If the tangle of mountains that lay beneath the storm were a tree, and the tree had thrown out roots of an ancient gnarled character, and those roots were made of stone, and reached greater or lesser distances from the trunk, then the farthest flung of them all, at least on this northern side, was the one that finally plunged into the ground at the shore of this lake. They were standing on its utmost tendril. It was at least partly hollow. And though Pick had not yet gone to the trouble of coming right out and saying as much, all who had descended into the fault in the Asking, only to emerge here, understood that Pluto had, in the waning years of the First Age, explored these deeps and connected them with roads of chaos so that he might more easily make his way from one part of the Land to another without having to trudge across all of the intervening ground. To follow those roads without going astray and losing oneself in unknown realms was subtle and dangerous, but Pick knew how to find their beginnings and Mab knew how to trace them to safe ends.

The canoes were laden with goods and victuals that they now unloaded on the shore of the lake. A lot of the cargo consisted of clothing; lacking very much of it, the Firkin contingent simply put that on. The remainder they distributed among packs that they could carry on their backs or suspend from poles that two could carry between them on their shoulders.

Pick was of a mind to explore the several other cave entrances that could easily be seen from here, but Corvus literally bristled at that suggestion. “It would take forever,” he said. “Mab assures us they do not lead where we wish to go. Now that you know how to find this place you can come back here later, after we have saved the world, and do all of that.”

“If our purpose is to save the world,” said Ferhuul, “this is the first I have been made aware of it.”

“Yes,” said Lyne, “you might have mentioned it earlier.”

“Oh, come on!” said Fern. “It’s perfectly obvious. Has been all along.”

“Sometimes I must express myself in few words,” said Corvus, “so that these Quest councils don’t go on forever. If ‘save the world’ is objectionable I can expand on it. Doing so wouldn’t help. Things are wrongly set up in the Land now, as anyone who has seen what we have lately seen would agree. Even if you can’t quite put your finger on it, I think you’d have to admit it’s not how a proper god would compose a world. It is not going to fix itself. That is probably why I came here from the other plane of existence. Things were set in motion there that it is my purpose to see through here. Stop arguing.”