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hand.
    ‘And you can cheer up, too!’ Willow said. ‘Things might have gone a lot worse for us. That loathsome woman – Iwon’t dignify her with the title of queen – is running away into the north with what’s left of her friends. Things look set for a change at last, and probably a change for the better.’
    ‘Maybe. But Master Gwydion once told me to remember that we’re peacemakers – we shouldn’t be feeling pleased that Duke Richard’s forces won at Delamprey, even though he’s been a better friend to us than his enemies ever have. The balance has been shifted again, and that’s the important thing.’
    Willow settled Bethe in a more comfortable position in front of her. ‘I don’t see why we shouldn’t feel happy for the duke. We lived among his household. You were even schooled with his sons. Duchess Cicely helped my father and me when she might have sent us back to face Lord Strange’s displeasure. And she looked after Bethe as if she was one of her own.’
    He sighed, trying to see how best to put it. ‘I’m not saying Duke Richard isn’t a good man at heart. He’s probably better than most, but he’s human like us all, and—’
    Willow grunted. ‘And what? When fighting against him is that she-wolf who cares nothing for nobody. Tell me where’s our loyalty supposed to lie?’
    ‘You just have to try to see things more broadly. That’s what Master Gwydion means.’
    ‘Oh, is that it?’
    Will sucked his teeth. He saw the way his infant daughter’s eyes swept across the land, drinking in everything they noticed, delighting in every bird and squirrel she saw. Her expressions were so much like her mother’s, and yet Willow said they were exactly like his own.
    ‘It’s got something to do with the way the past gets made out of the future,’ he said. ‘There’s the future where all is uncertain and yet to be fixed, and there’s the past, where all is done and cannot be undone. But where the future touches the past, there’s a thin line. That’s what we call the present. That’s where we live.’
    ‘I see,’ she said unconvincingly.
    ‘And the present’s the only part we can affect with our free will, don’t you see? Because what we choose to do in the present affects the way the future is turned into the past.’
    ‘Well, I know that ,’ Willow said, unimpressed. ‘That much even Bethe knows, don’t you, sweet baby?’
    ‘But…but the point is, Master Gwydion says there’s only one “true path”, one track through time that’s the best of all possible destinies. If everybody did what was right by everybody else then the best possible world would come about as soon as blink.’
    ‘You mean like it does in the Vale when everyone argues and we all somehow come to a compromise in the end?’
    ‘Exactly! But you see not everybody can do right because there are powerful people out here and they’ve multiplied their strength so that now most people just take orders and don’t even think about what they’re doing. And then there’s Maskull, who’s done that more than anyone. And because he’s a sorcerer that means he understands the harm he’s doing, which is even worse.’
    Willow let it all sink in. She shook her head. ‘Then why is he doing it?’
    Will shrugged. ‘He’s a renegade, a cock who thinks the sun has risen to hear him crow. He’s broken his vows of guardianship and forgotten all about humility and kindness and all the things he always said he cared about. He wants to live forever and go on and on in charge of the world, and he thinks he might have found a way to make that happen.’
    ‘So that’s the path he’s leading us all towards.’
    ‘Yes. It’s one that will reward him alone. He’s started behaving as if he’s found a way to live forever and enjoypower forever. But to do that he needs to turn the future of the world far away from the true path. And Master Gwydion says that if we get pushed too far from the true path, then we’ll