Alberdina swore under her breath in a language Delia didn’t understand, and then shouted, “Hakkon! Stop the horses right this moment!”

Delia did not blame her in the least, because rising up before them on both sides of the river was a thing that could not, by any standard she knew, be called a forest.

Oh, there were tree-like objects, and lots of them. It was just that under no circumstances would she have called them trees.

There were no variations in them other than height. There were no conifers or evergreens. They were as uniform as a planted orchard, and spaced just as neatly apart: about the length of a horse and farm wagon, to be precise. Not only were they leafless—which was to be expected, since most of the leaves at this point were on the ground, and those that weren’t belonged to things like holly—their limbs were contorted and twisted like no tree she had ever seen before. Once, before Isla had married Kordas and she and her sister had both shared a tutor, the tutor had taken them out on a bright summer day with glass bowls and a sieve and a dipper and a little, but very strong, pocket magnifying lens to examine the tiny animals in the estate’s ornamental pond. These things looked something like one of the creatures they had seen that day. Except they were big. Big as the oldest apple trees in the Valdemar orchard.

The trunks, covered with a heavy, dark gray bark, sprouted branches that contorted and spiraled in ways that could not possibly have been due to wind and made very little sense in terms of growing things. The only time she had ever seen branches that looked like this was on climbing vines. In fact, they gave the impression of movement that had nothing to do with a breeze. As Hakkon tried to slow the string of barges and they got nearer to this forest, she noticed something else. The trees on both sides of the river were the strange ones, although there were normal trees just at the edge of the forest on the other side. But the closer they got to this “weird forest,” the stranger and more sinister the place looked. Patchy with green moss and sporting odd, transparent fungi, there were places on the trunks that looked less like boles or cankers than open mouths with teeth in them.

And as Hakkon managed to bring the string to a complete halt, she noticed, with a sensation of great unease, that there was something else about the branches of those trees. The underside of each and every twisty, contorted branch sported odd symmetrical round marks. Or were they another kind of fungus? But what fungus grew in regulated, evenly spaced rows, one or two rows per branch, from the base of the branch to the pointed tip?

“What in all the dark hells . . .” Alberdina said aloud, as Jonaton poked his head out of the barge and looked from the forest to her and back again.

The ground seemed to be covered with a reddish-brown matter of some sort. Fallen leaves? Maybe . . .

Flitting among the trees were reddish-brown winged insects that looked like dragonflies. Which should have been impossible. It was more than cold enough for insects to be dead. Were they some sort of bird? But what bird had four wings?

Jonaton hopped over to their boat as Alberdina stared. “I don’t want to go in there,” she said flatly. “Those . . . I won’t call them trees . . . there’s something very wrong with them.”

“Well, the horses agree with you,” Jonaton replied. “But Briada and I went all the way to the end of this forest and back, and took no harm. Can you be a little more specific about what you think is wrong with them?”

Alberdina shook her head. “Lad, I’m a Healer, not a mage, but . . . this is a place that doesn’t much like things with warm blood in their veins. That’s my impression, anyway. It’s as if this entire forest is one single creature. And it’s dormant . . . at least I think it is. But I wouldn’t want to wake it.”

“Are those . . . mouths with teeth?” Delia stammered.

“To be honest, we didn’t go close enough to it to find out. It could just be imagination. Or an illusion, a trick of coloration and texture that looks like teeth to keep animals and birds from making holes in the trunks.” That was what Jonaton said, but it was in a tone of voice that made her think he actually did not believe what he was saying. “Look, there’s no choice here, we have to go through. But that’s why we’re going to go as fast as we can without exhausting the horses. We’ll be in the clear before sunset.”

“That’s all very well for us, but what about the convoy?” Alberdina demanded. “We are stopping here, right now, and we’re going to ask Amethyst to contact Kordas.” She turned to the Doll. “Is there any way that you can show him what we see?”

Jonaton sighed. “No need,” he replied, and turned to Amethyst himself. “Amethyst, please get in contact with Kordas, and ask him to scry where we are. He can see for himself.”

Kordas stared into the depths of the scrying pool that Ponu had conjured up. All the rest of the Old Men, and some of the other mages, had gathered around it as well.

Alberdina’s insistence, through the Dolls, that he see what they were about to traverse for himself had been so vehement that he had decided to get some of the best of his mages to join his “look ahead.” And now he was glad that he had.

