Chainer took one of each type of snake into dementia space. The rest he killed and shared with Kamahl. Kamahl wasn't sure what his friend was doing with the half-dozen rattles he had taken from his kills, but he seemed almost reverent about preserving them in his satchel, so Kamahl left him to it. There was much he didn't understand about this trip, but at least Chainer wasn't so intensely morose anymore.

The Cabalist was sitting against a fallen tree, counting the rattles in his collection. Kamahl sniffed the air, and for the fiftieth time felt that something was going wrong. "We're not very deep in, are we?"

"No," Chainer continued to count, transferring the rattles from his hand to a neat line he had arranged on the ground beside him. "Don't you think it's odd that we're seeing so many creatures this far out?"

"It's odd," Chainer agreed, "but not remarkable." "But there are tribes in the forest," Kamahl said. "Druids and Nantuko. We should have seen more of them and less of the things we've been hunting."

"Maybe they heard we were coming and fled," Chainer said. He began to put his rattles back into his satchel.

"That gargadon wasn't fleeing. It was milling around, lost, as if it had just been put there."

Chainer cinched up his satchel. "So?" "So who put it there? And why?"

Chainer stood up. "You're never happy, are you? Either there are too many creatures or not enough. Things are either too close to the edge of the woods or too far in. Don't get all anxious on me now, Kamahl. We'll start seeing the really big stuff soon, and I'll need you at your best."

"I'm always at my best," Kamahl said. "And when you say big, do you mean bigger than a gargadon?"

"I mean bigger than a wildcat or a crocodile. Centaurs and wurms. Maybe even a pack of monkeys." The eager look in Chainer's eye did nothing to address Kamahl's concerns. "I still say this feels wrong. It feels like a trap." "It feels like a trap because you barbarians are constantly pouncing on each other. If I got jumped every time I went to the privy, I'd see traps everywhere, too." He threw a handful of dirt on the embers of their campfire. "Come on. We've got one more day to get to the heart of Krosan. If we don't see any leaf-eaters or dirt-farmers by then, we'll ask the First about it when we get back."

Later that afternoon, they heard more rumbling in the distance, as another elephantine creature stomped through the forest.

"Could be another gargadon," Chainer said. "Which we already have. Even if we were able to kill this one, we don't have time to butcher and eat it."

"So we're letting it go?"

"Hells no. Not until I see what it is." Chainer smelled something familiar, and his heart began to quicken. Kuberr, he thought, smile on me now. They jogged for a while, until they came across the thing's tracks in the loose dirt and mulch that covered the forest floor. The prints were deep, but narrow, as if the creature were walking on the balls of its feet. There were extra tracks scattered alongside the regularly spaced ones where the creature had either gone down on all fours like a bear or propelled itself forward with its arms like an ape. Chainer followed the tracks as he ran, scanning ahead to make sure of his footing and behind to make sure Kamahl was keeping up. From around a thick copse of trees in the distance, Chainer heard a terrifying but familiar roar that made the blood pound in his ears.

"It's a grendelkin," Chainer said. He stood still, staring at the copse of trees. As Kamahl came up behind him, Chainer said, "This one's for Skellum. Ready?"

Before Kamahl could answer, the rampant grendelkin burst through the trees. It was even bigger than the one Chainer had seen in the alley outside Roup's, and this one's legs were whole and healthy. With a tree in each massive paw, the grendelkin spied Chainer and Kamahl and roared a challenge. It threw one tree at them, then another, missing by a wide margin but impressing them nonetheless. It thumped its chest and then the ground.

Chainer handed the loaded censer to Kamahl, and with a snap of his fingers, the barbarian ignited it. He tossed it back to Chainer, who lashed a chain into it as it flew. He immediately began spinning it around his head, spreading Dragon's Blood smoke all around them. Kamahl readied a throwing axe.

Then a strong gust of wind blew out of the copse, carrying a wave of greenish-yellow pollen. Chainer was breathing shallow and was partially protected by the smoke from his censer, but Kamahl took in a huge lungful of the pollen and immediately doubled over in a fit of uncontrollable coughing.

"Kamahl! Are you okay?"

The barbarian waved Chainer off and dropped the rest of the way down to the ground, trying to evade the pollen. With his face half-buried in mulch, Kamahl coughed the pollen out and tried to suck clear forest air in.

Chainer hesitated. He didn't want to leave Kamahl in the dirt, and he didn't want to face the grendelkin without support. The huge monster took a step forward and casually snapped the top off another tree. It used the tree as a crude club, and it shambled forward, slamming into the ground and other trees with each step.

"Poison," Kamahl choked. His eyes were wet, but he had stopped coughing and was struggling back to his feet. "There aren't any poisonous plants in this part of Krosan, Chainer. We're being set up."

Thirty yards behind the pair, a long, legless wurm slithered onto their tracks. It opened its square reptilian head and hissed, displaying the foulest and most jagged set of dragon's teeth Chainer had ever seen. A huge, burly centaur with spotted markings and a crude wooden club trotted out from behind the grendelkin, and a crimson night tiger growled from the trees above, its brilliant red hide almost glowing under its black stripes.

"All they've done," Chainer said, "is line themselves up for us." From above, a screaming wolf- monkey dove at Chainer. It became fouled in the censer chain, tearing it out of Chainer's grasp as the monkey itself sprang away with the chain tangled around its leg. Chainer sent a sharpened weight screaming after the retreating monkey but missed by a hair's breadth. The dementist glared at the mandrill with awful fire in his eyes.

"You're mine," he said darkly. "You are all mine." He kept his eyes locked on the monkey as he bent to retrieve the censer. A long vine whipped out of a nearby tree and wrapped itself around Chainer's wrist, and he felt an uncomfortable tingle. Moss was growing across his human hand, spreading outward from the vine. Chainer slashed his wrist loose with his dagger and scraped off the moss before it could spread any farther. The dagger took off the top layers of skin along with the moss.

"This is spellcraft." Kamahl was on his feet, standing behind Chainer. He had drawn his sword and stood with a weapon ready in each hand, his eyes darting from the copse to the wurm to the centaur to the tiger.

"Druid magic?"

Kamahl nodded. "Someone's pulling their strings." He blocked another lashing vine with the flat of his blade and chopped the offending tendril off with his axe.

"That copse of trees seems to be the center of it." Chainer flexed his bleeding hand, testing it. "Somebody's setting its pets on us. Kamahl, I want those monkeys and the grendelkin. The rest can burn, for all I care." He smiled at Kamahl and picked up his still-smoking censer. "You ready for some burning?"

Kamahl coughed the last of the pollen out of his lungs and spit. "Right now, I'd torch all of Krosan just to clear a pathway out of here." His eyes kept traveling back to the centaur. Chainer thought his friend looked disturbed, distracted by something other than the pollen or the attack vines or the platoon of wild beasts that had gathered to kill them.