The rift continued to zig and zag, but now I noticed that the cuts east were always longer. I wondered if it was yet another legacy of the tremors that had occurred during the Great White – the result, so the Teknoguilders said, of the potency of the weapons that had been used by the Beforetimers, which had roused terrifying forces locked inside the earth. I had no idea what we would find at the end of the rift, but given how steeply and closely the mountains rose up beside one another, it seemed unlikely that we would find a convenient canyon or valley waiting for us. Certainly I had seen few canyons when the Agyllians had brought me to the ken. On the other hand, I had really seen only the western side of the mountain range, since the birds dwelt on that side of the great spine of mountains that ran along the centre of it. The high jagged giants would have blocked any clear view of the eastern side of the range. Suddenly I found myself remembering that Jacob had scribed of mountain paths or roads forged in the Beforetime. That I had seen none of these likely meant that, if they existed still, they were on the eastern side of the range. I made up my mind to re-read the journal more attentively as soon as I had the chance, but one thing was certain: whether or not there were ancient roads he might have used for his vehicle, Jacob could not have travelled into the mountains through the rift because the vehicle he had drawn in his journal would not have fitted through it.

And something else was beginning to nag at me.

If Dragon and I were not to travel together with the expedition to the Red Land, and if I had not been mistaken in my reading of Cassy’s clue, which referred to those things, then something had happened to prevent the future Cassy had seen from coming to pass. In which case the final clue might be in the Red Land even if I had been unable to accompany the expedition because of the need to find Cassandra’s key. And what of the visions Maryon and Dell had experienced of Dragon and me in the Red Land, which had occurred long after Jacob had left Obernewtyn with Cassandra’s key? One mistaken vision that put me in the Red Land I could accept, but that the two most powerful futuretellers in the Land should have made a mistake, and that it should be the same mistake, simply did not seem possible.