Kastor lay daydreaming. Through his delirium, he was vaguely aware of the soldiers loading the last of their barrels.

  His mind threw up memories of home that were so vivid he almost believed himself to be there. He saw the great hall, carved out of the heart of the mountain, where his parents received honoured guests and hosted feasts. At the far end, beyond a little opening in a hidden nook, was his favourite place. A small doorway that led into a snug room, bedecked with hangings and plush cushions. A fire raged in the corner and books lined the walls. His sisters and brother were there, playing a game of sevenstones. No! Sevenstones was a forest game. How could he let it infiltrate this fantasy? They would be playing cards. That was better. This was the real heart of his home; a room which only his family could enter. He’d heard servants whispering about what was inside. They thought the books might contain the forbidden love poetry of the sixth prophet emperor, or perhaps secrets of state, entrusted to his father’s guardianship. What would they have made of the reality, having built up such wonderful illusions? A few good epics and a place to be together.

  Then Kastor had met the Serpent Islander. Tales of the man’s adventures had seeped into his young mind and soon he made a decision that shocked even the most wayward of his siblings. Hal-Talens were born into privilege and power, in a society as stable as their mountaintop home. Who would risk that for an adventure in some forgotten woodland, far away in the land of their enemy?

  Cold water splashed against his lips and brought him back to his predicament. He shivered under the thin blanket. A soldier was trying to make him drink.

  “We’ll be on our way soon. We’ve a lot of cargo to carry, so you’re riding on the cart. It’ll be quite something, to bring a Southern noble into the Godless City."

  Kastor felt the ground rocking beneath him. He heard Joturn panting nearby and caught a few words of conversation between the soldiers.

  “Captain Tristor's had a message in the smoke. He says the Sullin screwed up. He's beaming from ear to ear.”

  “That puffed up savage chief said he could stop them trying to leave, didn’t he? He’ll be out of the general’s good books.”

  Kastor fantasised about how things might have been. What if he’d met the medicine man in a different time? Usually, when Kastor had failed one of his many exercises, the old man had berated and belittled him, cursing the gods for sending him an incompetent apprentice. Once, though, he had shown a measure of pity. He had explained that the branching possibilities along which Kastor laboured to travel were once clear and easy to navigate. That changing one's tongue to fit the language of an animal, healing a wound or making something grow was as easy for a medicine man as wishing it to be so. Even when the old man took his apprenticeship, it was easier for him than it was for Kastor. It was as though the gift had been crumbling around them. Kastor had asked why, and the moment of sympathy and good humour had passed. The old man had snapped at him that it was none of his business, not before he could perform a simple healing, to know the secrets of the forest. And here he was now, the last medicine man, and still he did not know them.

  Kastor imagined his leg being healthy – that between this reality and that possibility a simple wish bridged the gap. Was that what it was like to be a medicine man in those days? They must have walked anywhere they wished to unafraid. Had it cost them anything at all to use their gift? If the legends were true, it had not, yet Kastor could not quite believe it. As the forest folk loved to say – medicine and poison went together. Perhaps they had not known the cost.

  The breeze picked up suddenly and he shivered. It was more than just a breeze, though. He felt invigorated, as though a clean, cool wind had blown away some cobwebs of sleep. He opened his eyes and focussed on his surroundings. The convoy was moving.

  They journeyed forwards and Kastor watched as the path rolled into the distance behind them. He balked. The wheels of the wagon left neat lines in a wide corridor of ash. What destruction! The Republican soldiers had burned a path through the woods. In some places, planks covered rougher terrain. The beginnings of a road, here in the forest. He pushed himself up, noting the ease with which he did so, and craned his neck. Two horses pulled the cart he rode on.

  He felt a sharp pain in his side.

  “Feeling lively today?”

  Kastor turned to see Captain Tristor leering across at him. He had reached down from his steed and jabbed Kastor in the ribs with the tip of his sword. Kastor felt his shirt turn wet where the point had touched him.

  “Perhaps we need the gag back in, if you’re well enough to take in the scenery. Or perhaps you can walk with your friend.”

  He pointed to Joturn, who walked and stumbled beside the cart, pulled by his bound hands.

  Kastor turned away from Joturn’s humiliation, feeling somehow guilty for seeing it. The old man deserved better than this.

  "How dare you treat an elder like that?"

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  The clarity of his own voice surprised him. Speaking recently had been like dragging the words across hot coals in his throat. Even stringing a sentence together in his mind had been difficult. He’d barely been able to communicate, but this phrase had come from his mouth with confidence and ease.

  Tristor smirked at his indignation, oblivious to his renewed strength. Kastor imagined moving his arms freely. How wonderful it would be to rip through the ropes and grasp a weapon from the ground! Anything with even a flicker of life could become a weapon, for him. That was one trick he’d been able to master. If his hands were free, he could make one last stand against this tormentor. He could pull him down from that horse in the middle of the smoking ruins he had created and make him pay before the soldiers' swords and bows found him.

  A moment later, Kastor looked at his hands. He blinked and looked again. They were in front of his face instead of behind his back. He looked at the ground. Two piles of rope receded into the distance as the wagon rolled away from them. How has this happened? I willed it to be so, and it was. He kicked his feet too, reaching in his mind into a place where they were free. He encountered no resistance and the rope slid off them like a snake uncoiling itself from the branch of a tree. His wounded leg no longer hurt.

