The guard sending knelt and bent its head, and the cowled one followed, and then the whole bucket line of sendings knelt as well. Belatiel felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck, and from somewhere deep beneath his feet he thought he heard the distant echo of a sorrowful bell.

Already some half-dozen leagues away on dragon-back, Mogget sat up in Clariel’s lap and turned his head to the south, ears pricking up.

‘What is it?’ asked Clariel. She could not sleep, for the wind sped past too briskly, it was cold, and the dragon did not fly as smoothly as a Paperwing and she was afraid of falling out.

‘A change,’ said Mogget thoughtfully. ‘Not unexpected, but sooner than I thought. It is as well we left when we did.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Clariel.

But Mogget was silent, and did not answer.

chapter thirty

an ancient treasure

Clariel came to the foothills of Mount Aunden in the early morning, well before noon. The mountain itself loomed up to their right, a great hulking mass of granite, its snow-capped peak gleaming in the sun. In winter, its upper slopes would all be under snow, but now bare rock shone there, above the conifer forests that thronged below the winter snowline.

The dragon tilted its wings and began a long glide down, aiming for a long flat shelf of grey-green rock, a little way above the treeline. Just before it seemed to Clariel that they would simply fly straight into it and all be killed, it beat its wings furiously, so that they almost stopped in mid-air. Then, with its rear legs running fast before they even made contact with the ground, the dragon landed in a lurching gallop that ended not, as Clariel feared, over the edge of the rocky ledge, but some twenty or thirty paces short. Whichever Free Magic creature was the guiding force behind the shape the two had assumed, it knew how to use it.

Clariel climbed stiffly off the chair, stood on the footrest and leaped clear of the dragon, Mogget at her heels. Clapping her hands together, she jumped on the spot, for despite the hooded robe and mask over her hunting leathers, she was cold. They had flown high and fast and the chair definitely did not have the warming spells of a Paperwing.

‘We will divide,’ said the dragon, ‘if you permit, Mistress.’

‘Do so,’ said Clariel. She pushed her hood back and continued to stomp and clap her hands as she walked around the ledge. She could smell the pine sap of the trees below, a clean, welcome scent that she drew into her lungs. Once she’d got warm in the sun Clariel thought she might walk down under those trees, since they were going to stay for some hours anyway to allow the Free Magic creatures to rest.