Someone had taken great care fitting the stones together to make it concave rather than conical. It curved around an offering bowl fixed firmly into the structure so half of it was sticking out. The howl itself was made of rough clay, plain and unfinished, but its con¬tents showed someone valued the shrine. A carved bone comb, a worn but serviceable knife and two small copper coins; they meant nothing In Isak but they were significant enough for whatever shepherd had left them in the first place. Above the howl was a rounded shard of slate on which had been scratched Vrest's horns symbol.

'Aye,' confirmed the veteran with a grim face, 'less than a year since I joked that the Gods might have a plan for you. Careless words in this life.'

The silver-haired man stepped away from the shrine, hawked up noisily and spat onto the dusty ground. That act earned an admonish¬ing look from Tda, at which Carel hung his head and, after a moment of looking sheepish, he reached into his money-pouch to find a coin for the offering bowl. Tila's reproach vanished into the glittering smile that Carel had never been able to resist. She beamed at the man as though the veteran guardsman was a five-year-old just learning right from wrong. Carel knelt in front of the shrine and said a short, silent prayer to accompany his offering. As the man bowed his head, Isak felt a touch of breeze skitter down his neck like cool breath. He turned instinctively, but there was nothing there, only the certainty in his mind that the local God of this place was close at hand.

Isak reached out with his senses as gently as he could and to his surprise saw a blurred shadowy shape, like a hawk, circling slowly above the shrine. With a start he realised how frightened the spirit was; strange, he'd expected it to keep as far from him as possible. He placed a hand on the shrine and felt a shudder run through the spirit above it. Suddenly it all made sense: the local God hadn't moved away because it couldn't bear to allow him between it and the shrine. The shrine was all it had.