Finally he stopped running at the mouth of a narrow fissure in the granite. The split was in a giant slab twenty metres tall, and ran all the way through, like a sliced turnip. They would have to shuffle along it sideways to fit, dragging their packs behind them, and it would slow them down considerably. They would be sitting ducks if Thresher caught up with them.

‘We have to go through there?’ Lug wailed. ‘We’ll never make it! The hunter will catch us for sure!’

‘Isn’t there another way?’ Liska asked Fishbone. After watching him bound through the rocks, her respect for the cat-creature had grown enormously.

‘No,’ Fishbone shook his head, but a crackle of mischief danced in his eyes. ‘This is the only safe way down from the mountain. But us kittimews have a surprise in it. Quick now. In, in, in and start moving.’

He hurried them up with quick jabs of his claws. They were very sharp, the needly tips even piercing through Liska’s leather armour. The three humans were soon edging their way through the crack, their noses almost brushing the solid rock in front, their backs squashed against the wall behind.

Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle – they made such slow progress it was painful.

Gradually the hole they had squeezed through began to fade into the distance. Liska kept her eyes fixed on it, waiting for Thresher’s cruel face to appear.

Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. The gap in the rock stretched above them: up, up, to where a strip of misty sky could be seen overhead. Liska willed Elowen to go faster. She longed to be out in the open again, with space around her to run, to change, to fly.

O, Undrentree, please don’t let me die here, trapped like an animal, she prayed.

After the longest ten minutes of her life, she heard a gasp as Elowen finally stepped free. A few more wiggles and Liska felt her left toe emerge into the open. She was about to whoop with joy when her eye caught a movement at the far end of the narrow passage.

Something – someone – was there.

She stared, pausing in her shuffling, and a low moaning noise of horror escaped from her throat.

A silhouette of a tall, slender figure with spiked hair, a barbed spear clutched in one fist. It blocked the entrance for a second, before stepping aside and making a beckoning motion with its hand.

That’s Thresher, Liska thought. But who is she calling? Who else is after us?

The question should have been what else. As Liska watched, frozen, another form appeared. Liquid, shapeless, the thing edged into the gap, wisps of thin smoke trailing from its surface. It stretched itself as it moved, pushing out limbs, a head – all clumsily formed from the grey sludge of the rot.