Tavi froze, panicked. It was everything he could do to keep from bolting at the sheer speed with which they had appeared. One of the Keepers swept past him, almost close enough to brush against his soaked cloak.

They all swarmed off in the same direction-that opposite of the one that lead back to the ropes to the world above. Kitai had done her job, Tavi decided. She must have been keeping a slower count than Tavi had. She had used half of their remaining oil and the firestones to light a blaze that would draw the Keepers. If she was all right and had kept to the plan, she would even now be huddled beneath her blanket, moving for the ropes out.

The last of the Keepers in sight fled, vanishing into the glowing trees. All that remained was for Tavi to accomplish his part of the plan.

A lump crept up into his throat, and his knees felt like someone had simply slipped the muscles and tendons out of them. He thought that they might abruptly buckle and pitch him to the surface of the croach at any time, he was so afraid. He struggled to keep his breathing slow and quiet, to make sure that his trembling didn't result in any twitches that the Keepers would see as sudden, jerky movement, and stepped forward, into the trunk of the tree.

Inside, the croach wasn't in a smooth layer on the floor and walls-it was spilled and dumped and heaped and piled like wheat in a granary. Great swirling loops of it twirled up the walls or wound intricately through one

another like the guts of some great and glowing beast Tavi stared at them for a moment, in confusion and incomprehension It was beautiful, in a bizarre, alien way-strange and unsettling and fascinating

He jerked his eyes from one of the more intricate structures and moved closer to a wall, where it would be less likely for a newly entered Keeper to simply bump into him, looking around, struggling to orient himself according to Kitai's description

He paced deeper into the eerie stillness inside the tree, around a mound of whirled croach that looked like an anthill and forward through a small field of lumpy croach, which could have contained another thousand Keepers, silent beneath the surface

He found the mushrooms in a ring at the center of the field, just as Kitai had said They grew at the base of a glowing mound twice the height of a man, as big around as a small house The mound pulsed with greenish light, and Tavi thought he could see the shadow of something dark, something slender within

He drew closer, a sensation of raw dread flowing over him like an icy bath, even worse than the soaked blanket he wore as a cloak His knees grew weaker, and his breathing, despite his best efforts, became ragged

Kitai was rather -pretty, he thought Though she was a savage, there was something about her face, her eyes, that he found intriguing If she wasn't dressed, up in a ragged smock (which really was shamefully short now that he thought about it), she might look more like a girl, less wild Of course, he had begun to see her without the smock If he had told her to get more into the water, she might have taken it off altogether The thought made his cheeks burn, but lingered in front of him, enticing in its exotic appeal

Tavi shook his head abruptly What was the matter with him? He had to be careful and get the Blessing of Night The dark mushrooms had some kind of spiny thorns on their undersides, Kitai had said, which had pierced her hand once and left welts that lasted for months

He glanced up and around him, but saw no Keepers That could be an illusion, he knew There could be a dozen within arm's reach But no matter how afraid he was, Tavi had to press on

That was the history of his people, after all The Alerans had never let fear or the odds of failure deter them from overcoming, prospering Their oldest histories, his uncle had once told him, reached so far back into time that the hide and vellum and stone they had been scribed upon had worn away They had

come to Carna from, another -place, a small hand of only a few thousand, and had found themselves pitched against an entire -world. They had overcome the Icemen, the Children of the Sun and their stronghold in the Feverthorn Jungle, had repelled the Marat and the Canim over the centuries to claim the land of Alera as their own. They controlled the seas around their home, had walled out the Icemen in the north, overcome the Marat through sheer, savage fighting. With their furies and their furycrafting, the Alerans dominated the world, and no other race or peoples could claim mastery over them.

Tavi shuddered and blinked his eyes several times. He must have stood there, his hand extended toward the first of the mushrooms for nearly a full minute, not moving. What was the matter with him?

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled up more sharply as he reached for the nearest mushrooms. He hurried, breath rasping, picking one, then another, careful to put them into the pouch at his belt.

And then he thought he saw something in the great mound in front of him move.

Tavi jerked his eyes up to it, flinching, and felt an immediate, hot pain in the fingers of his hand. The thorns on the next mushroom had pierced him. He jerked his hand back, and droplets of his blood flashed out and arced through the air, sprinkling the glowing mound in front of him.

Tavi stared at the mound, the droplets of his blood on it. The surface of the glowing croach abruptly pulsed, bulged, and then rippled beneath the droplets of his blood, moving like the skin of some hideous, enormous creature and making Tavi's own flesh crawl in response. He watched as the droplets of blood vanished into the mound, sinking into the surface of the croach like snowflakes into a still-melted pond.

And the shadowy shape within the mound abruptly shuddered. And moved. A slow unwinding of limbs, languid, liquid, as though from a sleeper that had, after an endless passing of seasons, finally awakened. It moved, and Tavi felt its movement, felt a vast, bewildering awareness that swept over him like the gaze of some ancient and horrible beast.

Terror flooded over Tavi, raw and hot rather than cold, terror that set his limbs on fire and burned any thought from his mind, save one: escape.

Tavi spun on his heel and, heedless of the danger in revealing himself, broke into a panicked sprint.

He would remember little of his run, later. One or two chirruping whistles, perhaps, echoed through the trees after him, but they were sparse, and

he left them behind him, his steps light on the surface of the croach, terror lending him more speed than he would have credited to himself before that night

He flicked one glance over his shoulder as he ran and saw something through the glowing trees, at the base of the monolith, the opening he'd fled through He saw something tall, glistening-alien It stood just within the central tree, just behind the doorway Tavi could not quite see it, but he could feel it in a way both horribly intimate and beyond simple description

The lower-pitched whistle that went out through the trees felt, to Tavi, like some sort of hideous, mocking laughter

Tavi fled and did not look back again

He ran over the croach until his legs were burning and his limbs felt as though they would be ripped apart by the demands he placed on them He almost didn't see the strip of blanket that he had torn off and tied to a low tree branch before he left to mark his way back He headed for it, and from that flag spotted the next, and the next, laying out his escape route back to the ropes at the base of the cliff

"Aleran'" came a voice from before him Kitai dropped from a tree branch ahead of him "Do you have it'"

"Got two'" Tavi yelped "Couldn't get any more'"