1 Chapter One: Torch-Flowers and Memory's Flight

When the Tree-Woman opened her eyes, a shudder flooded her mind with fear; she sprang from the shards of her seed hull, grasped the spear stuck point-first into the earth, then peered around the knotted root concealing the Tree-Mother's clutch of seeds. With neither names nor words to match to the newborn terrors in her breast, she knew nothing at first, but with each passing second, the petals of countless days flowered in her memory, revealing the pith of who she had been, if not yet who she was. Packed in her mind like the seeds of a sunflower, these past selves shivered as they too clamored to a semblance of life, shrieking that she should back away from the torches stabbing the night. And in that moment of numb wakefulness, a new self was shucked from the raw soul, and Leitara knew who she was.

In that instantaneous mingling of old memory and newborn sense, she walked the trees tens of thousands of times while overcome by the delicious feeling of new toes grazing the grassy slopes skirting the Tree-Mother's roots; the wintergreen scent of this towering dryad tantalized her with memories of peace and contentment past even as heads leered under flickering firebrands. Though cowls drooped over their eyes, Leitara was so familiar with the identical chins, noses, and cheekbones that she knew their half-cloaked faces. When they circled the tree, then closed in bearing the torches aloft, Leitara was tormented by a thought for the four sister-selves burgeoning in their hulls, soon to be expunged when the fire scooped out the husks of Tree-Mother and seeds.

Her feelings for the Tree-Mother were more complicated and contemptuous, for though she was Leitara's overshadowing greater self, her parent's obedience and loyalty to a faithless Queen had doomed their garden of memory. As she was not only the shadow of that same oversoul, but the noisy reflections of a repeated image in a crystal horde of memories, she could not help mirroring the scornful contempt of her past selves. Her progenitor should not have only hedonistically considered herself as root, branch, and flower, but as a flowering consciousness with a plurality of feelings and a diversity of continuties, all about to be dissolved to a plot of ash from which nothing might grow.

Embedded in Leitara's inherited trove of lies, truths, and other uncertainties was the intuition that the Queen's Tree-Women had assiduously uprooted all of Leitara's seed-sisters from the land, leaving only the decadent Tree-Mother, which now swayed in the storm winds, as if it was fearful, or as if it would cover the remainder of its new crop of blossoms. That their enemies' hands wavered carrying fire, the hated scourge, seemed a damning truth, for if these Inglefrases were only memories walking, they also had no fate of their own, but were instead doomed to be either forgotten or preserved as memories. Moreover, the ghosts of her past selves whispered, the entire history of the Dryad World was only a nursery, intimating not only the controlled growth of a greenhouse but rowdy children in a playhouse. A Tree-Woman was sown in a clutch, grown in imitation, and lived by achieving not their own goals, but the ambitions of the Tree-Mother, which they achieved in a fragmentary way, as their parent cared not whether individuals received credit of their own. If it was easier to do a task piecemeal over successive seven-year generations of Tree-Women, with each new hand contributing little by little, this was preferred by the Tree-Mothers, for it gave them greater satisfaction, and a greater ownership not only in their deeds, but in their children. When a Tree-Mother was tyrranical, like Inglefras, a vast crop of wickedness might sprout up all at once, without warning, but even when a Tree-Mother was benevolent, like Leitara's, there was little room for recognition or authority in a Tree-Woman's brief span. And so the greatest accomplishment--and the sole honor--for a Tree-Woman was to die a meaningful, natural death at the roots of the Tree-Mother, so as to be absorbed into the chorus of memories. With the death of the Tree-Mother at hand, it was up to Leitara to preserve those sparks of continuity for as long as she can; she was now no longer a short-lived messenger, but the sole vessel of countless lives.

The territory of meaning is not the now, but the future, they said. Run; find Sarin Gelf.

When the red leaves of the torch flowers touched the Tree-Mother, the smoky tendrils crawled, then streamed as the dryad crackled with its final flowering, an outpouring that clouded Leitara's face with the teary sting of of the fully-bloomed fire. While Leitara felt nothing for the faceless parent, the thought of loneliness burned; she would be not only the last of Leitara, but all that was left of Leitara, and as responsible for her own continuity as if each coming thought was scripted, though she had only wakened moments ago. She felt like she was not reborn but remembered, a memory uprooted from layers on layers of lived time, shaken free from the dirt and grogginess that clung to her, and thrust into the looming future with the expectation that she know herself before her time burned out. As the clouds of memories curled into a coalescing and coruscating idea of self, Leitara burst forth from the thicket concealing the Seed-Womb, gored one of the hateful Queen-shadows, then seized another's cowl to drag her into the bushes, where she crushed its skull under her newborn heel.

