The Runes of Norien

  V

  Their sleep was infested with the grimmest dark follies: snatches of nakedness and pain that made their bodies twist as though they felt it, filth that seemed to fill their mouths and make awful rasping sounds as it got caught in their grinding teeth.

  Such was their desperation, that before sinking into this torturous slumber, they had wordlessly, with no more than a shared, fleeting thought, agreed on what they would do if the rite was unsuccessful: they would pretend to put up a weak fight while their heads were thrust into the milk and then go limp, rise face-down to the surface, and hope that the current would remove them from sight before they had to come up for air. What might happen afterwards was too terrifying to consider in detail: perhaps they would end up in the Mists or beyond, at the foot of Mirror Mountain; but since no one had ever returned from these places of dread – at least not in living memory – to verify their existence, what would become of them was ultimately uncertain; there were even some who believed that the Sacred River had neither source nor outlet, and flowed, as life, between two boundaries of nonexistence.

  And as these dismal contemplations tormented what little of their minds was not under the follies’ assault, they both woke up before whiterise, and stayed in their beds breathing and looking at each other’s darkened yet faintly reassuring shapes.

  Yet the gloom had a peculiar quality, as if it wasn’t absence of light but rather a slightly brighter shade of uncolour, sneaking into the bedroom through the shutters.

  And Raddia suddenly recalled that other source of insidious fear, lying beneath their own personal terror: the hole in the sky. Had it grown overnight? Had Lurien the Pure turned into a realm of shadow?

  Sitting up, she brought the two small glowstones together and lit the bedside candle – and saw in its wavering halo something that made her gasp and flinch, crawling away till her back was against the wall. It’s the third circle! she thought, hardly believing it herself; but how else could such an unthinkable disaster be explained?

  What is it? Gallan said, sitting up too. What circle?

  But Raddia’s mind could only spit and crackle sparks of panicked confusion.

  For Gallan’s left eye had turned blue.