Edda brought him up short by withdrawing from her cloak a small gleaming object. Its nature wasn’t clear until Mab cast greater light on it. Then it could be seen that this was the bird-shaped head of Pick’s stick, somewhat deformed, as if it had partly melted. The eyes were now blind sockets, as the lenses were missing. A blackened shard of wood still dangled from the hole where the shaft had been affixed.

It was the rare moment when Corvus was not well ahead of everyone else. That combined with the fact that he was in his human form, and closely illuminated by Mab, made it possible to see emotions in his face that Prim—who had known him since he was a new soul in the Land—had never seen there before. He was completely astonished. It was that kind of surprise so total that one’s first reflex, be it never so out of place, is to laugh. Which he did in a faltering and nervous way. Then he became serious and thoughtful.

Querc’s grief was total, as was her shock at what she had witnessed. Prim remembered the scream Querc had made after a certain close lightning strike and knew it was true. Corvus knew it too: Pick was gone.

“Well!” he said. “That certainly changes a few things about the Quest. We can’t do this without a Lithoplast.”

There was a brief silence as this sank in, and then everyone looked at Querc.

They went deeper in, just to put more distance between them and any Dug who might have the audacity to come in after them. Sealing the entrance through Lithoplasty, which had been Corvus’s original plan, was no longer possible. But as this was a natural cave, it had twists and bottlenecks that they were able to chock up behind them with rocks. Edda had the strength to shift boulders, and Burr’s angel sword could cut stone. So they were able to make going difficult for any who might pursue them into the depths of the Knot.

Or for themselves, should they try to get back out. But it was obvious that this cave was another of those that Pluto had salted about the Land to make going from place to place easier, and that they would be emerging somewhere else.

This mere activity—the going in deeper, clambering up and down the cave’s convolutions, helping one another through tight places—had a calming effect on Querc as the scene of that horror fell away behind them.

The descent became treacherous, and Corvus grew cautious, then irritable, then impossibly annoying as he insisted that all be careful of their footing. Echoes from ahead of them—which was to say, below them—suggested that this narrow shaft was about to open up into something much larger. Light—not from Mab—began to gleam from smooth, damp cavern walls. Prim knew what to expect, and soon saw it.