He watched as the wolf leaped lightly on to the decking of the prow, moving in between Erienne and Will. Will’s hand reached out and stroked the length of his back. Thraun’s head turned and his tongue licked out, plastering the little man’s face.

‘Affectionate, isn’t he?’ said Hirad.

‘I wonder if he’ll be embarrassed to hear about that when he changes back,’ mused Denser, his mood at odds with his behaviour of the last few days.

‘How long will we be sailing?’ asked Ilkar.

‘Half the night, maybe a little more,’ replied The Unknown.

‘Oh, Gods,’ muttered Ilkar, tightening his grip still further. Hirad put a hand on his shoulder, patting him gently.

In the prow, Will wiped his face, anxious to keep the wolf saliva from his lips. He didn’t quite succeed. He scowled and grabbed Thraun’s muzzle with a hand, giving it a shake.

‘Do you have to?’ The wolf licked his lips and gazed mournfully back, eyes sad and far away. Will’s scowl turned to a frown. ‘What is it, Thraun? What’s wrong?’ Thraun dropped his eyes to the decking. ‘You could change here. You don’t have to wait until we land. Remember.’ It was the word that triggered the human deep within the body of the wolf. Or should have. But Thraun merely hunkered down, resting his head on his forelegs, head pointing out to the Inlet.

Will glanced across at Erienne. Worry lined her face as it lined his.

‘It’ll be all right,’ she said unconvincingly. ‘He’ll change when we land.’

‘You saw him the last time,’ said Will. ‘He changed the moment we were clear of Dordover. Couldn’t wait. The longer he goes, the harder it gets to remember he can.’ He stroked Thraun again, pushing his hand in hard against his spine. Thraun’s tail flipped languidly, for all the world like a dog relaxing by his master’s feet.

Will shook his head. Thraun always changed back so quickly. He hated the form of the animal, he was frightened by it. Or so he said. But this time . . . Maybe the motion of the boat unsettled him. Maybe. But he looked comfortable. Comfortable. That was a state he had never seen in the wolf and he’d witnessed Thraun change at least a dozen times over the years he’d known him.

‘Thraun, come on, look at me.’ The wolf obliged, blinking. That was something at least. ‘Remember. Please.’ Thraun raised his head slightly, sniffing the air. He growled deep in his throat and returned to his scan of the water in front of him. Will turned to The Raven; all eyes were on him.

‘Can’t this boat go any faster? I think we’ve got a problem.’

Chapter 15

It had been a sunny enough morning. The light cloud that had covered the sky at dawn had been blown away by a fresh breeze from the north-west, leaving clear blue skies, a gently warming sun and the ever-roiling and growing shadow.

The fifteen soldiers and three mages of the monitoring party in Parve had chosen for themselves one of the grand houses that lay just off the central square. It was a large, two-storey building with rooms enough for each to be shared by just two men. A well-stocked pantry and cellars, partly harvested from other nearby dwellings, made living comfortable. But not too comfortable.

Each of the men who had volunteered for the duty was aware that they were unlikely to see the Colleges again. Between them and home lay the entire Wesmen invading armies and the Blackthorne Mountains. Above them, the rip to the dragon Dimension posed unguessable threat, and in the dead city they knew that not everyone was dead.

Outside of the billet, the platoon officer, Jayash, forbade them to walk in groups of less than three. Mages had to have two guards each. Patrols leaving the relative sanctuary of the square were always six strong with a mage in support. The streets weren’t safe.

Not that they had actually seen anyone. But the sounds were there. The echo of a footstep, the slap of a door on a windless day, the hurried scrabbling of hand in dirt, the ghost of a voice carried on the breeze. Some, probably acolytes, had escaped Darrick’s net. Parve was an eerie place.

It was approaching noon on the eleventh day of measurement. Having long since calculated the rate of increase of the noon shade and the dimensions of Parve, it was now a question of monitoring, of completing the chart each day, of checking for errors and watching the sky.

No one had actually said it but they were the early warning system of another dragon attack. An attack they would not be expected to survive.

Jayash and three soldiers watched while the duty mages prepared the ground for the day’s measurement. Inside an area covering almost a thousand paces on its long side, and seven hundred on its shorter, the paving of the central square had eight lines of metal spikes driven in to its surface. Each line represented a compass point and the distance between each spike and their progression towards the edges of the square marked the expansion of the shadow.

Jayash strolled around the perimeter of the marked area as the shadow moved across the ground, a monstrous blot on the earth that sent shivers through his body and cooled the fledgling warmth of the day.

Turning in the area, he walked along one line and back down another, noting the distance between each peg. It was not an exact science, of course. If the cloud was heavy, the shadow’s edge was more indistinct and inevitably there was error.

He paused at the end of the second line he’d tracked, the one representing south-east, frowning. The final two spikes seemed a little further from their adjacent cousins than the rest, like the line was becoming stretched. He glanced left and right. If his eyes didn’t deceive him, the pattern was repeated in the south and east lines.

‘Delyr?’ he called. The Xeteskian looked up from his conversation with Sapon, a Dordovan colleague.

‘Jayash.’

‘Have we had a problem the last couple of days?’

Delyr shrugged. ‘Not really. We’ve seen what is a significant but probably small acceleration of the rate of shadow increase but some of it has to be to do with cloud effect blurring the edge of the shade.’ He glanced up into the sky, blue but for the rip overhead.

‘Today we’ll know.’

Jayash nodded. ‘But you’ve known of this possible problem for a couple of days.’

‘Five actually. Look, I appreciate your desire to be told every minute detail, but in scientific terms, it was not worth mentioning, so I didn’t.’

‘But today.’

Delyr smiled thinly. ‘You will receive instant assessment followed by a full report. Now, if you wouldn’t mind, time is short.’ He gestured at the rip and the shadow at the base of the pyramid that was all but gone.

Jayash waved a hand vaguely and stepped back to watch. Delyr and Sapon trotted around the edge of the spike field, leaving a peg lying at the end of each line. Both mages then walked briskly to the base of the pyramid and knelt close to the sun shade marker, a long piece of polished wood fixed to the ground where the pyramid’s east wall met the earth. When the last vestiges of natural shadow had left it, the measurements were made.

It was a good enough system but, Jayash considered, it had a flaw. At present, the shade was relatively small and the pyramid close. The movement of the sun between the moment the mages agreed it was noon and the measurement of the shade was negligible.

But soon, the pyramid would be covered by the rip’s shadow and the agreement of noon would have to be made more distantly. What was more, the area of the shade, growing larger, would mean more time to make the measurements.

He could foresee, firstly, all his men being co-opted into taking readings rather than securing lives and later, a hopelessly inaccurate measurement, leaving The Raven with a margin of error that ran into days. Delyr seemed oblivious. He alone still thought he was going home once the rate of increase of the shade had been clearly established.