Their destination turned out to be an old stone house at the end of a street where it ran smack into the base of a cliff. A stone wall enclosed the house and its court. The place was heavily worn around the edges but well kept where it mattered. Ferhuul explained that it belonged to a man and woman of his acquaintance who owned more than one vessel and were currently out to sea aboard one such. “The stairs and the ground floor are stone all the way down,” he said to Edda. “The upper story—mere wood.”

Edda nodded and sat down on the top of the low stone wall that ran along one edge of the courtyard. Prim understood that Ferhuul had been warning the giantess that the floors upstairs might not bear her weight.

Edda let the cloak fall from her head but kept it snug around her body. Others sat on wooden chairs and benches at a table nearby. Weaver had been silent for some days as sea travel did not agree with her, but now tuned her harp and sang a song that Edda had been teaching her, verse by verse. Dusk fell, somewhat concealing the approach of Corvus, who swooped down from the cliff top and perched on a long and extraordinarily massive tree bough stretched out above.

Corvus seemed uncharacteristically content to sit and listen to the song. Prim reflected that the giant talking raven had been in the Land for but one year, and though he had flown far and seen much, he could not have learned but a fraction of the tales known to the likes of Edda and Weaver.

The song was written in a very old poetic style, with many allusions to other songs and myths. But the basic story was familiar to anyone who had grown up around books. So Prim climbed up into the tree—which was easy, even though she had stopped being a girl and turned into a full-grown woman—and sat on the bough next to Corvus and whispered explanations at him so that the story would make better sense.