The boy laughed, running after his older brother, his bare feet beating a path through the tickling blades of grass.

‘Wait, Perrin! You’re going too fast! Let me catch up!’

Perrin turned, smiling at the distant silhouette of his brother running down the green tunnel of the Willow Barrow.

‘I thought you said you could run faster than me, Tarris!’ Perrin laughed, his blonde hair flaring in the dappled light slanting through the weave.

‘I’ve got a stitch!’ Tarris replied breathlessly. ‘It’s mother’s rennel pie, it sits too heavily!’

‘I have no doubt that it sits heavily’, Perrin gleefully shouted over his shoulder, ‘you ate enough for the both of us!’

When Perrin finally reached the end of the tunnel, he stopped to catch his breath. The swaying green branches that formed one of the great tubes of the Willow Barrow ended upon a small rise, overlooking the wide valley below. Framed within the shifting weave of the tunnel entrance, the town looked small and fragile beneath the soaring peaks of the snow-capped mountains towering above it.

It was only after his breathing had returned to normal that he wondered why he suddenly felt so unsettled. Ducking his head from the tunnel’s edge, a cloud of butterflies scattered into the breeze filling the air with fluttering fragments of gold. It was a beautiful day in late summer; the sky was a deep blue furnished with cotton-white cloud, the air ripe with the sweet scents of the meadow. But despite these assurances that all was well, something felt wrong.

It wasn’t until he heard the soft footfalls of his younger brother approaching from behind, that he finally realised what it was: it was quiet… it was far too quiet.

From a distance, the Willow Barrow resembled an overgrown bramble patch perched upon the top of Willow Hill. But up close, it resembled anything but a tangle of brambles. Once you were standing beside the Barrow, it appeared less of a plant than it did a living structure; somehow woven out of countless switches of green willow. If you were a child brave enough to enter one of its many tunnels, you realised the inside was stranger still, for its insides were riven with chambers, like the inside of a great apple devoured by hungry maggots.

The Willow Barrow was a relic of the mysterious Foresters, a reclusive and ancient race of forest-dwellers who hadn’t been seen nor heard of upon the plains in three hundred turns. Perrin’s father had once told him that the great forest of the Gelding, the ancestral home of the Foresters, had once stretched as far as the Klovelli Mountains themselves, and that the Barrow was the only thing that had survived the forest’s retreat.

But, whatever the Barrow might once have been to the Foresters, its use had long since been lost to time and memory. Now it merely existed as an exciting playground for the town’s more adventurous children, and on a fine day such as today, the Barrow should have been filled with the excited screams and laughter of their friends chasing one another down its meandering tunnels.

So where was everyone?

When Tarris eventually emerged from the tunnel entrance he was sorely winded, but still managed a tired swipe at his older brother’s shoulder. Absently brushing the punch away, Perrin continued to frown at the sea of thatched rooftops far below.

‘Did you see Willis or Jem today?’ Perrin asked distractedly.

‘I didn’t see anyone this morning,’ Tarris replied, sitting heavily upon the soft grass, panting and clutching at his side. ‘Don’t you remember that it was my turn to collect water this morning? Almost broke me back carryin’ them pails back from the well. I made seven trips up Tinder Hill, Perrin! Seven!’ he gasped, screwing his face up in disgust.

‘Mother needs our help, Tarris, you know this,’ Perrin sighed, dropping to sit beside his brother and aiming a belated punch in return.

‘I know,’ Tarris replied meekly, rubbing his shoulder, ‘but, seven times, Perrin!’

‘Where can everyone be?’ Perrin muttered, ignoring his brother’s continued lament.

He himself had spent the whole day working in the flour mill, filling Hessian sacks from where the three great mill stones rumbled and groaned like disgruntled bears. For ten hours each day, the three great stones were his only company, until he was grudgingly released from his toil by the bad-tempered mill owner, Mr Parson. Typically, it wasn’t until the sun had fully set that he would emerge from his toil, painted as white as a ghost by the flecks of flour stuck to his body. But today, there had been a problem with the waterwheel and Mr Parson had granted him an early reprieve.

