Chapter Eight

ON the far side of the Everwide, Raffa and Garith jumped out of the boat and hauled it ashore. Several other boats landed to either side of them. Fitzer, Davvis, and Missum Quellin were in the very last one.

“How many made it?” Missum Quellin asked as they joined Raffa and Garith on dry land.

Fitzer shook his head. “Hard to say. More than three-quarters, maybe? We’ll know for sure upon certain when we get to the camp.”

“What will happen to the rest of them?” Davvis was looking back toward the shore on the Gilden side. It was too far away to see anything, but Raffa shivered at the memory of what he had witnessed there.

Will they all be taken to the Garrison? Or will the guards force them to go straight to the foothills? In the chaos, families had surely been sundered—parents, bereft and in despair; children, wide-eyed with terror. The silence that followed Davvis’s question was its answer.

Raffa saw the people who had arrived ahead of them hurrying up the riverbank and disappearing over the top. He hoped with all his heart that Jimble and his siblings were among the crowd.

“But how will they find their way?” he asked, knowing that most of the slum dwellers—maybe all of them—were unfamiliar with the Forest.

“Folks from the settlements were waiting here for them,” Fitzer said. “A girl’s leading them—a friend of yours, I believe.”

“Kuma!” Raffa exclaimed, and immediately felt a little better. She was completely at home in the Forest.

And the slum dwellers had a head start: It would take the guards a while to reach the ferry landing so they could make the river crossing.

“She won’t have been expecting us to cross,” Fitzer said. Raffa knew he was talking about the Chancellor. “It’ll take her some time to come up with a plan. I’d say she’ll send some guards in pursuit, but not many. Not to attack but to scout, figure out what we’re up to.”

Garith began digging through the sack he was carrying. He pulled out several smaller bags and handed them around. The bags contained some kind of powder.

Raffa untied his and gave the contents a quick sniff. “Throx?” he asked.

Garith nodded.

“What’s that?” Quellin asked.

“It’s a powder distilled from throx plants,” Raffa said. “We use it as a stimulant—” He stopped and looked at Garith. “But why do we need it now?”

“Dogs,” Garith said. He looked at Raffa expectantly.

Raffa stared at him for a moment, until his mind lit up with understanding.

“Oh! Shakes and tremors, that’s brilliant!” He couldn’t help a little hop of excitement as he spoke to the others. “Throx powder has an unusual quality: It numbs scent organs.”

“What organs?” Davvis asked, in obvious puzzlement.

Raffa tapped his nose. “Your nose,” he said. “Makes it so you can’t smell. It’s temporary, but it lasts for a while—an hour or two, at least. So we need to spread out along the bank, wherever the boats landed, and sprinkle the powder around as we walk.”

“I still don’t get it,” Davvis said.

“The guards,” Raffa replied. “If they try to track us, they’ll most likely be using dogs. The dogs will inhale the powder, and—”

“And it’ll numb their noses so they can’t pick up our scent!” Davvis finished triumphantly.

“That is brilliant,” Fitzer agreed. “If they don’t find any scent trails into the Forest, perhaps they’ll think we’re headed for the settlements instead. In any case, it’ll surely delay them, and we’ll be needing every moment.”

Raffa pointed a finger at Garith, and then tapped his own temple. “Your idea?”

Garith shrugged. “Yeah. Aunt Salima harvested the plants, because I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere,” he said, an edge of resentment in his voice. “And Uncle Mohan helped make the powder.”

“Let’s get to work,” Fitzer said. He picked up a stick and drew a quick sketch in the damp sand, diagonal lines intersecting each other and making a sort of diamond pattern. “If we walk a grid like this, we’ll be able to cover the most ground.”

They spread out along the bank, staying within eyeshot of each other. Raffa climbed the bank, scattering powder as he went. There was enough throx to strew over an area thirty paces wide and nearly a quarter of a mile long.

As Raffa emptied the last of the throx from his bag, he heard Fitzer’s voice, calling urgently. “Down, everyone!”

They were in scrubland between the river and the Forest. Raffa saw a tangle of cracklefruit shrubs and ducked beneath them. He sat hugging his knees, listening hard.

At first he heard what sounded almost like singing, faint and far away. The sounds were getting closer.

No, not singing.

Baying.

Dogs.