When crackling boughs snapped and tumbled, fire pooled in the grass, and as the hooded Tree-Women backed away from the torrential fire consuming the Tree-Mother, those caught in red streamers from fallen branches became walking torches, then running torches, then ashy, crumbling torches.

From her crouch in the bushes, she rose to the balls of her feet, then raised her spear—or its splintered haft, which had snapped under the burden of her first murder. The Tree-Mother had not even provided a worthy spear. As the dead weight and awkward length would only hinder her escape, she tossed it into the shrubs, then sprinted through the woods.

She might have escaped the converging mob if she had kept to the ridge overlooking the Ssyrnas path, but it was there that she glimpsed her: not the Dryad Queen herself—that Tree-Mother drowsed in her grove, pruning schemes and dowsing the root network where dryads communed—but her proxy, armored in the Queen's lacquered ebon ironwood, an ancient heirloom designating her recognized identity more surely than the crown, but not more distinctive than her emerald tresses, chased with cherry red.

As Leitara's newborn limbs were yet too drunk to heed either her centuries of ingrained inhibitions or her reservoir of experience, she charged down the ridge, tripped on a tree root—which she remembered stepping over hundreds of times—and lunged into her momentum to crash into Inglefras.

Leitara's fists rained until muscled hands clenched her wrists, pulled her from the insensate Tree-Woman, then pinned her to a plushy softness concealing a hard torso. As she squirmed, the silky fibers tickled the newborn skin of her back and shoulder blades, increasing her anxiety, enflaming her anger, and inspiring her to stomp, kick, and thrash her head.

When he pulled her elbows back, the bony wood of her spine stretched stern, but as the Ingelfrases converged at a trickling speed, wary of their own blazing cudgels, her captor pushed her forward, and it was only by a backwards lurch and the recoil of her arms that she kept her footing.

"Run!" he hissed. It was the prince consort himself, in the black laquered armor that was the mate of the Queen's, and mantled in the white down of the yklenatu. The offworlder growled, drew his sword, and brandished it wide. "Run! Stupid seed!"

"I will not die the sport of that pretender."

Leitara knelt to draw the dagger from Inglefras's belt—a blade that shimmered in the moonless night by reflecting the red streaks of the mobbed torches. While those gleaming sparks were stretched thin by the polished steel, the weapon eerily reflected nothing else, as if saying that nothing that transpired existed.

"Sport? In another minute you'll pass from both pastime and remembrance. Run!"

"Think fast, Khyte of Drydana." Leitara laid the blade at the Queen's throat.

"Take a knife to a wedding dress. I've lived here long enough to know that's not my love, but her rags for a space." The human's hands told a different story, however, as they were held out and pressed outwards, as if to stop her by force of will; his feet also took insistent and persistent steps, but when he reached with his outstretched hand, Leitara hooked the point under the Dryad Queen's chin and with the faintest touch, left a trickling blush of blood.

"Come no closer."

"Tell me what you want. They will be here in a moment, and not bar my vengeance."

"Tell me why I should run."

"There is no time. Tell me what you want, you stupid flower."

"Why should you care?"

"I remember your face."

"That's all?"

"Put down the knife, and I'll tell you more."

"No. I will take it with us."

"With us?"

"Whether she is rags or regalia, if you would see no violence befall your Queen's vessel, you will take me to Hravak."

"There are no dryad groves on the Human World."

"If there was only the one dryad planted there, I would still go."

Understanding flooded into Khyte's eyes. "Sarin Gelf fled to Alfyria."

"You're stalling. Tell me your answer." When she again applied the edge to the throat of his lover, Khyte halted his inching advance.

"Though I pity you, do not trust me."

"On this world, yours are the only hands that move to their own will. If not you, who should I trust?"

"If that is the way you see it, how can I say no?"

"Nothing so glib, Khyte. Swear it."

"My word isn't good enough for you?"

"No. Swear it."

"I have duties!" said Khyte. "Behind you!"

