Karan had not eaten since breakfast; no wonder she could not think straight. She baited the hook of one of the fishing lines with a piece of bread and cheese squeezed into a lump and tossed it into the water. After tying the other end around one of the baluster stumps she gathered dry wood and kindling, and set a fire.

When she had been little, she and Galliad had often camped here for days, exploring the forest, catching fish and gathering wild herbs. She could see two varieties of bitter greens, creeping rogid and tall wild mustard with foot-long leaves mottled green, red and purple. At this time of year they would be as pungent as freshly mixed mustard, stinging the nose and taking the breath away. They would certainly clear her head.

The drumming repeated three times, then stopped. She lit the fire and gathered a pan full of shredded mustard greens and rogid leaves. Some of the mustard plants had gone to seed. She shook the seeds out of the papery pods for seasoning and collected some dandelion leaves as well. And lastly, three hard green limes from the tree she had planted here twenty years ago.

The line was taut. She drew the fish in, hand over hand. A small one. Karan killed and gutted it and tossed the line back, then scaled her fish and prepared it for cooking. It would soon be dark. Where was Maigraith?

She closed her eyes and tried to sense the shadow she had detected before, but it wasn’t there. What if Maigraith decided to take Sulien? Rachis worked in the east wing, forty yards from the keep; he would not hear her cries. She would be gone, just like that. That fear was a physical pain, worse than the one in Karan’s bones.

Now she was being silly; Maigraith was obsessive and single-minded but she wasn’t a monster. Karan wiped sweat from her forehead and checked her line, which was jerking. A big fat fish this time, almost enough for two.

As she finished filleting it, Maigraith appeared on the forest path, moving silently in the gloom. She had learned such skills from the Faellem, who lived in harmony with nature – though not with the other human species.

“Has it helped?” said Maigraith.

“What?”

“The solitude.”

“I haven’t had enough of it,” Karan said pointedly. She probed the fire with a stick, pushing the burning ends in so they would make a good bed for the pan. “Are you hungry?”

“Somewhat.”

She filled the pot with water and put it in the corner of the fire, tore up a handful of dandelion leaves and tossed them in. They would make a slightly bitter but refreshing tea. The drumming started up again.

“What’s that?” cried Maigraith, holding her hands over her ears.

Her indigo and carmine eyes flashed in the firelight, reminding Karan that she was very powerful… and very dangerous.

“That’s the drumming.”

“I thought people were making it up as an excuse for their own bad behaviour.” The implication was, Nothing like that could possibly affect me.

“It’s real. I’ve heard it many times.”

“It doesn’t affect you?”

She shrugged. “Nor Rachis.”

“Why am I hearing it here?”

“It’s getting stronger. Maybe it’s even starting to affect people as insensitive as you.”

Maigraith did not take it as the insult it was meant to be. She was insensitive, and knew it.

“About Sulien,” said Maigraith.

“What?” Karan snapped.

“Since she’s triune too, she may have a great destiny, but she needs to be nurtured and challenged. A change would broaden her outlook and give her new perspectives.”

“Call me selfish, but I want my only child to live with me until she grows up.” Karan banged the pan onto the fire, scattering embers across the stone.

“But this is bigger than both of us,” said Maigraith. “Julken and Sulien are also triune.”

Karan stiffened, for she had just remembered something Maigraith had said ten years ago, when they had been pregnant together. Now it struck her like a thunderbolt.

Who else can a triune’s son mate with but a triune’s daughter? From our loins spring a new people, a new species, perhaps with more of the strengths and fewer of the weaknesses than those that engendered us. Let us agree to pair them, now.

Karan had dismissed the idea out of hand and Maigraith had never mentioned it again, but clearly she had not forgotten it.

“Every single thing Rulke did in his long life was to save his people from extinction,” said Maigraith, showing passion for the first time. She rotated a heavy gold ring on her finger – Rulke’s own ring that he had shrunk to fit her.

“I’m aware of that,” said Karan.

“But he failed, the Charon are gone, and Julken is all that’s left of him. Karan, please listen. All their greatness and all their promise can’t be lost. Julken and Sulien could found an entirely new line of people. Their children would be tetrarchs – four-bloods!”

It was outrageous. Karan trembled with fury but kept her silence. She had to know the worst.

“It could enhance our great gifts and best qualities,” Maigraith went on, “and overcome the great flaws in triunes, like the constant threat of madness.”

“It might also cancel out those gifts and amplify the risk of madness,” Karan said coldly. “But even if every possibility was as you say, my answer would be the same. Sulien will make her own choice, when she comes of age.”

“Karan, please…”

The drumming pounded in Karan’s ears. “And never Julken. He strangled Sulien’s puppy just because she laughed at him.”

“That’s a filthy lie!” screamed Maigraith. She leaped to her feet, her eyes flashing fire. “Take it back or… or…”

Karan sprang back, her heart racing. She had never seen Maigraith lose control so badly. If the drumming was behind it, there was no saying what she would do next.

The drumming roared; Maigraith’s eyes flashed brighter. She stepped towards Karan, raising her hands. “I don’t want to take her from you, but…”

This had to stop now. Karan stepped in a small hole and pain rippled down her right thigh. Hrux, hrux! She froze. What if she fed the last piece to Maigraith?

No, for all her pestering, Maigraith had done Sulien no harm. And hrux was a dangerous drug with unpredictable effects. There was no way of knowing what it would do to her… though no permanent harm, surely. There wasn’t nearly enough for a fatal dose.

“But if you leave me no choice, I will!” said Maigraith.

