The Whispering Trees (32 page)

Safi turned, her eyes widening as she took in the misshapen creatures linking together before her eyes. Like malignant snowballs, bones rolled over one another and grew, until there were at least five or six of the unnatural creations . . . and then too many too count.

A six-legged horror with a skull perched on what appeared to be a tailbone looked up at Safi. Too many teeth packed its tiny mouth.

“Bones,” Kara said.

Safi screamed.

Kara, amazed that such a fantastically loud sound could emanate from such a small frame, was shocked into action. She focused her mind on the raging voices of the bone monsters and began to build a mind-bridge from loneliness and hunger, intending to control them. She didn't get far. Before she could mold her first memory into something usable she was assaulted by dozens of voices, desperate for entrance to her mind. With a scream of pain she shoved them away and abandoned the bridge.

Their furious wails echoed in her mind.

I can't control them
, Kara thought.
There's too many. They'll push me out of my own head
.

One of the monsters, ill-placed rib bones extending from its skull like antlers, fastened its teeth on Taff's leg. Kara lifted it into the air and slammed it down as hard as she could. Bones exploded everywhere, but even as Kara was catching her breath she saw them rolling along the ground, looking for new creatures to join.

“Are you hurt?” she asked Taff.

“It's nothing,” he said, but Kara saw the way he winced in pain, the blood matting his pants. He started to draw his sword, but Kara shook her head and slid it out of its sheath.

“We need the venom,” she said. “Keep working. I'll protect you.”

“
We'll
protect you,” said Safi, the grimoire in her hands. Kara started to disagree, but Safi cut her off. “You told me if there was screaming that made it an emergency, and I
definitely
screamed!”

“Cast well,” Kara said.

A bone monster like a hobbled dog charged her and Kara swung the sword as hard as she could, shattering the creature into two pieces and sending a cloud of white dust into the air. She stomped on a smaller monster, no bigger than a beetle, and swung the sword again at a shape spinning at her end over end like a windmill that had fallen off its base.

No matter how many monsters she cut down, however, there were always more to take their place. Her arms throbbed and the wooden sword grew heavier in her hands. She knew she couldn't keep this up forever.

The skull monsters exploded into flames.

The fire was strange and mesmerizing and seemed to be going in the wrong direction, as though the monsters were each surrounded by an invisible barrier that burned toward them, not away. In just a few moments all that remained were haphazard piles of blackened ash and a foul smell like burning sulfur.

“I did that,” Safi said, pointing toward the destruction. She laughed gaily, a child chasing a butterfly. “I did that! Me!”

“Good job,” Kara said, gently closing Safi's grimoire. “But let's put this away for now.”

“Right,” said Safi. “Of course.”

But she made no motion to slide the book back into her satchel, instead staring at it with a kind of wonder.

“I did that,” she whispered.

It was at that moment that the entire tunnel began to rumble, as if Niersook, after centuries of rest, had finally awoken from its slumber.

K
ara rocked back and forth, trying to keep her balance. Safi's grimoire flew out of her hands and she fell to her knees to retrieve it.

“What's happening?” Taff asked. “Is it Niersook?”

Kara listened with her mind; surely she would sense if Niersook had come back to life. There was nothing new, however, only a flurry of needy voices, too many to distinguish. . . .

Oh no
.

“There's more of them coming!” Kara exclaimed. The
tunnel rocked again, as though a thunderstorm had been trapped inside the body of the ancient beast and was now headed their way. “Taff—are you done?”

“Two down,” Taff said. He wrapped the shard carefully in a cloth and slipped it into his pocket with the other one. “One more left.” The venom was almost completely gone, however, and he was having trouble immersing the last shard without dropping it into the sphere. “It would be a lot easier if this place would stop moving.”

They heard the sound of footsteps. Dozens. Hundreds.

“The things that were following us before,” Kara said. “They're here. We have to go.”

Taff shook his head, steadying his hand against the sphere. “I almost have it . . . ,” he said. “Just give me a little more time.”

“Now!” Kara exclaimed, grabbing Taff's hand and yanking him away. He left the last shard behind, embedded uselessly in the sphere.

“Go,” Safi said, flipping through the pages of the
grimoire. “I can stop them. All I need is the right spell—”

But Kara grabbed her hand as well, and Safi had to quickly get hold of the grimoire with her free hand or risk dropping it.

They ran.

Glancing behind her, Kara saw the horde of bone monsters slam into the tunnel, too many to count, an ever-changing army of ill-joined creations that was far faster than it had any right to be. Some were as large as cattle, but most were no larger than a skinless cat. Since there were no tongues with which to make sounds, their arrival was measured in clicks and cracks and snaps.

At first Safi's and Taff's hands tightened on her own, but they quickly let go, pumping their arms to better speed their flight. The tunnel split in two. Kara, following the tube along the ceiling, chose the passage to the right. It was narrower here, which seemed to slow their pursuers down somewhat as they struggled to fit into the smaller space. Kara did not waste any more time looking
back. There was no need. She could judge the distance of the creatures from the sounds.
Click, crack, snap! Click, crack, snap!
More tunnels, more turns. Right, left. Left again. Then against her burning cheeks she felt cold air, the outside world. Kara reached out with her mind, difficult to do while running, and felt the creatures of the Thickety again, their comforting presence. She found the one she needed and built her mind-bridge, completing it just as two towerlike fangs came into view, hanging like stalactites. Behind them Kara saw the trees of the Thickety illuminated by faint morning light.

They were standing in Niersook's mouth.