“Can we, dare we, move the point of view closer?” he asked Ceri. “Alberdina is pretty adamant that she feels as if those things are hostile. Would they react to being scryed?”

“If they would, they’re too dangerous to pass through,” Ceri opined. “And it’s better to find that out now than later.”

Kordas grimaced, but Ceri had a point. And if the trees—and whatever depended on them, maybe—reacted with hostility, there was the option to get the scouts to collect the Gate uprights, speed through the forest, and establish that second Gate somewhere else if they had to. Granted, it wouldn’t be on that powerful ley-line, but maybe Jonaton could find another.

“Moving in closer,” said Ponu, and the point of view moved past the scouts and closer to the strange forest, although Ponu did not take it any nearer than the horses and barges would be on the river.

“Are those mouths in the trunks?” asked Koto, rubbing his bald head nervously. “And teeth?”

“They look like it to me,” Kordas agreed.

Alberdina’s voice came thinly through the pool, as if from a great distance. “I’m no expert on anything but Healing, but this doesn’t feel like a forest of trees to me,” she said. “It feels like one enormous entity.”

“There are groves of trees that are exactly that,” Ceri said thoughtfully. “They look like a grove of trees, but actually, each tree is a scion of an enormous root system. If something like that got caught in a Change-Circle, a really big one, then you wouldn’t get each tree looking different from every other tree. You’d get something like this—” He gestured at the pool.

They were all on top of Kordas’s personal barge, since the convoy did have to keep moving, and no one wanted to stop on the verge among all the herds, or impede the progress of the horses. Ponu had made the scrying pool by the simple expedient of creating a shallow dish made of magic energies, and pouring river water into it.

“And if that was what has happened,” Dole mused, sounding as if he was speaking his thoughts aloud, “then the thing has had five hundred years to proliferate and spread. It could have started out small, and expanded along the water source.”

That made sense. That would also explain why the border of it was not a segment of a circle. “But the question is, is it safe to pass it?” Kordas asked.

“I think it is,” came Jonaton’s voice from the pool. “Briada and I passed it twice, and nothing ever happened. Alberdina says it feels to her like it’s dormant.”

Dormant doesn’t mean dead. Dormant implies it can wake up.

“If we stay on the riverbank, and the herds stay on the riverbank, we should be fine,” came Briada’s voice. “If it didn’t notice a dozen people including four mages and a mage-made construct, I very much doubt it’ll be bothered by the convoy.”

Ponu sucked on his lower lip and looked at Ceri. Ceri stroked his chin. Koto rubbed his head again. “It is true,” Dole said, choosing his words with great care, “that magic-warped things do respond most readily to the presence of mage-made objects and magicians, if they are going to respond at all.”

“They’re trees,” Jonaton said in tones of exasperation. “What are they going to do, pull up their roots and come running after us?”

“Don’t tempt fate!” all the mages on Kordas’s side said at once, at the same time as the sound of a smack came from the other side, followed by Jonaton’s indignant “Ow!”

“What was that for, Sai?” Jonaton whined.

“You’re an idiot. And you used to be my apprentice. I reserve the right to continue smacking you when you say something stupid,” Sai replied. “How many times have I told you? Words have power for magicians. Say the wrong thing and it can come to pass.”

“Sai?” Kordas called. “What’s your opinion?”

“That no one knows much about things that happen in Change-Circles,” Sai said cautiously. “Largely because it’s never the same thing twice. This could have been the result of what Dole suggested.”

“Look.” Jonaton sounded weary. “We’ve already got the Gates across the rapids set up, with a good strong ley-line to power them. We don’t know that we’re going to find another. And at least some of us are going to have to go back, deactivate the outbound Gate, wait for us to establish a new one if we can and power it up. We don’t know we’re going to find a ley-line this good, and if we can’t, we’re limited to our own strength. Which means it will take days, instead of marks, to bring the new Gate up, and there is no guarantee that when we do, it will reach the outbound Gate on your side of the rapids. And meanwhile, we know there’s terror-birds, snake-dogs, and at least one bizarre bear on your side. So what do you want to do, Baron? You’re our leader.”

Yes, I am. Jonaton seemed very sure that those monster-trees weren’t going to hurt them as long as they stayed on the bank. But this was going to require a lot of coordination and preparation.

Doesn’t everything, right now?

