We had not got far along the ridge when I realised that the top was not merely flat, it was the remnant of another ancient road cut into the stone. Indeed it looked as if the Beforetimers had actually sheered off the top of the mountains along the ridge to make a flat road. And instead of being merely smoothed bare stone, there was a strange surface to the road, a thin black layer of some unknown material that crackled strangely under Gahltha’s hoofs. Seeing it, he had immediately insisted Maruman and I ride on his back.

We had not gone far before Darga wordlessly moved into the lead for the first time. I looked around uneasily, unable to see the blackness that often indicated tainted terrain, but my senses fizzed enough that I knew there was taint nearby. It also occurred to me that I had not seen a single bird that day, not even at dawn. Indeed, there was something in the quality of the silence that reminded me unpleasantly of the heavy, dead stillness of the Silent Vale, where I had been forced to collect poisonous whitestick as an orphan child.

Before midday I had to get down and walk. It was simply too cold to sit still atop a horse, for while the ridge had looked flat, it was in fact ascending in steps.

It was then, as I trudged on alone, that I was struck by the strangeness of walking along the remnant of a Beforetime road cut through the high mountains, and I wondered why the Beforetimers had created such a thing in an area that Jacob had called remote and sparsely populated. Was it because of the Taillard Observatory?

Late in the afternoon, we came upon a pool of water caught in a depression formed about a Beforetime pole that had been broken off at shoulder height, the top part of it lying a little distance away. Darga pronounced the water clean, ignoring the pole, but I was hesitant to drink. Maruman demanded irritably what was the use of having a guide if I doubted him, so finally I knelt and broke the thin crust of ice on the water and drank. When I stood up again, I went to examine the broken end of the pole. The cryptic markings upon it were similar to the markings on other such poles I had seen here and there in the Land, and some said they had always been built near Beforetime roads, though none knew what their purpose had been. One actually stood intact close to the Silent Vale. The young Herder priest who had travelled there with us had been terrified of it and had made us pray till our knees ached before he had permitted us to pass by it.

It was strange that no one had ever come across these remnants of the past, but that might be in part because the forays humans had made into the heights had all been made to the west of the range.