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'"
Kitai extended her hand, and Tavi shoved one of the mushrooms into it "Run! Go, go go'"
Kitai nodded once, then stooped to the ground Tavi hesitated behind the girl, dancing in place as he looked back over his shoulder "Hurry," he panted "Hurry, hurry, hurry "
Kitai drew out the firestones smoothly, her expression cool, and struck them together Sparks fell from the stones onto the oil-soaked blanket that lay on the croach before them Kitai watched the flames leap up, then moved quickly, reaching up to grab the end of the fishing line that Tavi had soaked in the icy water before he left She jerked the line toward her, hand over hand The other end of the line looped up over one of the higher branches of the tree, up where living leaves grew above the grasp of the croach, and then fell back down to where it was tied at one corner of the oil-soaked blanket Kitai hauled the line in, and the blazing blanket rose up into the tree's branches and snagged among the living leaves
Fire leapt up from the