They had come to an impasse. Directly ahead of them, a jut of stone like a plane of slate taller than one Giant standing on another’s shoulders blocked the way. It reached from the louring bulk of the nearest hill to the precipice barely two paces away on Covenant’s left. Shaded from the westering sun, he and the Humbled were shrouded in shadows and gloom. But beyond the barrier, cliffs and crags like clenched knuckles curved crookedly from the southeast out into the wan sunlight of late afternoon. They towered higher than his recollection of them. At their far end, he glimpsed the jagged edge where the collapse of Foul’s Creche had rent the tip of the promontory, sending uncounted thousands of tons of granite and obsidian and malachite into the insatiable hunger of the Sunbirth. And far below him—

A shock like a jolt of lightning ran through him. Bloody damnation!

Far below him, a simple spin and topple over the precipice, seas no longer thundered against the base of the cliff. When he first looked down, clinging fervidly to his saddle, he saw no breakers at all. The whole of the ocean seemed to have vanished, leaving slick rocks, splintered menhirs, and knife-sharp boulders like the detritus of landslides exposed to the air. Among them, reefs like the spines of cripples reticulated the expanse. Grey water lay in pools that trembled at the slow thud of imponderable heartbeats as though even salt and the smallest creatures of the sea understood fear. Patches of cloacal mud seemed to shiver in anticipation, reeking of ancient death and rot. Draped over and around the chaos of stones and reefs, strands of kelp sprawled as if they were already dying.

But when Covenant raised his eyes, cast his gaze farther, he saw the Sunbirth in retreat. Perhaps half a league from the cliff, waves still toppled onto the ocean floor. But they were ebbing. Ebbing dramatically. With every fall and return, they withdrew as if they were being sucked away. As if they were being swallowed by the depths of the world.

Faint with distance, they sounded vulnerable, as forlorn as a plaint.

Instinctively Covenant understood. His mind reeled, and vertigo was an acute teacher.

Somewhere scores or hundreds of leagues out to sea, a shock like a split in the Earth’s crust had begun to gather a tsunami.

The riders had stopped on level stone like a small clearing between the impassable hill and the fatal cliff. There the destrier stood with its legs splayed, gasping out its life. Ahead of and behind the beast, Mhornym and Naybahn fretted, tossing their heads and stamping their hooves.

Had they misjudged the path to their destination? Was that even possible?

Gritting his teeth in a wasted attempt to keep his voice steady, Covenant demanded, “Are we lost? We can’t be. The Ranyhyn don’t get lost.”