‘We’re going through the mist?’ said Lug. ‘Won’t it poison us?’

‘Not us,’ said Liska, turning away from the view of Arborven. ‘But the wyverns don’t like it. It’s made to blind them and clog up their throats so they can’t breathe fire.’ She knew quite a lot about it, having grown up with the stormsingers who visited the towers and used them as bases to conjure up the constant fog. She often watched them, leaning out over their platforms, waving their arms in complicated patterns as clouds of smoky vapour billowed around them. ‘We should be able to walk through it. Although it might make finding our way a bit tricky.’

‘A bit tricky’ was an understatement.

They walked across the humped back of the mountain’s top, over to where the bleached trunk of an old tree stood. From there Elowen was able to find a faint path – barely more than a goats’ track – that spidered its way down the mountainside in zigs and zags. It looked treacherous enough, but after only a few metres it vanished into the swirling grey mist, making it even more deadly.

Liska decided it would be safer to tackle it with two feet. Enough time had passed since her last transformation, so she shifted back, taking her rucksack from Elowen and clutching it to her chest.

The three of them then edged their way down the ledge sideways, backs to the rock, one slithering step at a time, trying to squint through the mist as they went.

It was so thick – like trying to walk through cotton wool. Liska could feel it clinging to the back of her throat, clustering in cold drips to her hair and clothes. They hadn’t been walking long before everything she wore was soaked through.

‘I think we have to climb down this bit,’ came Elowen’s voice from up ahead. The path had reached a patch of fallen rock where a thick slab of granite had sheared off. There was nothing beyond but a steep drop, the bottom hidden in the mists.

‘I can’t do that!’ Lug had crawled to the edge on hands and knees and was peering over. ‘It could go down for miles and miles! There’s only tiny cracks to grip on to!’

‘I’ll go first,’ said Elowen as if they had just spotted a fun-looking mud slide to go down rather than a plunge to certain death. ‘Let’s tie ourselves together, just in case.’

She pulled a coil of gleaming, silver-stranded rope from her pack, and Liska cursed again. Another thing she had forgotten.