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