continued, ‘in their northern Fastness. You would have no hope of entering there, but you can wait near by until he emerges, and then take him. Do you understand?’ At the demon’s muted croak that seemed to signify assent, he nodded sharply. ‘Afterwards you will be returned to your own Realm. But first, I will ensure obedience.’

He gestured, and the glowing circle surrounding the demon began to shrink. Within a moment it had contracted to a small golden circlet fitting neatly around the demon’s thick neck, gleaming amid the black fur. The demon moaned and whined, baring its teeth in a grimace that seemed filled with pain. And again Lebarran smiled his mirthless smile.

‘Perform your task swiftly, and the collar will be more swiftly removed.’ He raised a glowing hand. ‘Now begone! Bring me the one who bears the sword of Corodel!’

In the afternoon of the following day, no one was actively bearing the sword of Corodel. In its leather sheath with attached belt it had been irreverently slung around the slender neck of a nude female statue that graced one corner of a stone-flagged courtyard. Near by, the sword’s usual bearer, Red Cordell, was instead wielding a light fencing sabre with unguarded blade and point, trying to defend himself against an opponent who was measurably more skilled.

The courtyard was in the midst of a complex of low, solid buildings that formed part of the enclave known as the Fastness, built by the enchantresses of the Sisterhood as their principal base. The Fastness stood on the sheltered side of a ridge among broad open moorlands that formed the northern sector of the Four-Cornered Continent. More or less the size of a small village, its buildings and outer protective wall were made of thick and solid hardwood reinforced with stone, often also faced or decorated with varicoloured clay, so that the Fastness looked almost as if it had grown organically out of the land around it, its subdued earth-colours as rich and warm as those of the moors themselves.

They looked particularly warm on that sunlit afternoon, when the year was striding on towards high summer. The pale sky could not produce the tiniest cloud to filter the sun’s relentless glare, so that within the first moments of swordplay Red had flung his shirt off, while wishing that he could exchange his trousers and boots for the shorts and running shoes that he would have worn in his own world. His opponent had been enviably more able to cast aside outer garments – although it was not only envy that Red was feeling. The other fencer, also wielding a light sabre, was a leggy dark-haired woman named Brennia, with skin the colour of cinnamon and a knowing grin that was all too evident in the course of their mock-battle. Almost as tall and wide-shouldered as Red, and perhaps in her early thirties, a year or two older than him, she seemed to be at least his equal athletically and certainly his superior with a blade. Although, in fairness, he had lost some portion of his concentration since she had partially disrobed. Her light sleeveless undershirt was skimpy enough to display the circular mark of the Sisterhood like a brand between the upper slopes of her unrestrained breasts. And he was certain, from a tantalizing half-glimpse or two, that she wore nothing at all under the kirtle that reached only halfway down her thighs.

He was also aware that she was grinning as much because she knew what he was looking at as because he was having a hard time with the sabre against her. In fact, at that very moment she gave a supple twitch of her hips that caused the hem of her kirtle to flutter. And as Red inevitably looked down, she attacked. Red fell back against the onslaught of her blade as it wove its patterns with eye-baffling speed. Somehow, by reflex, he managed a jerky, desperate defence, but he was being steadily forced to give way, unable to hold her off or to offer any riposte or counterattack. Subtly then she altered the rhythm and the pattern, and at the same time managed to accelerate her sabre’s speed. It flickered around Red’s blade in a complex curve, until the curve incredibly twisted back on itself in a movement that ended with Red’s blade flying from his hand.

With that she halted, her grin widening. And in that moment of hesitation Red struck out, his left hand moving in a blur. The extended knuckle of his middle finger drove into the nerve centre of her upper arm, and her own sabre fell from her suddenly numbed hand.

Her grin vanishing, she jumped back with a small pained exclamation, while a burst of deep, hoarse laughter came from the far side of the courtyard. Red and Brennia looked around, towards the massive form of Krost il Hak taking his ease in the shade of one of the buildings. Seated on a heavy stone bench – which looked almost frail compared to its occupant’s bulk – gripping a pottery jug of frothing ale and laughing immoderately, Krost was clearly having a fine time in his role as spectator.

‘You must watch him, Brennia!’ he roared. ‘When he thinks he might lose, he cheats!’

Brennia nodded, rubbing her arm to restore its feeling. ‘They teach strange ways of swordsmanship in your Sphere, Red.’

Going to pick up his sword, Red looked contrite. ‘Sorry. You left the opening, and I couldn’t help myself.’

Brennia’s grin reappeared. ‘I wouldn’t have left the opening in battle. I stopped my blade before it completed the movement.’

‘Which probably would have cut my throat,’ Red said.

‘No, skewered your liver.’ She laughed cheerfully, reaching down for her sabre, her arm restored. ‘You might show me that stroke of yours, someday.’

‘Any time,’ Red said, ‘though I don’t think I have much to teach you about combat, unarmed or otherwise.’

Again Krost’s laughter rolled out from his shady bench. ‘Let him stay your pupil, Brennia. A man who carries a famous sword should try to gain some skill with it.’

‘He’s not so bad, Krost,’ Brennia said, smiling.

Red gave her a half-bow. ‘High praise,’ he said lightly. ‘Ready to go on?’

She raised her sabre. ‘We can try that last pattern again. Watch for the change of tempo, and see if you can find a counter. With your blade.’

At once she began the attack, barely giving Red time enough to bring his own sabre into position. Again he was driven back, trying to keep his weight properly balanced as he retreated, trying to concentrate on the movement of Brennia’s sabre rather than that of her body. Halfway across the courtyard in his retreat he sensed the change of tempo, but even as he glimpsed a partial opening for a parry the chance was lost. As her blade completed its coiling return sweep, Red’s sabre flew once more from his hand.

