Nurd shook his head. “I don’t know, but”—he pointed to his right, where the fires seemed to be burning brighter, the horizon lost to clouds and mists—“I’d guess that right over there is the Mountain of Despair, which means that we want to go—”

“Somewhere else?” suggested Wormwood.

“Anywhere else,” agreed Nurd.

“Are we going to have to keep running forever?” asked Wormwood, and there was something in his voice that almost caused Nurd to hug him, until he thought better of it and settled for patting Wormwood halfheartedly on the back. He wasn’t sure what one might catch from hugging Wormwood, but whatever it was he didn’t want it.

“We’ll keep on the move for now,” he said. He was about to add something more when a shadow passed over the stones before him. It grew smaller and smaller as whatever was above them commenced a circling descent.

“Douse the light!” said Nurd, and instantly Wormwood quenched the flame of the torch, leaving the cave in darkness.

A red figure dropped to the ground within a stone’s throw of the cave, its great bat wings raised above its back. It was eight feet tall and had the body of a man, but a forked tail curled from the base of its spine, and two twisted horns emerged from its bald head. It knelt and ran its claws over the rocks before it, then raised them to its nose and sniffed warily. A long bifurcated tongue unrolled from its mouth and licked the ground.

“Oh no,” said Wormwood. He thought that he could almost see the marks of rubber upon the rocks where Nurd had been forced to give the car a little too much gas in order to get them closer to the cave.

The creature on the rocks grew very still. It had no ears, merely a hole on either side of its head, but it was clearly listening. Then it turned its head, and they glimpsed its face for the first time.

It had eight black eyes, like those of some great spider, and mandibles at its jaws. Its nostrils were ragged perforations set in a snout of sharp bone. Nurd saw them widen and contract, glistening with mucus. For a moment the creature stared straight at the mouth of the cave in which they were hiding, and they saw the muscles in its legs tighten as it prepared to spring. Its mandibles clicked, and its jaws made a sucking noise as though it could already taste them, but instead of exploring further, it unfolded its wings to their fullest expanse and it shot into the air. The sound of flapping reached their ears, but slowly began to fade as the creature moved away, heading north in the direction of the bright flames.

“Did it see us?” asked Wormwood.