Risking a sidelong look, Leitara dodged the thrusting shadow of the spear and slid tumbling to Khyte's feet.

When three hooded Inglefrases entered the clearing, and more shuffled through the groves, Khyte turned his back to the advancing Tree-Women, then leveled his sword at Leitara. "Let none touch her! She is mine!" he shouted.

Leitara jumped up, then sprinted under the low canopies of the gilu trees towards the ridge by a subtle, obliquely converging route, in the hope of throwing her pursuers.

The patter of her feet was soon answered by the rhythm of a different syncopation, a heavier, meatier tread that could only be the meat body of Inglefras's human consort. "Leitara," he called. It, she told herself, as humans were only half alive, scented with death from the minute of their birth.

While it seemed odd to call out a target's name, rather than curses, lies, or threats to make them easier game, and her stems were so pulled by this stray thread of curiosity as to suggest collecting this fresh bloom of intrigue as a memory for her Tree-Mother, the scent of that smoldering progenitor killed that vestigial instinct, reminding her that memory and purpose were now her own; her lived moments now had no overseer. This shredded question joined the rest of the wonders mulched by her tiny mind--why was the Tree-Mother slain? Why fire? Why now? What did Khyte want with Leitara, when his love for Inglefras was infamous legend in Ielnarona? Had her seed-sisters escaped, or was she, indeed, the last of Leitara? If the last, was she now all of Leitara? Was she, in fact, Leitara?

As experience was wasted if fated to wilt, not to flower then be preserved in memory's pages, nothing could make her look, and she decided to live with her uncertainty, if only until she walked the Ssyrnas path. As she was her own being, she could now prioritize guessing and fuzzy thinking over memory and common sense if she chose, and she chose to heed mortal dread over immortal curiosity. Compared to the vast consciousness of the Tree-Mother mind that preceded her, she was now just a little growth, destined to flower for a brief space, then decompose into the Dryad World. She would barely have enough time for achieving a life, and could not afford to squander stray moments on opinions or knowledge, whether of her own self or the world.

She lengthened her gait on the grassy ridge, each fibrous leg shooting her forward to grind the distance until her pursuer's steps dwindled to a tap tap tap. When the footfall stopped altogether, she stamped her temptation to turn, for it would do no good to fall to ambush while spotting a distant pursuer.

Following the Ssyrnas road would take her near Glesingren, where she would risk the catacombs and the Furrow. While the Queen banned the Furrows, in Wywynanoir the Pretender ruled, and moreover, while Tree-Mothers communed instantly through Ielnarona's root network, the rootless Tree-Women could only enact the known will of Tree-Mothers as deeds followed words, and words followed the thoughts that flowered from memories embedded years before. While the dryad tongue was another kind of root network, language was a cruder communion that lagged behind the Tree-Mothers' world mind. If the Pretender Inglefras brought fire to her enemies, and if the Councilor-Generals lost the Queen's grip on Wywynanoir, Leitara must also defy royal edict.

Moreover, Dryad Law only protected and governed Tree-Mothers, leaving each Tree-Mother citizen responsible for controlling its Tree-Women. Not only was Leitara the Tree-Woman not a citizen, she was not even a person by Dryad Law. Only the Tree-Mothers were citizens and people, however much the Tree-Women were put on display for the other peoples of the Five Worlds in the hospitality cities. Motherless Leitara was less a nonentity in this social order than a persona non grata, a rogue element whose orphaned existence was criminal, and whose extinction was obligatory.

When the footfall resumed, its tenor changed from a dwindling, descending trot—clop clop clup clup clip clip—to a mustering, ascending click click cleck cleck clack clack clack clack clack, the sound ever harsher until it seemed scratched in the shaking bough overhead.

She could not resist a glance. Khyte had overtaken her by running atop the pythonic branches of the Tree-Mother grove. When he landed before her,she backpedaled less from his outstretched, torturously musclebound arms than his strange animal face, both hardened by hot beast blood, and softened by the darkness. Leitara dashed downhill, crashing the shaggy wooded scrub climbing the rise, and narrowly ducking the low branches of gray firs at the foot of the slope, their cones bluish in the Abyssal night.

