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did not want to have anything to do with this, he suddenly realised he desperately did want to know what was written in that letter. What his father had to say to him from beyond the grave. It had to be about Phillipe. Had to be.
    Alicia walked to the door, her hips swaying provocatively, and paused a half pace over the threshold. “The letter is sealed and addressed to you. The lawyer would not give it to me. As for Phillipe, he was recognised by his father as his firstborn son. So whatever you claim, until you can prove otherwise, la Sorenta was legally his and therefore mine. Shall I have Finch bring my baggage in here, or have you another suitable cabin? I expect comfort on a sea voyage.”
    “You’re not bloody sailing on this ship!”
    She laughed coyly and sashayed back to him, sensuously kissed his mouth.
    “Oh but I am. You are going to run like a lovesick boy after your black-eyed, black-haired mistress. And you want that letter as much as I want the estate.”

Six
    Tiola Oldstagh. A name chosen by herself, for rearranged it spelt all that is good . Created at the dawn of time with other entities of power, she was adept at hiding her feelings and at showing a bland mask of indifference to the world. She’d had eternity in which to practise.
    Most of those of Power were gone, either forgotten and faded into non-existence or destroyed, for their abilities had not been so immense after all. A few remained, among them the Gods of Belief and Faith, their names used in wondrous variety, and the Old Ones of Wisdom – the Immortals of Light. Their purpose: to defend human life against the cruelties and hatreds of the Dark Power; to protect against the Malevolence that sought to destroy without qualm or pity.
    Her ability of Craft enabled the full control of her body; she could govern every muscle, every nerve. The flow of blood, the pace of her heart and the breath in her lungs. She chose to repress her fertility, and although her present form was not immortal she could, in certain instances, cheat death. She was able to stand as still as stone for hours, or run for miles with the stamina of an ox and the speed of a gazelle. Had the strength of iron tempered by the delicacy of a cobweb. What was to be seen she could see, what was said, she heard. The wind obeyed her command and she could make the earth be stilled or quake. She had the Craft, a wisdom that bound and united the elements of nature – air, earth, fire and water. But not the salt seas. She had no jurisdiction over the ocean worlds where one of the few surviving Elementals from that early Time, Tethys, ruled with selfish indifference.
    Tiola’s inherited skills and wisdom had passed down through the alternate female generations, her limits were an inability to observe the future and to commit any action of intentional harm or hatred unless she was in mortal peril. There were few who possessed the old gifts of Craft now, for although the soul was immortal, the body was not, and too many of her sisters had failed to survive the predations of the Dark.
    The Dark Power had always been strong and it so easily manipulated the frail and vulnerable human emotions of jealousy, hatred, spite and greed. So easily manipulated superstition and the fanatical beliefs of religion. All her sisters had died in the name of a God – along with the many innocents condemned wrongly as witches. Poor wretches who had no gift, beyond a knowledge of the healing herbs or of Sight, or were merely old, their only crime to live alone with a cat or a goat as a companion. So much suffering and misery caused by those corrupted by the unseen influence of the Dark.
    Sitting in the lamp-lit gloom of a below-deck cabin, Tiola fought to repress her anger against that blonde-haired, blue-eyed cunny who had bewitched the man she loved. Bewitched him! Ais , yes! Did the Dark not empower its own witches and warlocks who lusted for the giving of pain and grief? Who sold their souls to the Dark