He respected her silence and lead the way, alternating between a fast walk and a slow run, until thing grew rocky enough that they were hiking uphill and periods of climbing.  The trees go stranger, still, and at one point Geraint had them wait atop a ridge while something moved through the brush beneath them - something large, with a stench that was far more metallic than an ordinary creature, with a tang on the nose that was hard to describe.  It raised it's head at one point, and it was like the head of a bear, except it had eye clusters instead of eyes, and its teeth glistened like wet copper.  It was also enormous, easily two tons.  It put its head down and moved on and they moved away from it.  Once, too, they skirted a dead tree that was full of crows, that watched them with silvery eyes, and when they shifted their wings the sound was metallic.  The spoke: "Later, we'll get you later, drink from your eyes, dumb wolves!  No escape, no escape!  We'll dance on your grave!"<br/><br/>Geraint didn't say anything in return.<br/><br/>The building he took them to was a square tower that was four stories tall.   The forest had reclaimed the land around it, but the structure was still intact.  Destroying reinforced concrete was hard even for a forest.  It overlooked the remnants of a city.  The forest got to the outskirts of town, swallowing all but a few of the taller buildings so it seemed only a canopy of trees with a few relics of the bygone age thrusting up through the leaves, but the center was nearly dead except for the shattered buildings and scorched earth... though in the center of the wasteland there was what could have been a fully intact building of perhaps twenty stories high, obscured by the ruins about it.<br/><br/>At the bottom floor there was a heavy door that Geraint had partially restored - the hinges had been replaced, set into the door with large copper rivets.  The door, itself, was nearly a foot thick, and despite being of steel had little more than a patina of rust on the outside.  A few decades before, the soil and water itself had been poisoned.  Now, the water ran clear, which took the poisons from the soil, off to the lowlands, to the plain where the city stood shattered.  While being outside for extended periods of time could overwhelm even a werewolf's constitution, being in a concrete building neutralized whatever effects remained from the wasteland below.  Inside, it was spare.  There was a cot, blankets, an iron fireplace with a tin chimney leading to who knows where, a table with an electric lamp with a hand crank to recharge it, with papers and books loading it down, and crates of food, bottles of water, boxes of who knows what.<br/><br/>"I'm not looking for redemption," he told her.  "Not from them least of all.  It's not much, but make yourself comfortable."  He got a bottle of water - glass with a wooden cork - and handed one over to her, got another one for himself.  "We should be careful with the water most of all.  There's a stream not too far from here, and it's okay by all the tests I know to do, but the land here is treacherous."  He didn't say about killing Blackvayne or not, because he had no idea what was going on.  He was trying to sort out his options.  Right now, no doors were closed, he saw that.  But he would be forced to make a choice soon.<br/><br/>"The witches told me to wander.  To scout.  If they were going to send anyone to do something that was risky, I was usually their first call.  I've spent years crawling around these hills, yeah, finding threats, and more than threats.  But are there others like me?  Not that I know.  It's rare enough that we're born.  Most werewolves would rather abort a cursed child than see it be born... though I heard a story about a werewolf that survived its abortion and survives to this day, the meanest sonofabitch the world has seen, never leaves its warform, and is twisted as any mutant born in the Burning Lands.  Maybe a story, but a few times I saw things that made me wonder.  But I don't know any."