"Then we'll leave them. Build a stout camp, leave the novice yeomen and most of the men-at-arms."

Before the canyon walls closed completely, High Marshal Connaught turned left away from the river, leading them onto a rough slope of broken rock. He seemed to find a trail; Paks, far back in the group, could not see anything ahead to guide them. Socks heaved upward, stride by stride. They stopped often to rest the animals; the warhorses were curded with sweat. Amberion's horse, alone of all the animals, never showed the marks of hard riding, always slick-coated and fresh. Paks had noticed that about all the paladin's mounts in Fin Panir. Far back she could see the mules, head down, picking their way delicately and almost without effort over the rocks. Below, the canyon they had come from disappeared into a jumble of shadow and light. Now she could see far to the right, more swooping curves of stone, patterned by dark cracks. Far up on the heights, she thought she saw trees.

By late afternoon, she could see a strange shape against the sky: a dark cone with a scoop out of the point. Amberion pointed to it.

"That's marked on the map. Blackash cone, it said: we must bear left of it." As they came nearer, always climbing, the rock changed abruptly from white to red. The trail led through a break in that vertical red wall. Suddenly the black cone was close; it looked like a loose pile of dark rock sitting on the red stone around it. Paks stared. Had someone—some giant, surely—built a cairn? Long shadows streaked the land, making weird shapes of the wind-blown rocks around them. Now they could see that the canyon they had climbed from was only a small section of something much larger that extended far to the east, ending at last in a higher rampart of white topped with forest. South, the land dropped abruptly into that hole. It was hard to believe they had climbed anything so sudden. Westward the land dipped to a rumpled plain of sand, and that again dropped sharply: Paks could just see against the setting sun distant mountains beyond that drop. Northward, their view was blocked by the black cone and the higher land behind it. Red cliffs, these, with fortress-size blocks lying at their feet. Paks wondered if the others felt as small as she did.

That night they camped on the sandy plain just southwest of the black cone. A cold wind brushed the camp; stars blazed brighter than Paks had ever seen them. She woke several times to hear Ardhiel singing. Dawn came early on that high place. Paks saw the white stone below begin to glow even before she was aware of light in the sky. Then the high wall to the east stood clear against a green dawn. First light turned the red peaks north of them to fiery orange; then the light crept down to meet them, throwing blue shadows below.