9 THE MOUTH OF THE ALDE, 31 MARCH 575 AD
Vast and grey, loomed the sky. Jake’s gaze passed over the silver waves and rose to the forlorn flocks of wading birds whose plaintive, shrill calls defied the feather-ruffling wind, heavy with brine. It slipped over the shingle-scattered foreshore, over the barnacle-faded rock and the senseless strewn flotsam to the mournful shrubs vying for land with the pools where crabs of indeterminate colour scuttled to safety under misshapen stones.
To what bleak outpost had the Snape ring transported him in some retrocognitive adventure? Wherever he was, it resembled Snape Common sufficiently for him to be confident of not having strayed a great distance from the barrows but here he was by the desolate shore and near the outflowing river, where birds of th
