Elda smiled then reached across and tapped his nose with a delicate finger. ‘With great difficulty,’ she said. Heirn laughed.
‘I’m being naïve again, am I?’ Atlon asked.
‘A little, if you think that any craftsman round here is going to give away their hard-won secrets,’ Heirn replied.
Atlon made an apologetic gesture. ‘It’s just that I’m intrigued by it. It’s a splendid piece of work. Would it be foolish of me to ask where you got the idea from?’
‘Who knows where ideas come from?’ Elda replied. ‘But this one, as it happens, was given to me by a man in a dream.’
Atlon c****d his head on one side. ‘You’re teasing me,’ he said. ‘I’m asking something I shouldn’t again, aren’t I?’
‘No and no,’ Elda said. ‘I’m not teasing you, and the idea did come from a man in a dream.’ Her face became t