“We made it!” Safi shouted, sprinting toward the open air. “We're safe!”

“Safi!” Kara exclaimed. “Wait!”

At the last moment Safi saw the fall that awaited her and came to a sudden stop, pinwheeling her arms. Kara pulled her back to safety. With cautious steps, the three children peered over the edge of the mouth. A gray,
mossy tongue, as long as a tree, dangled lifelessly from the open jaws but came nowhere near to touching the earth, the hazy surface below more like a memory of the ground than the ground itself.

Click, crack, snap!

The bone monsters were coming.

“Did you bring rope?” Kara asked Taff.

“No,” he said. “Who said I was in charge of bringing rope?”

“A rope will never reach the ground!” exclaimed Safi.

“I know,” murmured Kara, frantically searching their surroundings. “I don't need it for that. . . . Here!”

Something red and stringy ran along the floor. It could have been ivy. It could have been the petrified muscle of some unfortunate beast devoured decades ago. In any case, it looked strong. Kara grabbed it with two hands and pulled with all her strength. It didn't break.

“They're here!” Taff exclaimed.

The bone monsters spilled out of the throat and fanned
across the floor of the mouth. They slowed down, understanding that the children were trapped. A ball composed almost entirely of teeth clattered over the others, eager to take the first bite.

“No time to explain,” Kara said. Standing on the very edge of the mouth, her feet balanced on a surprisingly dull molar, she looped the ivy around them and knotted it as tightly as she could.

“Hold hands,” Kara said. “In case this breaks.”

She wrapped her arms around the children and pulled them toward the edge.

“Wait!” Safi exclaimed, her eyes wide with panic. “We're not going to jump, are we?”

“No,” said Kara. “We're going to fall.”

She leaned forward and they plunged over the edge.

Free-falling was a lot louder than Kara had expected: the violent whoosh of wind, Taff screaming in her ear. At first she thought Safi was screaming as well, but the girl's eyes were pinched shut and what emanated from her
mouth was little more than a series of small whimpers. The one screaming was Kara.

Please don't let me be wrong. Please don't let me be wrong
.

Their speed multiplied second by second. Green and black flashed by. The hilt of Taff's sword dug into her stomach. Kara's eyes had gone blurry with the wind but she still managed to see Niersook's head poking out of the mountain, its tri-forked tongue unfurled like the banner of some lost civilization. From this angle she was unable to see the upper half of its face.

That's too bad
, Kara thought.
I would have liked to have known what color its eyes were. . . .

And then the sky disappeared and everything was dark. The air around them turned warm and moist.

Thank you
, Kara thought, and sighed with relief.

“What just happened?” Safi asked. “Where are we?”

“My friend caught us,” said Kara. “I reached out with my mind while we were in Niersook's mouth and asked for its help.”

“Your friend?”

“A giant bird, more or less. We're inside its bill.” She squeezed Taff's hand. “You all right?”

“That was
amazing
!” he exclaimed.

“He's all right,” said Safi.

Though it was too cramped to stand, they managed to wiggle out of the red ivy and crawl their way along the bird's tongue. The beak was slightly open, affording them a view of the outside world. Leaning on their elbows, the children pressed their faces to the wind as the bird swept gracefully though the trees.

“We're flying!” shouted Taff. “We're really flying!”

“It's wonderful,” agreed Safi, “but if it's all the same to you two, I'd rather not be inside anything's mouth for a while.”

Kara laughed and stroked the girl's hair.

“I think I've had my fill of that as well,” she said.

The bird landed just outside Kala Malta.

The children rolled out of its mouth, a little shaky on
their feet but otherwise unharmed. Kara turned to face their hero. Its beak was long in proportion to its body, like a gull's, and almost perfectly circular. Black plumage allowed it to camouflage itself in the trees. A thin line of moss wound its way between three copper-colored eyes.

“I'm going to fix this,” Kara said, running her hand along the moss. The sharp tang of infection burned her nostrils, but Kara refused to embarrass the creature by holding her nose. “One way or another, the Thickety will be yours once again.”

The bird flapped its white-tipped wings and slowly raised itself into the sky.

“What now?” Taff asked, retrieving his sword from Kara.

She had hoped to return before dawn, but the canopy leaves had already begun to burn with morning light.
Breem will have noticed we're gone by now, but he might not have reported us to Sordyr yet. When we get back to the hut I need to convince him that everything is all right. Then I can take the cage down to Rygoth, same as always, and inject the venom directly
into Sordyr's roots. That would probably be the safest thing to do. And if that doesn't work, I still have the second shard
.

“We'll have to come up with some excuse,” Kara said. “Safi, maybe you had a vision and couldn't sleep, so we all went for a walk.”

“That'll work fine for Papa, but not for Sordyr. The Forest Demon can't know that I—”

“A nightmare, then,” Kara said. “Or something. We'll figure it out later. Right now we need to get back over the Divide as quickly as possible. If we're found inside the village, that's one thing, but if we're found beyond the Divide, that will be
really
difficult to explain.”

“They already know we're gone,” Taff said. Though he had not spoken loudly, Kara snapped to attention, hearing a rare note of despair in his voice. “Look at the gate.”

It was open. Around it stood a half-dozen Devoted, checking the ground for tracks. Even from this distance Kara could see the branch wreaths encircling their necks.

She pulled the children behind a large boulder.

“What do we do?” asked Safi.

“We can't let them see us,” Kara said. “That's the most important thing right now.”

“Maybe I can cast a spell to get us inside the village,” Safi suggested. Then she added in a softer voice, “Or I could make something bad happen to the Devoted.”