"I don't think anyone's ever come this way before," said Geirrod as they walked.

  It was still raining, but the sky was lighter to the west. Tarvos thought that it might stop in another hour or two. The small stream flowing down the centre of the ravine had swollen to a sizeable river, splashing across rounded boulders and swirling in eddies where it was forced to divert around larger obstructions. It suggested that the narrow valley they were following went on for some distance, or the river wouldn't have been able to gather that much water. He took that as a hopeful sign.

  "When people use a road regularly, their feet make a path," Geirrod continued. "There's no path here. I mean there are animal tracks, but they were clearly made by something much smaller than human beings. Gooths perhaps, or grats."

  No-one replied. Geirrod had been gabbling on for some time and the others had mentally tuned him out. Talking seemed to be something he did to relieve the boredom, and the others were happy to let him do so so long as they didn't have to expend any mental effort in replying.

  They'd seen no sign of animal life since their last glimpse of the bandits. That was because of the lack of plant life, Tarvos supposed. They were pretty much walking on bare rock, if you ignored the thin covering of loose stones and gravel. There wasn't anything for plants to get their roots into. There were a few weeds struggling to survive here and there but nothing like enough to support a population of herbivores, and without them there would be no meat eaters either. It made the place feel lonely, but Tarvos was glad for the chance to relax without having to be constantly on the lookout for hungry predators.

  And speaking of hungry, what were they going to eat in the time it took them to cross the Spine and return to the lowlands? We'll eat when we're out of this place, he told himself. A day or two without food won't hurt us, and we can feast on a nice, plump rabbuck when we're back in the woodlands. A rabbuck each, he corrected himself with a smile. He felt as if he could manage a whole one all by himself.

  "The rain's stopping," said Geirrod. Again, no-one felt the need to reply. No-one else would have felt the need to say something so obvious. They could all see that the rain was easing off. Above them the clouds were breaking up and the sun was peeping through here and there to cast patches of brightness on the rocky sides of the ravine.

  A few minutes later the rain stopped completely. Daphnis gathered up her long, dark hair into a ponytail and wrung the water out of it with her hands. "I should cut it short like you do," she said as she shook it loose around her shoulders.

  "I'm glad you don't," said Tarvos. "Long hair is a woman's crowning glory."

  "All women? she asked, smiling mischievously, "or just me?"

  "You more than most obviously."

  "What's that?" said Geirrod suddenly, staring up the side of the valley.

  It took Tarvos a moment or two to realise that he'd said something that required a response. "What?" he said as he struggled to remember what the question had been.

  "Up there," said the other man, pointing. "There's something shining. Bright. See it?"

  Tarvos followed the other man's finger with his eyes. There was something, he saw. Very bright, as if someone had taken a piece of the sun and thrown it up among the rocks and stones. A piece of metal perhaps? If so it must have been left there quite recently or it would long since have rusted to nothing.

  "So much for no-one having come this way before," he said.

  "It could be crystal," said Daphnis, also staring up at it. "A piece of quartz maybe. If a man polished it up it might make a nice gift for his wife."

  "I'm already making a gift for you," Tarvis replied.

  Her eyes lit up. "Really? What?"

  It's a surprise. It's not finished yet. I left it back at Gunnlod village. They'll take it with all my other stuff when they move north. You'll get it, don't worry." A wistful feeling came over him. "My father's probably back there by now," he said. "They'll be packing everything up aboard the wagons, getting ready to abandon the village for the summer. Funny. When we left the village I had no idea it would be for the last time."

  "I think there's a way to get up to it," said Geirrod, who'd been paying no attention to what Tarvos had been saying. He was examining the rocky slope of the ravine. "We can get up there. See what it is."

  "There's bandits chasing us," Tarvos reminded him. "We haven't got time to go off exploring."

  Geirrod ignored him and began climbing, picking his way past rocks and small stones that rolled downhill as he disturbed them. Tarvos cursed under his breath, but made no move to follow him. If he twisted an ankle, they would have to carry him. If more than one person twisted an ankle, they were dead.