  He stared up at Tristor, who rode with his mouth agape and eyes wide, frozen momentarily in shock. The captain yelled and raised his sword. Kastor threw himself across the space between them. His hands reached Tristor as the sword grazed his side and both men fell to the ground. The horse made a high whine and thundered away from them. The edge of the blade sought him out and he writhed and turned, rolling over amid clouds of ash that rose from the ground, filling his eyes and nose. He could not see, but he felt with more than just his fingers. He felt with the burnt, fertile earth beneath Tristor’s back and the movement of the insects that scuttled under their struggling bodies. The edge of the blade found him and his side lanced with pain. He felt germs of life beneath the surface of the soil.

  He howled.

  The last time Kastor had felt this reckless hate, his hands had been grasping for a rock beside his master's head. Back then, he'd been weak and confused, whereas now he felt like an un-stoppered bottle, pouring forth its fury in streams. His lungs expelled the last of their air as he lay atop Tristor and pushed him into the ground. He heaved in a breath and, as he did so, he reached up from the earth beneath them with the life of every seed and weed that lay dormant in the soil. The captain screamed and then went abruptly silent. When Kastor looked down, it was with both horror and exhilaration. Did I do this?

  Tristor lay half embedded in the earth. Around his neck, green shoots tangled in a tight net. Where they pulled across his face and into the flesh, it looked like string cutting into cured meat. The purple skin had burst beneath a blank open eye and blood seeped out. The thin wood of saplings pierced the captain's chest and stomach. Shakily, Kastor stood. He looked up. He was surrounded by soldiers.

  A familiar presence appeared in the air above him. It was a presence that he knew too well. And yet, it was not the same. The demon, if that’s what it was, called out from overhead: a beautiful melody at once arousing and desperately sad. The men around him had notched their arrows and drawn their bows. They looked up, distracted, until one of them called out:

  “The captain is down! Take him out!”

  A hail of steel points came towards him.

  Time slowed and Kastor listened to the arrows move through the air. He listened deeper and heard the air itself. How like his own mind the wind was! It whipped this way and that, vigorous and chaotic with a subtle strength. It answered his thoughts as he reached out to it. It was his thoughts. A storm of leaves and ash blew before his eyes, spinning around him like a tempest that died a moment after it sprang to life. Not one of the arrows met its mark.

  Every trick the old bastard had forced him to practise came to him now as easily as breathing. Every drill that he had repeated, hopelessly, until his mind itself felt as though it were bleeding, now waited upon his command with no resistance. He had mastered everything, and something now had unlocked that training. He took a step forwards and the soldiers backed away. He could feel them wavering, but he wanted them to attack again.

  “Kastor.” A low voice reminded him that Joturn was still here, tied to the cart that Kastor had been riding. “Don’t waste your strength on them. Don’t squander this chance.”

  The rage still trembled in the tips of Kastor’s fingers, but Joturn’s voice demanded a response.

  “The chance for what?”

  “Oli’s chance.”

  It was as though a hot needle had pricked an inflated sore. The anger rushed out of him and Kastor stood, facing the direction in which the soldiers had retreated. Oli! He had failed to stop what he had sworn to prevent: the sacrifice. That was the only explanation for the change that had come over him. At the edges of his mind where the rot had been encroaching, he felt tentatively and sensed a different presence. He felt something fresh. Something new, both powerful and vulnerable. He turned to Joturn and, with a single thought, untied the man's wrists. The ropes slithered off him and fell into a bundle.

  “Joturn...” he began,

  The elder held up a hand. “Don’t tell me that it’s hopeless. You don’t know that. Tell me where we’ll find him.”

  “You know the answer to that.”

  Kastor heard the call of the demon again and looked up. A huge, silver-white bird beat its broad wings above them. The light danced on its feathers and jumped away in rainbow colours. The sea raven! It was one of the famous spirits of Saltleaf. He thought that he had never seen one, but it had been his companion this whole time. Whatever had renewed him had restored this creature, too. Kastor trembled.

  The sea raven turned in the air and flew back towards the foothills. Kastor followed and called to Joturn as he ran:

  “This way!”

  “Lake Silence is in the South,” Joturn panted as he caught up beside him. “We must find a path there.”

  “I think our friend knows the way.”

  "Our friend can travel as the raven flies,” Joturn protested. But he stopped short when they reached where the creature led them.

  Before them stood a path, so wide and clear as to be practically a gateway. Kastor gazed into it with wonder. The light refracted around it, as through struggling to determine its course through the distorted space. Joturn sucked through his teeth and whistled.

  “Oli went this way? The boy who could never find a path. Even he couldn’t miss this one.”

  “I don’t think he found it,” Kastor said in a hushed voice. He neared the phenomenon and felt cool air on his face. “I think he made it.”

  Joturn’s face froze for a moment, then he gasped and shut his eyes.

  “Always the South,” he mumbled.

  “What do you mean?" Kastor asked.

  “Whenever he got lost, he always went south, in paths even I had sometimes missed. I hadn’t missed them, had I? He made them. He’s been making paths there all his life.”