Sarette soared through the storm, the ground below barely visible through the hazy mist of the lowest clouds. This was the fifth lightning storm she’d encountered since they’d first come to the barrens, and it was the strongest one yet. She took a deep breath, welcoming the smell of the rain on the dusty surface of the barrens. The water dripping down her face didn’t bother her—rain was common in Snow Crown, to the point that she barely noticed it.

She stopped to hover in place, feeling almost as if she herself was part of the storm. Surrounded by sparks, she fed on the lightning, allowing the power to suffuse her body before directing it back into the air around her. It was that power, not magic, that allowed her to fly or to leap over her opponents. Magic was merely the tool that let her channel the strength of the storm. Flying was most efficient here within the clouds themselves, where she could balance herself between the chaos of the opposed charges in the air.

She didn’t need to fly the storm to keep the group safe from the lightning—they were camped indoors—but she’d taken every opportunity she could to practice.

In the dusky evening light, she made out a small encampment below, surrounded by six wagons. It had to be the larger supply caravan, on its way back to the ruins. She dropped to greet them, her strength draining more quickly once she left the cloud cover.

Landing was always the hardest part of flying. The first time she’d tried it, she’d broken a toe and bruised her knee, but, luckily, Treya had been nearby. Sarette had gotten better since then. She thought she could handle it without a healer now.

Coming straight down was the hardest, she’d found, though that was how the other stormrunners always did it. For her, the safest option was to come in at a shallow angle, and end with a running finish.

Josip and the drivers were busy pitching tents so they could get out of the rain, and didn’t see her until she was almost upon them. She swooped low and aimed for the circle of wagons, hitting the ground thirty feet out. Her momentum was enough that she had to sprint to keep from falling over.

She managed to come to a stop just before slamming into the nearest man, who yelled and backed away, his eyes wide with fright. He was unfamiliar—Sarette had never seen him before.

Josip shouted something in Nysan, calming the drivers who’d seen her arrival. “What’s wrong?” he asked, coming over to her. “Is there a problem?”

“No problem,” she said. “I just saw you here, so I thought I’d stop. Are the lightning rods working?” Now that she was closer, she could see the three copper poles scattered around the camp at a distance. Each had a wooden platform to keep it steady despite the high winds. If Josip had followed her instructions, the bottom ends of the poles would be buried into the ground. It seemed he’d assembled them before working on the tents.

“Nothing’s come close enough today, but there was a storm right out of Livadi,” he said. “The rods helped some, but one of the wagons still got hit. It scorched the side and some of the hay, but it didn’t start a fire, so we decided to continue on. We were lucky it didn’t hit the mules—they keep trying to huddle together when it rains.”

“I can stay here just in case,” she offered. Judging by her elder senses, the worst of the storm would pass north of the camp, but it was better to remain than to risk anyone getting hurt. She could walk to the ruins with the caravan in the morning. If anyone grew worried about her absence, Corec would be able to determine what direction she’d gone, and she was close enough to be within Leena’s Seeking distance.

Josip nodded. Five men had gathered behind him, staring at Sarette curiously. She only recognized the two youngest, who grinned back at her—they’d seen her fly before. The other men were older.

“New drivers?” she asked.

“Most of their parents wouldn’t let them come back after I told them about the battle,” Josip said. “Even after I promised extra pay. One boy’s father took his place, but Lufton had to find two other men to help out.”

“Everyone will be relieved to see you. Ellerie’s been exploring, but there hasn’t been much for the rest of us to do. She says we’re going to leave once you get back.”

“Yes, Leena came and let me know,” Josip said, “but between the storms and finding new drivers, we’re a day behind schedule.”

“I don’t think the extra day will hurt anything. We’ve got plenty of food from the group that attacked us, and Shavala’s been growing grass for the mules.”

“Growing grass?” he asked, confused.

Sarette laughed. “Just wait and see.”

#

Humming a new melody she was working on, Katrin carefully folded her clothes and repacked them back into her saddlebags. Over the weeks they’d been camped in the same building, her things and Corec’s had all migrated out of their bags, ending up spread out across the room they shared. Her nicer dresses were hanging on nails she’d pounded into the wall. She saved those for last, so they wouldn’t be packed in as tightly.

