It had been two weeks since the maid had brought him back to life, and two hours since she had taken him to the world of the future.

  Back in Cernyw, Harper turned every two minutes to look at him as if she were surprised he was still alive. It had become somewhat annoying, but Ailill was quite patient with her, considering how pleasant she became when night fell.

  At first she seemed uninterested, but then she jumped on him and became someone else, a complacent woman with the experience of a 200-year-old whore.

  In the future, when he deposed his nephew, he would make sure to keep Harper by his side as his lover and marry the virgin daughter of some powerful man. That way he would have the best of both worlds.

  However, when he told her of his plans for conquest the morning after their first encounter, Harper simply massaged her temples and left the tent. It was confusing; any low-born girl would have been honoured to be the bedwarmer of a great king, but she seemed offended. Perhaps she needed some kind of correction.

  The following week, she stayed close, offering him food and pampering him like a child. He wasn't quite sure how he felt about it. He enjoyed the attention, but every now and then he wanted some time alone.

  Right now, they were in his curious little room in the huge castle of AEOna-whatever-it-was, staring directly at the black rectangle that dominated Harper's space.

  The entire room was no more than ten cubits wide, and its austere style reminded him of the houses on the continent. If he had been given a choice, he would have preferred the round houses of the Bretons, and he would make sure to voice his opinion when the castle carpenters arrived to build his rooms. Or at least that was what he assumed would happen, as Harper's quarters were unsuitable for a man of his position.

  He put his arm around the girl's shoulders, slipping his hand inside her tight doublet and searching for her nipple.

  ‘When are we leaving here? Your king is bored.’ Harper shrugged and continued staring at her rectangle.

  ‘We've got to let it run for a while, the AI in my brain is downloading onto the AEONALIZE computer.’

  Ailill blinked, confused. At his lack of response, Harper explained:

  ‘There's an insect in my brain that's ultra-intelligent. While I was in Cernyw, it learned your proto-Breton language so we could communicate. Now it's sending messages to the other insects of the future so they can learn your language too, and you can communicate with everyone here.’

  The explanation had actually raised more questions, but Ailill had lost interest and was now playing with Harper's breast, twirling her nipple between his fingers. She seemed unfazed. They had become quite intimate.

  At some point, the woman shook her head, squeezing her eyelids shut, by then Ailill was kissing her neck.

  ‘Sorry, I thought the television was on. The chip in my head... well, the insect I told you about makes you see things that aren't there.’

  She took a kind of small brick and pointed it at the black rectangle, which began to reflect images and spew out sounds, all excessive, tasteless, all too appealing, but at the same time too horrible.

  Ailill was startled by the assault on his senses, but Harper put a hand on his leg, and he knew he could remain calm.

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  ‘What are these visions, girl? These horrible creatures dancing in the obsidian mirror?’

  Harper thought for a moment.

  ‘Magic, remember, everything you don't understand is just harmless magic.’

  Waving and squeezing her magic brick, the woman made the colourful hellish images transform into a peaceful landscape, a magnificent blue sky and an emerald green field, more beautiful than any he had seen in Exeter.

  Ailill stepped forward, open-mouthed, and cautiously walked towards that window to another world. He ran his fingers along the frames, the surface and the wall behind the mirror to check that there was really nothing behind it. Finally, he pressed his face against the surface, so close that he saw the image turn into tiny particles of only three colours, which together formed a whole.

  He was so transfixed that he didn't notice another man entering the chamber.

  ‘Bore da!‘ said a familiar voice, making him jump.

  ‘That's Welsh,’ Harper replied to the voice.

  Turning around, he found himself face to face with the irritating man who had greeted them a couple of hours earlier in the horrible disinfection chamber.

  The first few seconds that a new recruit spent in AEONALIZE usually began with them being trapped in a sealed chamber whose walls began to close in more and more, until the subjects were confined to a space of four cubits; this space soon began to fill with soap, rising rapidly from the floor to the ceiling to ensure that the employees were well covered. Once this point was reached, the room began to spin around them, shaking them violently. After a full minute, the walls opened again, the soap spilled out, and the employees could breathe again for a few seconds before small pressure hoses, similar to thin grey snakes, drenched them from head to toe.

  Ailill did not enjoy the experience very much.

  As they laboriously made their way out of the chamber lined with hideous white cushions on the walls and floors, they were greeted by three individuals, a man and a plain-looking woman, and a kind of talkative eunuch goblin with half golden, half silver hair, who seemed to be wearing paint instead of clothes. He did not understand a word he said, but he immediately identified him as the Syn whom Harper had complained so much about on an occasion when she had drunk too much spiced wine. It was incredible how the maid had created such a perfect picture using such vague terms: tall but thin as a girl, with a masculine voice but delicate traces, as if a unicorn had turned into a man.

  He had never heard of unicorns turning into men, but among the people of Cornwall there was talk of the each-uisge, miserable creatures that transformed themselves into horses to lure people into riding them and then plunged them into the water to drown them. Syn seemed like the embodiment of one. Ready to take you to the bottom of the lake and devour your liver.

  Perhaps some of his animosity came from the fact that Harper seemed to have been very attached to him, but Ailill was an important man, not concerned with the love affairs of the villagers, so surely the real problem came from somewhere else. Besides, the girl clearly wanted him the most.

  Syn the horse man stepped forward to greet Ailill, taking his hand and shaking it warmly, as if he had been waiting years to meet him.

  ‘Myttin da,’ he said, fixing his sweet purple eyes on him.