‘You stay here, now,’ she told them. ‘Can you hide? Hide, if you can. Don’t come out for anyone but me.’ She made a spitting noise. ‘Fact is, if my people find you, like as not you’ll be dead anyway.’

She was gone abruptly, slipping off through the forest of stiff, interweaving trees and into the dark. So still, here, the boy thought. Everything is so still and rigid and heavy, frozen and cold.

‘Hide,’ Santiren urged him. ‘Marcantor and I will stand and watch.’ She hefted her spear, even though, in the close clutter of branches, it would be an awkward weapon.

The boy called upon his Art. That took a few moments, in this unfamiliar place, but he found it calmed him, as the colours rose within his skin, flowing over his arms and legs, matching themselves to the plantlife around him – at first awkwardly, then more and more naturally. He let out a long, calm sigh.

The night forest around them was full of noises. It was another jarring, alien aspect of this place. Things rustled and buzzed and creaked all around him, a constant patter of small life, and some not so small. The boy’s eyes, and his companions’ eyes, were well used to darkness – there was darkness far greater than this where they came from, places where the limn-lights had never shone – but their darkness was near-silent, not this constant chatter.

Something large moved there, between the trees. They all spotted it at once and he saw the two warriors grow tense, spears levelled. It was tall and slender, and the boy tried hard to make it out, seeing the glint of eyes, the thin spindles of legs, one hooked forearm held close, the other extended forward to aid the thing’s careful progress. It regarded them.

Some kind of claw-kinden thing, but moved to the land.