A Plague of Giants (Seven Kennings #1) - Kevin Hearne Page 0,80

the horse on the flank to send it and Yar’s body after the others, I ran alongside it for a short distance until it outpaced me. I kept churning after it, starlight and sound guiding me, hoping that soon I would find a patch of ground that wasn’t solid stone, a layer of topsoil through which I could call on the powers of my kenning.

The clatter of the horses’ hooves on the shale kept me from hearing anything of the hounds beyond their barking; I couldn’t tell how close behind us they actually were. But then the sound of the hooves changed as they hit the high mountain turf, and I knew that the soil I needed wasn’t far ahead. The collected thumping of their gait matched the hammering of my heart, and I took big heaving gulps of air to give myself as much energy as possible, straining against muscles that had tightened up after hours on horseback.

Reaching into my vest for a sealed inner pocket, I remember thinking years ago that I’d never have occasion to use the dormant seed waiting there inside a slim wooden box. It was given to me by Mat Som ben Sah once I’d adapted to my silverbark; every greensleeve got them from an elder of his or her clan. I remember feeling awed at its appearance as he placed it in my palm; even as a seed, the carnivorous bantil plant looks hungry and vicious, having a scalloped red hook and thorn to it. Animals that were too strong for the vines to take down took seeds with them, snared into their fur or flesh, and soon the seeds burrowed in and bloomed, consuming the animal from within and taking root in the soil where it died and then consuming any scavengers that came to feast on the corpse. It grew very quickly that way, converting blood and tissue into its own and growing more thorny vines tipped with toothy blooms that were really mouths.

“Plant it shallow, Nel,” Mat told me, words issuing from behind the impenetrable thicket of his gray beard. “Cut a finger and give it a single drop to get it started. More if you need it to grow big quickly.”

I would definitely need it to grow big quickly, and I would have to channel a huge amount of energy from the Canopy to do it. It would cost me a year or so of my life to accelerate the bantil’s growth to the extent that it would even stand a chance of stopping the houndsmen. But if it would save Pen and the others and guarantee alerting the Canopy before Gorin Mogen’s plan could take root? That would be worth it.

The jarring shock of stone ended, and spongy loam cushioned my feet. It was an island of soil in the rock, or more like a pool, blown into a water-carved depression and then rooted there by lichens and eventually grasses, and I could feel that it connected to the soil of the Canopy. I remembered seeing these areas trace up the hillside from Forn, hollows of vegetation streaming between ridges of shale.

The horses’ hooves faded in and out like the staccato barks of treetop apes, sometimes falling on stone and sometimes on turf. They were getting close to the Canopy. But the houndsmen were gaining. The barks were louder, and I heard massive claws scrabbling on the rock and the clanking of armor. Was I already too late?

Whipping the box out of my vest, I spun in the turf and knelt, poked a small depression with my finger, and upended the box over it, careful lest the hook of the seed get caught on my own flesh. I tossed the box away and pulled out my knife, slicing the tip of my left middle finger and holding it over the seed. Six drops and I pulled away, getting to my feet and stepping backward as the seed exploded into ravenous life, a small feral red mouth springing up a couple of fingerlengths even as roots shot into the earth. Hungry, the bloom of teeth searched for more blood, more meat, but that was not how the bantil plant would grow now. It would be fed from the Canopy itself at my direction.

Silverbark shoots dipped down from my legs and sank into the earth as I walked, picking up again before they tore as my movement demanded, pale tendrils that moved like the spokes of a wheel, communicated to