A warm breeze swept up from the meadow beyond, carrying with it the fragrant scent of wildflowers and warm grass. The green weave of the tunnel rocked gently from side to side, the sound of its shifting stalks like the distant roll of waves.

‘Perrin?’ Tarris said, his voice suddenly sombre.

Perrin turned to look at his brother and found his narrowed eyes focused determinedly on the clouds scudding across the blue sky.

‘What?’ he replied, staring back across the meadow to where thin wisps of smoke curled from crooked stone chimneys.

‘I love you and mother,’ the boy replied quietly.

Perrin looked down at his brother and smiled. He was about to tease him for what he had said, when he noticed a familiar sadness settle upon his brother’s eyes.

‘I love you and mother also,’ Perrin paused, following his brother’s eyes up into the clouds. ‘But, what makes you say such a thing now?’

‘I don’t know. I guess I just realised how much I…’ his voice trailed off, suddenly embarrassed.

‘We will be quite all right without father,’ Perrin said, his voice picking over the words as though they were cold to the touch. ‘We are the men of the house now.’

‘I know,’ Tarris replied quietly. ‘But… do you think mother will take another of the men-folk into our home?’

‘You know better than to ask such things, Tarris!’ Perrin chided, ruffling his brother’s hair as his father had once done. ‘Mother would never take another, not when she has the two of us looking after her. She loved father more than we ever could. She will not forget him in the arms of another.’

‘But we have no money!’ Tarris replied with exasperation.

Perrin’s face darkened and he turned so that his brother could not read the same doubts lingering there. Since the death of their father the previous summer, they had been struggling to make ends meet. The few copper pennies he earned each week from the mill were just barely enough to feed them. Only yesterday he had overheard the quiet conversation between his mother and their landlord Mr Berrymead, who had grumbled that the rent hadn’t been paid for the past three moons. His heart ached when he remembered how his mother had quietly sobbed after the man had left their home, how she had valiantly pretended to them that her tears were due to the dust rising from her cleaning.

Forcing a poor imitation of a smile upon his face, Perrin aimed another punch at his younger brother’s shoulder. Tarris smiled and before long, they were laughing once more, wrestling upon the sweet-smelling grass; their cares and worries momentarily lost in the love they shared for one another.

Their play was suddenly cut short by the sound of bells chiming upon the air. The two brothers abruptly stopped their play and sat up. Again, Perrin gazed distrustfully at the distant town sitting lazily beneath the late afternoon sun. The nagging feeling that something was wrong returned upon the breeze like a quiet whisper.

‘The Marris’ wedding isn’t today, is it?’ Perrin asked, quickly getting to his feet and shielding his eyes.

‘Nope, that’s not until the next Forest Moon in three days’ time,’ the younger brother said, apparently losing interest in the chimes still carrying upon the air. ‘Mother says I can have my first flagon of ale during the celebration!’ he said, proudly puffing out his chest.

‘First thimble of ale more likely,’ Perrin muttered, grinning at his brother’s darkening scowl from the corner of his eye. ‘But, if not a wedding, it can only be a welcoming.’

‘Who would the town welcome at this time of year?’ Tarris replied, snapping a piece of willowing from the tunnel and twisting it into a hoop. ‘And who could be bothered to visit Pinhoe in the first place?’

The broken half of the willowing slowly melted against its own edge, forming a seamless circle of green; a trick that all of the children had learnt to do over the years.

‘I know I wouldn’t,’ the young boy sighed, absently tossing the hoop into the breeze where it hovered for a moment before tumbling to the ground.

Perrin shook his head, lost in thought.

‘Want to find out?’ Perrin said, stooping to pick up the hoop from where it had fetched up against his foot.

‘But we only just got here!’ Tarris replied sulkily. ‘We were going to play hide and seek. And you still haven’t shown me how to find the Willow-Chamber!’

‘We can do that another time, Tarris! Are you not interested in who the visitors might be? It could be a nobleman from one of the five kingdoms, or… why, it could even be Foresters!’ Perrin said, a knowing grin spreading across his lips.

‘Foresters?’ Tarris said, his mouth agape.

‘Yes! A band of Foresters with their hair as black as soot, their wooden swords swinging at their hips! Wouldn’t you like to see that?’

