I agreed. But only when the glow of the embers had faded did I let go of consciousness. I dreamed I was flying over Obernewtyn in my spirit-form but when I tried to fly down to it, a barrier held me back. Then the dream changed and I was flying over the mountains. It was night, and they were glowing green. I could not tell if this was because they were tainted or because I was seeing their aura. Then I noticed a black road winding its way north and realised that if the glowing earth was tainted, the road must be clean, or at least less tainted. A hard wind began to blow, howling and skirling through gaps and hollows in the stony slopes, and gradually it came to me that I could hear someone crying out. Then I looked up and saw a dragon the colour of fire dropping towards me, talons outstretched. Its eyes were full of madness.

‘Dragon!’ I screamed, and woke.

Chapter 19

19

I opened my mind to the smell of ash and to the dazzling radiance of sunlight flooding through the entrance of the cave. I sat up, squinting and blinking in confusion, my heart still hammering from the dream. Had it been a dream, I wondered? It was impossible to tell from such a brief fragment, so I dismissed it from my mind and went outside to look for the others. Gahltha was standing just below on the ledge path, nibbling at some brown lichen growing between the stones and Darga lay stretched out at its broken edge, his brown eyes gazing down over the flint vale in a way that made me wonder if he was seeing it or some inner vision. The vale looked sharper and blacker than ever in the clear bright morning light, and now I could see mountains beyond it to the north, dim and purple with distance.

There was no sign of Maruman.

I went to wash myself and fill the gourd bottles and found that the water source Darga had sniffed out the previous night was another ribbon waterfall, albeit a very small one. It was dropping from a spring higher up the mountain into the void beside the ledge path, rather than onto it. This was fortunate or we would all have got a soaking when we went on, but it did give off a haze of droplets that had caused a slick moss to grow over the stones. Thinking of Gahltha’s hoofs, I decided to bring some gravel from the cave to spread before we tried to cross.

I got back to the cave to find Maruman had returned and was waiting impatiently, and after I had restored pack, sword, bow and quiver to Gahltha, and shouldered the remaining wood, we went on.