'My companions are bred for war since ancient times. The others are their helpers, known as Aides.' She bowed in the direction of her taller companion. 'Ainé bears the Oraculum of Bree upon her brow. It is the mark of Kyra - the hereditary leadership among the Shee.'

Alan studied the ferocious-looking woman, called Ainé. Her hair extended, in luxuriant tufts of sideburns, the colour of ivory, down the sides of her down-covered face to the angles of her jaws, and there were symmetrical markings, like large brown freckles, over her brow. There was a scar, like a sword cut, running from her left brow down onto her cheek. Her eyes were the same eyes he had seen in the snow tigress - huge and a glacial blue. There was a rippling strength in her broad arms and shoulders. Her facial markings resembled Maori war-tattoos, but the thick brown marbling that followed the centre of her brow in two widening tracks, with stripes like broad ribs moving out to either side and dappling down over her cheeks to fuse with the luxuriant sideburns, was as natural as the decorations on the wings of a butterfly. He saw a puckering of scar tissue in the centre of her forehead, broken veins about a flat oval of glistening crystal that was embedded there, like his own ruby triangle - what the stateswoman, Milish, had called 'the Oraculum of Bree'.