Pilgrim. Sara Douglass

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      And that was not very close, for that cloud was dangerous, very dangerous.

      It was composed of hundreds of … bird-things. The eagle did not understand them. They had the scent of the Icarii bird-people about them, but that scent was somehow tarnished and warped. They also carried the scent of hunting hawks, a scent the eagle was familiar with, for he had spent many a cold winter’s night huddled safe within a nobleman’s hawk stable murmuring love songs to unresponsive lady-hawks.

      But as they were not quite Icarii, then they were also not quite hawks.

      They behaved as a flock with one mind — yet that mind was not their’s, for the eagle sensed that the mind that controlled them was far distant.

      These bird-things spent many hours of the day hunting and eating. They hunted anything that moved, horses, cattle … people. When they had spotted a target, the bird-things swooped, and tore it to pieces. Once they had fed — and they left nothing uneaten, not even a speck of blood — they rose again as one, and recommenced their whispering patrol of the skies.

      There was a brief movement on the streets below, and the eagle glanced down, distracted. A group of three or four people, scurrying from one house to another, baskets of food under their arms. The people of this land had been almost as quick as the eagle to realise that certain hours of the day were … bad … to venture forth. Now they, like the eagle, spent the bad hours huddled inside, or under whatever overhang provided shelter.

      Many — thousands — had not been so wise. In his forays over Tencendor, the eagle had seen bands of maniacal men and women, and groups of children, roving the land. Some had been ravaged by despair, some by terror, others by disease; still others by internal tempest so severe some extremities looked as though they had self-destructed.

      And still others wandered, so hungry that they consumed everything in their path. For several hours one day the eagle had roosted under a chimney stack, watching in absolute horror as an aged man had literally eaten his way across a stony field. He had crawled on his hands and knees, and everything he touched that could be picked up he stuffed into his mouth and swallowed.

      Stones, brambles, thorns, dried cattle dung — the man had even bitten off four of his own fingers in his quest to assuage his hunger.

      He had died, eventually, by the low stone wall that had bounded the field. His internal organs had finally exploded with the weight of the rocks he carried within him. He’d died stuffing scraps of his bowel and liver into his mouth.

      Sickened, the eagle had watched it all, and wondered if, eventually, he also would be caught outside when the badness billowed abroad.

      Now he sat safe under the watchtower roof. The black cloud swooped low over a band of pigs that roamed savage and crazed to the west of Tare — yesterday, that band of pigs had caught and devoured several people trying to scrabble among the fields for some scraps to eat — and then rose into the sky again, and flew eastwards.

      The eagle shuddered as their whispering sounded directly above him, and then slowly relaxed as they continued to fly westwards.

      Drago lurched forward as the donkey bucked and kicked, and tried to grab at her brush-like mane.

      But it was no good, and with a grunt of surprise, he slid to the ground.

      He rolled to his feet immediately, grabbing his staff to use as a weapon — and then froze in utter astonishment.

      Faraday already had her hands to her mouth, stifling her laughter.

      The donkey bucked and kicked in a small circle, trying to dislodge what appeared to be a blue-feathered lizard that clutched at her tail trying with narrow-eyed determination to climb onto the donkey’s back.

      Drago slowly rose to his feet, laid both staff and sack on the ground, and then cautiously approached the aggrieved donkey, holding out one hand and murmuring soothing words.

      The donkey gave one final buck — the lizard still gripping her tail — and halted, trembling, allowing Drago to rub her cheek and neck.

      The lizard gave a hiss of triumph, and then, with almost lightning speed, scrabbled up the donkey’s tail and onto her back.

      Drago looked at it, looked at Faraday — who had quietened herself — and then ran his hand down the donkey’s neck and across her withers towards the lizard. He hesitated, then gently touched the lizard’s emerald and scarlet feathers just behind its head.

      They were as soft as silk.

      The lizard’s crest rose up and down as Drago scratched.

      “What is it?” he asked, raising his eyes to Faraday.

      “It is one of the fey creatures of Minstrelsea,” Faraday said. She explained how, when she’d planted the last tree for the forest, the borders between the forest and the Sacred Grove had opened, and Minstrelsea had been flooded with the strange creatures of the Groves. “I think it likes you.”

      Drago grinned and ran his hand down the lizard’s blue back. “It’s beautiful,” he said, watching the shafts of light glint from its talons. “Entrancing …”

      The lizard twisted a little, and grabbed at his hand with its mouth — and then began to wash the back of Drago’s hand with its bright pink tongue.

      The donkey, grown bored, sighed and shifted her weight from one hind leg to another.

      The lizard slipped, and Drago instinctively caught it up into his arms.

      “What am I supposed to do with it?” he asked helplessly.

      “I think it wants to come with us,” Faraday said. “And as to what you are supposed to do with it … well, I think it expects you to love it.”

      For the rest of that day, and all the next, they travelled further south through the Woods. The lizard travelled with Drago, curled up in front of him on the donkey, the crystal talons of its fore-claws gripping the donkey’s mane for purchase.

      The donkey put up with it with some bad grace, her floppy ears laid back along her skull, and she snapped whenever the lizard slipped. But at night she did not seem to mind when the lizard curled up beside her for warmth.

      On the morning of the third day they neared Cauldron Lake, descending through thickening trees, and Faraday indicated they should dismount and walk the final fifteen or twenty paces to the edge of the trees.

      The lizard, silent and watchful, crawled a pace behind them, careful of its footing on the slope.

      “There,” Faraday murmured as they stopped within the gloom of the line of trees. “Cauldron Lake.”

      Drago’s breath caught in his throat. As with so many of the wonders of Tencendor, he’d heard tales of this Lake, but had never seen it previously.

      It lay in an almost perfectly circular depression, the entire forest sloping down towards it on all sides. To their left, perhaps some two hundred paces about the Lake’s edge, stood a circular Keep, built of pale yellow stone. Its door and all its windows were bolted tight.

      But it was the water of the Lake that caught Drago’s attention. It shone a soft, gentle gold in the early-morning sun.

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