She could feel warmth and something soft which tickled her neck for a long time before she was aware of anything else. She was happy to lie there and do nothing but feel for what seemed like hours.

Then something lifted from her mind a little and she began to wonder. Was it hair brushing against her? She had the half-formed thought that Benjamin might have crawled into her bed like he used to do as a toddler. But that didn't seem right somehow, and then she remembered that he had been taken, and she had to find him.

The comfortable warmth suddenly seemed like a trap to keep her from her brother, and she fought to sit up. There was something heavy keeping her down. With a huge effort, she opened her eyes, and then fought to focus.

The weight was a thick, white, furry animal pelt. She pushed it away, her arms feeling shockingly weak. She had to fight to lift it but once it was over the edge of whatever she was lying on, it slid and fell away. Then she put her hands behind her, and finally managed to sit up.

The pain in her head was incredible. It blocked out vision, feeling, awareness. Everything except a sluggish thought, that she could just lie down again and give up. But she had to find Benjamin. She didn't know where she was, or how long she'd been here, but she knew that.

So she hunched forwards, her eyes closed and her hand to her temple, while the pain thundered through her and the room span. Slowly, gradually, it started to ease, and after a minute she could open her eyes again.

It was a cabin, she saw, like the kind Dad had taken them all to a couple of summers ago in order to enjoy the great outdoors. It had been wooden, just like this one, with one window and door.

But this was plainer. There was no furniture, and she was sitting in a bed that was really just a raised platform. The only interruption to the plain wooden walls was a brick fireplace and chimney. The dim light in the room came from the glowing embers of the fire. A wood fire, she saw, rather than coal like the one Aunt Frances had in her living room.

On a shelf above the fire she saw a series of objects laid out, and saw with relief that one of them was the book, and that it seemed to be intact in spite of her plunge into the river. Thank goodness for waterproof pockets.

Her eyes travelled to the pelt on the floor, and she began to think she knew where she was. She could imagine a hunter living in a place like this, a place with no decoration, where all he needed to do was sleep. There wasn't even any sign of food here.

There was a kettle nestled in a small iron frame within the fire, though, one of the old-fashioned ones she'd seen in period dramas. And on the floor there were two mugs next to a metal tin which she thought might hold tea.

Grace only realised as she looked at them how parched she was. Her mouth felt as dry as dust. It sent a jolt of anxiety through her. She must have been asleep for hours. She tried to remember what had happened to her last, but her mind was a confused muddle of strange creatures and green eyes, and she gave up for now. What she needed urgently was something to drink.

There were only a few feet of bare floor between her and the fireplace, but even tilting her head slightly brought on a fresh rush of pain, and she had to bite back a yell of frustration. How could she go after Benjamin when she could barely move?

With a sigh, she realised that she just had to do it, and ignore the pain. If whatever she'd done to her head hadn't killed her, she was probably on the mend, she supposed.

She moved her legs first, sliding them off the edge of the bed. Even the small movement to her neck and head hurt, but it was manageable. She put her feet onto the floor and leaned her weight on them slightly. Her feet were bare, but the true-seer was still fastened around her ankle. That was one relief, anyway.

Another relief came as she realised that she was still part-way dressed. She still had on her t-shirt and the long leggings she had put on under her trousers. While not exactly flattering as an outfit, it meant she was at least covered up.

Taking a breath, she levered herself off the bed, and hissed through her teeth as the pain returned with full force. She closed her eyes again, instinctively, and had to put a hand out to the wall to keep upright. This time the pain lasted a little less time, and she was able to breath in and out steadily while it pounded its way back to a background level. And then she put her back against the wall and slid down it.

At the very last moment, her feet slipped on the floor. Her backside bumped down onto the floorboards and her head bounced off the wall.

Her vision went black for a moment, and the pain was so bad that she gagged and came close to being sick. But she focused on breathing in and out and thought about Benjamin, and little by little it fell away.

She was still sitting there, breathing deeply with her eyes squeezed shut, when the door swung open and Afi entered. He brought a great cold rush of air with him, and it helped her feel a little less sick.

