The teaching and the learning of each other’s language, which had begun in the hay bam, continued as they walked along together through the nights and it was not long before Nab had enough command of Beth’s language to be able to tell her of his life and of the purpose of their mission together. She listened in amazement and fascination as he told her of his early days with Brock and Tara in the sett and of how he had been found, and of his adventures and friendships with the other animals in Silver Wood. He related to her the tales and legends of the members of the Council; Rufus, Bruin, Sterndale and Pictor, all of them now dead, and he told her the stories which he had been told of the great heroes of the past and of the early days when the Urkku were first on the earth and of the myths of the time Before-Man. Slowly, as their journey together continued, Beth felt a whole new world revealed to her; a world of whose existence she had previously been almost totally unaware and a world over which the shadow of the Urkku loomed, omnipresent, dark and forbidding. She felt as if her eyes were being slowly opened and when finally Nab retold to her, as best he could, the saga which had been related to him by the Lord Wychnor, then the answers to so many questions which had worried her and puzzled her for so long became clear; now the jigsaw became complete. She felt humble and proud to have been the one chosen by Ashgaroth to accompany Nab and she was pleased that the significance of her dreams had been explained. And she was to play a part in this saga; a part which she and the others would only fully understand at the end when they had completed their mission and Ashgaroth revealed it to them. When Nab had finished he buried his hand beneath his raiments of bark and, finding the casket on the Belt of Ammdar which contained the Ring, he pressed the catch and put his fingers inside to pull it out.
‘Here; this belongs to you. It is your gift from Ashgaroth; given to me as a sign for you by the Lord Wychnor,’ Nab said tenderly.
Beth took the precious ring, which she remembered so clearly from her dreams, and as she did so the silvery threads of mist deep inside it shimmered and moved gracefully in the golden light given off by the jewel deep in the shank. She placed it slowly and carefully on the long middle finger of her right hand and it seemed to cast an aura of light around her, so powerful was its glow. There it remained for ever, never to be removed, and the strength of its beauty never failed to fill Beth with wonder whenever she looked at it, and to help her through the difficult times ahead whenever she felt doubt or fear or uncertainty. It was her link with the world which Nab had shown her; her proof that she was truly chosen, and a constant reminder of the power and magic of that world and the depth of its mysteries.
The country through which they were going was not as flat as it had appeared from their first view of it; little streams and valleys cut it up and there were large areas of woodland and these they passed quickly in case they were seen by any of the travellers living in them. The existence of Nab and Beth must be kept secret until the end, and talk within a wood would soon find its way out to Dréagg through careless conversations. As they passed on across the plain the land became more fertile, the fields smaller and the Urkku dwellings more numerous. Farms were everywhere and sometimes it was impossible to avoid being within sight of one and they would find themselves crawling along ditches or by the side of hedges as lights from the farm windows blazed out across the fields and the noise of the cows being milked in the shippens, the hum of milking machines or the clatter of pails drifted out on the frosty air. At other times a dog would bark and the travellers would freeze where they were as a door opened and an Urkku stared out into the night to see what had caused the disturbance. Then they would wait until the door had closed again before venturing forward like silent shadows.
It was also at this time that they came across roads; the great bands of concrete which cut across the face of the land. Beth explained the purpose of them to Nab and he in turn told the others although they had all seen them before. Beth told them of the dangers if they were crossing when one of the Urkku vehicles was travelling along, and she always led the way over them, standing on the verge looking out for headlights and beckoning them to go over one by one when she thought it was safe. Sometimes two of them would be safely on the far side, normally Perryfoot and Brock as they went first, and then a stream of cars would appear from nowhere and the animals would lie terrified behind a bank, or hidden in a ditch by the verge, while the cars roared past in a thundering storm of noise and light, choking them with dust and fumes and leaving them shaking with fear. Once they had been crossing on a bend and Beth, thinking it was safe, had motioned Perryfoot across. He had just hopped on to the tarmac when a car screamed around the corner trapping him in its lights. The hare had frozen, mesmerized as Nab remembered from the incident he’d seen in the field at the front of Silver Wood, but fortunately Beth had just had time to leap out and pull him back before he was crushed under the wheels. The driver had seen the girl in the glare of his headlamps and had pulled to a halt further up the road. Beth had gone up to him when he got out and told him that it was her little dog he had almost run over and that she had left him tied to a tree at the side of the road in the ditch. He offered her and her dog a lift home as it was a cold night and it was past eleven o’clock, but she had politely declined the offer explaining that she did not live far away and was just taking the dog out for its last walk. The man had then wished her goodnight, walked back to his car and driven off, feeling slightly bemused by the sight of the wild-looking pretty young girl in the brown tweed cape whose eyes had seemed to transfix him with their depth and intensity and whose blonde hair had tumbled like a mane around her shoulders. She did not live far away, she had said, and yet the nearest house he had passed was eight miles back. Once back in the familiar surroundings of his own car, it was almost as if he had dreamt the entire incident.
Some time later they came across their first town. The previous night they had noticed a red glow in the dark sky and had wondered where it came from. They had stopped at dawn by the base of a huge oak tree and rested all day. That evening they set off again and the glow had still been there ahead of them until, towards midnight, they became aware of a constant hum coming to them on the wind. It was such an indistinguishable mass of sound that it could almost be forgotten about and it reminded the animals of a strong wind rushing through trees. As they got nearer the glow became brighter and the noise louder and more jagged so that now, over and above that level hum, could be heard the occasional horn of a car or the sound of a heavy lorry churning its way through the streets or a motor cycle buzzing along an empty road.
They were approaching the summit of a sharp rise in a meadow: suddenly they were at the top and there, stretched out in front of them, lay the town. It was not particularly big but to the animals it seemed as if it went on for ever. Their ears now felt as if they were being assaulted by the noise and the sky was ablaze with light; gone now was that comparatively gentle red glow, this was a maelstrom of reds, oranges and whites which carved away the darkness of the night in a huge arc above; and all around, like the crooked spolces of a giant wheel, stretched out ribbons of red as the street lights followed the roads out into the suburbs. Sometimes they could see twin pairs of lights travelling along as a car returned home late or a lorry made its lonely way through the town. As they turned a corner, these lights would sometimes, if they were on the outskirts, beam out into the darkness of the surrounding countryside and swing round as the car turned: once or twice they shone straight out at the animals, blinding them momentarily until they continued on their way.