I dragged myself away from the view and set about removing Gahltha’s burdens before checking his back and belly and salving the places that had been rubbed by the straps. Then I drank deeply, the water so icy that it made my teeth ache, and refilled the gourd bottles. Next, I washed my face and feet, despite the fact that the air was still cold, and changed my underclothes and socks.

Maruman watched me the whole time with a truculent look in his good yellow eye, tail snaking backwards and forwards. ‘I’m ready,’ I told him mildly now, after I had restored Gahltha’s burdens.

Instead of coming to me to be lifted up, the old cat turned and stalked off along the road. Taking my lead from him, I told Gahltha that I would walk. ‘Will he ever forgive me?’ I asked wearily, and felt the horse’s mind ripple with amusement, but he made no response.

Partway around the face of the next mountain, we came to a great pile of rubble fallen from the slope higher up, and as we picked our way over it, I glanced up uneasily at the overhanging earth above, worried at the thought of accidentally setting off another rock fall. Just beyond the rubble I saw that the outer edge of the road had broken away, leaving a rough-edged ledge little wider than the one we had traversed the previous day. I did not know whether to be sorry or glad when it began to slope downward, for there was too much shadow below to see precisely where it led. Late in the afternoon we had dropped low enough for me to see that what I had taken for a great dark chasm running from north to south was a flint vale. I had seen several of these on the other side of the range and I wondered if this was our immediate destination.

‘We cannot go that way,’ Darga sent in his sombre mindvoice. ‘It is tainted.’

A little chill ran over me, for this was our first sight of tainted ground, and yet I was not truly surprised. I had been expecting us to come to poisoned ground almost from the first moment I had stepped from the rift. The surprising thing was that it had taken so long. No doubt irritated by my emotions, Maruman suddenly chivvied us all to move more quickly. I had to stifle an urge to demand that the old cat tell me where we were going. In truth, I was dreading nightfall, knowing it would be very dark again and that once more we would have to spend the night on the ledge. I would not dare to sleep, I knew, and so the long cold night would creep by.