They stopped and broke their fast and then set out. The trail did indeed take them around the mountain and northward, the ground slowly rising as they went. Engvyr kept a weather-eye on the countryside, the lay of the trail and the signs along the way. He was becoming a better tracker and what he saw now disturbed him. He spoke to his father about it as they travelled.
“Have you thought about who made this trail, and where it might lead?” he asked.
His father nodded and cast a quick look at his sister and her daughter, who were following behind.
“I've noticed too. Seems we're following a Goblin trail. I'm not sure what that means for us but it's nothing good. I don't want to alarm your aunt but I reckon she'd best know. I'll tell her at the next stop.”
“What should we do?”
His father shrugged and said, “Keep an eye out and that hand-gun ready. Lord and Lady know what we might find.”
As they rounded another turn in the trail the sky ahead seemed to change, to open out before them. He could tell that for some reason this worried his father more than the Goblin trail did. The altitude sickness returned but it was fairly mild and his aunt's herbal simples helped them to sleep that night. The next day they passed between low peaks and they could see that the country leveled out.
It was a strange land that they beheld, almost flat to the horizon. Odd shapes loomed in the distance and Engvyr could not tell if they were wind-carved rock or ruins, but they made him uneasy. In all the vast expanse stretching before them he could see no sign of life. The wind swirled the dust into disturbing shapes that seemed to whisper in a tongue he did not understand and he felt a thread of fear tickling at the back of his neck.
“Gunnar,” said his aunt, speaking slowly between breaths, “What is this place?”
“In the Old Tongue it's called the Daenteg Idengeord, 'The Roof of the World.' It's a high plain, a league or more above sea-level that stretches to the north and east; no one knows for how far.”
“No one has ever crossed it?”
“Not that I ever heard tell,” he said. He looked as if there was more to say, but hesitated.
“Likely if we head north we can find a way back to dwarven lands.”
Indeed the trail wound north along the edge of the peaks, skirting the strange, high plain. Their altitude-sickness worsened and they were still climbing. They were all gasping for breath, their vision greying at the edges when his father called a stop. He produced a waxed paper package of a kind Engvyr had seen before, when the Goblin had given his aunt herbs for his father's fever.
“Our goblin friend said this would help if we were too long at high altitude. I haven't broken it out because there are side-effects but it’s time. Chew it slowly and don't swallow it.”
Carefully unwrapping the package he passed each of them a small portion of the contents, some kind of leaf candied with honey.
They did as he bade them and it seemed to make it easier to breath. Engvyr's headache didn't go away but it faded into the background and he felt more alert as well. They followed the trail along the peaks at the edge of that unearthly wasteland, searching for a way back into the mountains. It was bitterly cold as they trekked along. They stopped occasionally to rest but could not sleep, a side-effect of the leaves. They felt little hunger but forced themselves to eat regardless, knowing that they needed sustenance.
They continued even after night fell. At that altitude the stars gave enough light to travel by. Engvyr began to feel a sense of unreality creeping over him as if they moved through a dream. He kept thinking that he saw movement from the corners of his eyes out on the plain. He dismissed these at first as mirages, the product of fatigue or a side effect of the leaves. But he could not shake the sense that there was volition behind these movements, and that he was being observed. The others were similarly nervous, except for Berget who stared out into the wastes calmly, eyes moving as if tracking things unseen by the rest of them.
“Honey- what are you looking at?” her mother finally asked, not really expecting an answer.
“The sleep-walking ghosts,” the child replied quietly. These were the first words she had spoken since her sister’s death.
They all turned to stare at her and her mother moved quickly to her side and crouched next to her.
“What did you say?”
The child turned her disturbed gaze on her mother and said, “The ghosts that walk in their sleep. They're waking up and they don't like us being here.”
His aunt gave Engvyr and his father a look of bafflement and concern. She took her daughter's hand and told her, “Well, they are just ghosts, love. Everyone knows that ghosts can't hurt you.”
Berget looked at her gravely and whispered, “Not yet they can't.”
She kept ahold of her mother's hand as they went on, but continued to glance at the barren plain from time to time.
As night turned towards morning they saw a hunched figure seated by the trail. Approaching warily they perceived that it was an ancient goblin woman, staring sightlessly over the plain with blind, white eyes. Tumors disfigured her wizened face, distorting the tattoos of red and black that crawled over her features. Her thin tufts of gray hair were braided with feathers, beads and the bones of small animals. Her shapeless clothes pooled about her wasted figure. Engvyr almost thought her dead, mummified by the cold desert air until she turned her blind face to their approach.
“Well, well, well!” she said in a cracked, dry voice, “forgive me that I cannot offer you hospitality. I was not expecting visitors.”
Ignoring her sarcasm his father knelt before her and asked, “Are you well, mother? Are you in need of help?”
“I am not your mother, dvaerg!” she spat viciously, “And as for help I am beyond any in your power to give! Leave me be.”
He stood and exchanged a look with the others and shrugged helplessly. Berget looked at the shriveled figure curiously, unaffected by the crone's overt hostility.
“Aren't you afraid of the ghosts?”
“Ghosts? There are no ghosts here, child.” She turned her blind eyes on the child and continued, “No, those are not spirits you see. They are the dead gods of the forgotten folk that dwelled in this place in the Time Before Time. People not of the races of men.”
She made a sweeping gesture to encompass the wastes before her.
“In their dreams they wander the great cities and temples of their long vanished folk. Their heaven stands cold and empty, its gates barred to them. Now you are waking them to fury and hate, for by your very presence you show the lie of their dream and they will destroy you for that.”
“Oh? Then why have they not woken and destroyed you, crone?” Engvyr challenged her.
She cackled in response, a horrible grating noise.
“I have too little life left in me to be worth the taking, boy! Can you not see? Cankers eat me alive from the inside. I am here to die!”
“You came to this place, Ma'am… surely you know a way that we might leave it? Will you help us?” Egerta asked.
The ancient woman gave a guffaw of surprise at the thought.
“Help you? Help you, dvaerg? That I will not.”
“But why?” his aunt said, “We have done nothing to you!”
The old woman turned on her with an expression of fury.
“Have you not? Truly? Your very existence is an affront to the natural order! Help you? I should spit!”
“But what of my child? Have you no mercy in your heart for her?”
The crone turned her blind face to Berget.
“Mercy for your child? I ache for the strength to wring her tiny neck! I long to feel her tender skin part under my teeth, to suck her sweet flesh from her pretty little bones! That is what I have for your child!”