Brennia’s blade flashed onwards, and sliced a line of bright scarlet across the flat muscle of Red’s belly.

At once they both moved back, Brennia’s eyes and mouth opening wide with horror, Red grimacing at the sudden flare of pain. He looked down at the blood dripping over his lower abdomen and pawed vaguely at the sweat that was also trickling over his torso, adding its salt sting to the pain of the wound.

‘Red, I’m sorry!’ Brennia gasped.

He gave her a lopsided grin. ‘I guess I left the opening this time and you couldn’t help yourself.’ He touched a finger to the edge of the cut. ‘It’s nothing much. I’ll get something to stop the bleeding …’

‘I can do that.’ Brennia moved close to him, reaching out to the wound, the knotted gold ring of the Sisterhood gleaming on one finger. ‘This may sting a little.’

‘It stings already,’ Red told her, watching as her hand touched his skin, slowly and delicately trailing two fingers along the seeping wound. Red tried not to flinch as the slashed flesh grew suddenly hot – but it lasted for only an instant. And in the wake of Brennia’s touch, the flow of blood from the wound slowed and stopped.

‘Good trick,’ he said, impressed. ‘Handy for a battlefield.’

He lifted his gaze to her face – and was suddenly, powerfully aware of how close she was standing, how her hand rested almost caressingly on his midriff, how her skin smelled like flowers, how her mouth was slowly softening …

Then she abruptly removed her hand and stepped back, shattering the moment. Just as Krost ambled up, jug in hand, to peer with interest at the angry red weal of the wound.

‘Healer as well as warrior,’ he remarked. ‘Very useful.’

Brennia made a vague gesture. ‘The Earth-magic doesn’t do true, complete healing. It just stops bleeding and speeds up the body’s natural mending. But there will be a scar …’

‘There are worse places for scars,’ Krost said with a grin.

Red cleared his throat, pulling his gaze away from her. ‘You have any beer left, Krost?’

‘Not a drop,’ Krost told him cheerfully.

‘Just as well,’ Brennia said. ‘You should bathe the wound now, Red. With water, not ale.’

‘You need to bathe more than the wound,’ Krost commented, indicating the smeared blood and sweat on Red’s torso. ‘Time enough for ale this evening.’

He turned away, going to reclaim his heavy iron quarterstaff that he had left leaning against the bench. Red and Brennia went in the other direction, gathering up Red’s sword and the items of clothing that they had removed.

‘I’ll send someone with a salve for your wound,’ Brennia said, pulling on the short gauzy tunic that was her outer garment. ‘You’ll certainly be able to fence again tomorrow – if you wish.’

‘Bring the salve to me yourself,’ Red said quietly.

She looked at him for a long moment, then heaved a sigh. ‘Red, I have no doubt that I would enjoy what you have in mind. But I can’t, and won’t. I know you are pledged to Aurilia, and she to you.’

Red’s mouth twisted. ‘That’s as may be, as they say. Does it make such a difference?’

‘It does,’ Brennia insisted. ‘Out of courtesy and respect for Aurilia. Mine because she is my friend and also one of my leaders in the Circle of Nine. Yours … for obvious reasons.’

‘Not all that obvious, these days,’ Red said dourly. ‘But I get the message.’ He forced a jaunty smile. ‘Come and have a drink with Krost and me tonight, anyway.’

She smiled. ‘I’ll try.’

‘And I’ll try,’ he added, ‘to keep you from cutting me open again, in tomorrow’s fencing lesson.’

Alone in his quarters – a suite of small airy rooms high in a building near the outer wall of the Fastness – Red flung off his clothing and lay awhile in a bath of cool water. It should have been a delight, after the heat and exertion of the courtyard, but his mood had taken him past such small pleasures. At last he climbed out of the bath and carelessly dried himself, then flung himself naked on to a settee by a window. Staring blankly out, he scarcely noticed the glorious view – over a rolling expanse of the Northern Moorlands, where in the distance a flock of woolly beasts grazed peacefully, tended by a bronze-skinned herdsman. Instead, his gaze was turned almost entirely inwards, to examine a far less pleasurable view.

He knew, because he had been told often enough, that he was by nature a restless, edgy and impatient person. He had little time for the more serene, contemplative processes of living. All his life he had craved action and excitement, always seeking to release his energies and test his nerve, hopelessly addicted to the rush of adrenalin, ready for nearly anything that would end inactivity and relieve boredom. Yet there in the Fastness of the Sisterhood, for him, inactivity and boredom seemed the order of the day – as they had for almost every day since his arrival. The only real breaks to the dullness had been the fencing sessions with Brennia, when she had the time, and a few well-behaved drinks with Krost most evenings. But even those recreations were growing repetitive and stale for Red, as his volatile nature asserted itself.

That, he knew with his usual self-awareness, was why he had made his impulsive overture to Brennia. Trying for something to break the monotony. And that wasn’t much of a reason, he thought with a grimace. Not much regard there for Brennia herself – nor for Aurilia, whom he would have been betraying. He glowered darkly at the landscape, thinking about Aurilia, seeing the images that always arose unbidden when he turned his thoughts to her. Images of Aurilia in her younger form – in vivid conversation, in thoughtful stillness, in supple and graceful movement, or in wanton invitation with her long blonde hair swirling around her as if it had a life of its own …

He knew very well that it was not her fault, in any direct way, that he was feeling restless, bored and caged. And yet, illogically, he did blame her. He was there in the Fastness because of her, his wish to b. . .