that reminded him of spiderwebs. “It can’t be so thick all the way to the colony.”
When Boult didn’t answer, he turned around, but the rest of his crew was nowhere to be seen. He couldn’t see the beach, and the passageway that he’d cut through the underbrush Seemed to have reverted to its original state. Surrounded by a tangle of plants, Harp suddenly felt disoriented. He tried to listen for the ocean, but he couldn’t hear the crashing of the waves through the dense plants. Harp resumed his hacking, moving slowly back to the beachhe hopedbut without making much progress. If his boyhood forest was a cathedral, the Chultan forest was a demon’s playground.
The air around him was hot and close, and he felt dizzy as if he had been working without water in the hot sun for hours. He realized he had no sense of how long he’d been alone in the thicket. The sunlight world of sand and crashing waves was long gone as Harp struggled against the stranglehold of plants.
“Boult!” he shouted, surprised at how little his voice carried. He might have been yelling from inside a closet for all the sound he made. “Kitto!”
He attacked the vines with renewed vigor. They’d all left the beach at the same time. Surely they couldn’t have gotten too far apart, not when they were all fighting through the same twisted undergrowth. Harp saw a beam of light flash across the ground. Bending down, he saw an opening at knee height. He sheathed his sword and scrambled on his hands and knees into a low, narrow passage through the thicket.
As he crawled along the ground, he felt his hands squish into something soft. The ground beneath his fingers was slick with white fungal growth. He crawled faster, sinking deeper into the thick mat of mold, the putrid smell of decay making him gag. A netting of black moss hung from the branches above him, tangling around his face and neck. Harp felt panic rising in his chest. It would be a miserable place to die.
Up ahead, he saw a clearing in the thicket. He lunged forward and tumbled into the open, pausing to wipe the slime from his hands on the leaves on the ground.
“Harp!” Cenhar called with relief. The old warrior stood at the edge of the clearing, his axe raised high above his shoulder. His long, gray hair was matted with leaves. Cen-har’s massive biceps twitched as he gripped the handle tightly, and his eyes darted wildly as he scanned the undergrowth with unnerving concentration.
“What’s wrong?” Harp asked. Usually Cenhar was as steady as a boulder, but Harp wouldn’t be surprised if the jungle had spooked even the veteran warripr.
“I heard something,” Cenhar said.
“Animal?” Harp noticed that his sword’s sheath was coated in white slime. Crouching down to wipe it off, Harp sensed movement behind him. He spun around, but nothing was there.
“Did you see that?” he asked.
“No, but I hear something over there,” Cenhar said. He used the edge of his axe’s blade to part the leaves and peer into the bushes.
“Let’s get back,” Harp said. “We need to find the others and regroup on the beach.”
“Yeah” Cenhar began. Something long and narrow snapped out of the undergrowth, cracked through the air, and retreated into the thicket with a hissing sound. Cenhar sidestepped out of the way and moved to join Harp in the center of the clearing.
“What in the Hells was that?” Cenhar said. “A whip?”
“I think it was a vine,” Harp replied. The leaves on the ground began rustling as if a multitude of snakes were slithering toward their feet.
“Since when do vines move?” Cenhar shouted as the two men leaped away from the mysterious onslaught. A mass of dark green tendrils rose out of the loam. They undulated back and forth rhythmically before lashing simultaneously across the clearing. Harp and Cenhar scrambled away as the vines snapped against the ground.
“Welcome to the jungle,” Harp said, pulling a flask with a cloudy orange liquid off his belt and flinging it at the vines. The bottle smashed, splattering the tendrils with acid, and making them drop to the ground and retreat out of sight under the fallen leaves. Cenhar and Harp moved to run, but the vines snapped into the air again. Cenhar dropped to the ground, yanking Harp down as the vines lashed over their heads. They clambered to their feet and plunged into the underbrush. Beside him, Cenhar gasped in pain. But when Harp paused to see what had happened, Cenhar shoved him to keep moving.
“Kitto!” Harp yelled. “Boult, you bastard! Answer!”
He heard Boult shouting at him, but the dwarfs voice sounded muffled and distant. Harp’s skin itched. He looked down and saw small dark shapes swarming over his hands and legs. He yelped and tried to brush them off, but the swarm clung. He and Cenhar blundered in the general direction of Boult’s voice. They stumbled out of the vegetation and onto the beach, as thousands of tiny insects swarmed over their clothes.
Wincing in pain, Cenhar stumbled and nearly fell, but Harp half-carried him down to the ocean waves where they frantically scrubbed off the creatures, some of which were already burrowing into their skin. Harp yanked off his shirt and scrubbed his face and the back of his neck. As they cleaned off the last of the insects, Cenhar groaned in pain. Harp helped him back ashore, and the old man collapsed on the beach.
“What happened?” Boult asked as he loosened the shoulder straps on Cenhar’s leather chestplate. The warrior took ragged breaths between his gritted teeth. A green vine had wound tightly around his upper arm; hooked burrs curled deep into the inflamed tissue.
“It jumped on him,” Harp said.
“The vine jumped on him?” Boult repeated, “I don’t like that sound of that.”
“How long were we in there?” Harp asked.
“Not very long,” Boult replied. “But we all came out onto the beach in different places.”
Harp pulled his dagger out of his boot and began to slice through the vine, sparking cries of pain from Cenhar.
“Damn,” Harp said, sheathing his dagger. “We have to get him back to the ship. Help me lift him.”
But when they tried to pick Cenhar up, his body went rigid, and he seemed to stop breathing.
“Poison?” Boult asked.
“His lips are blue,” Harp said. “We have to move.”
Verran laid his hand on Harp’s shoulder. “Let me try,” he said, but he looked terrified.
“Try what?” Harp asked suspiciously. But he moved away so Verran could kneel beside Cenhar.
Verran held his hands over Cenhar’s chest and began to chant under his breath. As his trembling fingers moved through the air, the barbed plant began to twist and writhe around Cenhar’s arm. The warrior cried out, and Harp moved to stop Verran, but Boult stayed Harp with a hand on his shoulder. The dwarf pointed to the vine, which began smoking as if it were burning from the inside out. With a hissing sound, it blackened and dropped to the sand. Small puncture wounds remained in Cenhar’s arm, but the redness vanished, and Cenhar flexed his huge gnarled hand with a look of relief.
Boult helped Cenhar sit up, and both of them stared at Verran, who looked like he wanted to crawl into a hole and hide.
“Stop looking at me like that,” he said defensively. “I saved you.”
“Uh, thanks.” Cenhar swayed on his feet, and Harp thought the behemoth of a man was going to faint back onto the sand.
“We didn’t know you were a sorcerer,” Boult said to Verran.
“I’m not. I got rid of the vines, that’s it.” Verran jutted out his chin defiantly.
“You used magic!” Boult said.
“You should have told us,” Harp said.
“I’m not… It doesn’t matter,” Verran said shakily.
“Magic always matters,” Boult insisted.
“It’s complicated,” Verran said, kicking at the sand beneath his boots. “And private.”
“If you want to be on the crew, you have to be honest with us,” Boult continued angrily.
“Really?” Verran said. “Does that just apply to me? The captain can keep whatever secrets he wants?”
“What do you mean?” Harp asked.
“You have a massive secret. Not even a secret. It’s all over you.”
“What do you want to know, Verran?” Harp asked quietly.
“How’d you get the scars?” Verran demanded.
When he saw how the other men reacted to the question, Verran lost his adolescent bravado. “They’re all