Just as she was finishing, Corec came in. “All done?” he asked.

“I’m as ready as I’m going to get, I suppose. I can’t get my cloak to fit back in the bag.”

He chuckled. “There’s spare room on the wagons. You can put it there.”

“Are we leaving now?” It was getting late in the morning on the day after Josip had returned with the wagons. Everyone had needed more time to get ready than they’d expected—Katrin wasn’t the only one who’d made herself at home.

“Leena’s going to hand out some food so we don’t have to stop later, then we’ll get the mules hitched and the horses saddled. Probably an hour, I’d say. Is Shavala ready? I didn’t see her.”

The elven woman had the small room next to theirs, though she spent half her nights with the two of them.

“She was all packed last night. She said she’d be back in a bit—there was something she wanted to do. She had that thing with her again.” Katrin didn’t think much of the staff after what it had done to Shavala during the battle, but her friend had made it clear she was going to keep it.

Corec nodded, then glanced around the now nearly empty room and spotted his shaving kit. Katrin had found it and placed it near his saddlebags while she was packing her own things. He slipped it into one of his bags, then said, “I guess that’s everything.”

“Do you realize we’ve been living together in this room longer than we’ve ever stayed anywhere else?” Katrin asked.

He furrowed his brow. “I guess we have,” he said. “It’s been, what, more than three weeks since we moved the camp here?”

“It was starting to feel like home,” she replied. “But not a very pleasant home. We need to find a place with plumbing, or at least our own well with a hand pump. And we need some plants and trees—I can’t take looking at bare dirt anymore. I went down to the river with Shavala yesterday just to watch her grow some more grass.”

Corec laughed. “I’ll see what I can do. There aren’t too many places in the free lands with indoor plumbing, but digging a well shouldn’t be a problem if we’re away from town. I was talking to Treya, and she thinks one of the farmsteads outside Four Roads might work for us. Her family’s place was several days outside the town, and the area wasn’t heavily populated.”

“Is anyone living there?”

“Ahh, I got the impression she was just using it as an example. I don’t think she wants to go back there.”

Katrin nodded. Treya didn’t talk about her early years much, but everyone knew her parents had been killed by raiders when she was very young. “Will a farmhouse be big enough? Even if we only live there temporarily, we’ll have Shavala, Treya, and Sarette, at least for a little while. And what if Ellerie and Boktar stay long enough to help with the red-eyes?”

“True. We may have to look for something more like a small manor house.”

“In the free lands?”

“They’re rare, but they exist. You just need the right circumstances. Say, if some idiot third son of a border baron thought he could make a living as a gentleman farmer, and then had to abandon the place when he failed.”

Katrin snickered. “Aren’t you the third son of a border baron?”

“Yes, so if I ever start pretending I know how to be a farmer, remind me not to be an idiot. But the manor house itself might be what we need. I just don’t know how much it would cost.”

“Is land near Four Roads really that expensive?”

“It’s probably not as expensive as farmland in Larso, but I’ve never looked into it. The problem is that I’m not sure how much will be left over from our shares after we pay for everything else. Even if Prince Rusol sticks to only sending small squads, we’ll still need some sort of defensive fortifications—a wooden wall, at least. And the sort of armed guards we’ll be able to hire in the free lands will mostly be half-trained mercenaries, so I’d say at least a dozen men, plus an armsmaster to train them. A few extra archers. Figure on paying their wages for a year or more. It adds up. And, to be honest, I’m getting tired of campfire cooking. If we can afford it, I’d like to have a cook and a housekeeper.”

“I hadn’t thought about all that,” Katrin admitted. “How much does a defensive wall cost?”

“It’s not cheap. We’re going to end up spending a lot of money for a place we’re only planning to live in for a few years, if we move to Tyrsall once Yelena leaves.”

