Prim did not get down. She kept walking until she had reached the beast, which was lying there as if asleep. Burr, still convinced of danger, caught up with her a few moments later, spear at the ready. When the rest of the party caught up with Burr, he was rolling the dead beast over, looking for some sign of the arrow that had slain it. But of course there was none.

He stepped back from it. “I saw a similar thing during the wolf fight. I did not believe it.”

“We saw something like it too,” Mard said. “A wolf simply died.”

“Some fell presence stalks these woods, and slays what it will by magic.”

“I am the fell presence,” Prim said. “Let’s eat.”

This time, no wolf pack came. Neither were they molested by larger beasts or clouds of insects. Not even when they lit a fire and the aroma of roasting meat spread on the breeze. The rain stopped while they were cooking. They were on the edge of a meadow that sloped up out of the country they had covered during the last day. Below them in the distance they could hear wolves raising the same alarm they had heard yesterday: “Invaders have come!” This seemed to arouse the curiosity of Corvus, who had already supped on raw flesh. He flapped into the air and then beat his wings powerfully to gain altitude, heading back north.

“The raven thinks we are being followed,” said Burr.

None of the others seemed to think that this was news. Fern paid no note at all. She had been inspecting Prim since the latter had revealed her nature. Tiring of the attention, Prim met her eye.

“I wondered,” Fern said. “Just being a princess isn’t enough to get you invited on something like this.”

Prim was doubly offended. She hadn’t even thought of herself as a princess at the beginning; she’d taken Brindle at his word when he’d said that Quests were just a thing that Calladons did. A sort of birthright. But she was too tired and hungry to enter into a dispute with Fern just now.

“Could you kill any soul in the Land?”

“According to the legends, I killed Egdod,” Prim reminded her. “I have to be close to what I’m killing, though.”

“Could you kill El?”

“I don’t know. The opportunity has not presented itself. He might have ways of killing me sooner.”

“Spring made a creature for that purpose,” said Querc. “Or so Weaver told me, the night before she died. It is made of chaos and adamant. It is called the Chasmian, and it waits under the Broken Bridge for any who makes it that far.”

“And did Weaver have anything to say about what additional hazards we must pass through in order to be in a position to be menaced by the Chasmian?” Lyne asked.