Thankfully, the signals don’t result in an ambush. Instead, a loaded packhorse waits for us at the next crossroad. Bastian looks patiently through the saddlebags, counting off items, before nodding his contentment. We watch from the woods as he takes a loaded sack from his coat and ties it around the road marker. It’s not hard to understand. He’s leaving payment. Some of yesterday’s stolen Ashlord goods in exchange for food and water.

It’s my first glimpse of life in the mountains.

We skirt the second village entirely, wind up the forested shelves of another valley, and stumble into sight of Gig’s Wall. Once it might have been a marvel. A great stone wall that stretches from one side of the valley to the other, barring encroaching armies from the valleys beyond. It rises fifty feet into the air and stands three times as wide, but the decades have worn away all sense of grandeur. Great blasts of wind have swept chunks out of the wall’s once-even ramparts. At the bottom, I note gaping holes wide enough to ride a horse through.

It’s through one of these, and not the reinforced gates, that Bastian leads us. Everything about his posture—and the posture of his soldiers—changes once we’re inside the fortress. They dust themselves off and move toward familiar nooks in a central room, looking like workers returning after a long day out in the fields. I realize, with a sense of honor and dread, that this place is home to them. One of many homes, and they’ve invited me into their trust. Luca and I both stand off to the side, feeling a little like intruders.

“Rest well,” Bastian calls from the nearest stairwell. “We’ll sleep the night here. A handful of you will move on to escort Imelda to Little Sickle tomorrow. Mattys, let’s get something hearty on the stove. I’d like to have the whole group—”

His words are drowned by fire. It flashes in the air before us like a magician’s trick. The blast of energy knocks everyone backward. I’m on one knee as the flames take form and a man strides out into the center of the room. He’s shirtless and shoeless, wearing the dirtiest trousers I’ve ever seen. What catches every eye, though, is the great falcon mask sewn into the skin of his neck, enclosing a human head within. Everyone stares at the creature, the man, but his great beaded eyes swivel in my direction. He lets out a throaty cry and darts through our ranks.

The gods have come.

We all know which one this priest represents: The Curiosity.

Bastian screams, “Quit staring and kill him!”