This was his third day on the trail and he still had twelve miles to go. But what lay immediately before him was dismaying, a bleak slope of loose broken granite that probably would begin to slide the moment he stepped out onto it, sending him crashing onto the rocks of the distant valley floor. Even if this was only a training exercise, he knew that he could get quite authentically killed out here if he blundered.

But going back the way he had come and trying some other route of descent was even less appealing.

Once more to risk that narrow ledge of a trail winding in miserable switchbacks over the face of the cliff, the thousand-foot drop that a single false step would bring, those ghastly overhangs that had forced him to crawl forward with his nose to the ground and barely half a foot's clearance above the back of his head—no. Better to trust himself to that field of rubble in front of him than to try to turn back. Besides, there was that creature prowling still up there, the vourhain, one of the seven trackers. Having come past those sickle tusks and great curving claws once, he had no appetite for confronting them a second time.

Using his cudgel as a walking-stick, he edged warily out onto the gravel field.

The sun was bright and penetrating, this far down Castle Mount, well below the perpetual band of clouds that sheathed the great mountain in its upper middle reaches. Its brilliant light struck fragments of mica embedded in the shattered sharp-edged granite of the slope and rebounded into his eyes, dazzling him.

He put one foot carefully forward, leaned into his step, found the rubble firm beneath his weight. He took another step. Another. A few small chunks of rock came loose and went skittering down the slope, flashing like little mirrors as they turned over and over in their fall.

There seemed no danger yet that the entire slope would give way. He continued downward. His ankles and knees, sore from yesterday's difficult crossing of a high windswept pass, protested the steep downhill angle. The straps of his backpack sliced into him. He was thirsty and his head ached slightly: the air was thin in this stretch of Castle Mount. There were moments when he found himself wishing he was safely back at the Castle, poring over the texts on constitutional law and ancient history that he had been condemned to study for the past six months. He had to smile at that, remembering how in the weariest days of his tutoring he had been desperately counting the days until he was released from his books and could move on to the excitement of the survival test. Just now, though, his days in the library of the Castle did not seem nearly so burdensome, nor this journey anything but a grueling ordeal.

He looked up. The sun seemed to fill half the sky. He raised his hand before his eyes as a shield.