The eye-thing didn’t feel like a part of him. It had no feeling. Touching it felt prodding a dead mole rat. His eye socket no longer hurt, thankfully, but he felt… invaded. The images it let him see disturbed him, too. They did not mesh well with his native sight, giving him the constant feeling of double-vision. The new sight was dull of color, yet it was incredibly sharp and detailed, allowing him to perceive the smallest movement or change around him.
The heat he could see now was the strangest of all. It had bewildered him entirely at first. The welter of new signals overlayed his vision and yet somehow existed as a separate sense, letting him know how hot things were. Living things leapt out of the undergrowth as he looked at them, bright spots against a dark background. His mind was finally adjusting to it, and now he saw their campfires as bright spots of white, his companions in shades of red and orange fading to blues at the extremities, and non-living things as dark spots. It was confusing, for these “colors” competed with the real colors his true-born eye saw. Looking at Nira was a strange and lovely dichotomy -- her skin a dusky brown in one eye and yet brilliantly bright in the other. He wanted to ask her why she was so much warmer than the others. No, leave her be. She wants no part of you.
The heat vision didn’t come from the ugly little insectile eyes embedded in his face, but rather from sensitive pits embedded in between them. Each pit was protected by short, wiry hairs like eyelashes. It was an amazing gift, truly – but still he begrudged the cost. What would my old chief Puldaergna say if he could see me? Or Mother? Most likely, Pul wouldn’t say anything – he’d simply attack him as an abomination. His mother would weep and do the same.
Keeping it covered helped. He felt exposed in the worst kind of way when anyone looked on that hideous eye. But now, with the others a stone’s throw behind him, having the eyepatch up helped. The insect eyes’ sharpness made the subtle bending of the grasses before him obvious. With a nod of satisfaction, he flipped the eyepatch back into place and waved to the others.
Gamarron surged forward on his zephyr, the others close behind. The old man was getting ever more urgent as they got closer to their goal. Kest had actually seen him chewing on his lip earlier, which was the equivalent of any other man ripping out tufts of his own hair.
“Anything?” Gamarron asked.
Kest gestured to the opening in the treeline before him. “I think I’ve found the exit vector for the Naga army.”
Gamarron tugged at his beard. “I don’t see anything.”
Kest squatted and gestured to the short grasses that grew abundantly in this region. “It’s hard to tell, because Naga don’t have feet to crush the blades with, but if you look closely, all of the grass blades have been swept in the same direction. The grass is hardy, so the blades don’t break, but when you look at them all together you can see that a lot of bodies passed in the same direction. Especially when you compare it to other spots…” He popped up and walked three meters back into the trees. “Like this. The blades point in all directions. This is how it grows naturally.”
Gamarron dismounted, taking a moment to slap away his zephyr’s head before it could bite him. He knelt and touched the grass. “I’m looking closely and I still can’t tell. You can see the difference?”
Kest hunched his shoulders and scratched under his eyepatch. “Half of me can.”
“The mighty tracker speaks!” Guyrin said. “But how do you know it’s the Naga and not just a bunch of snakes?”
“Not many snakes travel in herds that leave five-meter swathes in the grass,” Kest said. “Plus, I see broken twigs and torn leaves along the border up to shoulder height. Ever seen a snake that can do that?”
Nira grinned at him from atop her mount. “Mighty tracker indeed. Two more minutes of looking at it and I could have figured all that out.”
Kest felt his chest clench and hid it with a smile. “Ah yes, the legendary hunting skills of… Canton Bend, was it? I should have stayed on Pacari. But tell me, great jungle sage, do you know how long ago they passed?”
She frowned. “You can’t possibly know that!”
“Twelve hours at least,” he said. “Maybe eighteen.”
“Pure guessing,” grumbled the girl.
He walked to a broken branch near the edge of the grassy opening in the trees. “This is gumroot ash, or something like it. Break the branch and it will drip water for eight hours and then bleed white sap for about another four before sealing. Look.” Exposing the spot where the branch had broken, he pointed to a clear, tacky bulb right at the break. “Once the sap starts to dry it turns clear. At least twelve hours. Given how tacky it is, I’d say sixteen.”
Gamarron nodded impatiently. “Nicely done. Lead on. No time to waste.”
Kest hesitated. “We need to be more careful now. It’s been most of a day since they passed, but they might have trailing sentries. We should stay off the trail and stick to the shadows. Less talking.”
Turning to the others, the old man said, “You heard him. Stay quiet, follow his trail exactly, and watch for his signals.”
They moved on in silence, weaving through the trees parallel to the Naga’s path much as they had done in skirting