‘Not really,’ the boy replied sulkily, his arms crossed defiantly across his chest. ‘I’d much rather play!’

‘Oh Tarris!’ Perrin sighed, absently spinning the hoop of willowing on his finger. ‘How about this, we go back into town and find the rest of the gang, then bring them back here so we can have us a proper game!’

‘Oh all right,’ Tarris grudgingly conceded, kicking his bare foot against the soft turf. ‘But you have to give me a head start! This time, hold your breath twice, and if I get home first, you have to show me the Willow-Chamber when we get back! Do we have a deal?’

‘Deal!’ Perrin laughed, and promptly drew in a huge breath.

Tarris yelped, and turned tail, sprinting away down the hillside and into the meadow, his tangled blonde hair trailing behind him like a golden tail.

Perrin let his breath out slowly and walked from out of the willowing with a smile.

He’d let his brother win, just this once.

***

Perrin halted when he reached the small market square. The twelve tarnished bells now lay silent within their wooden cradles, but a large crowd of town folk had gathered beneath the sloping roof of the bell tower. It was indeed a welcoming, and it seemed that most of the town had turned out in greeting. It had to be someone important, Perrin thought as he drew nearer, for even the farm labourers had been drawn from the fields; their sweaty faces plastered with red soil.

For one wild moment, Perrin even started to believe that some nobleman had indeed deemed to pay their sleepy little town a visit. But even a nobleman wouldn’t have pulled the farm-hands from the fields.

No, it had to be someone even more special…

Perrin’s heart beat faster when he considered that other impossibility; that a band of Foresters, unseen within the land for more than three hundred turns, had ventured from their distant forests to pay them a visit…

When he found his brother, he was standing upon the lip of a stone water trough, craning his neck to peer above the sea of heads. Perrin tapped him on the shoulder and Tarris smiled down at him sheepishly.

‘Didn’t quite make it home, I see,’ Perrin grinned sarcastically. ‘Come on, get on my back and let’s get us a proper look!’

Perrin turned around and his brother eagerly jumped onto his back, before clambering up onto his shoulders. Swaying slightly with his enthusiastic weight, Perrin tottered over to the edge of the milling crowd.

‘So who are they gawping at then, Tar?’ Perrin asked, grimacing.

‘They ain’t no Foresters, nor Noblemen for that matter,’ Tarris called down, sounding disappointed. ‘Just a couple of old men wearing silly clothes, is all.’

‘Old men?’ Perrin groaned, bracing his hands upon his brother’s squirming ankles.

‘They do look funny though,’ Tarris remarked. ‘They got skin as black as tree bark, and…’ Tarris moved suddenly to one side and together they pitched forward, raising disgruntled oaths from two dusty farm-hands. ‘Their eyes,’ he exclaimed excitedly, ‘they ain’t got no eyes, Perrin!’

‘What do you mean they don’t have eyes?’ Perrin replied, wincing from the pain now building in his back.

‘Their eyes are all cloudy, like there ain’t nothin’ in ‘em,’ Tarris shouted above the babbling crowd. ‘Oh! I can see Jem!’ he called, waving frantically above.

Suddenly, Perrin felt his brother’s body stiffen upon his shoulders.

‘What’s the matter, Tar?’ Perrin asked, craning his head up between the boy’s unsteady knees.

‘Let’s get out of ‘ere, Perrin!’ Tarris said, dropping to the cobbles.

‘Leave now?’ Perrin cried. ‘I didn’t even get to see them!’

‘Something’s wrong, Perrin!’ Tarris said, reaching for his arm.

‘For goodness sake, Tar! Calm down will you?’ Perrin shouted, struggling against his brother’s insistent grip. ‘Whatever’s got into you?’

‘Perrin, please!’ he begged. ‘I want to get back to mother! Somethin’ bad’s goin’ to happen!’

Perrin hesitated, but if he was honest, he felt it too. The silence of the Barrow earlier that afternoon had merely punctuated the growing unease he had been feeling all day. Something was wrong, and for the first time he saw its evidence reflected in his brother’s fear.

