There were seventeen male wolves and fourteen females, some little more than cubs, but there were no very old wolves. Descantra was the eldest and I saw no sign of Gobor One Ear. There were no young cubs either, and though it might just be the season, it might also be that the pack had split. Certainly I had reckoned there to be more of them when Descantra and Gobor had led them to the Skylake. Had some refused to go with Rheagor, or had he commanded them to stay?

The pack leader came to me. ‘Come tha and tha pack follow,’ he commanded, and turned to lope away. There was a little flurry of activity as we hastened to mount up and follow the wolves. Analivia rode behind Swallow on Sendari and Ahmedri rode behind them alone. He had offered to have Gavyn ride with him, but the boy had refused, setting off at a loose, easy run after the wolves, his face wreathed in delight. Rasial bounded by his side, red tongue lolling. I rode behind on Gahltha, and Darga loped beside us. Maruman lay across my shoulders, sinking in his claws, and Dameon brought up the rear on Faraf. High overhead, the owl soared and dipped.

We were headed back towards the gorge at the southern end of the valley when some impulse made me turn to look back. The mist had thinned and now the Skylake lay still as glass beyond the trees. Two pale stone mountain peaks rising sharply above the rim of the crater caught the moonlight, and reflected in the water, they looked like nothing so much as the horns of some vast dark animal.

And Jacob’s journal had spoken of horns …

We led the horses over the rubble and into the defile, then the wolf led the way along it until, close to morning, we were standing once more above the valley and looking into it. Bathed in the subtle radiance of moonlight, the lake had an eldritch air. The others stopped to gaze down into it in wonderment, for they had entered the valley from the east and so had not seen it from above.

‘It looks like an eye,’ Analivia muttered and Ahmedri made a warding-off gesture towards her that I had sometimes seen tribesmen make, though never, I thought, Bruna or Jakoby.

The wolves continued north, leading us up a low slope to a higher slope. The latter was very steep, but there was another remnant of a Beforetime road cut into it, which eased our passage, though it was narrow enough that we had to travel single file. Now that I had recognised these flat broken-edged ledges as the remnants of roads, I could not see them as anything else, but the others, who evidently had not encountered any such roads on their journeys to the valley of the Skylake, merely marvelled at the flatness of the stone.