Though the rest of the forest was covered in a sheath of the greenly glowing croach, this one tree, smooth sided, branchless, straight, was only covered to a height of ten or fifteen feet. The trunk was enormous, fully as big around as Bernardholt's walls. It didn't look like it had any bark at all-just smooth wood that reached up to a height of more than a hundred feet before ending in round, irregular edges, as though the tree had been snapped off by some giant hand, then had its rough edges smoothed by time.
At the base of the tree, there was a cavernous opening, a sloped and irregular triangle where the trunk parted, allowing entrance to the interior Tavi paused and watched the Keeper he had been following It paced slowly into the tree's interior, and as it passed within, another Keeper moved out on the other side of the opening, as though it were a tunnel in the causeway
Tavi stopped for a few moments and watched Shortly, the Keeper he'd been following or another like it came out of the tree in exactly the same place Still another came creeping in from another direction and entered the tree in exactly the same manner as the first, emerging again a few moments later
The Keepers must have been taking something into the tree But what' Something small, if they were just scuttling in and out, like ants in and out of their hills Food' Water' What did they carry'
Tavi shook his head and touched the blanket with his fingertips Though it was still cool, it didn't feel as cold as it had a few minutes ago The air down here in the chasm was just too warm He had to hurry, he knew, because with each passing moment his method of concealment became less effective
Tavi struggled to calm the pounding of his heart What if these bugs were smarter than he thought' What if they had only allowed him to come this far because they wanted him there anyway' What if they just wanted to get him to a place where he could not escape and would then leap on him and devour him'
And what, he thought, could possibly be there inside that tree' What would be there that the Keepers would be carrying something to' If they were like ants, existing in a colony, where some carried food, and some fought, and so on, would they have a queen, like ants did' If so, would she be inside the tree, at the heart of their domain'
A dozen more questions flicked through Tavi's mind, before he realized that he was doing nothing but wasting his time He didn't have any answers to any of the questions, and he wouldn't get the answers standing in place- all he would get would be warmer More vulnerable
He kept counting in his head and reached five hundred
Tavi all but held his breath, poised to flee if the plan went wrong, though he knew that his chances of escaping from the heart of the chasm were slim indeed Tavi waited And waited Nothing happened
He felt his heart begin to race as panic crept over him. Had Kitai abandoned him and her own part of the plan? Had something gone wrong? Had she been found and killed before the time limit was up? Could she even count to five hundred? What had gone wrong?
Tavi remained still and kept counting, deciding to give her another hundred counts before he fled.
Then the stillness and silence of the Wax Forest dissolved into a symphony of whistling shrieks. If Tavi had not seen it happening, he would never have believed that so many of the Keepers could be so close to him without his knowledge of them. They erupted from everywhere, from every surface where the croach glowed, ripping their way up out of the waxy forest floor, dropping from the glowing branches of the twisted trees, boiling out of the interior of the great tree trunk itself. Hundreds of them appeared, and the air itself shook with their whistles and clicks and the squeak of shell rubbing on shell.
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