While no Tree-Woman had bent these branches in years, the grass was tussled by acephalous tree toads whose non-stop springy leaps seemed a constant upwards plopping, as if the ground boiled to erupt blobs of mud, not to mention the many headless crawlers of the Dryad World, or the all-tail slitherers, whose energetic sliding had no front or back, as all directions were one to the completely symmetrical reptile. Leitara now hastened through this verminous swarm, occasionally trodding down the serpents and toads in her journey.

Leitara was then struck by a crystal clear memory, one associated with warm camraderie and cozy soirees. Three old Tree-Mothers once clung to the base of this hill, and their Tree-Women were not only bon vivants, foodies, and sensualists, but generous hosts that extended their knowledge of dryad bodies and minds to an unparalleled hospitality that might have bred a reputation for sycophantism or whorishness on the beast worlds. Now these ladies of the ancient wood, celebrated people for whom she once entertained the most possessive friendship, were skeletal trunks hollowed by moss and bug and bird nests, and crowded by mindless conifers. One of the dead trunks had tilted, its desiccated roots forced half out of the soil by the greedy thirst of the blue firs' root systems.

As Leitara ran, guided by memories ancient and recent, she leaped the sprawling brittle roots and almost tripped, for her memories of a predecessor two years dead said the roots were an inch lower, marking the slow progress of the decomposing trunk into the soil, and of the Tree-Mother into the Afterworld and the Aftermind.

When she heard the meat man fall into a clacking clatter of his wooden armor, venting a jumble of curses that might have delighted one of her late seed-sisters, she wondered why she felt no pleasure.

If Leitara's memories were hers, why had the series of moments not linked? She saw not cause and effect in her past lives, but a continuum of discrete rings, each a distant experience despite all its clarity of memory. Her mind was a myth whispered by a chorus of dead women that had not yet converged on her living body. If she kept running, would she escape the ill will of her antecedents?

The trailing Hravakian was another matter, for he followed with a heat that gave both force to his blast through the harsh scrub of low branches and barricading bushes and lightness to his steps.

With him following so close, the Ssyrnas path was unapproachable, but escape still crowned the horizon, for the charcoal ridgeline of Mount Iluria scrawled through the blacker skies towards crags and promontories where Baugn sunned, mated, cooled, and slept. But why strive to herd her from Glesingren towards Mount Iluria, when Tree-Women are expert climbers?

When the lowing moans and thunderous pace of kiuvathi smashing through the brush confirmed this skyward route, she led her pursuer toward the steeper of Iluria's precipitous sides. Iluria meant 'needle,' and Mount Iluria took after its namesake, being a narrow spur from base to peaks that erupted into dozens of outcrops, and a sharp eye could see Baugn roosting along the ridge glinting from the vermilion rays of the Abyss-rise snaking the rocky horizon to light the leafy canopies.

Having heard of this meat man's prowess, not only with blades, but with climbing and riding, Leitara knew the sheerest face of Mount Iluria would neither daunt not stop him, but hoped his meat body might prove heavier in the ascent. So with the vegetal confidence of her fibrous green limbs, she didn't climb so much as vine up Mount Iluria, and as the Abyss-light fell on her face, she smiled, and felt that she was seeing for the first time.

On reaching a short basaltic ledge, Leitara glanced down to see a frenzied animation in her pursuer, his meat limbs almost magical in their mastery of Mount Iluria. His feet and hands moved in tandem like spider legs, not only rivaling the speed of her ascent, but threatening to surpass it.

If Khyte was as inescapable as fate, she would hasten his descent. She drew the knife, paced the ledge back and forth, then sheathed it. She would push him to his death.

She looked down. He slowed to a feral creep, then came to a rest—if rest it could be called, while gripping the flanking rocks—a dozen yards under the ledge. As she glanced at his helpless sprawl, her unfair plan seemed an echo of the Abyss, the unbalanced universe in microcosm. Having lived five times her lifespan, hatched plots, dabbled in schemes, and hoped in futures, Khyte would be undone by a day old Tree-Woman on the high ground. In that moment, his death seemed conveniently arranged by a conspiratorial cosmos, for a loose rock in the cliff face sloughed into her prying hands,

and his brains would slide out just as easily.

"Why wait?" he called.

"You might outstrip me."

"Go ahead. I'm right behind you."

"Are you stuck?"

"In a way. While I can climb, I glimpsed your stone."

"Why are you chasing me?"

"Chasing? This is me helping."