Katrin considered that. She liked living in a city, and had hoped to settle down in Tyrsall or Circle Bay eventually. Of the two, Corec preferred Tyrsall, but Yelena had seemed nervous about having another warden nearby, so Corec had promised the woman he wouldn’t stay there while she was still present. She wouldn’t be there much longer, though. As a warden, neither she nor her bondmates were aging, so to avoid suspicion, they planned to leave the city soon and assume new identities elsewhere.

“I suppose we don’t have to move to Tyrsall right away,” Katrin said. “If we’re close enough to Four Roads to visit, I wouldn’t mind trying out the free lands for a while to see how it feels.”

“Really? I know you wanted to live somewhere bigger.”

“I just need an audience that hasn’t heard all my songs a hundred times. After this place, even Four Roads will seem like a major city. We’ll still have plenty of time to try Tyrsall.”

Corec frowned. “Listen,” he said, “Rusol’s after me, not the rest of you. Maybe you should stay in Tyrsall. You’re not a fighter—you’ll be safer there. I can come back for you when everything’s been dealt with.”

Katrin was tempted, but only for a moment. She shook her head. “He’s after you because you’re a warden,” she said. “We’re all in this together. The five of us, at least.” And she intended to have a private talk with Ellerie. The woman was one of them, even if she didn’t want to admit it. Razai and Leena were different. Razai had ended the warden bond, and would be going her own way once they returned to Aravor. Leena had her own issues to deal with down in Sanvar—she was only coming with them because Corec was worried it wasn’t safe for her to return yet. Bobo, on the other hand, had taken advantage of Corec’s hospitality and protection for months when they’d first met. Katrin resolved to talk with him as well.

“Well, I would rather have you with me,” Corec said, “but if another big group comes after us, I’d like you to go to Four Roads until it’s over. I don’t like how close we came this time.”

“I’m not going to go hide while everyone else is fighting for their lives!”

“Katrin …”

“How about this?” she said. “If you convince me there’s no way I can help, then I’ll consider it.” Maybe, she added silently.

Corec sighed, but nodded.

#

Shavala stared across the plaza, two scarves across her face in a failed attempt to block out the smell. Decomposition was a natural part of the life cycle, but that didn’t mean the side effects were pleasant.

Ever since dragging the bodies here after the battle, everyone had avoided this spot. Corec seemed to feel some sort of guilt that he hadn’t been able to lay their enemies to rest, but there was no realistic way to bury more than a hundred bodies in the hard-packed earth of the barrens—it had been difficult enough burying Ariadne’s Mage Knight compatriots, and there had only been nine of those. Burning them wasn’t possible either, not without firewood, and there hadn’t been any way to obtain enough wood before they’d begun to decompose.

Now, of course, it was too late to even consider it. No one could approach the plaza without gagging.

Shavala had thought about trying to burn the bodies with magic, but that would have taken hours, and she couldn’t maintain a spell for that length of time.

But she’d spent nearly two weeks now regrowing small patches of grass and weeds down near the river. It was too soon to tell whether her changes would last after she was gone, but it felt good to see some hints of green against the vast swathes of brown. And it had given her an idea. These deaths had been meaningless and stupid, but did they have to remain that way? Could they be given a purpose?

She wanted to try to grow greenery in a ring all around the plaza, surrounding the bodies. Then, as they decomposed, they would feed the soil, and the plants might eventually grow to cover the place the corpses had once been.

It would be difficult here. There was a layer of paving stones—the original city streets—two feet below the surface, and the river was too far away to draw water from. But there were old community wells on the east and west ends of the plaza, and she could sense water deep underground. She just needed a way to bring it up.

Pulling one of her gathering sacks from her pocket, she turned it inside out and shook out the extra seeds she’d been collecting from her work down by the river. With quick, controlled flurries of wind, she blew them all around the near edge of the plaza. There were barely enough seeds to provide even a light scattering across a thirty-foot-wide area. It was all she’d been able to spare from her other efforts, but the plaza seemed much larger when viewed close up.

It was better than nothing, though, so she began the process she’d been practicing over the past weeks, convincing the seeds to sprout and grow, and then accelerating the life cycles, using bursts of wind to pollinate between the grasses, and then repeating everything once the new seeds matured. She hadn’t worked out a way to draw water up through the paving stones, but the rain from two days earlier hadn’t completely dried out yet.