“A compromise?” he suggested. “You all go through that forest and if anything, anything at all, threatens you, retreat. Otherwise go on. If you find another ley-line on the other side of it, move the Gate. If you don’t, we’ll take all due precautions with the convoy and take our chances with the forest.”

He glanced at the mages all standing on the walkway of his home-barge. They all looked concerned, but nodded.

“Good,” Jonaton replied. “Now we’ll get our string moving again so we don’t have to stop in the middle of this place. And I suggest that when you get here—”

“—if we have to,” interrupted Ponu.

“Fine, if you have to, then break up the convoy so that no one has to stop overnight there either. All right? I can tell you that it’ll take about a day for you to get to the other side at the pace you’re moving. You should be able to figure out how to break the convoy up from that.”

“That is a good plan,” Kordas agreed.

“All right. And now close this thing down, if you are so certain that you’re going to wake a bunch of trees.” Then Jonaton laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Kordas demanded.

“Well, we were all speculating about where that Change-bear came from,” the mage replied. “I don’t think we need to speculate anymore.”

Sai snorted, but didn’t say anything, and Kordas nodded at Ponu, who motioned to the people standing on the river side of the walkway to move. They did, and he tilted the “dish,” sending the water over the side of the boat and back into the river, then dispelled the magical vessel.

Most of the mages left then, taking their mules from where they were walking beside the barge, tethered to it by long leads, and going back to their respective spots in the convoy. But Ceri stayed, staring absently out across the river.

“Your thoughts?” Kordas asked.

“It’s almost winter. Normal trees are slipping into winter sleep; probably those are too. That’s probably what Jonaton is thinking. He’s probably not wrong about that.”

“But?” Kordas prompted.

“But we shouldn’t let anyone or anything under those branches,” Ceri finished. “Which means no foraging, and no taking wood. We’ll stock up on the way there. Each section should pause to feed their herds on grain before going in, so they aren’t hungry. We tighten up the charms so they all stay as close to the barges as they can get without falling in.”

“And?” Kordas sensed that Ceri had more to say.

The old mage sighed. “And we hope that luck is with us and Jonaton and his band find a ley-line on the other side of that thing so we don’t have to worry about it.”

The horses and mules did not like that forest, and neither did Bay. Bay wouldn’t even set foot on the bank; he planted himself on the top of the women’s barge with his ears and tail down, whining, and refused to move.

Delia did not blame the mastiff in the least. She didn’t have anything like a Healer’s Empathy, but the nearer she got to those tree-things, the more she felt a sort of . . . dull, distant, background emotion. Like rage, if rage had been smothered and sleeping for centuries until it had dulled down to a sort of ambience, barely there unless you looked for it.

But that ambience of rage did not change when the mages on Kordas’s end did their scrying. And it didn’t change when they entered the forest boundaries. So after unconsciously holding her breath until she suddenly realized she was running out of air, Delia clambered up onto the roof of the barge with Bay and sat down. The dog immediately put his head in her lap, whimpering just barely loud enough for her to hear.

The horses and mules not being ridden had all been put into harness and attached to the barges. With all of them pulling, the pace had gone from an amble to a fast walk, and no one had needed to urge them into a faster pace. Even unflappable Tight Squeeze had his ears back, his tail twitching, and leaned hard into his harness, trying to increase his speed. Clearly, they could not stand to be in this place a moment longer than they were forced to be.

Delia looked at Amethyst, who stood in the prow of her barge with head cocked to one side, as if she was listening.

“What are you sensing, Amethyst?” she called softly, as if too much noise was dangerous.

“Anger, but distant, and sleeping,” the Doll replied immediately. “But I do not think it would be wise for you to collect even fallen wood from this place. I feel as if . . . as if . . . as if these trees would know if you did, and if we burned or broke any of it, they would know that, too.”

“What is it?” she begged.

“It seems vaguely familiar, but vastly changed. Changed so much I cannot recognize what it once was. Something I might have recognized immediately before that change took place.” Amethyst shook her head. “That is all I can say for now. We need to be gone from here.”

Thank you for the obvious, Delia thought, her own temper irritated by the anger all around her and inescapable. But she didn’t snap at Amethyst or let it show. The Doll was doing her best, had been doing her best, and it was not fair to get testy with her.

Oh, but she wanted to be on the other side of this thing!

As noon approached, she decided to see if Sai wanted help with getting food to everyone. Obviously they were not going to stop to cook, but if he made up some sort of thing, she could distribute it for him.

