Aismarr smiled at him. She was standing a few yards away, her smock stained green and her cheeks ruddy. Sevekai liked the way her hair fell about her face — tangled, flecked with dirt, half-plaited.
‘I dreamed of dragons,’ she told him.
Sevekai remembered a dragon, though only vaguely. ‘Oh? What did it tell you?’
‘Their souls are broken,’ Aismarr said, sadly. ‘Someone has died, someone they loved.’
Sevekai remembered Drutheira then. Of all of them, she was the one he still remembered. He hadn’t ever loved her. There had been passion, of a sort, but that was part of the old pattern. Here things were simpler — more direct, more honest. He wondered where she was.
‘Then is it time?’ he asked. He knew that something would have to change. Some signal would be given and then the deep wood would beckon.
Aismarr frowned. Her hunting dog slunk around her calves, snagging at her smock.
‘No.’ She glanced over to her left, to where the path ran down like a river into the heart of the forest.
Sevekai followed her gaze. He didn’t think it was time either, not yet.
‘This is the start,’ he said, not really knowing where the words came from. ‘The dragonsoul is gone; others will follow. The world must change.’
Aismarr looked at him with shining eyes.
‘And then will we enter?’ she asked.
Sevekai couldn’t take his eyes off the trees. They called to him, though silently, and with neither malice nor affection.
‘When the word is given,’ he said.
‘And what then?’
Sevekai looked back at her. He no longer saw an asur standing before him, just a kindred soul. All of them were kindred souls now.
‘Rebirth,’ he said, smiling.