The staff started to help, but its own magic seemed sluggish, as if it wasn’t sure what she was attempting to do. She rested the butt of the staff against the ground, then tried to imagine the entire plaza as a grassy field. According to Treya, Ariadne had claimed that the land near the city had once supported vast forests. A small meadow shouldn’t be a problem.

Just as Shavala completed the thought, the staff suddenly jerked upright, nearly jumping out of her hand as it fastened itself tightly to the earth. The shaft trembled, and small cracks spread out in the ground surrounding it. Shavala cast her elder senses downward and found tree roots growing out from the bottom of the staff. The roots were familiar—tershaya.

Dorvasta druids often grew new tershaya trees by transplanting a cutting. The cutting would then grow its own roots, eventually joining with the combined root system underlying the Terril Forest. Had the staff simply been a cutting all along, intended for growing a new tree? It was tershaya wood, after all, and was still alive despite its age. If it wanted to become a tree, who was she to say no?

But though the root system continued to expand down and outward, the staff itself didn’t grow into a sapling. It remained as it was, a bare branch cleared of bark, thick and knotted at the top, thin at the base.

The spell continued, and Shavala lost what little control she had over it. It was still pulling a trickle of power from her, but most was coming from somewhere else, far in excess of anything the staff had demonstrated so far. The roots directly below the staff broke through a gap in the buried paving stones, continuing to grow downward, while the bulk of the tendrils snaked toward the center of the plaza, where the bodies were stacked. The ground trembled, and then a small sapling suddenly burst up near the pile.

A second sapling sprouted just ten feet from Shavala, and then a third on the far side of the plaza.

It wasn’t like transplanting a cutting after all. It was the opposite, with trees springing from the root system rather than the roots growing from the tree. And unlike a cutting, which would grow a duplicate of the original tree, thus making it incompatible for cross-pollination, each of these new saplings looked different enough that Shavala suspected they were originals.

While the first three saplings grew taller, a dozen more shot up all around the plaza. Below each tree, the roots grew stronger and thicker, bursting through the buried paving stones and stretching far enough down to reach the underground stream. Smaller tendrils surrounded the pavers and crushed them into pieces, a process that would normally have taken centuries.

As the saplings grew into juvenile trees, the ground began shaking strongly enough to knock Shavala off of her feet. Dirt-covered roots suddenly sprouted from the earth in hundreds of spots across the plaza, stretching briefly up into the air before curling back down to wrap themselves tightly around the corpses. More roots burst up, breaking the hard ground and churning the soil, and then the bodies were pulled under, leaving a lumpy, uneven surface covered with loose earth and pieces of broken paving stones.

The roots had returned underground, taking the bodies with them. Feeding them to the plants, as Meritia called it. Shavala’s teacher had once killed a man that way. It could be done with any sufficiently strong bushes or trees, but it worked best with tershaya and their massive joined root systems. It was the reason the humans had never been able to conquer the elven forest. With all the druids working together, an entire small army could be made to disappear, with no clue left as to why.

The earthquake died down, but the trees continued to grow, casting new shade over the plaza. The stone walls of a nearby structure collapsed as another tershaya grew up from within it, expanding outward. The falling stone gouged the bark, but it healed as it grew, as if it had had years to recover from the damage.

The trees didn’t stop growing until they reached what Shavala would consider to be young adult age, with trunks ten feet across and the crowns topping out over a hundred feet above her head. They were still small for tershaya, but they looked and smelled like home.

The spell came to an end. With her elder senses, Shavala could feel the root system directly below the staff wither and die, as if it was a dead tree, but the staff itself remained alive and unharmed. As the roots below it were reabsorbed back into the soil, the staff came loose, no longer attached to the system it had created.

Shavala held it steady, using it to brace herself as she climbed back to her feet. She stared out at the tiny forest. It wasn’t much in the scheme of things, but in such a desolate place, even this small start was enough to provide a sense of hope.

