‘Oh,’ said Bel. ‘You saw the bottle … Kargrin told me not to tell anyone, including you. It’s spelled so only an Abhorsen can touch it.’

‘Hmm,’ said Clariel noncommittally. She wondered if Kargrin had worked out that she had let the creature escape on the island. But that seemed unlikely. Maybe he was just being secretive in general. ‘What will happen to her … that is … it?’

‘It’ll go down to the Abhorsen’s House,’ said Bel. ‘The original house, you can’t see it yet. It’s in the river, as running water defends against the Dead, and you don’t get much faster running water than in the middle of the biggest waterfall around. See that huge low cloud up ahead, past Hillfair?’

Clariel did see the cloud. She had wondered why it sat so low and alone, with the rest of the sky so blue.

‘That’s from the waterfall? And the house is there? It must be damp.’

Bel shook his head, a little too vigorously, and winced at the pain.

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘The mist doesn’t fall back on the house. A spell, I suppose. The whole place is wreathed in spells. Even the river currents are ensorcelled, so you can get there by boat without being taken by the waterfall. Presuming you’ve been invited, of course.’

‘Why doesn’t the Abhorsen live there any more?’ asked Clariel. ‘I’ve only ever heard people talk about Hillfair.’

‘Take a look along the ridge road,’ said Bel. ‘You’ll see.’

Clariel frowned in puzzlement, but looked. There was a long line of people on horseback moving towards the closer buildings, but they were still quite distant so she couldn’t make out more than that.

‘Riders,’ she said. ‘Might be a hundred of them, I suppose. What of that?’

‘The Grand Hunt, returning to Hillfair,’ said Bel. ‘I hope they had a good day, it always puts Himself in a better mood.’

‘I still don’t understand,’ said Clariel. She knew about Grand Hunts; there was one in Estwael three times a year, she’d even ridden in a few. But it was a ridiculously overdone show, in her opinion, with massed riders and packs of dogs all getting in one another’s way, and foolish rituals, and it depended on weeks of work beforehand from foresters and the Borderers, and beaters on the day. ‘I heard the Abhorsen likes to hunt …’

‘Loves to hunt,’ said Bel. ‘Twice a week, if not more. And everything is about the hunt. Half the buildings in Hillfair are horse stables or dog kennels. That’s how it got started, in the first place, with the Abhorsen Kariniel … Let’s see, she was Tyriel’s great-aunt, so your great-great-great-aunt … She was hunt mad and you can’t keep horses in the old house, and the island is inconvenient. So she built a lodge and stable and called it Hillfair.’