It was morning.
The twisting little road started to gather carved pillars and gates. Caewen, who was walking first, kept batting at lines of spiderwebs, frowning as she did.
“No one’s been along this path recently, and maybe not for a long time. The webs attest to that.”
Dapplegrim had been sniffing the ground behind her. “Not even wild goats, or a cat-o-the-mountains. I’m starting to regret this path. Hurm. There’s a wrongness in the air.”
The progressed around a few more turns, before coming out onto a wide view: ahead of them the path split. The main road shot over a thin bridge and disappeared into a chiselled doorway. The stone faces all about the opening were caved as if they were the turrets, walls and columns of a grand city: but the windows did not open onto anything. It was a sort of fakery of a city. Beautiful. Delicately carved. But unreal.
The other path doubled back and shot down a ravine that had not been visible before.
When the travellers reached the split, they could see clearly that the other path went on for a little way, then disappeared into ivy tangles, down in the rifts and valleys below.
Dapplegrim sighed. “That way smells of boggart. Might be we’ve no choice after all…”
As he spoke, Fleat squinted up at the sun, then said, “At least the morning is just barely started. We’ll have more light than if we’d tried the boggarty paths yesterday.”
“That is true enough.” Caewen was looking at the dark opening, plunging into the mountainside. “What lies that way, I wonder?”
With a shake of his mane, Dapple replied. “Death. Those are tombs of an ancient and lost people. I recognise the pillars and carvings. I don’t know anything about them, except that their death-places are evil. They left malice in the darkness to stop grave-robbers.”
Caewen mused on this. “And there’s no telling if a grave-place would open out anywhere else anyway.” We seem to be back on the previous path. She looked down the other valley, at the narrow walls and long, sloping path. “Or at least, mostly. I think we are a little farther north than we were? We’ve probably cut around some of the boggart holes.” She considered the path. “And there will probably be fewer guards on this approach. Maybe even none, if we’re lucky. The boggarts might not expect anyone to be foolish enough to approach them from the direction of these tombs. The air here feels thoroughly evil.”
Everyone nodded. There seemed no point in waiting, and they were about to start off down the narrow defile, back towards the ivy-tangles, when a disturbance glanced across the air above them. By the time any of them knew where to look, she had already landed: a creature made of white feathers, mist and a few of the shapes and curves of a naked woman. Her features shifted and fused, melted and changed. It looked as if the creature–whatever it was–was having trouble keeping its form together.
Dapplegrim snarled and took a step towards the thing. He whispered, low and wary. “The rest of you: stay back. This is a thing of some power.”
But Caewen put a hand on his shoulder. “Easy, Dapple. I know this one. It is the sleeping queen. I spoke to her yesterday. She has been watching us.” Caewen turned her attention to the half-heron, half-woman creature. “Haven’t you?”
It nodded.
“I thought you said she couldn’t leave her little mausoleum?”
“She can’t, not in her true form. This is a spell-wrought body, isn’t it?”
Again, another nod.
When the creature spoke, its voice was thin and fragile. “I will soon be mist. I found the necromancer prince. Athairdrost. He is carrying an ancient object of power, as you suspected. And there are armies abroad too. As you said.”
“So, will you help us? The whole of the world is racing towards war, and no one seems to even know why.”
“When have princes ever needed a reason for war?”
Caewen shook her head. “No. There’s more here. Prophetic visions about threats and attacks. But it makes no sense. Everyone seems to think everyone else is the threat. We need to find out the truth. And we need to take the Old Great Spell from Athairdrost. No one who is willing to make slaves of souls should be allowed to keep such a thing. It’s too dangerous.”
The heron-thing was already half mist. She spoke haltingly, and some of her words were hard to hear. “I–will–help–but–my–flesh–is–“
And she was gone.
A curl of silver mist, like the wings of a butterfly, floated away southwards. The white-grey fog was caught in a breath of wind and tumbled and spun until it was hundreds of feet away, and down the the slope.
“She exhausted herself. Hurm. I wager that one has not had much practise making mage’s flesh. Not in a long time. She’ll need to rest.”
“Hopefully, we’ll see her again,” replied Caewen. “In need, or in not.”
“Hopefully,” agreed Dapplegrim.
They turned then and walked down the path that led away to their left. It cut a track on a roughly north-westerly line, creeping along the bottom of a defile. The air grew colder in the shadow of the little, narrow valley, and the ground was soon damp. A few patches of old snow still clung to the stone in places where the shadows were thickest.
It didn’t take them long to approach the wall of dark ivy: green and glossy on top, thickly shaded and full of corded, twisted coils beneath.