When Elowen’s lamp was lit, she set off into the cave with the others behind her. There was a tiny scrap of a path between the mounds of rubbish and the cave wall. Even so, they had to slip and slither over shards of china, glass and pottery. It broke even more under their feet. Tiny tink, tink, tink sounds and lots of crunching, as if they were walking on especially hard snow.

‘Did anyone bring bandages?’ Lug asked, his voice echoing inside the cave. ‘If we fall over on this stuff, we could slice open an artery and bleed to death.’

‘Are you going to worry about everything we do?’ Liska asked, rolling her eyes.

‘I’m just being realistic,’ said Lug. Then added ‘Someone has to be’ under his breath.

The piles of broken rubbish reached up almost to the cave roof. As they went further and further back, the pieces of shattered pots and jugs became more and more buried in dust, rubble and what looked like rat droppings. From the flickering shadows cast by Elowen’s lamp, they could hear scurryings and snifflings. Liska’s nose twitched as it filled with the scent of rodents. That, and something else. Something . . . feline.

‘The entrance to the secret path should be around here,’ said Elowen. ‘Unless it’s been buried in old crockery. It’s so hard to tell . . . the last time I was here, there were only a few cartloads of junk.’

‘Why is there a secret path, anyway?’ Lug asked. ‘And why put it somewhere so . . . disgusting and dangerous?’

‘Why, it’s the best place for a secret,’ said Elowen. ‘Who would ever want to look here? And it was built to escape the city in an emergency. There used to be lots of wyvern attacks when I was younger.’

‘That must have been before the stormsingers created the mists,’ said Liska. ‘We don’t get any wyverns now.’

‘Yes,’ said Elowen. ‘There were no mists when we first arrived here. Just hungry, flying, fire-breathing monsters.’

‘I don’t suppose you were one of the first stormsingers?’ Lug asked. ‘Then you could magic a mist to surround us when we’re . . . out there. To keep us safe from monsters.’

Elowen patted him on the shoulder. ‘I’m afraid my magic is rather weak at the moment. It always is for a while once I have woken from one of my sleeps. It takes a few weeks for things to get back to normal when you’re dead, you know.’

‘But you do have magic, right?’ Lug pressed. ‘You can help us with some storm spells when we need it?’

Elowen ignored him, stopping to peer at a section of wall, holding up the lamp to see better. It plunged the rest of the cave into darkness, and the skitterings of small animals grew louder.

‘Ah . . . this might be it,’ she said, laying a hand on the wall. ‘Help me push.’