Dare Karan use it? Half mad with pain and terror as she was, she could not think straight, but how else could she stop Maigraith for long enough to get Sulien away?

“Calm down.” Karan pointed to the fish to distract her. “I’m starving. We’ll talk about it after dinner.”

The flush retreated from Maigraith’s face; she nodded and sat by the water. The pan was smoking. Karan greased it by rubbing it with a piece of oily cheese and slid the fillets in. When they were done she scooped them out onto two of the enamelled plates and squeezed the juice of one lime over the fish. The others she squeezed into the pan, tipped in a small amount of water and tossed in the greens. Their bitterness would disguise the taste of hrux, she thought in a curiously detached way – if she used it.

Pain shrieked up her leg as her body realised it was not going to get the hrux it craved. She wavered; whatever happened next she would soon be desperate for it. Then she thought about Sulien falling into Julken’s brutish hands. It could not be endured, so her own pain must be.

She stirred the wilted greens around, then, when Maigraith was not watching, flicked in the piece of hrux and squashed it into the liquid on the far side of the pan. Karan poured the hrux-dosed sauce over one plate of fish and handed it to Maigraith, then dribbled the sauce from the near side of the pan onto her own meal.

“What’s this?” said Maigraith, forking out a piece of red leaf.

“Mustard greens.” Karan indicated the tall plants growing further up the slope.

“And this?”

“Rogid. It grows over there.”

Maigraith studied Karan for a moment. Karan ate her dinner. Maigraith took a forkful of fish and greens, frowning at the taste, but ate it.

Karan tensed. Hrux only took a few minutes to act, but how would it affect her? Would she slide into euphoria? Pass out? Scream and shout? Become violent?

Maigraith’s teeth began to chatter. She half rose to her feet, the enamel plate clattering to the stone.

She turned to Karan. “What have you… nnnnnhh? Nnnnnhh. Guh! Guh!”

Foam formed at the corners of her mouth; her eyes went a burning carmine and protruded from their sockets; her arms flailed; she reeled around in interlocking circles, knees bent, gagged, spat out a cupful of foam, reeled in the other direction… then stopped as if she had run into a post.

Blood ran down her chin from a bitten lip. Her eyes widened even further. “No!” She shrieked. “Rulke, it’s Tensor! Look out!”

Her slim body twisted; she was wrenching at something immovable as if trying to get past. “No, no!”

Karan’s flesh went cold as she realised what was happening. Maigraith was reliving the worst day of her life, the moment ten years ago when Tensor had attacked Rulke with that irresistible Aachim spell, blasting him backwards and impaling him on a long metal thorn torn out of the side of his ruined construct.

Maigraith went wheeling sideways, landed with a thump, rose to her hands and knees, then screamed so shrilly that it hurt Karan’s ears. But then the iron self-control Maigraith had practised for decades asserted itself, even over the effects of hrux. She laboured across to the point where, in her addled mind, her dying lover must be, and stood like a marble statue, staring down at him.

“You gave your life for me,” she said.

Then in Rulke’s voice as if replaying the fatal moment, “How we would have loved, you and I. But it was not to be.”

“I once loved, and was loved.” She bent as if to kiss him. “And the fruit of our love will shake the Three Worlds to their underpinnings. But this is the end of the Charon.”

Maigraith’s marble face twisted. “I will not allow it!” she screamed. “I will reach even beyond the grave to bring him back.”

She thrust her hooked hands up as if to pull the sky down on their heads. “I… will… not… allow… it!”

She turned and stared at Karan, though she could not tell if Maigraith was seeing her or something else from that desperate day ten years ago. She ran at Karan, reaching out as if intending to choke her. Unable to get out of the way, Karan dropped to the stone with an impact that sent needles of pain up her bones.

Maigraith trampled over her, still screaming, and ran straight over the edge into the water. She sank out of sight, resurfaced, thrashed to the bank, slipped in the mud, clawed her way to her feet and pounded up through the black forest.

Her cries faded into the night. Silence fell, though for half an hour afterwards Karan could still hear Maigraith’s psychic screams.

I will not allow it! I will not allow it!

Suddenly the pain struck like an avalanche. Hrux, hrux! Karan crawled to the frying pan and licked out the dregs of sauce, but her tongue did not even tingle. Every skerrick of hrux was gone.

Why had she come up here; and why had she done such a reckless thing? The drumming, so strong here, had turned Maigraith’s foolish longing into obsession, and now the hrux had raised that obsession to a mania.

Sick with guilt and in such pain that she could not stand up, Karan began to crawl back down the dark path towards the cliff stair. She could not stop, even if she wore her hands and knees down to bare bone. She had to take Sulien away before the hrux wore off and Maigraith reverted to the quest she could never forsake, because she had just sworn it on the image of the love of her life.

Before she reached the cliff path Karan felt a small piercing pain in the top of her skull, as if a sharpened spike had been pressed against it. Tap! The pain increased. Tap! It increased again. It felt as though the spike was being tapped into her skull with a mallet. The magiz was attacking again, but far more strongly than before, and Karan could guess why.

The struggle had weakened her block, reducing her ability to keep the magiz at bay. And perhaps the drumming up here, so much stronger than at Gothryme, was also eating away her strength.

Tap, tap, tap. Crack!

The pain was agonising. The magiz was close to breaking through. And the moment she did, she would divert her attack from Karan to Sulien. Sulien could not resist the magiz; she would be killed in minutes and then the sorcerer would attack Rachis, everyone who worked at Gothryme, and go after Llian.

And all because of Karan’s unbelievably stupid act.