They avoided the meadows from then on, and stayed in the deepest woods that Mab and Corvus could steer them to. Thus without further incident they came to a place where the ground ramped sharply upward. The soft earth of the forest gave way to a rubble of sharp stones that had quite obviously tumbled down here from the bare high ground above. Fat drops of icy rain began to thud down. From off to their right the sun was slicing in under the storm and lighting up the whole face of the rampart, all the way from where they stood—near its western extremity—down to its eastern end, many miles away, where it sank like an axe into the buttresses of a mountain range. The Eye of the Storm was there, but could no longer be seen save as a vague column of iron-gray weather round which the whole rest of the Evertempest turned like the millstone in Edda’s kitchen.

“Stop and have a good look at it then,” Corvus said, as quietly as it was possible for a giant talking raven to form words. “We go up under cover of dark, and we go there.”

“Where?” Lyne asked, for all of them.

“There. I’m pointing right at it.”

“You have no way of pointing.”

“I am pointing with my beak.”

“Never mind, I see it,” said Pick. He had dropped to one knee and planted the foot of his stick on a rock, the better to peer through its lenses. Between that and the direction of Corvus’s beak the rest of the party were able to see what was being looked at: the tiniest black pore in the surface of the rampart. It was directly above them, for Corvus had led them right to it. Unlike the various entrances made by the Dug, this did not have an enormous fan of spoil pointing right at it.

“Is that the famous cave?” Querc asked.

“Famous to this little band. To the Dug, more infamous, and rarely entered.”

“Strikes me as odd,” Pick remarked.

“Yes,” said Lyne. “Why wouldn’t they go into a conveniently situated natural cave?”

“I don’t like where this is going,” Mard said.

“Terror” was the answer of Corvus. “Fear of what becomes of any who strays more than a few yards beyond the entrance.” Continuing in the same level tone, he added, “Memorize landmarks that may be useful in the dark.”

“Why not go up now?” Querc asked. “The storm is brewing up again.”

“Dug patrols on the heights.”

“They’ve seen us?”

A raven shrug. “If not, they will. It’s their purpose for existing.”