Chapter 111

The shepherds’ hut stood above the tree line in a fold of the mountain, where the wind could not quite find it: one room of grey stone with a turf roof, a hearth at one end and a smoke-hole that did not draw. Someone had left a pallet, dry heather and a split log for a bench. It was the best house I had ever been glad of.

We got Rowan onto the pallet. Lyra sat down in the far corner with her knees drawn up and did not move for an hour.

My hands had begun to come back to me on the climb, in needles. Rowan looked from the pallet at the blood dried on my lip, and at my fingers, which would not quite close round the strap of the kit.

“Sit on them a while first, lass,” he said. “I’ll keep it.”

I sat on them until I could feel the floor through my palms. Then I unrolled Issen’s kit on the floor by the fire.

***

“The little brown bottle,” said Rowan, to the ceiling. “Three drops. Not four, four’s for a horse. Then the knife from the loop at the end, the