Casting one last curious glance at the gathering crowd, he turned on his heel and ran after his brother.

***

The town sprawled across the slopes of a steep hill, which rose into the sky like a crooked parody of the mountains high above. A tall church spire marked its summit, presiding over the square within which the crowd had gathered. Sprinting down its only paved street, the boys weaved between the thatched houses that littered its way. The cobble gave way to a dirt track and then finally to an overgrown lane which marked the less prosperous part of town.

As the dust settled behind them, the two brothers slowed to a breathless walk, passing between the ramshackle dwellings cluttered beside the River Pin. Perrin felt unnerved as he watched his brother constantly looking over his shoulder, but soon he too was doing the same. The road behind them was completely deserted, but it didn’t ease the sensation that they were being followed.

When the tumbled-down cottage that was their home appeared around the corner, Tarris once more broke into a flat out run.

‘I’m sure they were harmless, Tar,’ Perrin said, as he trotted to keep up. ‘They’re probably just blind vagrants seeking food and shelter, that’s all.’

But as Perrin approached the weathered front door of the small hovel that was their home, a thought occurred to him which he decided to keep to himself. For, if they were just blind vagrants, why had the whole town turned out to greet them?

‘He weren’t blind, Perrin,’ Tarris replied breathlessly, reaching for the door. ‘One of ‘em looked right at me… and then he smiled.’

‘He smiled? What’s wrong with a smile?’ Perrin asked, his heart thudding in his chest.

‘It weren’t a nice smile,’ Tarris whimpered.

‘Hello boys! I wasn’t expecting you back until supper!’ The gentle voice of their mother greeted them from the gloomy interior, where she sat by the light of a cracked window darning a threadbare shirt.

Tarris ran into her arms and hugged her tightly, sobbing into her lap.

‘Whatever’s the matter, sweet?’ she asked, frowning at Perrin as her needlework dropped to the floor.

‘There was a welcoming at the square,’ Perrin said, looking uncertainly to where his brother sat slumped against their mother. ‘It was just two blind vagrants from the road. They just spooked Tarris a bit, that’s all.’

The look on his mother’s face made the forced smile slip from Perrin’s lips. Her arms clutched his brother closer to her, as though afraid he might be torn from her grasp at any moment.

‘Two blind men?’ she asked, her face growing pale in the darkened room.

‘Yes. Why? What’s wrong with that?’ Perrin asked uneasily.

‘What colour did they wear?’

‘I didn’t see them, Tarris wouldn’t let me!’

Tarris continued to sob into his mother’s lap, but slowly his arm rose from his side pointing to where a tight bunch of flowers hung in the rafters to dry. The bright yellow petals blazed against the darkened timbers as though still thriving upon the meadow.

‘They have come!’ she whispered against her boy’s hair.

‘Mother, what are you talking about?’ Perrin asked, raising his voice in concern. ‘Who has come?’

The dark cloud that had settled upon her face after learning the colour of the blind man’s robes seemed to slowly pass, and when she finally looked up a frail smile clung to her pale lips.

‘Fear not, sweet, it is nothing to worry about,’ she soothed, stroking the younger brother’s golden hair. ‘Tarris dear, why don’t you go and make us all some tea?’ she said, her smile gaining courage from the tear-soaked eyes peering back up at her. ‘Darning always gives me such a thirst!’

The boy nodded, and a faint smile returned to his wet face. He promptly scampered into the next room, and soon the sound of the ladle passing between the water barrel and the fire pit could be heard.

Perrin stood beside his mother and she looked up, a pained expression quickly returning to her freckled face.

‘They are the Kloven,’ she said, her voice lowered to a whisper.

‘The Kloven?’ Perrin repeated apprehensively. ‘Are they from Spinnet?’

‘They are not of the plain, but of the mountain,’ his mother replied, shaking her head. ‘They are a brotherhood of monks who live upon a distant peak within a monastery of stone. They worship the god of the sun, and wear its colours as though they were made of the same stuff.’

The sound of tin cups clattering upon a table drifted in from the next room, quickly followed by a hissing splash and a muffled curse.

‘They are indeed blind,’ she continued, her eyes glazed, ‘yet they see better than you or I.’

