When night-time came they set off across the small stretch of plain which lay between them and the hills and by midnight they were climbing. Soon the lush green pastures of the lowlands had been left behind and the ground became rocky; the grass poor and short, and instead of cows they saw only sheep picking at the sparse patches of green between the rock and the scrub. The following day the winds brought in snow and they awoke in the late afternoon to find everywhere covered with a thick blanket of white. Fortunately the snow had stopped and the sky had begun to clear so that the moon was shining clearly down on the hills. The going was easier now because the snow was freezing on top of the heather and scrub and they made good progress, particularly as up here there were no Urkku dwellings or any other sign of them.
It took them two more nights to reach the other side of the little range of hills. Eventually they found themselves standing on the top of a steep slope looking down on to a carpet of mist below. It was almost dawn so they rested and slept behind a crag before setting off in the evening down the slope. To their disappointment it had begun to rain again as the weather had grown warmer and soon the exhilaration of the clear crisp nights walking over the snow-covered heather with the moon and stars lighting up their path had evaporated under a pall of dampness.
There was no moon and the rain made it difficult for even Warrigal and Brock to see far ahead. They descended slowly down narrow paths turned slippery by the rain, which had not yet melted the ice but instead had polished them with a layer of water, making them treacherous. Several times Beth slipped and once she went rolling
down a steep bank until she came to a halt at the edge of a little stream. From then on Nab kept hold of her hand for some of the paths took them along the edge of deep drops falling into inky blackness which they guessed went a long way down.
When they reached the lowest of the foothills and were almost at the bottom, the visibility became suddenly much worse as they found themselves in the middle of a thick swirling mist. The rain had now stopped but the cold clammy dampness of the mist soaked them to the skin. They carried on for a while with Nab in the lead for he was able to follow the Roosdyche even more strongly than Warrigal, who was perched on his shoulder peering into the murk ahead and steering him as best he could along what seemed to be raised green footways on either side of which the ground appeared to fall away and become black and broken.
‘We cannot go much further tonight,’ Nab said suddenly. ‘I have lost the Roosdyche. We’ll wait here until dawn when we might be able to see where we are.' Warrigal flew down and perched on an old rotten treestump in front. His eyes were red-rimmed and raw with tiredness and his feathers rough and bedraggled with the wet. Behind them the others gathered in a little group, miserable and silent as the mist blew in wraiths about them.
‘We’ve decided to stay here until the morning,’ Nab announced, and without saying a word they all lay down on the saturated ground.
It was impossible to sleep. Somehow an air of evil hung about the place; the mist seemed to form itself into figures which danced and leered at them through the gloom, racing on to be replaced by another and another, each one different to the last until their minds became numb with a kind of dull sick horror. Tiredness eventually overcame Beth and she fell into a restless fitful sleep in which the evil figures which had paraded before her in the mist assumed gigantic proportions. They laughed down at her from the heavens and their long fingers wrapped themselves around her body and picked her up, tossing her like a rag doll from one to the other. Their flesh seemed to be made of some sort of slimy gelatinous substance so that where they touched her she felt terribly wet and cold and the dampness went right through her body, wrapping its icy fingers around her soul and tugging at it as if trying to shake it free. She struggled and fought to release herself from their grip but they only laughed and threw her up in the air again where she waved her arms about in panic until she was caught by another. A terrible fear spread over her, freezing her heart and turning her legs to jelly as the utter helplessness of her situation forced itself into her consciousness. She was about to give up her struggles and abandon herself to despair when she felt herself shaken by another warmer grip and heard her name called insistently by a familiar voice. ‘Beth, Beth,’ it said, and slowly she shook off the webs of the nightmare as the voice brought her back to wakefulness. She opened her eyes to see Nab’s anxious face looking down at her. Although it was so cold she felt little beads of perspiration mingling with the damp on her forehead.
‘Hold me,’ she said in a small frightened voice and he did so, reviving her body with life and melting the chill in her soul with the warmth of love.
‘You were tossing in your sleep, and crying out. We were afraid for you,’ he said.
She told him of her dream and the others sat around and listened in fear. There was silence when she finished; they sat in the damp half-light of the early morning not knowing what to think or to do. Soon a pale watery sun began to try to filter through the mist and around them they saw a bleak landscape of twisted, stunted trees and flat bog which lay dark and oozing for as far as they could see in the unreal light. They had been walking along one of a number of raised paths on which grass grew but the one they were on now came to an end just a few paces further on and sank back into the quagmire. The heavy dank smell of decaying vegetation hung over everything, and they could see, protruding from the bog like fingers, the dead rotten stumps of old trees covered in fungi and lichens and mosses which dripped continuously into the bog.
‘This is an evil place,’ whispered Warrigal quietly to himself as if he was afraid that the bog might hear.
‘We must go back and try to find another path,’ said Nab, but he didn’t move for his body seemed to be sunk into a deep trough of despair and apathy from which he was unable to raise it.
Suddenly Brock exclaimed loudly, ‘What’s that! Look; walking through the mist.’
They could faintly see a tall white figure walking slowly and deliberately through the bog towards them and they could just about make out the regular splashing of delicate footsteps in water.
‘It’s a heron,’ Brock said. The bird walked towards them picking up its long spindly legs and placing them down carefully in the bog and as it did so its head, with the deadly sharp pointed beak, moved backwards and forwards in time with the rhythm of its walk. The animals had occasionally seen such a creature before as herons had sometimes come to the stream at the back of Silver Wood but that had been a rare occurrence and they had never been this close to one before. It stood before them, its long white wings folded in on either side of its body and reaching down at the back to a little rounded peak, reminding Beth of an old-fashioned tail coat. From each eye to the top of its head stretched a narrow spherical black marking that seemed to continue on into its plume which now was held down so that it pointed from the back of its head at an angle to the ground. To Beth it looked as if it was wearing a pair of glasses with thick black rims. When it spoke the long neck, which was tucked in between its shoulders, quivered slightly.
‘I am Golconda, the Great White Heron; Guardian of the Marshes of Blore. I have been awaiting your arrival for some time since the Sea Elves warned me of your coming. My task is to see the traveller safely through the marshes. We must beware, for with your presence here the atmosphere is thick with goblins. A band of them reside in the marsh and normally we live in an uneasy truce. However they are aware of your importance if not of your purpose and they will do all they can to stop you.’
