I wanted to ask Maruman why he had not told me at once that Atthis had died, but I did not. Probably he had feared I would refuse to go with him or fall apart with grief. I was grieved but I was also frightened at the thought of having to face the remainder of my quest without the ancient bird’s guidance, but who was to blame for what had happened? Atthis had warned me that there would be a price to pay for saving Rushton, and I had agreed to pay it. I would pay it again, I knew, even knowing what would come.

I bent down and lifted Maruman into my arms. ‘The OldOne would not have let things come out like this if she had not foreseen that it was still possible for me to complete my quest,’ I told him gently. The old cat stretched up and butted at my chin before clawing his way back onto my shoulder.

Despite my hopes, the clouds soon closed over again and it had just begun to rain as we came up a slight slope and found it ended abruptly at the eastern edge of a vast, deep cirque with smooth high stone walls curving up to jagged edges. Cupped at the base and centre of the crater was an unnaturally perfect round lake that reflected the sky with such fidelity that it made me feel dizzy to look down into it.

‘The valley of the Skylake,’ I murmured, wondering how we would get down into it.

I pushed back my hood, to Maruman’s disgust, and ran my eyes around the outer rim, ignoring the rain wetting my cheeks. There was no way to climb down the smooth, steep concave walls, and no possibility of using a rope. The valley was bare, save for a dark swathe of greenery growing around the southern end of the lake and running up against a deep fold in the wall at that end of the crater. It might be a gorge, given that the two mountains rising up behind it met at that point. I could see no other means of getting into the valley.

I glanced at Maruman and then at Darga to see what they made of my idea, but neither commented or offered any suggestion, perhaps because there was only one obvious course. We would have to make our way around the rim of the crater, and it frustrated me to know that we would be literally heading back the way we had come.

I scanned the base of the cirque again, but there was no sign of Gahltha. Doubtless he was grazing under the trees. I tried to seek him out, but the result was a flabby probe too weak and unfocused to send anywhere. It was a reminder, timely maybe, that using the spirit-force always took its toll. From past experience, it would be at least a twoday before I would be able to use my senses effectively again, though if I could sleep, my healing abilities would effect their repairs more quickly. I let the probe dissolve, consoling myself with the fact that the buzz at the edge of my senses meant there was tainted ground nearby, which would undoubtedly have blocked any probe I had managed to send out anyway.