Rustle. Rustle rustle.

“What was that?” demanded Den.

He craned his neck in a full circle, but all he could see was the mass of leaves overhead. They were so dense that they reminded him of the rosettes on Caltrop Pond.

Movement! On the side!

Just a slender branch swaying in the wind.

A flash of color!

The wingtip of a small bird.

A splash of golden-brown!

The fluffy tail of a small tree-dweller, a squirrel, perhaps.

But were they mortal animals? Newly awakened spirits? Demons? They were gone too fast for Den to tell.

“Relax. It’s a forest,” Floridiana told him without turning back. “There’s going to be animals.”

Except the mage wasn’t following her own advice. She held her dish of seal paste in her left hand and clutched her seal, already inked, in her right. Her shoulders were tense.

Den tiptoed after her, still scanning their surroundings.

Rustle rustle. Rustle rustle. Plink. Plink. Plink.

At the new sound, he nearly jumped into a tree – but it was just a pebble, bouncing down the mountainside, loosened by a serow that bounded from rock to rock.

A serow demon?!

He stared up after it. No, probably just a normal serow. Whew.

“It’s just a normal serow,” Floridiana confirmed an instant later. “C’mon. We’re halfway out.”

“Thank all the Stars in Heaven,” Den sighed, before remembering that one of those Stars was the indirect reason he was here in the first place.

Thank all the Stars but one, he amended in his head.

“Sir! They reached Nine Turns!” panted Tamiops.

A grin split Captain Rock’s pink face, showing two rows of gleaming steel teeth. “Ex-cel-leeent,” he hissed.

The massive rock macaque demon rose onto his legs so the soldiers could see him and rolled his shoulders. Muscles rippled under his thick coat of grey fur. Throwing back his head, he unleashed a scream that bent the aspens and rebounded off the mountain across the gorge. In the distance, marble groaned and shifted. One boulder started to move, followed by another and then another, grating and gathering speed and knocking more boulders loose as they fell. A landslide began.

Tamiops sat up straight on his hind legs too and chittered with pride. This was why Captain Rock was King Haplor’s most trusted commander! No invader stood a chance against him!

This side of the gorge, the two invaders who were twining their way along the trail’s nine turns whirled. They gawked at the landslide, distracted for a crucial instant.

The troop of rock macaque demons attacked.

Screaming at the tops of their lungs, they leaped from branch to branch and surrounded the invaders from above in seconds. As the mage spun back and raised her seal, the rock macaque demons puffed up their cheek pouches and started spitting nuts.

Not just any nuts. The nuts of the great Jadean oaks that grew to immense heights and bore acorns as hard as steel. Not even Tamiops’ teeth could pierce their shells, although older striped squirrel demons’ could.

The first few acorns missed their targets and punched into the ground, spraying gouts of dirt.

The mage yelled something and slammed her seal on her neck. At once, the skin around the vermillion stamp changed. It turned smoother, harder, leather-like. The armor raced up across her head and out to cover her arms.

Before she could harden her whole body, however, an acorn struck her right bicep and stuck in the skin. She gave a hoarse cry and wrenched the nut loose. Blood welled up to stain her sleeve.

“An acorn?” she shouted. “Really? An acorn?!”

“Ow!” yelped the dragonet. “Ow ow ow!”

Acorns were hitting his back and sides and ricocheting off to strike the trees. The top half of one slender aspen, younger than the rest, shivered, splintered, and toppled, crashing down through the dwarf bamboo shrubs. Mortal mice squeaked and fled.

“IDIOTS! DON’T KILL THEM! TAKE THEM ALIVE!” bellowed Captain Rock, jumping up and down on his ledge.

The force of his bellow bent the trees once more, and branches weakened by stray acorn hits snapped off, flying through the air and forcing invaders and defenders alike to cover their heads.

Hunched over, the invaders were screaming incoherently at each other and trying to flee. The mage yanked up her legging and stamped her right leg. Before she could stamp the left, a well-aimed shot – from the most junior rock macaque! Good for her! – blasted the dish of seal paste clean out of her hand. The mage shrieked and ran for it lopsidedly, each pump of her right leg sending her forward several times further than her left.

“Do something!” she screeched. “You useless dragon! Do something!”

The dragonet uncurled the front part of his body just enough to wrap a hand around the seed pearl, no larger than a rice grain, that hung at his throat.

All of a sudden, the world went blue-green. Patches of lighter and darker turquoise light rippled across the trees, creating the impression of being underwater.

Caught by surprise, disoriented, expecting pain where the dragonet’s light touched them, the rock macaque demon troop stopped spitting acorns.

“IDIOTS! IT’S AN ILLUSION! KEEP SHOOTING!” roared Captain Rock.

But the damage had been done. The mage had reached her seal paste dish and plunged her seal into it. She slammed it down on her left leg and rocketed through trees.

The dragonet bounded after her, gasping something under his breath. When Tamiops perked up his ears, what he heard was: “Too dry too dry too dry.”

Of course. That was one of the reasons Captain Rock had chosen Nine Turns for the ambush, besides the way the path twisted and turned and slowed down the invaders. It was also so far above the Caligo Amnis that the dragonet wouldn’t find enough moisture in the air to fly on.

“AFTER THEM!” roared Captain Rock. “CATCH THEM!”

Of course, springing the ambush at Nine Turns was also a gamble for their side. Howling and spitting acorns, the rock macaque demons bounded through the trees after the fleeing invaders, trying to catch them before they could –

A giant spray of white photinia flowers, angled like a shield, appeared in front of the invaders. Running too fast to stop, they plowed straight into it, and the flowers let them through before closing ranks again.

