The irascible old feline was now accepting the food I offered as eagerly as Darga, which told me he was finding nothing to hunt. Yet for all we had reached tainted ground, there was still life. I saw a few birds flying in an arrow formation very high at midday one day, and another day, a firelizard sliding into a crack, its movements sluggish in the cold. Most of all, I worried about Gahltha, for although I had seen several patches of the scabby brown lichen he had previously nibbled at, he now ignored it so that I knew it must be tainted. My own supply of food was dwindling, too, since I could not replenish it by foraging. Water might become a problem as well, for Darga had rejected the last two pools we had passed.

Wherever Maruman was taking us, we had better arrive soon.

At dusk, the ridge road came to a sudden end at the edge of a great dark pit. Darga stopped short of it, sniffing the way ahead, and finally he went down from the road and up the side of the mountain to the east some way before turning to head north. Twice that night he stopped and conferred with Maruman, and listening in to their exchange, I learned that there were patches of taint ahead that could not be avoided, but that clean ground lay beyond them. Maruman bade him lead us across it, avoiding the tainted ground as much as possible, and Gahltha insisted that Maruman and I ride. His hoofs would give him some protection. I was worried about Darga and nagged until he gave in to my insistence and allowed me to bandage his paws using the strips of linen from my healing kit.

Fortunately we had not been moving along the side of the mountain for more than half an hour when Darga announced that we had got beyond the tainted area. I was relieved and prayed that the taint in them had been slight, but only time would tell. At least none of us had begun to vomit, and it had been dark enough for me to see that the ground about us was not glowing.