It seemed like no time at all before Raffa could hear voices. The shrubs around him were in spring bud, not full leaf. He felt so exposed that he might as well have been sitting out in the open.

“THIS WAY! OVER HERE!”

Were they coming toward him? Raffa stared as hard as he could in the direction of the voice.

Then a sharp bark—so close that he nearly jumped out of his boots! He swiveled his head and saw a dog off to the right, perhaps fifteen paces away, on a lead held by a guard.

Fear knotted his throat. In a moment of nonsensical instinct, he closed his eyes. If I can’t see them, maybe they won’t see me. . . .

“NO! THIS WAY! WHERE ARE YOU GOING?”

The voice was so close, it seemed he could almost feel the guard’s breath.

Another voice, farther off: “FAULTS AND FISSURES, THAT’S THE WRONG WAY!”

“SEARCH, TRACKER! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? SEARCH!”

Raffa swallowed a squeak of surprise. The dogs are confused! The throx is working!

Now the guards began arguing with each other.

“My dog says this way!”

“Well, mine’s pulling hard over here!”

“Arrow’s more reliable than Tracker, and you know that’s the truth!”

“Is not! Arrow couldn’t find her way to a tree to pee!”

Raffa would have laughed aloud if he weren’t trying so hard to stay quiet.

Guards and dogs crisscrossed the scrubland in confusion. Finally a guard who apparently outranked the others gave the order to head south—toward the settlements. Raffa gave a fervent, silent cheer. The throx powder had worked even better than he had hoped.

He waited until the guards’ voices faded into silence, then began counting to one hundred. At seventy-three, he heard Fitzer calling.

“They’re gone. Come on out, everyone. We’re in the clear.”

Raffa ducked out from beneath the shrubs and ran toward Garith. He whooped and tackled the taller boy to the ground, mock-pummeling him.

“You did it! It worked!” he crowed.

“Get off me, you quake-brain,” Garith said, grinning.

Raffa pulled his cousin to his feet. The success of Garith’s idea to use the throx powder had inspired him. As they clapped each other’s hands in celebration, hope rose inside him—hope spiked with determination.

The glow wore off quickly during the hike to the Forest, for the memory of seeing people attacked by the animals remained vivid in Raffa’s mind. Their fear had tainted the air like smoke.

He started walking faster. They entered the Forest and soon joined up with a path that he recognized. It led to a large clearing.

A place he had been to before.

Months earlier, he and Garith had made a trip to the Forest of Wonders. They had been appalled to discover an enormous clearing, created by the ruthless axing of dozens upon dozens of old-growth trees. The Forest had long been protected by government charter, because its plants were the source of such valuable botanicals. The cousins could not imagine who would commit such a terrible crime.

Later, Raffa deduced that it was the Chancellor herself who had ordered the desecration of the Forest. The clearing had been used as a base during the effort by her forces to capture hundreds of animals, most of which were either babies or pregnant mothers. Jayney and his complice, Trubb, had discovered that very young animals were the easiest to train.

Raffa was so preoccupied that he could not properly appreciate being in the Forest again. Normally, he would have been searching constantly for useful or unusual plants, and marveling at how the Forest had changed since his last visit. Now he hurried along the path, barely noticing his surroundings: It was yet another way that the small joys of life had been wrenched away ruthlessly by the Chancellor’s schemes.

He found himself especially torn on entering the clearing. He hated this gaping wound in the Forest, and knew that the entire area around it had been stripped of much of its animal life. It would take years—decades—before it returned to anything like its natural state.

On the other hand, there was a grim satisfaction in the knowledge that what the Chancellor had made was now being used against her.

The clearing looked completely different from when he had last seen it. A tent village had been erected to serve as housing for the evacuated slum dwellers. The tents were makeshift, constructed of motley materials and, as a consequence, very colorful.

He made his way farther into the clearing. Near the center was a large open pavilion, which consisted of a canvas roof held up by poles. The space under the canvas was filled with rough benches and tables. Raffa guessed that both the poles and the furniture had been made using the felled trees. A stream ran near one edge of the clearing. A water station had been set up there, equipped with buckets and barrels. Next to the water station was a long fire pit, with big pots and kettles rigged to hang over the flames.

He was astounded. Shakes, it’s like a whole town!

“Raffa!”

He turned and saw a small group of people heading toward him.

“Kuma!”