"Helping?" She laughed. As the newborn dryad was still too raw to laugh a scoffing or sneering laugh, her laugh only tinkled. She hated the flirtatious sound, for she was disgusted by his inflamed meat face, which panted and exuded sweat as he bided his time.

"Are you really going to Hravak?"

She laughed again. She liked to laugh. It was a good sound, and a better feeling. Much better than fear. "Why should I tell the husband of my assassin?"

"You just did, not ten minutes ago. And it might be in your interest to tell me."

"But returning this knife to your safekeeping is in both our interests. Bear it in your heart to your beloved."

"You have my attention, seedling. I know the strength in dryad limbs."

"Don't call me seedling. As I am what remains of my Tree-Mother, call me Leitara."

"Could I call you something else?"

"What's wrong with Leitara?" She returned his easy laughter.

"I didn't like the last Leitara."

"Give me another chance, Khyte, seeing that it's my last one."

"Are you sure you're the last? What if your Tree-Mother sent out more seeds?"

This was a good point. She could not know if any other Leitaras were slain or not,

as only living Tree-Women rejoined with their Tree-Mother to yield their memories in death. Those past selves in her consciousness had lived full circle, springing from the seed bower, doing as the Tree-Mother had bade for a few revolutions of the Abyss, then drifting back to dissolve into the roots of Leitara. While thinking she might have a handful of seed-sisters put a wry smile on her face, she still felt the urge to hide, claim a new grove, and take root. Were they all possessed by that fear of a futureless being? "You know a little about Tree-Women, Khyte."

Khyte rolled back his head and cackled, shaking so hard that his knuckles whitened gripping the mountain. "That's good to know." When Leitara had no comment, Khyte's roar died to a chuckle and he glared through eyes blurry with tears of laughter. "After living here for eighteen months, I should know something."

"Knowing how we will our memories back to our Tree-Mothers, and having seen the bower of my birth, you know as much as I do. Do you know where Tree-Mothers come from?"

"No," said Khyte. "Where?"

"Inglefras hasn't told you?"

"Why would I ask? You don't know?"

"I was hoping you knew. The generation of Tree-Mothers is a mystery to Tree-Women."

"How can you not know?" scoffed Khyte. "Isn't it a memory?"

"While it is a memory in the Tree-Mother, it wasn't lived by any Tree-Woman, and wasn't repeated in me. Maybe we drifted here from the oases of the Abyss?"

"That's ridiculous, but I'm too exhausted to laugh. Will you let me on that ledge?"

"If you don't try, when you fall asleep, I'll set you afire like your wife did to me."

"What if I swear?"

"Swear all you like. Though born less than an hour ago, I don't remember being a virgin."

"I need not answer to you. Am I not a prince? I swear to take you to Hravak."

"Forgive me, my liege," Leitara bowed frostily. "You're not my prince. Neither I, nor my seed-sisters, ever bowed the knee to the pretender. That said, why save the life your mate strove to undo?"

"Despite what I know of Dryads, I treat your flowered faces as people, worthy of pity, care, and friendship."

"Do you kiss all your wife's faces before they're swept in the dustbin?"

"Love loves, Tree-Woman. I love who I loved, who I love, and who I will love. If the one I loved is no more, but her loving seed-sisters think of me as she did, have I no duty toward feelings shaped in the fires of my beloved's heart? When the feelings of the dead quicken a living pulse, they live on."

If the goblin king had captured me, and not Inglefras, thought Leitara, this yapping meat puppet would dog my steps and heed my call. "Swear then."

"I did!"

"Did you? Swear again."

"I swear to take you to Hravak."

Leitara stepped to the ledge, stooped over the rim, and lowered her hand. "This must be important to you, but I don't see why or how."

Khyte scampered up the steep slope, ignored the outstretched arm, seized the outcrop, and hoisted himself onto the ledge. "Are you always so difficult?"

"Maybe yes, maybe no. If I was today, it was my first day."

Khyte had a pained expression. "I keep forgetting your true age. It's hard to look at you and think that you've never seen the Abyss-light."

"In a way I have. I see the days of others."

"Memory isn't as vivid as sense. Not in humans."

"It is somewhat stronger for dryads. Is it worth seeing?"

"You tell me," said Khyte, as the Dryad World twisted toward the first rays of Abyss-light.

