His parents however, had trained him for the ruling of a relatively peaceful and ordered land. They had not remotely prepared him for dealing with a people torn from within by such as the Gevethen, except in so far as they had died for their own inability to measure the depth of the Gevethen’s treachery and inhumanity. Their deaths had been their last terrible lesson for their son.

Now, Ibryen’s duties were both simpler and more onerous. No longer was he burdened by the innumerable ties of administrative and political need that ruling a land involved. Instead, he had become a beleaguered warlord whose least error, or lapse in vigilance, could see himself and his followers destroyed utterly, and the Gevethen given full sway over the land. And always, darkening even this deep shadow, was the unspoken question – what were the Gevethen’s ultimate intentions? What could the acquisition of such political and military power as they constantly sought betoken, except ambitions beyond the borders of Nesdiryn?

However, while these considerations formed a constant, disturbing undertow to his life, none of them were immediately in Ibryen’s thoughts as he lay back against the still-cold rock and, eyes closed, turned his face towards the sun. His new life was not without pleasures… simple pleasures that once he would have disdained or even been oblivious to – pleasures such as the sun on his face and the solitary silence of the mountains. And he could indulge these for a few moments now that he was here and alone.

He had scarcely begun to relax however, when, unheard and unfelt, yet indisputably there, the mysterious call that had reached into his dreams to waken him and lured him to this eyrie was all about him.

But still its message eluded him.