I said nothing. There was a certain comfort in his words, for I knew he was not the kind of man to speak thus solely out of a wish to make me feel better. All the same, my best was falling far short of what I had expected.

He murmured something else, his back to me.

“What was that?”

“I didn’t particularly want to hit you,” Cathal said.

“I’ll try to stay awake from now on so you won’t have to do it again,” I told him grimly. “On we go, then.”

We climbed, and the light changed. The golden haze faded; with infinite slowness the landscape around us emerged from the veil: bizarre outcrops of rock, narrow pebbly pathways mazing in and out, stunted trees clinging tenaciously between the great stones. In the distance, rugged hills, deep, secret valleys. A cloak of trees over the lower reaches, obscuring details. Bare fells above, their slopes rising to crags resembling grotesque fortresses, from which I expected any moment to see swarms of giant bats or predatory birds wing outward on a mission of attack. The sky was leaden gray. The last of the warm light was gone. There was something oppressive about that sky. I felt again the sensation of weight, as if the whole of this realm existed somehow underground. And yet, last night there had been moonlight.

“What are we looking for?” asked Cathal, shading his eyes against an invisible sun as he stared across the wooded valleys below us. “A settlement? A fortification? Where do these folk live?”

Stories tumbled through my mind. “Under lakes,” I said. “In hollow hills. In caverns. In deep forests. I don’t think there will be any settlements. The tales usually talk about halls, palaces, that kind of thing. Or folk that just . . . float about in the woods.”

“What about hilltops?” Cathal was casting his glance up toward the unusual crag that had caught my attention, the one that resembled a fortification. “There’s something moving around up there, and it’s not trees in the wind. Perhaps we should take cover, just until we work out what it is. Down here.”

We crouched behind the rocks. “What did you see?” I whispered.

“Maybe only young eagles in a nest.” It didn’t sound convincing.

“Or?”

“Or a sentry post of some kind, though it would be difficult to get up and down. Do these people have wings?”

“I don’t think so.” It was the smaller ones that flew about, masquerading as birds or insects. The Fair Folk, as far as I knew, resembled human beings, save that they were taller, more beautiful, altogether more remarkable.