‘You’ve seen them?’ Perrin asked incredulously.

‘Yes, once,’ his mother replied, distantly. ‘When I was a little girl, two of the Kloven came to town. They were looking for a child,’ she said, her voice trembling.

‘A child?’ Perrin asked, screwing up his face. ‘Whatever for?’

‘To become one of them,’ she replied quietly.

‘Who did they pick?’ Perrin asked, suddenly intrigued.

‘They picked no one. But one of the monks spoke to me,’ she paused and looked her son in the eye for a moment, as though checking that he was still in the room, ‘inside my head. He told me that I would one day carry a child that they would take.’

‘What does that mean?’

Perrin’s mother was now lost within her own thoughts and seemed not to hear him. A fear that had been buried these past sixteen turns was now displayed openly upon her careworn face.

Suddenly, she looked up and shouted for Tarris, who came scampering into the room holding a battered tin of loose tea leaves.

‘Sweet, I’ve changed my mind about the tea. Let us all go for a walk along the river instead. Would you like that?’

Perrin studied his mother’s face.

Despite the warmth of her words and the familiar smile upon her face, he had never seen her look so scared. Quickly, he grabbed a cloth bag hanging upon the door and hurriedly packed it with a loaf of bread and a handful of wizened apples from the window sill.

‘Come on, Tar!’ Perrin yelled, slinging the bag across his shoulder. ‘I’m going to take you to see the Willow-Chamber!’

A loud knock at the door brought them all to silence. The smile that had briefly alighted upon Tarris’ face vanished and he ran back into his mother’s arms. Perrin froze as she put a finger to her lips, and followed her frightened eyes to the door.

The knock was repeated, more loudly this time, and after a breathless pause, the door slowly opened…

A young girl walked inside, smiling from ear to ear.

‘So you are in!’ she said, twirling a faded pink ribbon woven into her dirty blue dress. ‘I told them that you would be!’

‘Told who, Jem?’ Perrin asked, his heart lurching inside his chest.

The doorway darkened as a tall figure dressed in bright yellow robes appeared beside her.

‘Thank you, child. You have been most kind. Now, why don’t you run along and play, and let me have a moment alone with this fine young family?’ the old man said, smiling around the white marbles of his eyes.

The girl blushed at the compliment and skipped back out of the room, closing the door behind her.

For a moment, the old man merely stood with the door to his back, his bright yellow robes now muted to tarnished gold. His head was completely devoid of hair, his skin as dark as tanned leather. The opaque globes of his eyes gleamed from the husk of his face like gemstones sitting in black rock.

‘It’s Lynnia, isn’t it?’ The old man finally said, the smile still playing about his dark face as though it were stuck there. ‘I believe we met once before, many turns ago. Do you remember, child?’

Perrin looked to his mother doubtfully, but slowly, she nodded her head. He had never heard his mother referred to as “child” before, but then he supposed that most adults were children to a man so old.

The man looked harmless enough, but there was something unsettling about the way he stood silently regarding them, as though a dangerous animal had somehow shuffled inside the house and was considering whether or not to eat them.

‘What is your business here, old man?’ Perrin said, his young voice attempting to imitate the deep growl his father’s had once commanded.

The old man chuckled to himself and nodded towards a stool beside a cracked window.

‘Would you mind if an old man sat awhile? I have travelled a very long way and wish to speak with you for a moment, if I may?’

Again, Perrin’s mother slowly nodded her head, as the man shuffled across the room. With difficulty, he lowered himself onto a wooden stool which creaked beneath his weight.

‘That’s much better,’ he said, with a contented sigh.

‘Speak with whom?’ Perrin asked, standing rigidly before his mother and brother, his knuckles white upon the strap of the cloth sack still hanging limply at his shoulder.

‘Why, it is with you that I wish to converse with, young man.’ The old man smiled, his disconcerting white eyes seeming to stare straight through him.

Perrin hesitated and looked to his mother. But her face was now turned away, buried within his brother’s golden hair.

‘Tell me boy, how many turns are you now?’ The old man asked, his arms folded across his chest.

‘Twelve turns,’ Perrin muttered.

