Gamarron rose from his crouch in the corner. “Then there are more of your kind guarding the Shard. How many?”
The snake-man spread his hands helplessly. “A hundred? Twice that? It was a very brief glance. The lowest of them could take a strap to me for being out in the public hallways, and my skin is too fair to take much of that.”
“We’ll be overwhelmed,” Gamarron growled with uncharacteristic temper. He looked down at Guyrin, his face darkening. “I think you’re going to have to exert yourself some more. A chaos wielder ought to be able to disable a small crowd, I think.” The chaos wielder clutched at the wall behind him and shook his head.
Renna nodded thoughtfully. “He’s struggling, but if I give him an extra dose to calm him, perhaps…?”
Tychus looked from Gamarron to Renna and back again, aghast. “Are you seriously considering having him unleash Chaos in direct proximity to the God Stone? Are you really so anxious to die?”
“What’s this, now?” asked Renna, irritated.
The Naga’s eyes bulged. “Three save me, you’re like children juggling spore pods.” He leaned in with hands outstretched as if he wished to shake sense into them. “He uses the essence of the creators to force reality into a new shape. Do you think that is simple? Or safe?”
Guyrin licked his dry lips, gathering himself. “Put another source of Chaos too close when I’m wielding, and it will amplify the discord in me. I feel it already, just being close. Everything is so much harder. It’s gone slippery on me.” He touched the red protrusion on his face, wincing. “What’s it like… a feedback loop? Overload? Whatever, it’s bad.”
“What happens if there’s an overload?” Nira asked, struggling into a sitting position with Kest’s help.
“At best,” he replied, “An unplanned warping of reality. The release of chaos beasts or time fluxes.”
“At worst, and much more likely, there will be a very loud boom,” Tychus interjected, “that none of us will hear for very long. The whole city could be annihilated, and who knows how much of the swamps besides. It could be so big that they’d feel it in Far East. The God Stone is massively powerful.”
“All the Naga dead at once doesn’t sound so bad to me,” Renna opined.
“Your concern for others is touching,” Tychus replied acidly, “but you’d all be at the heart of it. It’ll be difficult to confront your so-called demon lord when you’re nothing but ash, hmm?”
Nira closed her eyes as they argued, her head hurting too badly to think about anything. She let their whispered words wash over her, and her thoughts drifted aimlessly, fragments of the dream she’d had when passed out flitting past her mind’s eye in throbbing little flashes. Human hands shaping the tree. Not human, though – they were too big, too perfect. The translucent tree-flesh twisting up to the sky, hallways, rooms, and tunnels all springing into being…
Her eyes snapped open. “Tunnels,” she whispered. She struggled to her feet, waving Kest away weakly as stars danced before her eyes and her head pounded mercilessly. “Tunnels,” she repeated, interrupting the others. “Service tunnels, or spy tunnels, maybe – I don’t know.”
Renna looked at her as if she had sprouted a second head. “Is that supposed to mean something, or have you finally snapped?”
“I saw the tree’s history, its memory,” Nira explained, wishing she had the strength to punch the vile woman. “It was shaped somehow, made intentionally. There are tunnels, and I’ve seen the, the, what did you call it? The crown bower. I’ve been there. I can get to the Chaos Shard.”
Tychus gaped at her. “What? How? Are you certain of this?”
Nira steadied herself against the wall. “If the hall’s empty, I’ll show you.”
It wasn’t much farther to the top of the tree, and the silent corridor ended in a wide chamber with a rounded roof. A grand, artistically-embellished ramp hugged one wall, and a low buzz of sound drifted down to them from above. Nira put one hand to the luminescent flesh of the tree and refreshed her memory of its shape and being. Then she moved confidently up the ramp toward the opening above, ignoring Tychus’s warning hiss. Many voices were chanting in murmured unison above her, and the opening revealed twinkling stars peeking through a crown of green foliage.
It wasn’t where she was going, but she dared a peek over the rim of the opening anyway. She immediately wished she hadn’t. A huge throng of Naga crowded the open-air platform that was the crest of the tree. It was more of a bowl, really, with huge branches arching up and out on all sides before the willow-like ends drooped earthward. Other branches had been purposefully doubled back to form a loose roof overhead, giving the large space the feel of a bower, or perhaps a holy place.
All the Naga faced away from her, focused on a dais on the far side of the open space where a female with an elaborate feathered headdress led the chants. The Naga priestess had her arms upraised and her eyes closed in fervor.
Ducking back down into the room below, she looked to Gamarron and the others. “Lots of them. But there’s an altar up there I can get to without being seen. That’s where the Chaos Shard will be, I’m sure of it.” Gamarron grimaced and nodded, obviously not liking that he had to cede this critical task to her.
Reaching down onto the wall of the ramp on which she stood, Nira pressed her hands against the tree, searching for the opening she’d seen in her dream. The whole tree