  Fornjot shared his concern and shouted up at him. "Get down here you idiot. And be careful or you'll fall and break a leg."

  Geirrod still ignored them and continued to climb until he reached the place where the thing, whatever it was, was shining in the sun. The others saw him reach over to pick it up and then frown down at it in confusion. "It's like ice," he said. "But it's not cold.."

  "How can there be ice in this heat?" asked Tarvos.

  "It's not ice," Geirrod replied. "It just looks like ice. And it's broken. Like it was part of a larger piece." He stared further up the slope. "I can see something at the top," he said. "I'm going to look."

  Tarvos swore. He and Fornjot shared a look of exasperation, then began climbing up after him. "Wait you idiot," said Daphnis as she also followed. "If a quatzel sees you up there..."

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  "Serve him right if he gets carried off and eaten," said Fornjot, "but the creature'll probably get indigestion."

  They watched as Geirrod scrambled higher above them until he reached the top of the valley wall and disappeared from sight. They all heard him gasp in astonishment. "Get up here, quick," he said as his face reappeared, looking down at them. "You won't believe this."

  His genuine tone of surprise made them climb faster until they also reached the top. Above the valley, the ground was uneven with jagged, rocky peaks separated by deep chasms containing stony soil at the bottom in which stunted, straggly plants grew. It would be almost impossible to make one's way across to the next ravine, but fortunately the object Geirrod had found wasn't too far away. The other three made their careful way across to join him and then stared at the thing that lay wedged in one of the narrow, rocky fissures.

  It looked like a quetzal, except for being made of metal, and was almost the size of one. It had two wings, one of which was crushed and broken, and a head, the top half of which was made of the not-ice. Or it had been. The not-ice was shattered, leaving a jagged rim around the base that looked as though it would slash the skin of anyone who tried to climb inside.

  And that was the most astonishing thing. It had an inside. Inside the head, inside where the dome of not-ice had been, they could see the mummified head and shoulders of a long-dead human corpse dressed in the rotting remains of clothing unlike anything they'd ever seen before. The head with its empty eye sockets stared down at them as if it had been waiting for them and was annoyed that they'd taken so long. The front of the head was caved in by an impact, possibly with the panel in front of him in which small squares and circles of not-ice were embedded.

  They stared for a long time as their eyes drank in the strangeness of the scene. "Why didn't scavengers eat it?" muttered Tarvos to himself. "There should be nothing but bones left, scattered across the rocks."

  "I wonder who he was," said Daphnis.

  "And what's that thing he's sitting in?" asked Geirrod. He stared at the others in excitement. "See? I told you there was something up here."

  "Yeah," said Fornjot, "and there's something out there as well. Bandits trying to kill us. There's a mystery here all right, but we don't have time to solve it. We need to be moving on."

  Geirrod was climbing the side of the iron quetzal, though, using dents and tears in the metal as footholds to lift himself up. "I wonder how long he's been here," he said. "Maybe he was a shaman who worshipped quetzals. He made an effigy so his tribe could worship it."

  "Then why sit inside it?" his sister asked.

  "A clever ploy," Geirrod replied. "When the tribe worshipped it, they'd be worshipping him as well. That explains his clothes too. Shamans wear headdresses and jewellery. They never wear ordinary clothes."

  Despite himself, curiosity overcame Tarvos and he picked his way carefully around to the other side of the quetzal to climb up, suddenly wanting a closer look at the corpse. There was something alien about the scene that profoundly disturbed him. He had the sense that the quetzal and the corpse inside it came from outside everything he was familiar with. He was gripped by the sudden sure knowledge that the world he'd known all his life had an edge, a boundary, and that this object came from beyond it, from a place where things were alien and different. Dangerous, maybe. Or possibly wonderful. The idea of another world wasn't a new one, of course. Everyone he knew believed in a spirit world where the souls of the dead went to live in peace and contentment, but the object in front of him now was no spirit. It was solid and real. The jagged not-ice could cut his skin if he wasn't careful, and who knew in what other ways it could hurt him?

