“It’s about your creature-Pupp, isn’t it?”
Brant noted her turn slightly to the left, where Pupp must be roaming.
“I mentioned this to the regent, and I didn’t know if he told you. My stone-I can see Pupp if it touches him, and I sense him if he draws near, a warming in the stone that can turn fiery if he’s very close. Not like the skull, but still mightily hot.”
She nodded. “I heard. That’s how you found the room where Pyllor attacked me.”
Her eyes found his, no longer shamed but more grateful and open. Under her immediate gaze, he struggled to find his tongue and failed.
She finally broke contact and explained, “Your stone must be ripe with wild Grace. If strong enough, any Grace-blood or otherwise-can draw Pupp fully into this world for a short time.” After a moment, she gestured toward his hand. “Could I see your stone? I never did get a good look at it.”
With a nod, he tugged the cord to pull the stone free from his shirt. She leaned closer to examine it.
Brant caught the scent of her hair and noted the curve of her neck as she cocked her head to study the rock. He suddenly found himself warming all over. He wanted to step away, but at the same time to step closer. Trapped between, he stood very still, as if he were being hunted.
“It’s beautiful,” Dart said, fingering the stone. “I hadn’t realized. The way it catches every bit of light.”
He felt the gentle tugs on the cord around his neck as she turned the stone in her fingers. It all but unmoored him.
Then underfoot, a slight tremble reverberated through the ship’s planks. They both took a step back and glanced to the windows. The flippercraft turned inland and passed over the first of the black cliffs that shot straight out of the churning white waves and treacherous currents.
“We’ve crossed into the Eighth Land,” Dart whispered.
As the flippercraft angled higher and the sun cleared the seas to the east, the entire land suddenly ignited, awash in morning light. Past the climb of the Nine Pools, the highlands awaited, framed in green peaks, thick with mists that glowed as pink as the clamshells of Farallon’s Ruby Pool.
But as the sun rose, it revealed a disturbing sight farther up in the highlands. A black pall mingled with the mist.
Dart noted it, too. “Smoke…”
With a growing sense of unease, Tylar stood on the captain’s deck, sharing a rail with Rogger and Krevan. “Still no word from any of the ravens we sent?”
“Not one’s returned,” Rogger said.
They had sent four birds flying with each bell as the flippercraft crossed into the Eighth Land. They bore messages toward Saysh Mal, announcing their arrival, inviting welcome and tidings. Tylar had ordered their craft slowed when smoke was noted rising into the skies.
Smudge smoke, Krevan had assessed with his more experienced eye. It did not churn and writhe with the breath of fresh flame. The pall here seeped from an old fire, one still smoldering in ember.
“What about the raven we dispatched to Farallon?”
Rogger shook his head, then shrugged. “No surprise with that one. When I stopped at the Nine Pools during my pilgrimage, Farallon was lost to his own dreamsmoke, wallowing in a torpid state from inhaling too deeply on his water pipes, bubbling with the dried and burnt petals of the realm’s water lotus. You could burn his palm-thatched castillion down around his ears, and he’d still not move. His household had been little better.”
Krevan pointed to the mountainous peaks with their vertiginous cliffs draped in greenery. The cloud forests still lay hidden in the valleys beyond, blanketed behind mist and smoke. “We should continue forward. We waste the day’s light. I’d prefer to be there before night falls.”
Tylar agreed and motioned for the captain to stoke the alchemies and gain the height necessary to climb from the Nine Pools into the highlands. The flippercraft rose with the barest shudder. Two massive peaks stood as sentinels before them, framing the gateway into the forests of Saysh Mal.
They had no choice but to trespass.
The flippercraft circled out and back, gaining the height to push over the falls, but just barely. The ship sailed forward between the towering peaks, fording the waterfalls from a distance close enough for spray to sparkle the flippercraft’s glass Eye.
Then they climbed higher yet, following a twisting concourse that switched up between jagged peaks until at last the squeeze of the mountains released them. A vast valley opened ahead, a gulf of mist cupped by green peaks. A few taller sentinels of the forest poked through the clouds and patches of open jungle shone brilliantly, like emeralds half-buried in snow.
But all was plainly not well.
Except for a few green pockets, the entire western edge of the valley floor lay exposed like a charred scar. Rising heat held back the morning mists, revealing the devastation. The forest had burnt to embers, leaving black trunks sticking out of the burnt ground like planted spears, a fiery palisade between Saysh Mal and the hinterlands that stretched out from the border there.
“What happened?” Lorr asked.
The tracker led in Brant and Dart. Brant wore a grim expression.
“Has there ever been a fire like this before in Saysh Mal?” Tylar asked.
“No. The Huntress controls root, leaf, and loam, protecting any ravaging fires from spreading. The only time I’ve seen such wild burns is in some of the lowland jungles of the hinterland. But never up in the highlands.”
“Until now,” Rogger murmured.
“Could she still be raving?” Brant asked. “Could a simple fire have been started by lightning, and in her madness, she did not stanch it but let it burn?”
Tylar looked to the thief for answers. Rogger was the one of them who had most recently visited this land, when he stole the skull.
His eyes held a worried glint as he rubbed the scraggly beard under his chin. “Eylan,” he mumbled and flashed Tylar a significant glance. “You saw her state when Brant broke the seersong’s grip on her. Her mind all but tore apart in the struggle. Taking the skull and hauling my arse out of there may not have been the wisest theft.”
Krevan made a grumble that clearly agreed with Rogger. But he kept any further accusations to himself.
Rogger continued. “Seersong is like a worm that takes root in a body rich in Grace. Look how it persists in the bones of Keorn, well after his death. Once embedded deeply enough, like with Eylan, or long enough, like with Keorn, the song becomes irretrievably entangled in mind and flesh.”
“And when you took the skull…” Tylar said, beginning to sense the depth of the error.
“Are you familiar with tanglebriar?” Rogger asked.
Tylar frowned. There was no need to answer. Everyone knew about tanglebriar, the thorny and stubborn growth that could be found everywhere throughout the Nine Lands. It proved almost impossible to kill, even with fire.
“Tanglebriar,” Rogger said, “is like any pernicious weed in a garden. You rip it free, only to have it grow back wilder. But tanglebriar is even more insidious. You tear off what’s above the soil, and its roots respond by digging deeper, spreading wider, bursting forth more robust than the original thorny stalk.”
“And you think seersong might be like tanglebriar?”
“If it fully gets its roots in you.” Rogger turned to the fire. “Taking the skull might have been like ripping tanglebriar. Whatever had already been planted in the Huntress over the years may have responded in kind. Driven deep, spread wider, bursting forth with an even more ravening madness.”
“Mad enough to let her own realm burn?” Tylar asked.
Rogger just stared toward the devastation. “There’s only one way to find out.”
Tylar’s eyes drifted away from the charred forest and turned to the tallest sentinel of it. Its crown of leaves caught the morning light and glowed with green fire. An ancient pompbonga-kee. The oldest of all the forest-and home to the Huntress.
No matter the risk, they would have to venture down there.
They needed answers from this realm. If they were to follow the footsteps of Keorn back into the hinter, they would need to start in the lands here, where his tracks ended. Additionally, Brant said a chronicler from the school in Saysh Mal possessed a map of the neighboring hinterlands, centuries old and sketchy at best, but better than
