Through the shredded black clouds a fire moved like a dying star, falling back to earth -but unlike any star had ever done before, it sometimes managed to steer its fall, sometimes rising, sometimes twisting, but inevitably heading down. Snow glowed briefly on the mountain slopes when it crackled overhead. Under it, the land itself started to fall away. The fire was reflected off walls of blue ice as the light dropped into the beginnings of a canyon and thundered now through its twists and turns. The light snapped off. Something still glided down the moonlit ribbon between the rocks. It shot out of the canyon at the top of a cliff, where meltwater from a glacier plunged down into a distant pool. Against all reason there was a valley here, or a network of valleys, clinging to the edge of the mountains before the long fall to the plains. A small lake gleamed in the warmer air. There were forests. There were tiny fields, like a patchwork quilt thrown across the rocks. The wind had died. The air was warmer. The shadow began to circle. Far below, unheeded and unheeding, something else was entering this little handful of valleys. It was hard to see exactly what it was; furze rippled, heather rustled, as if a very large army made of very small creatures was moving with one purpose. The shadow reached a flat rock that offered a magnificent