  He had to know more. He knew that if he didn't take this chance to examine the quetzal, the missed opportunity would haunt him for the rest of his life. Soon the full heat of summer would be upon them and they would have to be in the Summer Lands if they were to survive. It would be fifty years before the long summer came to an end, by which time Tarvos would very likely no longer be alive. He climbed higher, therefore, driven by the fear of missing some wonderful discovery, until he was above the ancient corpse and looking down on it.

  It was sitting in a chair. One of four chairs, the others of which were empty. And it was old. He didn't know how he knew that. Maybe it was the soil that buried it up to the waist where dust had blown in over the centuries. Generations of small weeds had lived and died in that soil, and some small animal had dug a burrow in it. More small weeds were peeping out from the tattered remains of his clothes but none of them touched the corpses' mummified flesh. As if the man's flesh was poisonous, thought Tarvos.

  He was wearing a pouch on a belt around his waist, he saw, the top of it just peeping above the carpet of weeds that covered the soil around his legs. He could just reach it by leaning carefully over the jagged line of broken not-ice. When he pulled, though, he found that the pouch was glued to the man's clothes by dried mold, and when he pulled harder it ripped open with a soggy rasping sound to reveal a square, black object.

  They all gasped in recognition. The object was identical to the Storyteller; the sacred object held by the Storymaster of Festival City. The object that spoke and told stories of ancient heroes after whom the Six Tribes had been named. The object whose origin no-one could remember but which had been carefully guarded and protected as far back as the stories of the ancestors could reach.

  Tarvos reached carefully out and touched it, half expecting it to burn his fingers as punishment for his presumption. It didn't react, though, and Tarvos took a firm grip on it to pull it free. Then, the object safely in his grasp, he climbed carefully down to the ground. The others gathered around to stare at it.

  "A Storyteller," said Geirrod. "I thought there was only one. Just one in the whole world."

  "Make it talk," said Daphnis, her eyes glowing with eagerness.

  Tarvos touched the spot on the side that made symbols appear on the front of the object, but nothing happened. He touched it again and again with no more success. "It's dead," he said. "The Storymaster told me once that it has to be left in the sunlight or it won't talk. This one's been in darkness since this man died."

  "He must have been one of the First Fathers," said Geirrod in awe, staring up at the corpse. "The stories say that they could do all kinds of magical things. They could fly." He ran his eyes up and down the length of the iron quetzal. "Maybe this thing could fly. Maybe they travelled around in it like a flying wagon."

  "Don't be ridiculous," said Fornjot scornfully. "Quetzals fly by flapping their wings. How can iron wings flap?"

  "How can a small box speak?" Geirrod countered.

  Tarvos held the object up to his eyes to examine it more closely. More closely than he'd ever been allowed to examine the Storyteller. It seemed to be completely smooth and featureless. There were no openings. No indentations. Nothing but six sides of polished black so shiny that they appeared to be wet but which were as dry as sand to the touch. He turned it until it reflected the sun directly into his eyes. He blinked in annoyance and moved it into the shade of his body.

  Fornjot had moved to look back down into the ravine they'd just left. "We have to go," he said urgently. "The bandits could be back at any moment. There's nothing more to find here. Just some old shaman like Gyre said, and whatever secrets he had he took to the spirit world with him."

  Tarvos nodded. He was right, he knew, and he turned reluctantly away from the iron quetzal and its enigmatic occupant. He tucked the dead storyteller into his tunic, and then the four of them climbed carefully back down the side of the ravine.

  ☆☆☆

  The sun was ahead of them as they continued on their way west. It was in all their eyes and they were forced to squint as they picked their way across the rocky floor of the ravine. It also shone on a corner of the Storyteller where it peeped out between two of the buttons holding his tunic closed across Tarvos's stomach. Unnoticed by any of them, a tiny red light appeared in the corner. A few minutes later it was joined by the number 1 followed by a strange symbol; a diagonal line with circles above and below.