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“All the way? None of us,” Lucan said. “I have been on part of it.”

“I too. As far as the Crow’s Foot at the Tomb Fork,” Biri-Daar said.

Paelias looked around. “Just the two of you,” he said. “And neither as far as this Inverted Keep. Interesting. Well, I’ll take the first watch and perhaps in the morning one of the crows will bring us a map.”

In the morning, while they brewed tea and toasted bread, Remy said, “Would the crows do that? I mean guide us.” Keverel was slicing jerked meat. He paused and looked at Lucan.

“Interesting,” he said. “Would they?”

Lucan chuckled. “My guess is that I have no idea. I’ll give it a try.”

They waited as Lucan walked closer to the road and whistled out to the crows. Two of them flapped down into a dead tree closer to him. Remy watched as the crows bobbed their heads at Lucan. He pointed down the road, made a circular motion in the direction of the sun. After a few minutes, the crows flew back to their stations at the tops of the nearest trees. Lucan walked back toward the camp and the crows began to caw.

“They’re just sentries,” he said. “They’re descended, or say they are, from the crows buried along this part of the road, which according to them originally came from a clan that lived on the edge of the elves’ forest near the Gorge of Noon. Who knows whether it’s true.

“But they also said that they thought it was five more days to the Crow’s Foot, and a day after that to the Inverted Keep. I’m not sure how clear their ideas are about how far we can go in a day.”

“Not far enough,” Kithri sighed. “Is there water on the way?”

“Odd you should mention that. The crows said that the last day or so of the trek would be through a swamp.” Lucan squatted by the fire and poured tea. “They don’t like the swamp. They wouldn’t say why, but it was clear they didn’t like the swamp at all.”

“Well, I love swamps,” Paelias said brightly.

Keverel snorted. “Gods,” Kithri said. “You made the cleric laugh. Either this will be a great day or we will all die.”

Saddled up and back on the road, they watched the crows watch them for that day and the next. The Crow Road leveled out and traversed a broad landscape of naked granite and clear water, punctuated occasionally by twisted pines festooned with observant crows. “So,” Remy said when they had ridden the entire day without incident. “I’m starting to feel unusual because nothing has happened.”

“You mean nobody besieging us because they want your box?” Kithri said.

“Or undead spirits wanting to drag us down below the stones, to transform us into ghouls and wights.” Keverel smiled thinly. There had been too much of that in the reality of their days for it to carry much humor.

“When we get to the Inverted Keep, what are we going to find?” Remy asked.

“I don’t know.” Biri-Daar looked at the clouds gathering to the northeast. “I’ve never seen it except from the other side of the Whitefall. And I have never spoken to anyone who has been in the Keep and returned.”

“What do you know?” Paelias. “Every time someone asks you something, O dragonborn leader, you tell us what you don’t know.”

“What do I know?” Biri-Daar repeated. “I know that the Inverted Keep hangs hundreds of feet in the air over the Whitefall, and that the way into it involves a way underground through the tomb of the Road-builder. I know that he transformed himself in some way, and presides over the Keep as he has done for centuries. I know that …” She faltered.

They rode in silence until she was ready to speak again.

“I know that there is a dragonborn there. One of my ancestors,” Biri-Daar said quietly. “I know that one of the Guardians of the Quill is there. That …” Again she trailed off and again she mastered herself. “That will not be so once we have come and gone.”

None of them knew what to say. Remy watched the dragonborn who had led them this far, and he understood more about how and why she did what she did.

“I will find Moidan’s Quill, and bring it out, and we will take the quill to Karga Kul,” Biri-Daar said. She