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him.
My limbs felt frozen, a paralysis not caused by cold. The
soulscaper took off his coat and spread it on the grass.
    ‘Lie on this,’
he said. ‘Relax, close your eyes, breathe deeply...’
    Numbly, I
obeyed, telling myself I was undertaking necessary action. Later, I
could rebuke Beth in the strongest manner for making me do this.
Later, it wouldn’t matter. I thought of Rephaim falling from the
campanile. I steadied my breathing. I let this kind stranger look
inside my mind.
    I was aware of
distant noise, floating in a pleasant haze, where summer clouds
scudded across a cornflower sky. I awoke to activity, anguished
voices, violent movement. Someone trampled on my arm. I cried out
and rolled off the soulscaper’s coat onto the wet grass. Tamaris
was shouting, and there was a melee of floundering limbs beside me.
I heard the dull thump of flesh against flesh, then silence, but
for panting breath. I scraped my hair from my face and saw Ramiz
standing nearby, bent over, his hands on his knees. Beside him,
Beth stood upright, wiping his mouth. There was a dark, huddled
shape on the grass between them. It did not move at all. The air
was full of the intoxicating perfume of fresh blood. I found myself
salivating, both nauseated and hungry.
    Tamaris
hurried towards me, put her arms around my shoulders.
    ‘Get up,’ Beth
said. ‘Quickly!’
    ‘What
happened?’
    Tamaris helped
me to my feet. I could not look at what lay on the grass.
    ‘He couldn’t
take it,’ Beth said sharply. ‘I thought this might happen.’
    ‘It killed
him?’
    My brother
shook his head. ‘No... but he saw... he knew.’ He sucked his upper
lip, staring down at the motionless shape. Then he glanced at me.
‘Are you alright?’
    I did not
answer, but struggled, light-headedly, towards the stile. Tamaris
scurried after me.
    ‘He went
crazy,’ she said, ‘flinging himself about. Lord Beth ended it for
him... in a civilised way. We could do nothing else.’
    I could not bring
myself to speak, painfully aware that we had contravened an
unspoken law. We had killed; not through the sup, but in cold
blood. Nothing felt completely real; the night around me seemed
like an illusion. I could remember nothing of the man being in my
mind. Beth came up behind me, reached to touch me. I shook him
off.
    ‘Don’t speak.
Don’t touch,’ I said.
    ‘Get her to
bed,’ Beth said to Tamaris. ‘Ramiz and I will remove the
remains.’
    As I walked
unsteadily back to the fohndahk, leaning on Tamaris’ arm, I was
thinking how wrong the soulscaper had been in his assessment of his
ability to protect himself. So wrong. His own madness was the last
thing he’d feared.
    He was the
first, the first of many.
    I forced
myself to develop a shield of passionless dedication, rather than
ponder the possible consequences of our quest. It helped to think
that we were engaged on a holy mission and that each soulscaper we
encountered was simply expanding the knowledge we needed to save
our people. A kind of unreality took hold of me. Coolly, I did what
had to be done, feeling nothing. Tamaris and Ramiz became quite
adept at sniffing out lone soulscapers, although after the first
occasion, we were more discerning about whom we actually let into
our soulscape. We used the same story of my fictional illness,
which allowed me to sit quietly and uninvolved while Beth did the
talking. I felt queerly detached during these interviews, as if I
really was mentally ill. Beth was pleased. My demeanour added
conviction to his claims. I did not realise that a change was
coming over me.
    Both Beth and
myself could speak Lannish, but we used only the Bochanegran tongue
for our transactions. The soulscapers, all of whom, it is said,
speak every language in the world, were as we suspected shrewd
creatures to a fault. Several of them were keen enough to be
acutely suspicious of us, despite our convincing fabrications and
superbly delivered performances. I remember one or two of