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Driftwood, I’m enchanted by it – what you have made of it.’
    â€˜I did not create this wonder – you did.’
    â€˜I don’t understand.’
    â€˜The bed of rock on which you slept – it was not a single grave. It was the graveyard of many.’
    Kate’s heartbeat rose into her throat. Was Driftwood saying what she thought he was? Had she resurrected not just one dragon, but a race of such extraordinary and wonderful beings?
    She had to take his word for the fact that this was the same island where she had discovered him. How it had changed! It was as if a magic inherent in the land itself had been awakened. The ecology, even the geology of the entire island landscape had evolved. It was as if aeons, rather than weeks, had passed, during which time it had become lusher than before. Even the trees had changed. Staring up into a dense canopy hundreds of feet overhead, Kate saw that these were no longer the oaks and birches that she herself had planted. These soaring titans resembled …
    â€˜Oh, my! They’re the ancient trees you showed me – theyreally are. It’s where the baby dragons nested in your dreams.’
    â€˜Not my dreams. In the memories you saw as dreams. You and I, Kate, girl-thing – we need to talk.’
    â€˜I love to talk with you.’
    His snort rumbled and echoed throughout the ground beneath her feet. ‘You must understand the value of patience – and the need for caution.’
    â€˜Caution?’
    â€˜Blood ’n’ bones! Guts ’n’ gizzards!’
    He had resurrected his childish exclamations. She didn’t know if he was joking with her or genuinely mad with her.
    â€˜Don’t be cross with me.’
    â€˜Pah!’
    â€˜Please?’
    â€˜This has ever been a perilous world. And things have begun to change.’
    â€˜What changes are you talking about?’
    â€˜The Tyrant feels threatened. The situation has become far more dangerous even than the struggle with the Great Witch. It is inevitable that he will take measures to rid himself of that threat.
    â€˜But you are hungry, and weak. You need to rest and prepare yourself for the ordeal that is to come.’
    Ordeal?
    Oh, heavens! Driftwood was right, as always. She really was starving, and frightened too. The use of her oraculum, the Second Power, had drained what little remained of herreserves of strength and will. She was only slowly recovering from her torture in the Tower of Bones, where she had been Olc’s prisoner. She needed to rest.
    â€˜Should I be worried, even when I’m here with you?’
    â€˜You should be worried anywhere and everywhere.’
    â€˜What am I to do?’
    â€˜You must heed the fact that the Tyrant has access to the Fáil.’
    Kate shivered, recalling what she had witnessed of the third portal. It had been hidden within Dromenon, at the spot marked by the Great Witch’s Tower of Bones. The colossal power of it frightened her – the danger it represented.
    Driftwood pressed her, gently. ‘But there is a more immediate danger.’
    â€˜There is?’
    â€˜You think of the Cill as pure.’
    â€˜I wouldn’t have put it that way.’
    â€˜How would you have put it?’
    â€˜I think they live in innate harmony with nature: they have a sense of oneness with what is good in the world. This, surely, was why the Great Witch, Olc, tried to destroy them.’
    Driftwood took a great breath in through those scaly nostrils. When he exhaled his breath was hot, sulphurous, like throwing open the gate on a furnace capable of melting iron. ‘You are indeed naïve, Kate girl-thing. There were other reasons why the Witch sought to destroy them.’
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜A conflict of power.’
    â€˜I don’t understand.’
    â€˜Your kindness, when coupled with your oracular gift, is a temptation more dangerous than you might