She looked up at him as much as she could without moving her head. He was wearing thicker furs this time, patched in black and grey and white. He had a sack slung over one shoulder, and he dumped it on the floor and stamped his boots free of snow before he looked towards the bed.

His eyes found her on the floor, and he took an instinctive step forwards before he stopped and closed the door behind him.

"You should be in bed," he told her, and came to crouch down in front of her. He seemed bigger, more like a man, in his furs and up close like that. "I mean, I'm glad you're awake, but you – you're a really awful colour."

"Thank you," she said, and gave him a weak smile.

He held a hand out to her. "Come on."

She shook her head, and immediately regretted it. But she still said, "No."

"You need rest," he said gently, but he was frowning.

"I need to find my brother," she replied.

"You're not going to help him by killing yourself," Afi said, with a mild reproof and a shake of the head that reminded her of Dad. A rush of powerful homesickness hit her. Her eyes stung as they watered, and she gritted her teeth, trying not to cry. She didn't have time to think about how much everything hurt, and how lost she felt, when Benjamin needed her.

"I just need a drink," she said, her voice hoarse. "I'll feel better if I can just drink something."

She stared back at him, meeting his intent gaze resolutely. In the end, he sighed. "All right, stay there while I make one."

He stood and went over to the sack. He rummaged in it until he pulled out a tied bundle of what looked like nettles.

"I picked up some maricum. I guessed your head wouldn't be happy with you."

She just gave a small smile again, unable to summon up enough energy to ask him what it was. Aspirin, she hoped. But that was made from willow-bark, she knew, not leaves.

He crouched over the mugs and shredded some of the leaves into one of them. Then he opened the tin and spooned powder into both of them, and added water from the kettle.

"It's not that hot," he told her, as he handed her the mug with the leaves in, "but it should do the trick."

Grace was glad it was only tepid. She drank it down in three seconds flat, and her throat cried out for more even though the act of tipping her head back to drink hurt.

Afi silently filled the mug again, and then went to the door where he took off his heavy outer furs and hung them on a nail on the back of it.

Grace drank the second cup more slowly, and decided she'd been right about feeling better after a drink. The ache in her head was already dwindling.

"So this is where you live?" she asked him, between mouthfuls.

He gave a small snort of laughter. "I have a few more creature comforts. This is where I sleep when I'm hunting in the woods."

Afi came to pick his own mug up, and sat on the edge of the bed with it, watching her as she drank.

"Do you remember what happened?" he asked, after a little while.

Grace thought back to those hazy memories, and started to see a sequence of events instead. She remembered casting fire and acid at the creatures, and then the green eyes.  

"I ran, and I fell into the river," she said slowly, remembering with a jolt that shocking cold. "Didn't I?"

Afi nodded. "You almost drowned, just when you'd seen off all the beasties. You seem to have a powerful instinct for trouble."

Grace scowled at him, surprised to find that it didn't hurt.

"I was minding my own business when those things turned up."

"The evanescents?" Afi asked. He was looking at her curiously again, and she wanted to tell him to stop it. But she was pretty certain he'd saved her life. "What was it you did to them?"

"What?"

"You threw something at them and they vanished."

"Oh." Grace thought back to the frantic search through her pack. "It was just salt. Dad was always on at me about salt saving your life." She gave him a smile. "I don't think that was what he meant, but he was right, wasn't he?"

"But why salt?" Afi asked. "What did it do to them?"

"It forced them to become water," she said. "I remembered science at school, and how road gritters use salt because it makes the melting temperature of water lower."

Afi looked mystified.

"Don't you use salt here?" she asked. "Surely it's important to clear the roads when you live somewhere with this much snow."

He shook his head. "All our roads have fire magics embedded in them. The snow never gets to settle. You'll see once you hit the road to Kryzna."

He looked away, into the fire, his face drawn into a frown. Grace had drained the last of her tea before a thought struck her.

"So you saw the evanescents attacking me?" she asked him. "You were there, and you didn't do anything?"

He glanced up at her, blinked, and then gave her a broad smile. "You seemed to be doing just fine on your own."

