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on the streets. All over northern and central Forluin the Serpent spread doom and decay. It could not have happened to a people more disattuned to horror. Many survivors suffered Estarinel’s experience of seeing loved ones murdered and looking into M’gulfn’s dreadful eyes.
    When he, Falin and Lilithea ran back to the Bowl Valley, they found the farm untouched. Estarinel’s sisters Arlena and Lothwyn were both there with his parents; the horses having been stabled before they bolted. They sat, close together and silent with dread, for many hours before they knew the Serpent had finished its evil work and gone.
    People came from Maerna, Ohn and all the untouched parts of Forluin, to gather together the survivors and give them comfort. In some ways those whom the Worm had left alone were even more horrified by the devastation than those who had suffered. Surely the Serpent was only an ancient myth with superstitious origins in Tearn or Gorethria? That such a thing could happen was beyond reality.
    The nearest Forluin had to a government was the Council of Elders, a nominated group of the oldest and most respected men and women who convened to mediate in disputes or other troubles. In the dim and terrible days after the Serpent, they called all survivors to a meeting in the Vale of Motha, many miles north-east of Estarinel’s home.
    His parents and Lothwyn would not go, because there were animals to tend, and his father had developed a cough from the ash the Worm had left behind. Estarinel, with Falin, Arlena and Lilithea, set forth on horseback across their desolate land. They rode swiftly and in silence, the cause of their grief too obvious all around them to need any expression in words. It took them three days to reach the Vale, and in that time they missed the coming of the H’tebhmellian Lady.
    The Vale was still whole, only the edges having been scorched by M’gulfn. There was a small cluster of cottages in the Vale, with a green stretching in front of them. Here the council was held, with scores of folk seated on the grass around the Elders. Estarinel and the others greeted many friends, but heard of the deaths of many others. And although the sun shone, there was a greyness in the air, and the stench of the Worm still hung over them. Many were falling sick with an unknown fever, and a sense of doom filled them, made far more terrible because they had never experienced such a thing in all the island’s history.
    ‘We have no resources to draw upon,’ said Englirion, the most senior of the Elders. ‘We cannot ask how our ancestors faced this situation, or any other; for they knew only peace, as we have.’
    The Elders looked physically no older than the rest, except that most of them had white hair; only there was a quietness and grace about them. ‘Ancient writings tell us that the Serpent resides in the snows of the far north, that it always returns to its lair and cannot be destroyed. More than that… we do not know. So it would seem we have no guidance but our own instinct and judgment. Now there are two foolish lines we might follow. One is to remain drowning in sorrow, wailing with grief and regret that the Worm ever came, and to dream of how sweet life would have been if it had not. The other, suggested to us by many of you, is to form an army and chase the Serpent, in mad anger, back to the Arctic. Where, I tell you, we would all perish and the Worm would live – if you can call its miserable existence “life”.
    ‘We must all accept that an appalling, senseless, dreadful attack has taken place on our home. That cannot be changed, it is already history. And to undertake a suicidal journey to the North Pole to destroy what is reputed to be an invincible monster would be useless. It is easy to forge off upon a journey fired by a desire for revenge – but when that desire evaporates amid freezing snows and ice-storms, and you die in greater despair than ever, how will that have helped your