There was noise behind her, and she turned to find Corec, Katrin, and Ellerie staring at the tershaya trees in shock. Most of the others were running up behind them. They all looked at her, questions in their eyes.

She shrugged. “I wanted to try something,” she told them.

Life. Death. Life. Not words but concepts. Feelings. It was the first time the staff had communicated since the battle.

Yes, Shavala agreed.

#

Ellerie didn’t have a chance to corner Shavala alone until after the group had gotten underway. She found her walking near the front of the procession to avoid the dust clouds raised by the wagons.

“How did you do it?” Ellerie asked. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“It wasn’t really me,” Shavala said. “The staff did all the work.”

She’d said that right after growing the trees too, but Ellerie had been too stunned to question her about it then. Shavala had admitted that the staff was enchanted, but it didn’t glow to arcane sight, and Ellerie had never heard of an enchantment constructed from elder magic. She hadn’t known it was possible.

“How did the Chosar manage to create something that can grow tershaya?” Ellerie asked. “The nilvasta have been trying for thousands of years and we haven’t had any luck.”

“I don’t think it belonged to the Chosar. It’s elven magic, and it was elves that carried it in the visions. It was around for a long time before it ended up in that mountain.”

“The Chosar took it from us?”

“I don’t know. That wasn’t one of the visions.”

Ellerie sighed. “It seems like the more we learn, the less we know. Do you think you could do it again? Grow tershaya, I mean?”

“I’m not sure. I wasn’t trying to grow them this time. I accidentally thought about a forest, and it just happened.”

“Would you be willing to try?”

Shavala cocked her head to the side. “Here?” she asked, her tone puzzled. “Why?”

“Not here. In Terevas. My mother has invited dorvasta druids to try to grow a new forest, but we only ended up with some small groves and scattered trees.”

“It’s difficult to cultivate new tershaya trees.” Shavala looked down at the staff. “Or it always has been before. They’re capable of growing on their own, but if there’s a fire or if they’re being harvested, they don’t grow fast enough to replenish their own numbers, so we have to help them along. We normally plant just enough cuttings or fertilized seeds each year to compensate for the number of trees that have been lost. The druids might not have had enough to spare for you.”

“In the last five hundred years, Terevas has lost just as many trees as we’ve planted,” Ellerie said. “We keep records at the Glass Palace.”

“Tershaya have always done better in the Terril Forest, since they can join the existing root system.”

Ellerie furrowed her brow. “You mean the tree bond?”

“No.” Shavala paused. “No, and yes. The shared root system is how the trees bond with each other, but it also makes it easier for individual trees to stay healthy regardless of the condition of the nearby soil. But yes, the tree bond is important too—both the bond between the trees themselves and their bond with the people. We always know when one of the tershaya is unhealthy.”

Ellerie sighed. “Then it’s pointless? How can we keep them alive without the tree bond?”

Shavala glanced at her. “Nilvasta are still elves. The tree bond isn’t gone, it’s just … different. I still feel it in you, but I can’t predict when you’re going to talk, or whether you’re going to agree or disagree with whatever’s been said. The bond is there, but it doesn’t work the same way.”

“Ariadne thinks it’s because we have too much human blood. Well, human or Chosar.”

“Do you believe her?”

“It makes as much sense as anything,” Ellerie said. She doubted her people would accept the idea, though, and she had no intention of being the one to tell them. “If there’s something of the tree bond left in the nilvasta, do you think we could take care of a forest if you grew one?”

“I’m not sure, but I’ll try if you’d like. I do want to see Terevas before my travels are over.”

Ellerie had a sudden thought. “What about the trees you grew here? Will they be all right on their own?”

“For now, but the ecosystem isn’t large enough or diverse enough to sustain them, tree bond or not, and the barren soil is still mixed in with the better soil from below the surface. The trees will need help. I’d like to return here with you when you come back.”

Ellerie hadn’t considered that any of the others might come with her, other than Boktar perhaps, and the vague hope that she and Leena would have a closer relationship by then. Shavala was enigmatic, but she was also a capable companion on the road, and she had the calming presence of a dorvasta.

“I’d like that,” Ellerie said.