While her Tree-Mother collected this memory from every angle and degree, some for their intrinsic beauty, and others for a fond moment shared with beloved seed-sisters, all these recorded times were dissolved in this first true light. "It is magnificent."

"Not to me. I see it every day. One day you may appreciate it less, and appreciate Mount Iluria more. Or a face will affect you like Inglefras does me."

"Though I may remember this mountain with some interest, I will never see it again."

"You're very confident. Have you ridden a Baugn?"

She snickered. "You have me at a disadvantage, my prince. You know Baugn do not fly between the seeds of a Tree-Mother's bower."

"But do you remember?"

"Those dryads you see on other worlds seem so similar because few of us are interested in Abyssal travel, and those few comprise most Tree-Woman travelers. While we are curious, we prefer to entertain you here. As Leitara was not one of those few Tree-Mothers obsessed with disseminating their seed into the Abyss, I have neither memories of other worlds or of riding on Baugn."

"While I've done it many times, it's not easy. I had a good teacher, and I will try to be that for you."

Leitara said, "I do not have to learn, for I will ride with you."

Khyte snorted. "Don't even try it."

"Try what?"

"Never mind. You can ride with me if you want."

When the iron shaft crunched into the mountain and quivered, they braced against the rock. The next sailed just over the ledge, faltered, then clattered spent at their feet. It was a cruel, hooked dryad javelin.

"What now?" asked Leitara.

"Why ask me? This is your fault, and your escape. Up or down?"

"Then it must be up. Help me with this." Leitara had the loose boulder half out before the meat man bent to help, but when he saw what she was about, he plucked up the rock, stepped to the edge, lifted it high, and fumbled it when his foothold sheared. While the plummeting stone grazed Khyte's forehead and scraped his ankle, the shorn outcrop drew blood when he grasped the sharp stone with his outflung hand. As Leitara knelt to pull him up, the tumbling stone toppled two of the five dryads clutching Mount Iluria, and the Tree-Women fell noiselessly, more like dry leaves than dead wood.

"You have miserable luck," said Khyte.

"You broke the ledge!"

"Your bad luck rubbed off—that never happens to me."

"You mean good luck. For me. You crushed two of your beloved's faces."

After a pained expression, Khyte looked over the shortened ledge, then backpedaled when a javelin flew past. "Inglefras, it's me!" To Leitara, he hissed, "why didn't you tell me."

"In case you haven't noticed, Khyte," Inglefras called back, "the ones you killed were very much myself."

"That was an accident!"

"And I was aiming for your head. It's not like you use it."

"Don't worry," whispered Leitara. "She won't stay mad at her consort."

"Climb," muttered Khyte, then leaped to scamper on all fours up the slope, his cut leaving a wet handprint where it fell. As Leitara scrambled behind him, two more javelins flew; while one went wide, the other touched its target with a tap so depleted, it clattered on Khyte's back plate and fell towards the dryads.

"I hate armor," Khyte grunted. At first, Leitara strove to match his muscular pace, but her unyielding vegetal sinews soon gave her the advantage. "I wouldn't be wearing this if she hadn't insisted. She thought you—or, rather, your Tree-Mother—would sell your life more dearly."

"My life is not for sale." Leitara passed the bleeding meat man.

"Why ask for my help?"

"I wanted to live."

"Why did you think I would help you?"

"I didn't. I coerced you."

"Still, you trusted me."

"Should you call me a fool when I'm not two hours old?"

"I would never call any dryad a fool. On the contrary, you tend to overthink things. And not by thinking of alternatives, but in thinking a thought over and over, you nail it into place."

"You're right that we're rigid. It's taking all I have to choose this escape, since I've never walked it."

The next ledge widened into a mountain pass, which meandered through a cleft blocking their sight of the climbing dryads. Condensation trickled down the shaded interior of the rocky canopy as they wound through to the mountain face, which sloped up to the first of the jutting promontories. While the rise was gentle to start, it soon veered to a dizzying ascent, and on a few stretches they were nearly vertical as they clung to the rocks.

On the steepest of these slopes, when Leitara lost her grip and skidded past Khyte, he grabbed her arm and swung one-armed from his white-knuckled fingers before the mountain returned their desperate embrace by knocking the wind out of them, and only by digging in their heels and grinding upwards by inches were they able to continue.

