The cave is just as Makari had described it to me, just as the other villagers had said it would be: a tall vertical slit in a rocky cliff face, just wide enough for a man, with a broad field of scree and small boulders spread before it like a gray, dusty skirt. The day is overcast, shedding a dull ambient light across the scene but leaving the cave itself impenetrably black.

Nisus takes me within a dozen yards of the cave and stops. “I promised Grandfather I wouldn’t go inside,” he says sheepishly, as if the only reason he doesn’t charge through the gap right this moment is the oath he’d made to Makari.

I nod. “That’s okay,” I say. I pause to take a torch from my pack, unsettling Rigi in the process, who gives me a peevish peck on the ear.

Nisus watches silently as I light the torch. Then, “Are you taking your owl inside?”

I look to Rigi, who has apparently already gone back to sleep on my shoulder. “I don’t think he’d let me leave him outside,” I say.

Nisus smiles. “I wish I had an owl.”

I touch the spot of blood on my ear where Rigi pecked me, and shake my head ruefully. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

Nisus laughs, and we grasp one another’s forearms in farewell. “I’ll see you this evening,” I say, trying to sound confident and brave, and hoping he can’t hear the uncertainty and nervousness behind my facade.

He nods. “We’ll have a place for you at table.”

We part, and I listen to his footsteps as they crunch across the gravel, fading as he returns to the trail and disappears into the low scrub forest beyond. It is just me, and Rigi, and the cave. A lonesome wind blows across the entrance with a low moan.

I gather my courage and cross the distance to the entrance; then, with a deep breath, I step inside.

The air is immediately cooler inside, and smells simultaneously dry and damp. I hold the torch up before me, keeping my other hand on the cave’s wall. It narrows gradually, becoming almost tight, before abruptly opening up again.

I am standing on a narrow ledge in front of a deep chasm, blackness both below and above me. A breeze blows up from the depths, chilly and damp, and my torch flickers fitfully. Its unsteady illumination shows a narrow stone arch, a natural bridge, that reaches across the chasm. On the far wall I can just make out a relief carving of a pair of hands, clasped together, with a dagger plunged between them.

My Sight supplies an interpretation—betrayal—and I shiver. Hardly a pleasant image to greet an explorer.

The narrow stone bridge is sturdy, and I cross it quickly, feeling the weight of the invisible depths below me. I glance once more at the relief carving before continuing into the passage on the other side.

Now, the passage narrows further, and begins meandering unpredictably. The flickering of the torch reaches only as far as the next bend in the passage, and every step I take seems to shake a hundred whispers from the silence around me. I glance behind and see nothing but blackness, and feel a creeping sense of being swallowed by some enormous beast of stone and dust and night.

I turn another corner, and suddenly there is a cloaked shape before me. I start back, almost dropping my torch, and Rigi hoots irritably as he nearly falls from his perch. The shape raises a staff and I fumble for my own, uselessly strapped to my back. I curse in desperation.

“Be calm,” says a deep voice. “I mean you no harm.” The figure pulls back their hood, revealing a craggy face framed by a thick, dark beard and heavy eyebrows. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he says.

“I’ve been hearing that a lot, lately,” I say, gasping, still uncertain about this man that has appeared before me. “Were you just sitting here in the dark?”

The man smiles. “Something like that.”

I look around, trying to see past him, but the passage bends yet again a few yards ahead. “How long have you been here?”

“Long enough,” he says. “But here, let us be properly introduced. My name is Delkash. How many I call you?”

“Delkash?” I ask. “You’re the one who saved Raven Hill?”

“I am,” he says, his voice echoing resonantly in the passage. “And you are the one they were told to expect, yes?”

I shrug. “I guess so. That’s what they told me, anyway.”

“And how may I call you?”

I blush, and hurry to introduce myself. “I’m Inka,” I say. “Of Timberwall, to the south.”

“Inka,” says Delkash, almost as if he were tasting the name.

“How is that you knew I was coming, but didn’t know my name?”

He cocks an eyebrow at me. “Does the Sight always tell you all the things you wish it would?”

“…No.”

“Just so.”

There is a silence between us then, as I regard Delkash and he regards me. He is tall, taller than me, anyway, and his cloak is a dark color that is difficult to identify in the torchlight. His staff is a gnarled, ornately carved thing, polished and lovely.

“You have the rumors?” he asks.

I grip my bag’s shoulder strap and nod. “Yes, in my pack.”

“You studied them?”

“I did. They led me here.”

“Very good. I hope,” he says, “that they might be of some further use deeper in the cave.”

“How far does the cave go?”

He shrugs expressively. “I have no idea,” he says. “I’ve never been here before.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “Who are you?” I ask. “Really, I mean? Why are you here?”

“I am an observer,” he says. “I am a witness.”

“What are you here to observe?”

He chuckles as he dips his staff to point it briefly at me. “You.”

“But why?”

“So many questions!” he says, his voice booming in the narrow passage. “I don’t intend to answer them just yet, though. Not here. Not now.” He gestures behind him. “Shall we continue?”

I consider my options, wondering if I ought to trust him. Is he really Delkash? Could this be a trick? A trap of some kind? I don’t feel like there’s any way to continue past him without his permission, though, so I nod cautiously. “Fine,” I say.

“After you, then,” he says, making room for me to squeeze past him. Again, I’m not completely comfortable with this arrangement, but I don’t see that I have much choice.

Together, now, we move deeper into the cave.