Ping ping ping ping ping.

Acorns bounced off the petals and plinked to the ground.

“HALT!” bellowed Captain Rock.

The troop skidded to a stop, clinging to branches that swayed back and forth and screaming their frustration. One clumsy rock macaque lost his balance and tumbled down.

The shield rotated up to meet him. When he struck it, a cloud of sickly yellow, foul-smelling smoke rose from the flowers and enveloped him. Retching, the other rock macaques scrambled higher to get free of the smoke. On the ground, the hapless soldier began to gag and claw at his face, trying to rip his own nostrils off. After a few minutes, his motions stilled.

“FALL BACK!” came the command.

The troop pulled back. The fallen rock macaque was unconscious, not dead, but he’d already proven his incompetence. King Haplor had no place for useless vassals.

They left him there.

“Who are you?” asked a voice from above.

It was cool and breathy and somehow reminded Floridiana of wind blowing through leaves. After crashing through that giant spray of flowers, she slowed to a graceful stop (thanks to her dance training, she supposed) and looked around for the source of the voice.

It came from an ancient, fifty-foot-tall Photinia serratifolia tree. Dark-green, teardrop-shaped leaves splayed out from gnarled branches. Among them reclined one of the most beautiful ladies Floridiana had ever seen. Only spirits in human form achieved that level of perfection. The lady’s skin was as pale as the petals of a photinia blossom. Her gauzy robes were the same green as the leaves and fluttered in the wind. On her glossy black tresses, she wore a crown woven from tiny white blossoms and dark-green leaves, and accented with scarlet, bead-like fruits.

As Floridiana gawked up at her, the lady asked in that same cool voice, “What brings you onto my soil?”

On the other side of the flower shield, the rock macaque demons were screaming in thwarted rage. The shield shook and deformed as one of them lost its balance and fell onto it.

With no trace of emotion, the lady lifted one graceful, long-fingered hand. On the other side of the shield, there was a thump, like that of a body collapsing to the ground, followed strangled retching.

Then the wind carried the command, “FALL BACK!” and the branches clattered with the demons’ passage. The noise of their retreat grew fainter and fainter until it vanished at last and the mountainside was peaceful once more. The flower shield broke apart into individual blossoms that drifted away.

“You have not answered my question,” the lady stated. She looked down at Floridiana and Den like a queen (in theatricals, anyway – Floridiana had never seen a real queen before). “Who are you and why are you on my soil?”

At that moment, a monstrous wild boar ambled into the open, sniffed at the fallen rock macaque demon, seized it in its jaws, and lumbered back into the undergrowth for a leisurely meal. Den looked as if he were going to vomit all over the tree’s roots.

Collecting herself, Floridiana swept a deep bow to the spirit of the photinia tree. “My lady, my unworthy name is Mage Floridiana.”

At her pointed glare, Den pulled himself together and bobbed his head at the tree spirit. “I am Den, Dragon…Prince of Caltrop Pond.”

One delicate eyebrow arched. “Are you, now?”

Flustered, Den confirmed, “Yes?”

Floridiana could have told him what he’d done wrong: If he were a mere prince, then he should have bowed to the ruler of another fief. Not to mention addressed her as “my lady.”

The lady ran her eyes over him from snout to tail, as if sizing up a potential rival for her lands. “And where is this ‘Caltrop Pond’?”

“It’s near Black Sand Creek,” he explained, again omitting the honorifics.

Stars! That Demon was always griping about modern-day humans’ lack of manners, but this dragon was far, far worse.

Also, Floridiana wasn’t sure that a tree spirit who dwelled in the Wilds would have heard of Black Sand Creek. But the lady waved her hand, apparently familiar with and unimpressed by the river.

Den, too, was happy to move on to other topics. “We are most grateful to you for saving our lives. As for why we are on your soil….” He looked to Floridiana, letting her explain the experiment she had designed.

She hesitated, wondering if a tree spirit would take offense at magical experiments. When the lady’s face hardened, though, she decided to tell the truth. “Gracious lady, we are a pair of natural philosophers performing experiments to ascertain how the concentration of magitoms at different locations in the Wilds affects the rate of magical growth in humans and spirits.”

From the lady’s expressionless face, it was impossible to tell what she thought of that. Or even whether she’d followed the explanation. Now that Floridiana thought about it, that had been a fairly long sentence.

“Is that what you told Haplor?” the lady inquired.

“Uh, well, you see, we hadn’t had a chance to speak with him before his soldiers attacked.” Floridiana left out the part where they’d made no effort to speak to the demon king before he attacked.

The lady nodded as if she had expected no more from her neighbor. “Tell me more of these ‘magitoms’ and your experiments, mage,” she commanded. “If I find them useful or interesting, I will permit you to perform them on my soil.”

“Oh yes! Thank you, milady!” exclaimed Floridiana.

She found a twig and began to sketch figures on the ground as she explained the philosophy of magitomism. Remaining in her tree, the lady mostly let her talk, interrupting from time to time with a trenchant question.

At the end, the lady observed, “From what you have described, the fruits of your research will have no bearing on my strength, as I am rooted to this location.” Floridiana’s heart stopped – until the lady continued, “Still…your proposal is novel and may prove entertaining. I will permit you to stay.”

“Oh, thank you! Thank you!”

Floridiana threw herself to the ground and prostrated herself, flapping a hand at Den until he reluctantly followed suit.

The lady’s cool eyes gazed down at them. “But only for as long as you prove entertaining.”

Well, entertainment was one thing Floridiana definitely knew how to provide.