Every now and then the sky was pierced by a roar. Myrtle usually replied and Liska spent a few terrified minutes looking around her, waiting for a titanic winged beast to swoop down and snatch her out of the air.

But, thank the Tree, they only saw one or two of the creatures and those were in the far distance. Just smudges amongst the clouds. Even so, they looked massive, gargantuan. Easily the size of the dead wyvern they had seen the Poxpunks carry away, perhaps even bigger.

They flew for hours and, other than a dull ache in her shoulders, Liska found that gliding was almost effortless. She just kept her wings spread and followed the breeze, gently rising and falling as the currents of air took her. Every now and then she circled around to see if Myrtle’s passengers were coping. Lug and Fishbone were usually fast asleep, and Elowen was watching the ground far below, searching for a familiar landmark.

It was nearing dusk when she finally spotted one. Liska heard her anguished cry pierce the air behind her. She banked hard, swooping around to fly alongside Myrtle.

‘What’s the matter?’ she shouted against the wind. ‘What have you seen?’

‘Almberg!’ Elowen shouted back. ‘It’s gone!’

Wondering what her friend was talking about, Liska looked down at the ground below. Elowen was pointing to a sandy-coloured cluster of stone rectangles half buried by dirt and trees, scattered haphazardly at the edge of an ocean of forest.

‘What is it?’ Liska called. ‘An old town?’

‘It is . . . it was . . . a city,’ Elowen replied. And then in a voice so quiet that only Liska’s fox hearing could pick it out: ‘It was my home.’

Sensing the place was important and realising that they wouldn’t be able to fly on in the dark, Liska began a slow descent towards this Almberg. Behind her, Myrtle followed, letting out a trail of smoke as she dropped.

Within a few minutes they were gliding above the ruins. Liska spotted the shells of grand three-storey houses now reduced to one or two walls of ornately carved stone. Under centuries of dust, dirt and plant growth, she saw the outline of broad streets, circular structures that might have been theatres or stadiums and, roughly in the centre of it all, the lifeless trunk of a long-dead tree. One too big to have been anything other than a sacred tree just like the one at the heart of Arborven.

Liska landed on the plaza before it, kicking up a cloud of dust as she came down. Myrtle touched the ground a few seconds later, skidding to a halt in front of the tree itself. They all looked up at its bare, petrified branches as they stretched skywards. So similar in size to their own, but cold, dead and empty.