Lily stood staring until the coach was completely out of sight. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then stooped to pick up her bag. She had no idea how far away Ardnaroch was from Kelseth, or how she was going to get there. She consulted the notes Alf had given her before she left, but found no reference to Ardnaroch, or any suggestions for a place to stay nearby.

I just need to find someone to talk to, that’s all. She tried to comfort herself, refusing to let her worrying mind take over this early on in her journey. I’m sure there’s someone around here who wouldn’t mind helping. Maybe they’ll have a map or something. It’ll be fine. She breathed in and out a few times, trying to slow her raging heartbeat, and looked around.

Ardnaroch was an old-looking place, with clusters of strangely misshapen houses and shops built from crumbling bricks. Most of the roofs were thatched, but not in the careful, pretty style she was used to seeing back home. Instead, these were far more ramshackle, as if someone had just thrown bunches of branches and twigs in the general direction of the roofs, hoping they’d stick there long enough that no one would notice the job was only half-done.

Lily couldn’t quite believe she was less than a day’s travel from Alder Vale. Even the glowing, sanguine light of the approaching dawn couldn’t brighten the mottled atmosphere of this village.

Where were the people? Where was the birdsong?

Lily knew the Shadow Lands had been left behind after the Wars of Change, when those from beyond their shores tried to force their new ideas of progress upon them, but she hadn’t realised that a place could feel so … soulless. Lily wondered whether the wars had been harder on these people, whether they were still recovering all this time later.

Ardnaroch was built around the one road that snaked into, and then out of, the village through an uneven cobbled square. There were squat houses behind the few shops, but everything looked desolate and uninviting. There were no comfortable hearths in Ardnaroch.

The only sound that broke the silence was a rhythmic hammering coming from a smithy in the corner of the square. A hulking man – the blacksmith, Lily presumed – didn’t look up from his anvil. The tap, tap, tap echoed out across the moor. A death knell, a warning.

This kind of place should be bustling, Lily thought. There must be people toing and froing all the time on their way across the country. But then … where were they?

In the centre, a large wooden sign pointed backwards to a village called Barley – which she remembered passing through a little while before the coach dropped her off – and onwards to Kelseth. The sign gave no indication of distances and she was reluctant to set off walking if Kelseth was still days and days away.

Lily knew all too well the dangers of underestimating this rural, pastoral landscape. The countryside all across the Shadow Lands was pock-marked with little villages sprouting awkwardly from the moorland. Sometimes the villages were only a small distance apart, often visible one from the other on a clear day. However, some villages were separated by deep, damp bogs or thick forests. In those conditions, even a place just half a day’s travel away as the crow flies could take a week with the effort and navigational skill needed to venture across the difficult terrain. Kelseth could be close by, but Lily knew she would need local expertise if she was to venture there safely.