‘You should go more slowly,’ said Crows, puffing up behind her.
‘We’re not going to get there if we don’t get a move on.’ She gazed up at the steep slope, and tried to work out her route.
‘That is not what I meant.’ He too tilted his head back, scanning the sky. ‘You know how dangerous magic is. If you do not control it, it will control you. I have seen the results and they are not good.’
‘I can handle it, okay?’
‘Being lucky once does not make you invulnerable.’
‘I know that. Crows, you’re not my social worker, all right?’
‘Am I correct in thinking you did not listen to them either?’
She gave him the look, and he turned away, holding his hands up in mock surrender.
‘You are free to destroy yourself in any way you see fit. Just that it would be a waste, that is all.’
The wolf howled again. It seemed closer, but that could have been her imagination.
‘It’s almost like you care,’ she said. ‘What about those people who you were supposed to be protecting?’
‘Mary, they are not here. You are.’
‘They don’t stop existing. They’re still there, locked away in her castle. They’re people like you and me, who were running from something terrifying: they ended up here and tried to make the best of it. They don’t deserve this any more than my lot do.’
‘The strong do as they want, and the weak suffer what they must. I cannot protect them: I built myself up for a role I could not fulfil. Now, we all suffer, they in their prison and me in my ruin.’
‘Fucking hell, you sound like me, and I sound like someone else. Things change, Crows, and there’s no reason why we can’t make them change.’
‘Strong words. Perhaps once you have seen her castle, once you have seen her, you will realise how pointless all this is.’ He swirled his own cloak about him, gathering the darkness and blotting himself out for a moment before reappearing as the cloth settled again.
‘Maybe I will. There’s no harm in looking, is there?’
‘Yes, there is. We are deep in her territory, almost up to her door. If you think there is no risk in this, then why are we hearing the wolf ’s howl?’
Mary pushed her hair away from her face. It felt tangled and greasy, and her scalp itched. Perhaps Crows did have a point, but she was certain she did too. She wasn’t doing this blind, but naively? She shrugged.
‘Is there any way of working out whether the wolfman’s hunting us?’
‘Only by finding him before he finds us. Which is not very wise.’
‘So let’s get on with it.’ She clambered up, and turned to look at the last rays of the sun touch the crowns of the trees. She had no idea where this sudden courage had come from. First sign of danger and she’d always run. And sometimes not fast enough.
Crows was still below her. ‘You may go if you wish,’ he said. ‘I have done my duty, and I will go no further.’
‘Shit, Crows, what is wrong with you?’
‘Whatever follows, you cannot say that you were not warned.’ He flapped his cloak a second time and was gone.
‘Well, fuck you too.’ She set her jaw hard, and turned back to the ascent.
The summit was above her, and close up it was now clear that gaining it wouldn’t be straightforward. The direct route took in at least two bands of loose scree and a vertical cliff just below the top, where the rock had broken away and tumbled down into the forest beneath. To her left was a steep incline that merged with the sheer side of the gorge, and only to the right did the mountain become easier to navigate.
She didn’t want to climb in the pitch black, so she started off again, zigzagging up rather than confronting the whole edifice at once.
She worked her way around to the shoulder of rock that sloped down from the summit, scaling the last ridge in the last of the light. She was almost there, a few more steps and she’d be on the very top. It didn’t seem at all likely, the girl from the tower blocks, on a mountain, exhausted, exhilarated.
The view opened up to take in what looked like the whole world. At her back were seas without end, at her front, a mountain range so tall that the snow didn’t carry all the way to the top. Left and right were bays and islands, and everywhere between was cut with rivers and leavened with lesser peaks and hills. Up on the darkening mountain, her leaf cape was now redundant. She discarded it, and unlike Crows’, hers caught the gusty wind and came apart, leaves separating and spiralling away, chasing each other across the bare rock like children.
The last sliver of reflected sunlight died in the sky, and it was night. With no stars to appear, she was left entirely unsighted, at least until moonrise. She couldn’t tell where the mountain ended or began. She realised that if she took a step anywhere, she might end up broken at the bottom of the gorge, or bouncing down the way she’d come in an avalanche of loose rock.
She crouched, felt around her, and sat down. She wouldn’t have that long to wait for the moonglow to begin glimmering on the underside of the clouds far away on the horizon. A couple of hours before the massive moon ground into view and thundered across the heavens.
While she sat, aware of the unseen vastness around her, she began to see things. Flashes of light where there were none, trails of luminescence in the sky, bright sparks dancing around her: none of it was real, and yet it didn’t matter. She’d never experienced anything like it before, and it was her reward.
The land turned silver, and the lights were gone. The moon hung low, a huge half-circle of white bone carving its way into the night sky. The illumination it gave was nothing compared to the majesty of the full moon, but it was not just sufficient, it was generous.
She picked herself up now that she could see. The crystals embedded in the rock made it twinkle like frost, and she could skip over the puddles of shadow towards the far side of the mountain. As she jumped from high point to high point, she could see an edge forming ahead of her. She slowed, and stepped cautiously. She could see into the valley below, but not the slope that led there.
Eventually, she was crawling on her stomach. It was a cliff, high and long. It swept down the mountainside to form a huge bowl of land that was itself perched halfway between summit and river. At the bottom of the bowl was a lake, and next to the lake, the geomancer’s castle.
Like Crows’, it had a ring wall, but it was no mere collection of stones thrust out from the ground. This wall was tall and broad, set with gates and towers. Inside were various squat buildings, and two towers, one broad and short, the other tall and thin, with a roof that pointed upwards like a wooden rocket.
Fires lit the yard, and plumes of silver-lit smoke drifted away in spirals. She was close enough to see the shadows of the men around the largest fire, black shapes against the orange of the fire glow, but too far away to catch any of the sound they made.
The castle was large and impressive. It was guarded both by walls and by people. The central tower had commanding views over both within and without, down the mountain and beyond. The ground immediately outside the castle was bare, and unless she learnt to fly◦– unless she learnt that she could fly◦– the geomancer would get plenty of warning of anyone approaching.
She looked harder. The gates were pointing at the lake and toward the valley, which left a lot of the wall nothing but blank stone all the way to the battlements. There didn’t seem to be anyone patrolling them, either. She’d known warehouses like that, where security had a warm cabin and control of the CCTV, which they sometimes even watched when they weren’t reading a paper or napping in their chair.
If no one was watching, it made getting in and out easier: only the physical barriers would cause a problem. But once she was in, what could she do? Even if she managed to sneak in, find Dalip, Mama and the others, where would they go? Back to Crows’ castle if they could. If the wolfman and his crew came looking for them there, they’d just have to have moved on first.