‘Twelve, indeed! The last I was here your mother was of the same age!’ The old man chuckled, clapping his hands in delight. ‘How time passes below the mountains!’

His penetrating stare suddenly hardened and he leaned forward in his eagerness like a hungry dog pulling on its leash, his smile dropping from his face as though discarding something already obsolete.

‘Now, tell me boy… do you dream?’

‘Of course I dream, who doesn’t?’ Perrin replied, unnerved at being asked such a strange and pointless question.

‘Indeed, indeed. But, perhaps you have dreams that repeat themselves? Or possibly they contain things you cannot easily explain?’ The old man paused, an eyebrow raised towards the bald dome of his head. ‘Do you have such dreams I wonder?’

Perrin glanced at his mother, who continued to stare down into his brother’s hair. Turning back, he nodded once, his lips set firmly together. The old man’s body seemed to tense, and he shuffled forward, like a greedy beggar sighting a plump pouch of gold.

‘Excellent, child, excellent! Now please, if you will, tell me of these dreams.’

Perrin shifted uneasily upon the stone floor, his fingers restlessly fumbling with the strap of the cloth sack.

‘Sometimes I dream of father,’ Perrin said, glancing uncomfortably back at his mother. ‘I see him as he was in the past, when he lived here with mother, before me and Tarris were born.’

The monk nodded his head and smiled.

‘These are dreams of past-seeing,’ he said, his head tilting to one side, ‘glimpses of time that was, visions of things that were.’

Perrin was about to ask the old man what he meant by these strange words when he was quickly interrupted.

‘What other dreams?’ the monk asked, the faintest note of impatience colouring his words.

Perrin frowned. He didn’t like the way the old man had dismissed the dreams of his father so quickly, but he knew instinctively what the old man wanted to hear.

‘I dream of a man I’ve never seen before,’ Perrin said, staring uncertainly into the white orbs of the old man’s face.

‘Why is he strange, child?’ A flicker of a smile passed across the man’s lips, like a butterfly briefly alighting upon an old gnarled tree.

‘He isn’t of our world.’

The old man brought a hand to his face, cradling his chin as though it suddenly needed support.

‘And what, pray, does this strange man do in your dream?’ he asked quietly.

The boy’s reluctance evaporated as his mind poured over the details of a dream he knew as well as the freckles on his mother’s face.

‘Sometimes I see him flying through the sky like a bird. He likes to laugh, and sometimes I hear him singing a song with strange words. But most times, I see him in the midst of a great army of dark men. He makes war with them alone, his body burning in blue fire, a sword in his hand as red as a blacksmith’s forge.’

The old man’s smile was now in pieces upon his darkened face, and he stared back at the boy as though in dismay.

‘Do you have the dream often?’ he asked.

‘I always have the dream,’ Perrin replied simply.

Closing his eyes, Perrin took a deep, shuddering breath.

‘The man, the one in my dream… he has a name… he calls himself James.’

Upon hearing the curious name, the old man appeared to wilt slightly in his chair; although whether it was from surprise or fear, Perrin could not tell. For the first time since entering the small room, the man reluctantly pulled his attention from the boy and addressed his mother.

‘You know what I must ask of you now, Lynnia. The boy has a rare talent, a gift that has blossomed out here in the meadows beyond the Kloven.

‘Tiny fragments of this same vision have been glimpsed by myself and only one other of my order. Yet neither of us has witnessed details of any such depth. With my guidance, and the training of the brotherhood, this gift of your son’s will be fully awakened. I have no doubt in my mind that he has the potential to become the greatest seer in the history of the Kloven.’

The man’s words were kindly spoken, but an impatience punctuated each word, tainting its delivery like milk soured by vinegar.

‘Sir, I am greatly honoured that you wish to take my son, but we cannot afford to have him sent away. The boy’s father was killed upon the mountain last summer so we barely make ends meet as it is. I fear what would happen to us if Perrin were taken also,’ she said, her eyes brimming with unbroken tears.

As though the old man had already known what she would say, he produced a leather pouch from the folds of his robes and hefted it in his blackened hand.

‘There is gold enough here to allow you and your remaining son to live in comfort for the rest of your days. Please take it as compensation for the boy.’

