Wren drains the broth — woodsmoke and something herbal, warm enough to reach wherever her courage has retreated — then sets the cup back on the stone. "The Ashgate. Past the black barrow. How do I find it?" Old Maret looks at her. Then at her mule. "Birch knows the barrow," she says, as if this is not particularly surprising. "He doesn't enjoy it, but he knows it. Walk him north-northwest and let him lead — he'll stop three strides short. The Ashgate is ten paces beyond, in the root-shadow of the oldest oak in this wood." She picks up her spoon again. "He won't go further. Neither would I." So Wren enters the deeper Thornwood with a mule named Birch, who moves at a pace that suggests he has done this before and resented it every time. The trees grow older as she walks — bark so black it drinks the thin dawn light, roots humped and enormous underfoot. Then two leaning trunks frame a low mound of mossy stone: patient, ancient, the sort of silence that has never been anything else. Birch stops. Three strides short, exactly as promised.