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‘Malevolence in the night, Rhulad? Whose?’

‘I could not be certain But I felt it’

‘Fear,’ Trull said, ‘have you no questions for Rhulad on this matter?’

‘No,’ Fear replied drily ‘There is no need for that… when you are around’

Trull claht obscured the flush on his face

There was silence for so, winding aranite They climbed over fallen trees here and there, scrarew diffuse, and Trull sensed it was near dawn by the tihest point of the trail

The path now took thee of toppled trees and broken boulders Water trapped in depressions in the bedrock formed impenetrable black pools that spread across the trail The sky began to lighten overhead

Fear then led the the twisted trees A short while later Kaschan Trench was before the wound in the bedrock, its sides sheer and strea beneath Hasana Inlet half a day to the west, and finally vanishing into the bedrock more than a day’s travel to the east They were at its widest point, two hundred or so paces across, the landscape opposite slightly higher but otherwise identical – scattered boulders looking as if they had been pushed up froled trees that seemed sickened by some unseen breath from the depths

Fear unclasped his cloak, dropped his pack and walked over to a misshapen mound of stones He cleared away dead branches and Trull saw that the stones were a cairn of some sort Fear removed the capstone, and reached down into the hollow beneath He lifted clear a coil of knotted rope

‘Remove your cloak and your weapons,’ he said as he carried the coil to the edge

He found one end and tied his pack, cloak, sword and spear to it

Trull and Rhulad caear and all was bound to the rope Fear then began lowering it over the side

‘Trull, take this other end and lead it to a place of shadow A place where the shadoill not retreat before the sun as the day passes’

He picked up the rope end and walked to a large, tilted boulder When he fed the end into the shadows at its base he felt countless hands grasp it Trull stepped back The rope was now taut

Returning to the edge, he saw that Fear had already begun his descent Rhulad stood staring down