Yet was it truly by chance I had brought it along, when it described preparations for a journey into these very mountains? Especially since he who scribed it had come this way carrying with him Cassandra’s key, which I would need to complete my quest. Initially I had supposed that Atthis had the key, or that she would tell me where to find it, but she had never done that with any of the other clues or devices left for me. She had aided me only when my life was in danger, and she had always directed me obliquely. Indeed, perhaps she had not sent fliers to fetch me because she intended me to acquire Cassandra’s key before I reached the ken.

After all, she had told me long ago that I would come to the ken after I had got all of the devices and messages Cassy had left for me in the Land and surely she would have known then that things had transpired differently from the way Hannah or Cassy had foreseen, that Hannah had not returned to Obernewtyn and that Jacob had taken the key with him when he left seeking his dream?

If I was right, Atthis might have been contemplating how to ensure that I would find what must be found. The fact that Maruman had unexpectedly arrived with Darga to get me might very well be part of the Agyllian’s efforts to correct my course. I would not know until I could stand before Atthis and ask. Until then, if I was right and I was supposed to find Cassandra’s key, the only question that mattered was how far Jacob had got in his quest for his dream city.

The old Beforetimer had never mentioned the route he meant to take into the mountains, but he had referred to various landmarks and even to some sort of Beforetime building where he had hoped to find instruments that he could use to see the place he believed to be the location of his dream city. I had skimmed these parts of the journal quickly, because at the time I had simply been looking for the location of his dream city. But I did remember that Jacob had admitted the possibility that much or all that he remembered or knew about the mountains and the land beyond it might have been altered by the Great White, which he had called the holocaust. Certainly he had known the mountains were tainted for he had described instruments and devices he meant to carry to enable him to read the level of taint, which he had called contamination, and to protect himself from it. He had also planned to wear a safesuit because, although the vehicle that he would ride in would protect him to begin with, it would only carry him so far, and then he must walk.