Perrin’s mother looked disdainfully down at the pouch, as though it were a pile of dung clasped in his hand.

‘Again sir, you do us a great honour. But I would not take any amount of gold for my son.’

Reaching out her hand, she drew Perrin to her, cradling the two boys between her arms.

‘I know something of your order,’ she said, her voice strong despite the tears now dropping to her lap, ‘the children that are taken into the mountains and never seen of again!’

‘That, unfortunately, is so,’ he conceded, gazing down at the pouch held between his long fingers.

‘Were the boy to leave with me this day, it is unlikely that you would ever see him again. Those who join the brotherhood dedicate their very lives in service to Yophine, and all her many creations. The lives of mortal men and women are of little consequence to us.’

Again, he hefted the pouch within his hand and looked directly at the frightened woman.

‘But the Almighty Yophine repays our service in kind, granting us extraordinarily long lives, amongst many other… benefits. Your son will not grow old and frail as other men would. He will still be drawing breath hundreds, perhaps thousands of turns from now.

‘Is that not a gift you would bestow upon your eldest son?’

‘I love Perrin dearly and would not wish him to live through such a curse!’ Lynnia said, her jaw hardened despite the tears that now fell freely from her face.

Perrin’s eyes had not left the swollen money pouch sitting in the old man’s hand, and in the pause that followed, he spoke tenderly to his mother as the old man looked on.

‘Mother, with this money we are saved! We cannot survive for another moon as we are!’

‘We will find a way!’ Lynnia cried hysterically.

When the old man suddenly stood, his supple movement made a sham of his earlier display of frailty. Placing the heavy pouch upon the table, he strode to the door like a man half his age. Pausing on the threshold, he turned his burning white eyes upon the cowering woman for the last time.

‘Thank you Lynnia, I will take good care of the boy. You have my word as Mendra-Kloven, he will not be harmed.’

And with those final words, he stepped out of the house, closing the door quietly behind him.

Perrin turned and hugged his mother tightly.

‘It is as you said, mother. He speaks to me inside my head. He knows that I will shortly join him outside, but wishes us to have privacy for our goodbyes.’

‘Perrin no! You cannot do this!’ Lynnia cried, holding him tighter still. ‘We would never see you again!’

‘Mother, I will go with this man, but I will return, despite what he thinks.’

Lynnia shook her head silently, her grip loosening as though suddenly weak. Her tears fell from her eyes onto Tarris’ head, who sobbed quietly into her lap.

With more confidence than he really felt, Perrin kissed his mother, and then for the first time in his life knelt to kiss the top of his brother’s head.

‘Look after mother, Tar. I will not be gone long. I promise.’

Without waiting to reconsider his actions, Perrin turned and walked from the dark room that had been his home for all his short life.

A loud and joyous cheer erupted into the air as Perrin stumbled out into the overgrown garden. The crowd of town’s folk that had been gathered beneath the bell tower earlier that day now filled the narrow lane beside the house. He saw the beaming faces of his friends, Jem, Willis and Patrick. He saw the blacksmith, the mill owner Mr Parson, even the ruddy-faced mayor who now ambled out to greet him, his heavy chain of office clanking noisily as he thrust his podgy hand into his.

‘My boy, you do our town the greatest honour in four generations. Do not let us down!’

Perrin walked in a daze through the press of people, receiving pats on the back and hurried handshakes, until at last he finally came to rest between the two blind men. The monks stood tall and erect, their fluttering yellow robes reflecting the last of the setting sun like flaming torches. Whatever traces of infirmity they had displayed in their arrival had vanished as they prepared to take their leaving. The men who now stood either side of him were like marble statues, radiating a power that made Perrin’s stomach squirm.

The monk’s companion pressed a bony, blackened hand to his shoulder and smiled down at him, his teeth like crooked tombstones in his mouth. Perrin remembered the last words his brother had spoken, and he nodded in silent agreement; the man’s smile wasn’t nice… it wasn’t nice at all.

As they walked together out across the fields to the mountain pass beyond, amidst the cheers and the peal of bells from high above the town, he heard the muffled scream of his mother calling out his name…