Corvus meditated upon these words. “Very well,” he said, “I’ll be back.” He began to flap his wings but had some difficulty getting clear of the apple tree’s impossibly gnarled branches.

“There is carrion out back of the kitchen,” said a younger man with hair on his upper lip. “It might give you greater strength if you ate some.”

Standing next to that man was a woman with yellow hair. “And the greater your strength, the farther you can fly . . . from here,” she added helpfully.

“If you go south or east,” said Prim, “stay high—because of arrows.”

“North or west, low—eagles,” added the man who had spoken first.

Thus advised, Corvus worked free of the tree’s grasp and flew over behind the hall, to a little yard where someone was tossing food out of an open door onto the ground. There it was being fought over by various low-to-the-ground creatures. Wanting no part in their squabbles, Corvus flew in through the door and found a piece of a dead animal lying on a slab of wood. He picked this up in his talons. The woman who had been throwing the food took exception and hurled a metal container at him, but it did not strike him, so he flew into the Hall, carrying the piece of the dead animal, and went up to a high exposed piece of dead tree that seemed to be playing a part in holding the roof up. There he bided for a while, tearing the “carrion” into shreds small enough to swallow. As had been promised, the building’s walls, below the windows, were adorned with images. Some were made by the weaving together of colored fiber, others by applying colored stuff to flat things. At first these made little sense to him, but as his stomach filled with carrion, his powers of understanding grew and he saw that all of these were ways of tricking the eye to make it see things that were not actually present. Apparently the figures shown were Calladons. Or at least some of them were. The handsome ones astride four-legged beasts—probably Calladons. The ugly misshapen ones they were depicted as killing—probably something else.

Prim had made passing reference to a giant who was asleep. It could be guessed that the very large biped made of rocks, prominently featured in one of the larger pictures, was the very same—though, during the events shown, most definitely awake.