While the others talked of travelling plans, the coronation and the spear, Elsa let her mind wander. She had dispatched Morrslieb early this morning - by now, the raven ought to be approaching the Mere.

Morrslieb
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Fog hung over the marshes south of Ravenskird, just as it had when the party had taken Rogar’s boat, one year and four months ago. Flying low over the Mere, Morrslieb spotted the jagged tops of the manse’s tumbledown walls rising above the fogbank, and flew in their direction.

Alighting at the highest point of the old ruins, Morrslieb ran beady eyes over the marshy island on which they stood. Coils of slow-moving mist clung close to the ground, but could not hide the evidence of human habitation. Ragged lean-to tents huddled against the old stone walls, the ashy remnants of cooking fires scattered over the damp ground.

A gaggle of thin, dirty people were gathered around one such fire, turning a gutted frog on a wooden spit. Others were coming and going in ones and twos out of the rotten wooden hatch that led down to the flooded lower levels of the ruin. Casting around, Morrslieb spotted Klammenberg sitting alone, just outside the circle of the fire with a wooden stick resting across his knees. The necromancer’s beard was growing back in a scruffy swathe of dark stubble, and his face looked pale and pinched. Fine-feathers is not looking so fine, Morrslieb spoke through his mental connection to Elsa.

A flicker of movement drew Morrslieb’s attention away from the scene below. A small bird had perched on the weathered stonework beside him - one of the colony of martins that roosted in the great willow tree. Another landed, and then another, the small birds staring up at the raven in unnatural silence. There was a rank smell about them, the crisp black and white of their plumage now dirty and grey.

The sun passed behind a cloud, and in the dwindling light, Morrslieb could see the greenish glimmer of witchlights in their glassy eyes. One of them turned its head, and Morrslieb saw there was no eye on the left side of its face - only an empty socket, and the gleam of yellow bone beneath matted feathers…