They chattered to the queen who turned to Lucy. ‘There is no passage down, O Promised One, but there is a place where the precipice is not so high. That is where we shall go.’ Lucy remounted her trusty tapir and they trekked westwards with the morning sun behind them for twenty minutes. Then they went downhill a little way and came to a rocky outcrop clear of trees. The monkey led Lucy near to the rim of the crater and she gazed in wonder at the spectacle before her. ‘The arboribane says the thunderquill is here in the Valley of the Mighty Ones,’ she told Lucy. ‘It is as well, for the Valley of the Ancients lies far yonder, beyond those hills –’ she pointed to the horizon, ‘– and it would have taken us many more sunsleeps to reach it.’ She stopped and suddenly pointed down into the valley. ‘Here are the Mighty Ones below us.’ She pointed to the crater valley and Lucy gasped. In the distance on the plain below she could see the black shape of a creature as big as the tree it was stripping.
