The darkness moves, it is not, as I once thought, a solid mass, but an ever-changing presence. The faces, so clear to me when first the blackness descended, are gone. Replaced by other images: silhouettes of strange men, flickering lights, and people. Moving closer but never penetrating the dark veil that surrounds me.

My laughing eyes are clearer now, and I remember other things, golden brown hair, a bow, and a name…Rob…then end is lost. Something else is here too, lurking in the darkness – bright blue eyes, but they seem on the edge of my mind, just out of reach. I dream too; of faces and people, of bright swords flashing through the air. I dream of green, and a smell I can't quite place, rain?

There is something in these dreams, I am sure of it; they are trying to tell me something. The sword, the flash, the bright blue gaze. The green, the rain, my laughing eyes.

…

The ship rolls under my feet and I lurch from side to side, feeling the floor slip beneath me. My shoulder hits to wood of the wall, pain flooding through me, I relax into it. There is a knocking at the door and Much enters. I see his eyes flick back and forth as he takes in my surroundings: the broken chest, the putrid filth covering the floor. He holds his hand to his nose, trying not to gag.

Finally I feel his eyes upon me, wide and shocked, and I know what he sees. A broken man. My hair is long and filthy, my body covered in cuts and bruises. I feel the new wound on my arm sting; soon it will join the mass of scars covering my arms and chest. Slowly he comes towards me, reaching down, trying to move me into a standing position. He holds me trying to lead me towards the door, but I don't want to go.

I hit him as hard as I can, blindly striking out until I feel his grip slacken and he releases me. Dropping to the ground I curl into a ball and rock back and forth, back and froth. Finally my breathing clams and a sense of dark numbness descends, blocking out the pain screaming inside my head. But images creep back, slipping and sliding through the cracks in the numbness. I see her face, her eyes, her lips, the words she so wants to say trapped inside her mind. I see her body, forever held beneath the sand. And I cover my eyes trying to block it out.

…

The ship stands before us in the harbour, proud and tall, it seems to mock me, with my hunched shoulders and wary look. The small man in front of me talks on and on, filling the silence around us with meaningless drivel. I hardly spare him a thought, stupid insignificant fly, swat it away but it never leaves you alone. Again I glance over my shoulder, away from the water and the gleaming white sails, towards the dunes.

Somewhere out there she lies buried, or maybe they didn't even do that. Maybe she still lies in the blood soaked sand. NO! I think I may have shouted the word, for the little man turns, startled, but I do not care. I clap my hands over my ears, why won't she go away?

I can take it no more, she will not die! Not because of me. I turn and run, back across the harbour towards the sand. The part of my mind that is still thinking rationally makes me stop and take a horse, but even that small delay hurts me and as soon as I am mounted I gallop off towards her, towards Marian.

…

For a while the voices stopped and I felt my body grow unnaturally heavy. Again the blackness pulls me in but still I fight it, I will not let it take me, not yet. Then gradually I feel the weight lifts, and I hear again the strange distorted voices, as though filtering through a thick wall. No, not voices, a voice; a man's voice.

Something in it is familiar, but like the dreams it remains just out of reach. It calls a name, Marian. Who is Marian? Maybe they are searching for her, maybe she is one of the faces in the darkness. I try to call, to move, to tell them I'm here, that I can help them find this Marian. But the effort is too great, and I drift once more into the hazy world of sleep.

…

Eventually the real physical pain becomes too much for my body. They take me away and leave me in a room with a strange man – I ignore him. He tries to feed me, but I spit the food in his face. He tries to bandage my wounds but I bite and kick until he stops. Maybe if it was Djaq, but no, not even she could heal the pain that encompasses my whole body, like living, breathing fire.

They don't seem to understand this though; they don't understand that physical pain is a relief- that I crave it. They call me crazy, tell me I'm killing myself, and I smile. She is dead, she can never come back, and if I die too then I will be with her…forever. Finally they tie me up and force the food down my throat, I succumb to the humiliation. I cannot stop them; maybe if I cease resisting they'll realise I don't want help. I don't want to live.

…

The sand runs like liquid through my fingers, so that for every handful I remove another takes its place. I want to scream in frustration, I will never find her! There must be hundreds of graves, maybe even thousands, row upon row upon row. I think I'm going mad, I am searching for a body, how could she possibly be alive? I think, more then anything, I want to see it, the final irrevocable truth that she's dead.

I am not sure what draws me to this site, out of all the mounds of sand, why this one? True it has no shield; a sign that this is no soldier under the earth, but there are others like that and I do not feel drawn to them. I would like to say it is my love that draws me to her, but I think it is more likely it is my guilt. I call her name, over and over, and just for a second I think I see a movement in the sand.