“Where did he come from?” Lyne asked, looking around for a weapon. “And where’s the bird?”

Burr levered himself up to his full height, which was considerable, using his spear. It didn’t take long for him to notice the strange naked man on the rock. He took a step in that direction and brought the spear’s tip down to bear on the intruder.

“I think he is the bird, Lyne!” Mard said.

Weaver had set her harp aside and stood up. She was fascinated. She sidestepped over Burr’s way and rested a hand on the socket of his spearhead, just behind the glinting leaf-shaped blade, and pushed it gently aside. “Singing of this and actually seeing it are very different things,” she said.

Prim stood still through all of this, gazing into the man’s eyes. “It’s you,” she concluded, “it’s still Corvus.”

“Now that I have your attention,” Corvus announced. But then he gagged, hacked, and spat, as if having some difficulty learning to use the new vocal apparatus. When he had recovered, he went on in a somewhat deeper and more human tone: “There’ll be no more wanky chatter about such topics during the Quest.” He hocked up a little more and spat it in the general direction of the map. “Now roll that thing up, and don’t take it out anymore. What the hell are you doing, wasting your time looking at the map, when the world itself is spread out all around you?”

And with that his glossy black hair and beard wrapped themselves around his body and came together to coat all of his face save his eyes and his nose, and the nose and jaw extended and hardened into a beak. His feet shrank and his toes lengthened into talons. There was a lot of unsightly twitching and spasming and vocalization that caused everyone except Weaver to avert their gaze; Mardellian even clapped his hands over his ears, and Prim had to step lively as the creature voided its bowels in midtransformation. Then it was just Corvus again. He made two experimental hops and then took to the air.

The other six members of the party all looked at one another, just to confirm that this had really happened. Prim was still clutching the arrow she had been using as a pointer. She put it back into its quiver, then dropped to one knee at the eastern edge of the map. Before she began to roll it up again, she took one long last look at it, the way you do at an old friend before you set out on a long journey without them.

Burr had never unpacked; he was already good to go. Turning his broad back on the way they’d come, he gazed down the pass. The convolutions of the valleys below beguiled him for a while. But after a bit he picked out a plausible-seeming direction and indicated it with his spear. Then he looked at Corvus and raised his eyebrows.