28: Building
I
n
the hours when the bat and the owl come into their own kingdom, Isca turned to Garroch the King as they lay in their bed. In the last glow of the wood fire she saw that his dark eyes were still open and that he was awake.
‘Garroch,’ she said, ‘I have had a dream. In my first sleeping a vision came to me and a great voice that bellowed like a rutting bull spoke the words to it.’
Garroch smiled wryly at this, for he too had had a dream. That was why she had suddenly caught him awake. His dream had frightened him into waking, for in it the worm had crept into his mouth and had made there a home for itself. He had sprung awake, his throat dry and ready to scream, his heart thumping wildly. But before he had yelled in his terror of the death sign, Isca had turned to him an