The ascent only became more precarious, a danger heightened first by the widening perspective of the sprawling mountain, which increasingly threatened them with vertigo, and second because Mount Iluria was the backdrop of no memory inherited from the Tree-Mother, a virgin territory where Leitara felt abandoned by the shades of her past selves, not as if they left her to her fate entirely, but as if they lurked voyeuristically, waiting for her to join them in death, when they could finally rest.

Having reached the first promontory, the sinuous Baugn seemed to ooze away from Leitara as she laid down to spread her aching arms and legs—limbs that only hours ago nestled inside a hard, cozy hull in the bower of her Tree-Mother, unaware that the future was fire and ash—but when Khyte knelt beside her, he said, "not this one."

"What?"

"Those Baugn are too old."

Leitara lifted her exhausted face. The jet black beasts hadn't a single gray hair on their massive, muscular wings. "How would you know?"

"Their heads shake like ripe fruit, and their spindly legs strain like storm-weathered tree trunks."

"Don't you know some Drydanan birdcall to beckon another one?"

"Climb. She is right behind us."

"Why not wait? You're more than a match for them on this spur."

"And take arms against the face of my beloved?"

"But you've already..."

"If you want my help, don't finish that thought."

The next outcrop was a thick wave of stone twisted into a loop, at the end of which a tree had embedded in reverse, its branches stretching underneath toward the Dryad World, and its roots pricking through the ledge toward the Abyss. One Baugn slumbered on the ledge between this topsy-turvy tree and the mountain face.

"How about this one?"

Khyte's hand dragged at his chin, as if he pondered the beast's merits. "No."

"What's wrong this time?" Leitara again imagined pushing the meat man down Mount Iluria.

"He's perfect."

"Good. Let's go."

"We have no offering."

"We'll burn something to your human god later."

"It is the Baugn that wants fed." When Khyte frowned and scrutinized Leitara, she pressed against the rock face.

"Don't look at me like that."

"You would regrow it."

"You're not serious."

"Deadly serious. We are at an impasse."

"If it had a taste for dryads, it would scent me."

"Fear keeps it there. And like a gourmet, its palette is too broad to know its wants or satisfy its desires."

"Let it stay ignorant of dryad flesh."

"Is there another option? Your sisters are coming."

"They're not my seed-sisters. Could we force our way?"

"And get thrown? Even a seed cast from this height will likely find the rocks below inhospitable to living."

"As you say, we're running out of options."

"That doesn't mean we should go from bad to worse, such as my being stranded with you on an oasis."

"Did I bring you here at knife point?"

"You held one to Inglefras."

"Who had just killed me."

"You look healthy for being dead."

While this bickering droned on, Leitara argued more or less automatically, for having accumulated centuries of comebacks, rebuttals, and retorts, she let them rip thoughtlessly as she pondered her future. If she could not overcome this quandry, Inglefras would toss her from an outcrop, or roast her for a Baugn heading for an impromptu holiday spot where she might reconcile with her faithless lover.

On hearing scuffling on the rise below, Leitara tiptoed to the Baugn, but when Khyte followed uncertainly, she dashed the rest of the way. Her hunch became a certainty when she ruffled the beast's sleek ebon coat, and, without standing, or even shifting its haunches, its sinuous, flexible neck unfurled to track her as she walked all around it, her hands tracing a path through its shimmering fur.

While the first Baugn riders were intrepid souls, full of bravery and audacity, they underestimated the world-beast's heart. These lonely beasts, confined to the slenderest strips of mountain by the caged mesh of their terrors, always overlooked vast horizons to which they could never descend; ever on shaky footing, these spirits sought connection, and found it in the dauntless travelers emerging from the feared lands below like netherworld gods, bearing rewards for the long-suffering creatures. But the reward was not food.

Having completed her circular caress, the beast thrummed with a bass trill, and when Leitara leaned forward, its sinuous neck leaned into the embrace. When Leitara rubbed the soft fur between its ring of eyes, all eight closed under the pressure of her fingertips, and when she clambered to its shoulders, its wings brushed Khyte back to teeter near the edge, where the meat man was clutched by the Ingelfras assassins climbing onto the outcrop. Two javelins veered in the gust of the Baugn's ascent, but the third whistled toward her brow before unraveling in the hurtling nothingness of the Abyss.