They spent the night outside, warmed by the heat of the embers. They had not been invited into the burrows. Az would not have wanted to spend the night beneath the earth with people who so despised him, but nor did he sleep peacefully in the open air. Beside him, he could still hear Rhea whimpering almost all the night, her shaking and trembling keeping him constantly on-edge.

In the morning, Rhea only half awoke. Dark circles lay under her eyes, and she moved and spoke as if in a dream. Eris helped her to her feet, helping her to dress, and giving her cool water to drink and splash over her head. It seemed almost motherly, but as soon as the girl seemed to have regained her speech, Eris began questioning her.

“Rhea, what did you see in the flames last night?”

“I saw a pyre with a bed of bones, a cavern, and waiting snake.”

“And did you recognize the place?”

“Yes. You have taken me there before. Nyxia is at Raven’s Mount, a day’s walk up the river.”

“Good.” Eris smiled, turning to Az. “Now, it is time for you to earn your keep. You can start by carrying Rhea, she has not the strength to walk.”

First, they breakfasted on fresh raspberries and salted fish, left as an offering by the villagers. The fish was excellent. The salt was clean and pure, and Az was tempted to overeat. The berries were fresh, larger than his head they stained his beard as the juices ran down his chin. Rhea ate nothing, sitting in a stupor and staring into the ashes as the other two prepared to go.

When the meal was done, Eris emptied Rhea’s pack, taking from it the silk-gland and some of the various pouches and placing them in her own. Then Az lifted the girl onto his back, feeling the dagger press against him through her robes. She felt light, almost frail, though he knew from their weeks journeying together how far that was from the truth. Finally, Eris took-up his pack as well as her own and the three started off down the riverbank.

The going was hard. At first, they followed a walking path, winding between smooth rocks and around mudflats. But soon the path narrowed and then disappeared, the villagers apparently not venturing this way often. Az was surprised to find that even with the girl on his back, still Eris had trouble keeping pace. So enamored had he been with the woman’s wiles, he had hardly thought her mortal. But now, to see her sweat and puff under the weight of the two packs, struggling over the uneven ground, he was reminded that it was he who had been brought for the strength of his arm.

For the first few hours Rhea had been silent. Her head dangling forward, eyes closed, Az had not been sure if she was even awake. But, as the sun began to draw down in the sky, and the large hill they called Raven’s Mount came into view, Rhea spoke into his ear in a half-whisper.

“Set me down,” she said.

Standing at the top of a steep incline waiting for Eris to make it the last few-dozen feet, Az was happy to oblige. Bending his knees, he set Rhea down on the rocky soil. The poor girl looked awful, still half awake, pale, and probably nauseous. For a moment, there was silence between them.

“I will be eighteen tomorrow.” Rhea’s voice was weak and dreamy, and she looked into the dirt as she spoke. “A girl no longer.”

“I’m sure you will be more or less the same,” said Az. “A day older, but no more.”

“You know nothing of me…” She trailed off.

Az looked down at the girl, studying her pained expression. “How do you feel?” he asked.

“Is that the question you would ask the seer, in our minute alone?” Rhea looked up him, fixing Az with the same cold stare to which he had become so accustomed. “Are you really that incurious?”

Az frowned. He looked over his shoulder, reassuring himself that Eris was still a long way off. “Alright,” he said, “How did you get those scars? Not the ones on your face, but those carved into your flesh.”

Rhea blinked. Rolling up her sleeve to the shoulder, she looked at the marks that lay just above her elbow. “When I was a girl, the women, Eris and Nyxia, would have me drink the brew until I lost my senses. And every time, when I would awake, there were always fresh cuts. Until, eventually, I looked like this.”

Az grimaced, looking with pity on the poor girl.

“Ask again,” she said. “You will not get another chance.”

“Why do the villagers hate Eris so much?”

“They do not believe that Nyxia has lost her mind. They think we witches take their children as payment for finding the salt-spring.”

Az swallowed hard, glancing over his shoulder once more. Eris was not far off now, just barely out of earshot. “And is that how the headman lost his hand? Severed and burned in a ritual to find the spring?”

