answer must lie. But all her efforts proved in vain.
The Ancient jewel remained opaque to her, its powers beyond her grasp, and its gifts—of light, nourishment, heightened perception—always unbidden, arriving without summons.
Tempted nearly to despair, Aeriel could only walk on. The parched ground soon grew more broken, cut by dry riverbeds. No plants grew but thirsty, withered scrub. The Waste was more desolate than any place she had ever known. Even the most drought-stricken lands of Westernesse could not compare.
And the Waste was full of the Witch's little nightmare creatures. Cloaked in illusory shape, all appeared at first glance to be monsters. But the pearl soon penetrated their guises, revealing them for the mere vermin that they were. It seemed they could hide anywhere, in the dead scrub, in the cracks.
Initially, they dodged her gaze so that Aeriel caught only glimpses. Soon, however, they grew bolder—until before many hours she had a whole raft of them dogging her across the Waste.
Besides the long-legged rat-creatures, whose great protruding front teeth met like those of a horse's skull, she saw odd molelike beasts with dusty, spotted fur, disguised by witchery to appear like ogres.
Sometimes little snakes no thicker than her smallest finger hissed at her, miming basilisks. Once or twice a speckled thing resembling a huge moth fluttered after her till she swatted at it. Then it buzzed, a mere bottfly, and shivered away.
All of them had red orbs, featureless as glass. They were the Witch's eyes, keeping watch on her, Aeriel felt sure. Whenever she paused to rest, they crept closer, stealing up behind her to catch hold of her robe in their little teeth. Though she could neither ignore them nor drive them far away, Ravenna's pearl enabled her to see their true forms beneath the Witch's illusory guises. Plainly intended to terrify, they annoyed her instead. She found their constant presence wearing, but not unnerving.
The stars above wheeled ever so slowly. She knew that she had been walking half the month-long night. Irrylath and the distant army continued on their convergent path with hers, halting only each dozen hours for food and a few hours' rest. Aeriel herself felt no need now to sleep. In truth, she preferred not, considering what might come upon her unawares.
She reached the cliffs so abruptly that they took her by surprise. One moment, all was silent around her, save for the soughing of a slight, bitter wind and the scrabbling of the phantom creatures. The next, she heard jackals crying—their song floating eerily on the air—and realized what the maze of canyons opening before her must be: the jackal cliffs that never released any wayfarer they swallowed. At the heart of them lay the Witch's Mere.
Aeriel halted, listening to the long, ululating wail of the Witch's dogs. Yips, barks, then silence for a few heartbeats. A single cry rose, clear and falling, to be joined by another voice, then another, and another yet. Abruptly, they stilled, to be followed by silence again. The loathsome creatures clustering about her were growing impatient. Some of them scrabbled ahead, then turned to twitter at her. Unseen jackals sang and wuthered on the wind. Realizing that once she entered, there could be no turning back, Aeriel stepped into the labyrinth.
How long she wandered, she had no way to tell. Only a ribbon of sky showed overhead. Without a horizon, she could not judge how far the stars had turned. The pearl chose her way, distinguishing false trails from true and disregarding illusory walls meant to confuse and conceal the path. An unexpected sense of loss overwhelmed her when she discovered she could no longer sense where the army was. The twisting canyons seemed to bar the pearl's link to the dark girl with the sword.
Then the stone walls fell away on either side, and she was out of the maze. The jackals howled and hooted behind her. The creatures swarming about her ankles chittered and hissed. Before her lay a great flat stretch—tar black, oil smooth, without reflection: the Mere. So this was the place where the Lady Syllva's caravan had found itself trapped so many years ago, this the spot where the boy prince Irrylath had been lured by his nurse to the water's edge and given to the Witch.
Aeriel shuddered, picking her way through the bones that littered the bank. Far in the distance, she saw a white spire rising from the black water: the Witch's palace? It must be—though she had always pictured the