supposed he must have been much older than I realized. Everything does indeed have its own season.
“No, I’m sorry. I thought you already knew,” he said.
“We can remember him later,” I assured him, since there were introductions to be made.
The two clansmen were young men who had no plans to seek a kenning. One was fascinated by the sea and wished to be a trader, forsaking the Canopy for extended periods. The other wished to be a mushroom farmer and couldn’t tear his eyes away from the specimens growing on my legs.
So we were an odd bouquet of people leaving the Canopy and crossing over the westernmost pass of the Godsteeth in search of giants. The air became stark and cold, and I felt as if I were walking through emptiness even though there were still plants and peaks around me. I saw that Pak and Tip felt uncomfortable, too—they felt the change as I did, felt vulnerable outside the Canopy—while the others smiled in the abundance of sunshine.
There was a stretch of barren ground in the saddle of the mountains where our horses’ hooves clattered over dark shale and the sound echoed back to us, hollow and haunting. Only in a few crevices where some soil had accumulated did we see thin tongues of grasses; lichens on the rocks were the only other greenery. When we began to descend on the other side, we saw trees again, but they were softwoods like pine and juniper with evergreen needles rather than leaves. The horses trod on a carpet of needles as we picked our way down, and the smell was invigorating if lacking in complexity.
Sparse at first, the trees grew denser as we descended, and I felt less exposed. In some places our horses barely fit between the trunks, for this forest had never been touched so far as I could tell. Birds and squirrels cried out their alarms at our trespass. Some hours later, as afternoon crept by and shadows lengthened, the trees thinned out and the land flattened until we suddenly emerged from the forest and there was nothing ahead but grass to the horizon, not a single tree to be seen.
“Horrifying,” Pak Sey ben Kor declared. I don’t know if I would have gone quite so far, but it wasn’t pleasant.
“Ugh,” was all Tip Fet ben Lot had to say. It was fortunate that they were not our ambassadors to Ghurana Nent.
“Well, I see no Hathrim,” Pak said. “Or anything else. We’ve wasted enough time on this foolishness. Let’s return.”
“We haven’t searched the coast yet, benman,” I said. “We need to head west and perhaps travel some distance up the shore before I’ll be satisfied that the Hathrim do not threaten our borders. Like you, I don’t want to find them. But if Gorin Mogen does threaten the Canopy, it’s our duty as greensleeves to discover that threat before the first axe swings in our direction.”
The Black Jaguar’s eyes seethed with hatred, and his mouth twisted in a snarl. He didn’t like to be publicly schooled on his duty as a greensleeve, but I had said it more for young Pen’s benefit than to shame him. I turned my horse west and urged it to pick up the pace somewhat. We rode two abreast so that we wouldn’t be vulnerable to isolated attacks from plains creatures, and we skirted the tree line so that our left sides were less vulnerable; we’d be able to see anything approaching on that side before it leapt on us because the needles choked out most of the undergrowth. The grasses on our right could hide any number of dangers.
We managed an easy trot into the sun, a pace that ate up the unfamiliar ground but didn’t strain the horses. It jarred our bones, but I had no problem enduring that if it would get us our answer more quickly. Pak Sey ben Kor pointedly brought up the rear, refusing to ride anywhere near me. That was fine; he could mutter curses to himself if he wished.
Tip Fet ben Lot rode next to me, a smirk on his face about which I carefully did not ask him. Eventually he could not keep his amusement to himself. “You haven’t made a friend with Pak Sey ben Kor,” he said.
“He was never going to be my friend. The Black Jaguars hate the White Gossamers, and that is all he cares about.”
“Is not the reverse also true?”
“We are aware of the Black Jaguars’ feelings, but