"They could have killed me," she said, genuinely shocked. "He could have killed me. He nearly did."

"But then you kicked him," Afi pointed out, "and he dropped you."

"Just before he killed me," she said.

"Well I did kill him for you after you ran," he said, still smiling slightly.

Grace remembered, sharply, the strange cry the mage had given and the way the wind he called up had died away.

"How?" she whispered.

"The way all these magic-workers tend to forget," he said, with an odd little note of bitterness in his voice. "An arrow through the neck."

Grace blinked, and looked at him again. He had killed a man, and it didn't seem to mean anything to him. Did life and death really matter so little to him?

But he had come after her, and helped her.

"You dragged me out of the river, didn't you?" she asked him. "Did you have to jump in?"

"Yes," he said, "which is why we ended up here. I didn't plan on walking far dripping wet and carrying a fairly heavy extra weight. No offence meant."

"How long was I asleep?"

"Fourteen hours or so," he told her, glancing out of the dark window. "It's the early hours now."

Fourteen hours lost. They would have put Benjamin into the trance by now. There was no question. Which meant he might already be changed.

She tried not to let despair overwhelm her. She just had to keep moving.

But maybe she didn't have to do it on her own. She looked at Afi, and the wiry strength in his arm as he raised the mug to his lips.

"Why did you follow me?" she asked.

Afi let out a long sigh, and drained his mug before answering. "I thought you needed help." He gave a wry grin. "I was right in a way, though you weren't nearly so helpless as I'd thought."

She could see that something in that troubled him, and she thought back to what he had said the day before. As if everything we've suffered for centuries means nothing...

And suddenly she understood.

"She has your brother, too, doesn't she?"

He stood without looking at her, and went over to the sack. She thought he was going to ignore the question, and was kicking herself for having asked it. But after he drew out three chunks of wood from the sack and had brought them to the fire, he started talking.

"He was taken four years ago, when he turned nine," he said quietly. "My mother thought she could hide him. She ran from the kingdom to keep him safe, and brought us up in the wilds outside the walls. There are a few villages out there, still, where the people survive by understanding the cold and how to fight them. But then Ruidic came with his circus."

There was a spitting anger in his words, and Grace felt as if she was hearing her own story retold.

"I saw how frightened she was when it appeared on the edge of the village," he said, overturning the embers with sharp jabs with one of the pieces of wood. "She knew he'd come to find her."

"He knew her?" Grace whispered.

Afi nodded. "The Queen had brought my mother from her home to be one of her pets. She was a young mother with no husband, and the Queen took pity on her. She likes to pretend to be human, sometimes."

Grace could hear fury under his words, an anger which had burned away for years. She wondered how she would have felt if four years had gone by and Benjamin hadn't come back. Worse than angry, she thought.

"My mother had never been cared for in her life, and she thought the Queen loved her as much as she claimed. But then Edin started to show signs of magic, and she saw how delighted the Queen was. She understood then that the woman would sacrifice anything for her own power, and so she ran."

  He laid the three blocks of wood on the fire, and watched as the rekindled embers started to flame around their edges.

"She begged Ruidic not to take him," he said. "And I think something got through to him in some small way. He said he would take Edin, but he would tell the Queen that she and I had died. He expected us to be grateful." His mouth twisted in a mocking smile. "He'd saved our lives, but stolen Edin's away. Edin who was only nine, and frightened and pleading with him not to drag him away."

A silence stretched out between them, and Grace didn't know what to say. In the end she whispered, "I'm sorry, Afi."

His head moved a little, in acknowledgement, but his eyes were still on the fire. Grace looked over at the flames too, seeing Maggie's flame-red hair in them, and Benjamin's scowling face too.

"Do you think you can do it?"

She looked over at Afi, and he was watching her now, that intensity back in his eyes.

"Do you think you can get into the tower, and win out over her?"

"I know I have a chance," she said simply. "And if there's any chance at all, I'll try. No matter how powerful she is, and how much there is in the way."

Afi smiled at her, a slow lighting up of his features.

"Then we'd better get planning."