the Canopy, requested energy, received it, and delivered it again to the roots of the bantil plant.
Mat Som ben Sah had told me what it was supposed to feel like, and he had been told by his elders, and they by theirs, because no greensleeve of the White Gossamer Clan had done this for generations. But the lore was clear: “If you’re directing the energy properly, you will feel as if you’re burning from the inside,” he told me.
He was right, but it wasn’t burning like the Hathrim burn or like any fire I have known. It was the day’s sunlight channeled through my core, and although I did heat up and break into a sweat, it was not painful but enervating, as if I had not eaten for days—a strange sensation to feel such exhaustion when I was funneling weeks of growth through my cells.
Yes, it was weeks, for the bantil plant grew eight, perhaps nine feet high, a seething mass of thick, murderous vines, and its mouths faced north naturally, for it could sense the oncoming meat of the houndsmen, a far greater meal than I could ever provide; it would never eat me anyway since I enjoyed the protection of the Fifth Kenning. Seed hooks flashed in the starlight as vines snaked along the ground, hoping to snare a passing animal. They would have their greatest hopes realized soon enough.
Hounds do not track plants. They track animals like me, focus on their prey, and never think about vegetation as being dangerous or edible. So even if they smelled the bantil plant growing in front of them, they had no reason to be wary. And at the speed they were climbing over that saddle in the mountains, the houndsmen wouldn’t see it in time. But maybe they would hear ben Kor shouting from behind me, no doubt already safe under the leaves of the Canopy: “Ben Sah! What are you doing?”
Four mounted houndsmen bounded over the pass into Forn, and unable to see well, one of them ran directly into the bantil and went down howling in a tangle of snapping vines, its rider soon enough adding his screams to the hound’s as the blooms fed on them both. The other three passed by but brushed against the trailing seed vines.
I broke my connection with the Canopy, withdrew the silverbark roots into my legs, and staggered as the energy left my body. One of the hounds either saw or smelled me and pivoted to charge, allowed to seek a target by his rider. I knew I wouldn’t be able to dodge, much less fight such a beast on foot with only my hunting knife. I was too tired even to try. All I could do was collapse, and I did, the hot breath of the hound blowing my hair and its stench filling my lungs as it snapped its jaws above me, missing by inches as its trunklike legs passed me on either side.
The houndsman yanked his ride around to try again, and I thought perhaps I could manage a feeble roll, but I doubted it. The two other houndsmen were circling about, taking in their dying counterpart and realizing that I probably had something to do with the bantil plant.
A couple of steps more from each, and then their hounds yelped in unison. One sat to chew on one of its feet, and the other two spun in a circle at some irritation, bewildering their riders. I knew precisely what the irritation was: bantil seeds burrowing into their flesh and eating them. Only one of the giants had the sense to dismount and get clear. The others tried to hang on and get control of their hounds, but that didn’t work out well for them. The hounds flopped onto their sides, desperate to get at their feet, and that trapped their riders underneath them. The bantil seeds were young plants now, growing and eating fast, and soon enough they’d send roots into the ground, lash their prey to the earth, and feed until they could feed no more. I was not quite trapped in a circle of four bantil plants, but very nearly so. They might not burrow in and finish me, but those toothy blossoms might take a bite of me before they realized I was off limits.
The single giant that had avoided the bantils retreated and watched his feet as he ran. When he got close to the first monstrous bantil I had planted and