In his dream, Luthold watched as Oli’s funeral service ended and the flames lit. He heard laments and recognised his daughter’s voice among them. Then, gradually, he became aware of the morning light and felt a hand on his shoulder. The dream ended, but the wails and crying grew louder. He looked up and saw Adalina, her eyes wide and her face pale.

“...Haven’t moved his body yet. Father, you have to go there! Nobody knows what to do.”

He sat up and saw that her eyes were wet. Winilind scrambled to her feet, throwing a cloak over her undergarments.

“Whose body?” he asked, blinking.

“Oslef’s.”

Luthold gasped. He felt dizzy as he stood.

“What?”

“Aimar found him this morning. There are no elders, father! Joturn is still missing, and Mildred must be days away. What shall we do?”

Winilind stood at the door, dishevelled and confused. She must have awoken only moments before him.

Luthold breathed in and out, waited long enough to check that he was steady on his feed and said:

“Show me.”

He followed Adalina to Oslef’s roundhouse. Did he die in his sleep? Luthold thought again about their conversation the night before, searching it for any clue that might have foretold this. What about those questions?

A crowd had gathered around the home, though some distance from it. They looked like they were trying to press as close as possible without crossing an invisible barrier. As Luthold approached and they parted to let him through, he saw why. A circle was drawn in ash on the ground around the hut, about a yard away from its curved wall. Only Aimar stood on the other side of it.

“I crossed before I saw it.” He looked as grey as the ash. “He’s dead, Luthold. His body is in there.” Aimar pointed behind him at the closed door.

Luthold took in the scene. He looked at the terrified faces of the clansfolk. He could smell their bodies pressed close together. Many, like him, wore nightclothes in the chilly morning air. The line of ash around Oslef’s home was an inch deep and unbroken.

“Did he finish what he started in there?” Luthold asked. Aimar blinked.

“I... I think so.”

Luthold kicked the ash with his toe, breaking the line, and stepped over it. “You’ll be ok then. You didn’t interrupt them.”

His own voice surprised him; full of confidence, as though someone else were speaking. Aimar gave him a grateful look and some of the tension left the crowd, but nobody followed him inside the circle. Luthold entered the house and Aimar peered in after him.

Oslef slumped where Luthold had left him the evening before. His left hand rested beneath a blue embroidered cloth draped over a wooden board. His rigid face was fixed in a harrowed expression like the clay mask of a tragic hero, moulded for the Autumn festival of Manafel's descent. His right arm lay to one side, and Luthold’s eyes followed a deep cut that ran from inside the elbow down to the wrist. His right hand rested in a wooden bowl, which flowed over into a deep, red circle on the beautiful rug.

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“A sacrifice,” said Aimar behind him, in a disbelieving voice.

“The blood of an elder,” whispered Luthold in awe and horror. “He drew the gaze of the gods with his own life, to find a way for the rest of us. He consulted the oracle.” He felt excitement beneath the shock and sorrow, and wasn’t sure if he should feel appalled at himself for it. Did this oracle reveal the location of his son?

He turned to face Aimar. “Have you looked at the reading?”

“How can I? I don’t know what the questions were,” replied Aimar, shaking his head. Then he looked at Luthold with narrowed eyes. “Do you?”

Luthold repeated the elder’s words in his mind. How can we find our lost boys? Where should our clan go?

“I do, Aimar. I know his questions.”

Luthold stepped forward and pulled the cloth carefully away. Aimar flinched and stepped back.

The flat, polished stones lay in what could have seemed a random pattern, as though they had been emptied onto the table from a bag and left where they fell. In truth, the position and angle of each one would be a work of precision under other-worldly guidance. The glyphs on the stones bore no resemblance to any letters and the wooden disks had pictures engraved on them. They were the same pieces used to play the game of Sevenstones, but in the hands of an elder they served a very different purpose. Luthold knew how to read them – how to interpret their placement on the board Oslef had used. He had learned to read the stones from Oslef himself, over the course of many evenings. He walked round to look at the table from the elder’s side. Some of the villagers who could see through the door muttered to one another outside. When he looked up at them, they fell silent.

For a long time, he tried to find some other meaning in the arrangement than what stared up at him from the table. He could not. The answers were clear. There at the intersection of the lines drawn for Oli and Ingo sat The Lost Daughter. Loss or sacrifice. Death. Even now though, Luthold clung to a sliver of hope. Lost is not necessarily dead, is it? And hasn’t Oli always been lost? And what of the answer to the other question? Since he could barely grasp its significance himself, how could he tell the rest of the clan? What position have you put me in, old friend?

“No wonder he died with such an expression,” Luthold said to Aimar. “It must have been a bitter thing to give his life for this reading.”

He needed space. He stepped past Aimar into the morning light. He took a lungful of cool air but the crowd immediately pressed around him, no longer worrying about the broken circle of wet ash.

“What does it say?” one of them asked.

“If it’s an oracle, we have a right to know!” another demanded.

Winilind looked at him but did not speak. She and Adalina held each other close. Beresa stood beside them with an arm around Winilind’s waist. Luthold knew from his wife's expression that she had already seen the answer in his eyes.

Heridan arrived, pushing himself through the bodies thronged about the house until he stood in front of Luthold.

“What does it say, Luthold? You were deep in his confidence before he did this. What did Elder Oslef ask and what do the gods answer?”

Luthold wondered what Oslef had told Heridan. They were not nearly as close as he and Luthold. But he must have given him some idea, because a fierce hope burned in Heridan's eyes. Luthold did not look away from the mirror of his own pain as he revealed the oracle.

“They say that our lost children are lost to us forever.” Heridan groaned so harrowingly that several clansfolk around him stepped away. Algar moved to his side and embraced him, pressing his forehead to the side of Heridan’s face and whispering a prayer. Luthold continued: “and they say that we must leave.”

“To go where?!” The question came in hopeful shouts. Didn’t they hear the first part? Didn’t they care? He had lost his boy. Of course they cared, but they had children of their own to worry about, too. Wasn’t that also what Oslef had wanted him to understand?

“Where should we go? Where will we be safe?” they cried. “To the South? Should we join the Levonin? Should we do as the Sullin say and form an army?”

“They say,” Luthold began, and the crowd fell silent. He took a deep breath and steeled himself. “They say that we are safe nowhere in the Saltleaf. That this land will soon lie beyond the sight of heaven. They say that we must leave the forest entirely.”