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captain; but when she laid eyes upon Ravn Asharson the future came into clear focus. Assessing him at a glance as a powerful man, a man who could defend her against all comers, she knew at once that his soul cried out for the exotic; and so she had stepped into his orbit and drawn his eyes to her.
    In her short experience of the world beyond Sanctuary she had learned that women used whatever wiles they possessed to attract men to them, and that the conquest of a king would be regarded by most as a triumph, not an undertaking to be entered into lightly or by a woman of no breeding or heritage. But for the Rosa Eldi, this was no game of statesmanship, no play for status: it was a gambit made simply for survival, and so she had exerted the full force of her seductive magic upon him; he was utterly, inextricably bewitched.
    What she had not bargained for were the odd sensations he drew forth from her. These sensations, which she learned to term ‘feelings’, started with a vague tenderness toward a man so vulnerable her mere glance could bring him to his knees; then had grown into something altogether more demanding of their connection in the weeks of the voyage back to the northern capital and his careful introduction of her into the great castle he called his home. Now it had become something she could only think of as a slow fire burning deep inside her, so that instead of abandoning him as soon as the ship docked in Eyra as she had planned, she now experienced an almost physical pain every time he left her side.
    This pain was made all the worse by the fact that she knew she had wrought a powerful enchantment upon Ravn: she could not be sure that, without it, he would feel anything for her at all. And since she had thrown this veil of bewitchment over him, it was impossible to know his true character. It was like viewing an island through fogs: she sensed, beneath the miasma of the magic, something adamantine in him, something uncompromising and elemental; something that might challenge and thrill her into a greater understanding of love, of life, of the world and her place in it. But he moved and talked as if in a daze when he was with her; and when he was away, she knew nothing of him.
    It would, she pondered, leaning closer to trace the chiselled line of his mouth with the tip of her finger, be curious to withdraw the glamour and see just who this man she had chosen to ally herself to might truly be. But she did not yet dare to do it.
    And so, she moved further down the bed until her face was level with her husband’s chest. Then she laid her head down upon him and listened to the steady draw of his breath, to the powerful slow beat of his heart – like a tide, like a tide – and wondered whether she would ever learn what it was to be human in this world of Elda.

One
    Intrigues
    Aran Aranson, Master of Rockfall, stood in the doorway of his smithy with the moon leering over his shoulder like the eye of some vengeful giant, and watched with disbelief as the dead woman came to her feet.
    In front of him, his second son Fent was on his knees, gazing up at the apparition he had killed only moments earlier, while his only daughter, Katla Aransen, lay as still as stone on the cold floor with blood all over her face and hands. The dead woman took a step towards him and the moonlight shone from her single eye so that she looked like an afterwalker, recently returned from the quiet of the burial howe to haunt those who had done it wrong in life, to straddle the rooftree of the houses till the timbers broke, to hag-ride the livestock till they ran mad; to terrorise all and sundry until the whole settlement was cursed and abandoned.
    His hand tightened on the pommel of the dagger he wore at his waist-belt.
Severing the head, that’s the only thing that works with ghasts
, old Gramma Garsen had told them, her face lit ghoulishly by the embers of the firepit, as he sat with all the other little boys of the steading, held rapt and