She stood up, dusting off her tattered dress, and looked around the little hollow until she found a single, pencil-thin root, snaking all the way down from some desperate little tree on the surface. Alice put her hand against it experimentally and closed her eyes.

She could feel . . . something. A sense of light, and heat, and the vague feel of wind rustling through scraggly leaves. Her mind could follow the root all the way to the surface, where the gnarled trunk of the tree hunched in a bowl of thin soil, and back down a dozen other questing roots that forked and spread through the rock-pile.

Isaac poked his head in the end of the crevice. ‘Did you find something?’

Concentrating, Alice focused her will on the root. With a faint sigh like an old man forced to leave his comfortable chair, it pulled itself away from the rock and looped into the air in front of her, vibrating gently. Alice kept it there for a few moments, then let it drop.

‘I think that’s about it. Trees.’

‘I see.’ Isaac scratched the side of his nose. ‘Not terribly useful in our present circumstances, then.’

‘All right,’ said Alice defensively. ‘What have you got? Can you use that Siren to put it to sleep?’

‘I don’t think so. I don’t have the power-charm any more, and the Dragon is too big. Besides, she’s still singing out there, and I’m not sure what would happen if I tried to pull her in here with us as well.’

‘What about the one you used on me?’

‘The iceling?’

Isaac extended one hand towards the rock wall and frowned. Cold wind whipped for a moment, and tracks of frost spread out from a central point like the rays of a star.

‘It can freeze water and move the ice about a bit,’ he said. ‘And I have a couple of little ones, like the glow-wisp and the lizard-frog.’

‘That’s it?’ Alice said, with a bit too much satisfaction. ‘I’m not sure that’s very useful in our present circumstances.’

He gave a wan smile, which she hadn’t expected. ‘No, I’m afraid not. I told you, I never expected to have to fight the Dragon.’

‘There’s got to be something we can do.’ Alice felt the flutter of fear again, and balled up her fists. ‘What do we know about the Dragon?’

‘It’s big?’ Isaac offered. ‘And it has big pointy teeth.’

‘It moves like a snake,’ Alice said. ‘It’s fast, and agile.’

‘It—’

‘Shh.’ Alice held up a hand. ‘Did you hear something?’