For only the second time since he had met her, Rhea smiled. “Finding the spring was easy,” she said. “We know the woods and can tell the water by it’s taste. It was finding you for which we needed the hand.”

“And why did you need me?”

“Feeling better, Rhea?” Eris threw down the packs, bending over to catch her breath. “Good, then you can walk from here. And Azazel can take back his pack of stones.”

“Perhaps we should make camp,” said Az. “Move on the woman in the morning, when we are rested. Not when we are tired and as night is falling.”

“No,” said Eris quickly. “We have come too far to rest and risk missing our chance. This ends tonight.”

Getting back underway, Az shouldered his pack, glancing back at the women uncertainly. Rhea stood on shaky legs and he was far from convinced that she should be walking. Beside her went Eris, half to steady her, and it seemed to Az, half just to keep an eye on her.

As he walked, Az could not help puzzle over what the girl had told him. Stranger than anything she had said, was her sudden willingness to talk. He thought back to their journey. Had there really never been a time when Rhea had been alone with him? He could not remember one. Though, certainly, the girl seemed capable of slipping away from Eris, had she so chosen. Or was it the brew, sapping her strength and loosening her tongue. And her story. Eris poisoning and disfiguring her, making it impossible for her to join any community but that of the witches. The older woman had seemed so kindly and civil compared to Rhea, could she really be capable of such cruelty? Did Eris ever even drink the brew herself, or make any predictions of her own? Certainly, he had not seen her do so.

All these thoughts swirled in his mind, as the three made their way slowly up the final incline. The river they had followed all day bent around Raven’s Mount; a boulder speckled hill covered in tall pines. Where it faced the river, the hill was impassably steep. The three had hooked around to the east, climbing it where the slope grew gentler, and shielding their eyes from the setting sun.

Occasionally, they could hear the caw of the ravens that gave the place its name, sitting somewhere in the branches overhead. The sound gave Az chills. Ravens were not birds of prey in the category of hawks or owls. But still, they were massive. They could easily kill a man, should they choose to. And with Rhea half-alive, and Eris clearly exhausted from the walk, the three would make an easy target. And then there was the hag. The women seemed remarkably unconcerned, given how far they had gone to find someone to kill her. It seemed clear that this had been a lie. But then it was only he who had cause to fear, and not just Nyxia, but all three. Who would know if he turned on them now? Killed his companions. Took what remained of the gold, and left their bodies for the ravens. Who would care? To the villagers, it might be a relief. But no, Az would rather die, than take another such sin onto his conscience.

“How much farther?” he asked, as the three approached the summit.

“Not far…” said Rhea’s dreamy voice. “The pyre approaches.”

As she spoke, Az cleared the final crest, coming to the place where the hill rounded before its eventual descent. The ground was rocky here, and the hilltop was almost bald. Before them was a clearing, lichen and moss covered the open ground, stretching for half a dozen feet, and surrounded by tall pines. At the far side was a boulder, casting a long shadow towards them as the sun slipped down on the other side of the hill. The boulder was propped up by an unlucky little rock, on which it must have been dropped by a receding glacier, twenty-thousand years earlier.

Even for Az, there was no mistaking that this was the place. Between themselves and the cavern created by the leaning boulder stood a massive pyre. The old woman must have been busy. The pile of wood was easily twice the size of the one from the night before. Around it, scraped into the lichen, was a ring of runes, just like those cut into Rhea’s flesh. And, sitting on the stone before the base of the pyre, were many packets of folded leaves and woven reeds, like those which had held the parts of the spider, and the body of the boy. From the trees above, a raven cawed. Az set down his pack, and drew his sword.

“A cavern and a waiting snake,” said Eris, quietly. “There is little that escapes Rhea, when the ritual is right. Nyxia must lie in the shadow of the boulder.”

Az nodded, taking a deep breath, and preparing himself for the trial to come. He had walked for weeks, slept beneath stones and under stars, risked his life many times over, and all to come and kill this crazed old woman. He hoped he still had the heart.