‘I just know.’ Noon bit her lip, looking away to where Vintage rode ahead of them. ‘And it’s best if you don’t ask me about it any more.’
As it turned out, they did not receive a visitor until the night before the valleys and empty lakes of Greenslick revealed itself. There was a crescent moon, blurred with fog as though seen through a misted window, and a cold wind was whipping across the grasses, filling the night with an unsettling wail. Tor pulled up his hood, and Vintage threw some more sticks on the fire. It appeared to be on the verge of going out.
‘What I would really like now,’ said Tor, ‘is a very large glass of wine. Do you know, Vintage, that you promised me that I would have wine every night I was in your service? Do you remember that?’
‘Did I?’ Vintage clutched her chin and glared at the fire as though deep in thought. ‘I am quite certain I would never promise anything as ridiculous as that, my darling.’
Tor narrowed his eyes at her, and held his hands out towards the sputtering fire. ‘Wine, every bloody day. Did we write it down? I’m sure I have the paper somewhere.’
Noon leaned forward, her hand turned towards the fire, and it suddenly bloomed into emerald flames. Tor and Vintage both jumped back a little, and Noon shrugged.
‘We don’t have wine, but we don’t have to be cold.’
‘Well, yes, my dear, but I am also rather fond of my eyebrows.’
‘What did you take the energy from to do that?’
Noon glanced at him from under her brow. ‘From the grass under us. I lived on these plains as a kid. I always took from the grass.’
‘There’s certainly enough of it. So there will be a patch of dead, frozen grass where you’re sitting now?’
‘Would you rather a dead, frozen Eboran where you’re sitting now?’
‘Quiet, the both of you. Can you hear that?’
There was a sound, distant and growing closer. It made Tor think of a book falling downstairs, leather covers flapping. In a moment, he was on his feet, the Ninth Rain in his hands.
‘Where is it? Can you see?’
The sky was black as slate, suddenly threatening. Vintage unhooked the crossbow from her waist. ‘We should find shelter.’
‘Oh yes, perhaps we could hide under the grass. Witch, you’d better gather some more of your winnowfire. If we can surprise her, we might have a better chance.’
‘No, wait!’ She had her hands cupped over her eyebrows, peering at the sky. ‘I can see her. It’s Fulcor, it’s just Fulcor. Put your bloody sword away.’
‘Your bat? Why is it still following us?’
‘I don’t bloody know, do I?’
The great creature landed a few feet away from them, leathery wings beating the grass flat. It shuffled towards the fire, moving in the ungainly way bats did when faced with horizontal ground. Their hobbled ponies snorted and shifted, edging away from the beast as best they could. Noon went to it, stroking its squashed velvety nose.
‘That thing could lead the Winnowry straight to us.’ Tor frowned at the bat. It had a pair of dead rabbits in its mouth, which it dropped at Noon’s feet. ‘Can’t you make it go away?’
‘I’d rather make you go away. Fulcor saved my life, and probably yours too.’
Vintage had approached the creature too, peering closely at its enormous crinkled ears. Fulcor made a snuffling noise, apparently enjoying the attention.
‘The lad does have a point, Noon, my dear. This lovely girl is hardly inconspicuous, is she?’
‘She doesn’t seem to pay much attention to what I think.’ Noon pulled the silver whistle from round her neck and gave four shrill blasts on it. The bat twitched her ears once, and shook herself all over, but did not move from her patch on the grass. ‘See? I think she’s like me. Fulcor wanted to be free all along, and now she does what she likes.’ Noon bent down and picked up the rabbits, turning her face away from them, but Tor thought he caught a hint of blush around her cheeks. She was, he realised, embarrassed to have such a sentimental thought about an animal. ‘Besides, Fulcor saves our skins and brings us dinner. That makes her more useful than most people I’ve ever met.’
Fulcor had gone by the time dawn spread its watery light across the plains. They cooked the rabbits, eating one for breakfast and parcelling the other away for later. From there the morning was filled with monotonous riding and featureless grass, but the weather had turned. The sky arched over them like a blue-glass bowl, and the sun was relentless, so that Tor soon found he had to remove his cloak and bundle it on his lap, and Noon took off her hat and fanned her face with it. There was no one out here to see the tattoo on her forehead, after all.
All morning they climbed a gradual incline until they stood at the summit of a hill, and falling away below them was the ruined landscape of Greenslick. Tor grimaced. He had been here before with Vintage, and the view had not improved.
‘What is wrong with this place?’ Noon looked paler than she had a moment ago. She reached up and absently wiped the sweat from her forehead.
‘The scars of the worm people,’ said Vintage. Her mouth was turned down at the corners. ‘Quite a sight, isn’t it?’
Once a land of thickly wooded hills and bountiful lakes, Greenslick was a barren, broken place. The hills were raw heaps of stone and earth, mostly half collapsed – Tor could see the evidence of landslides everywhere – with many sporting thick swathes of the shining varnish. The lakes were dark holes, filled with shadows. In the distance, Tor could just make the scar that was the ruins of Trisladen’s largest city, a confusion of rubble and varnish. On their last visit, Vintage had insisted they make a pilgrimage there. It was not a memory Tor looked back on with any fondness.
They moved off down the hill, travelling through the last vegetation they would see for some time, until they came to a stone obelisk, standing alone in the patchy grass. There were words carved on it.
‘Do you remember what it says, Tormalin, my dear?’
Tor sighed. ‘If I remember correctly, it says something incredibly cheery like, oh, “witness the graveyard of Trisladen” and “something something despair”.’
‘It also lists the number of people killed in the Eighth Rain, in this region alone,’ said Vintage. ‘It is a very sobering number.’
Through the sweltering afternoon they reached the bottom of the grassy hill and began to climb another. The difference was significant. Stripped of its trees and foliage the hill was a rubble of earth and stone, liable to shift underfoot at any moment. Repeatedly, Vintage told them to go carefully and slowly, stopping a few times to send Tor ahead to look for the safest path. Eventually, they crested this hill also and, finally, the home of Esiah Godwort was revealed, crouching on the very edge of Greenslick.