Clariel held her breath and shut her eyes. She felt soft, sticky stuff on her back that rose up around her shoulders and ribs and spread over her face, going up her nostrils and between her lips, no matter how tight she tried to keep her mouth shut. She started to panic again, thinking that she was going to be smothered in this dirt, or mud or whatever it was, and then she felt the hairy arm or paw and she dropped a few inches, her eyes and mouth opening with the sudden shock.

There was light, and air. She choked and spat out dirt, and looked up at a red-eyed rodent creature the size of a horse that was looking back at her with a self-satisfied expression.

They were in what appeared to be a cellar, because it was full of barrels. The light was coming from a Charter mark that had recently been cast into the timber frame of the door at the top of the five or six steps that led out. There was a huge mound of fresh earth in one corner, and a hole in the floor that they had just come out of – the exit to the tunnel she had just been dragged along.

‘I have got to take this off,’ said the giant mole-rat. ‘Clothes and such over there.’

It gestured with one huge, muddy claw at a pack leaning up against the steps. Clariel limped over, brushed dirt from herself, and opened it up. There was a rough woollen robe and a pair of wooden clogs like Sharrett had been wearing. Clariel hesitated for a moment, then whipped off her dirt-smeared silk tunic and dragged on the robe, the kind of super-fast dressing she did on hunting expeditions, so as not to give the men ideas. But when she turned around, Kargrin was busy with his own undressing, taking off the Charter skin, and very strange it was too. Clariel stared at the weird combination of man and beast. It looked as if Kargrin was either being vomited out of the giant mole or was being eaten by it, since the top half of him was struggling out of … the back half of the mole. As he climbed out, he rolled back skin and fur, but as he rolled it tighter the very concrete illusion of that skin and fur instead became tightly interlocked Charter marks, thousands and thousands of marks all woven together.

‘Got to fold it up properly,’ grunted Kargrin. ‘Might need to use it again. Put on the pack. There’s a knife in the side pocket.’

Clariel opened the pocket and took a simple, short knife of the kind anyone might have, in a plain leather scabbard on a cord. She hung the cord around her neck and put on the pack.

‘Where are we?’ she asked.