She found him in the kitchen in the women’s barge contemplating leftover cold goose and cheese. “I wish I’d thought to make up some more flatbreads,” he said, as her footsteps told him of her approach.

“They’re nasty and tough when they are cold,” she reminded him. “What about wrapping up packets of meat and cheese in cabbage leaves? We’ve got them hanging from the roof of the storage barge.”

The storage barge had that same spell on it that they’d used back at the manor, to keep things preserved for far longer than they had any right to be. That was where the precious fat was stored, including some even more precious butter, some few eggs, and a great many vegetables as well as the grains for humans and animals. Everyone knew about winter-sickness, of course, and a very high priority had been placed on keeping things like cabbages sound enough to eat all winter. Sai perked up at that. “That’s an excellent idea. Go bring me one.”

Under any other circumstances, she would have chided him for lack of politeness, but if she was feeling under strain, it was probably worse for a mage.

So she ran off to the storage barge, and came back with a head of cabbage she judged just big enough to supply leaves for wraps and have enough left over to add to tonight’s soup.

Oh, how I hope we will actually be out of this place before sundown so we can get that soup!

In mere moments, she found herself running among the barges, passing out cabbage-wrapped packets of minced goose and cheese all held together with mustard and flavored with a touch of salt. Sai had boiled water to blanch the leaves; they were still crispy, but more flexible. No one made any complaints, and it tasted just fine, if a bit out of the ordinary, to Delia, who finally collected her own wrap after delivering them to everyone else.

Then, with nothing more to do, she sat back down with poor Bey, hand-fed him bits of goose and cheese sent by Sai, and stared at the forest.

The dragonfly things were pretty. But—they shouldn’t be alive. It was much, much too cold for insects to be alive.

And that was when she realized that she wasn’t cold. In fact, she felt a little warm. The air seemed stuffy, and smelled musty, like a room that had been closed up in the heat for a long time. Experimenting, she slid down off the roof of the barge to the river side of the walkway, and crouched down. It was definitely colder, much colder. And walking around to the land side, there was no doubt that warmth radiated off of the forest.

Were there shadows under those trees in the distance? Were they moving?

She looked sharply away, and then back, saw no change in the shadows, and scolded herself for being too jumpy.

But if the forest is warm, warm enough for dragonflies to live, why is it going into winter sleep? Or have we made a mistake there? What if it isn’t winter sleep, just . . . sleep?

Wouldn’t that mean it could be a lot easier to wake it up?

“The scouts are on the other side of the forest, with no incident,” Rose announced, in late afternoon. Kordas heaved a sigh of relief.

“Have they found a safe place to camp?” he asked the Doll.

“Yes, and they are going to mark it for the rest, because it is particularly defensible.” Rose paused. “Would you like me to describe the strange forest for you, as they experienced it?”

There is no such thing as too much information. “Yes, please,” he said, and listened as she described in detail the trees, the unnatural warmth beneath them, the presence of the dragonflies, and the sense of simmering rage.

It was the last that tickled some distant memory, but not enough that he recognized it, only that it seemed familiar. But he was not given a chance to probe his own memory, because the next thing that Rose said, in sharper tones than before, was, “Kordas, you are needed ahead. There is a problem.”

“How far ahead?” he asked. He was already on Arial with Rose hanging on behind him. He gave Arial a touch of his heel and a loose rein so she would know she needed to make speed and that she could pick her own path through the mingled herd of sheep and goats just in front of him. They didn’t like being shouldered aside, voicing their objection quite loudly. But Arial was used to this, and frankly didn’t care anymore; those she couldn’t move aside, she often leapt over.

“Near to the front of the convoy,” Rose replied in his ear as she clung to his waist with her mitten-like hands. “The Old Men are on their way from the front.”

“Something magic?” he asked.

“It is a boar.” That was all she told him, and he was forced to try to imagine why a wild boar would be a threat that would call for his attention. Was it like that bear the scouts had encountered? But Arial saw a clear path ahead, somehow, and leapt from a standing start into a run worthy of a horseback hunt through the forest, causing sheep to baa in alarm and pigs to bumble out of her way as she powered her way through and over them. Rose hung on for dear life, and he didn’t have the concentration or breath to try to talk to her and ride at the same time.

Then she vaulted right into the middle of a herd of churning swine, and he saw what the problem was.

A wild boar.

A wild boar that was roughly the size of a shed. It was easily a match in height, weight, and girth for a man mounted on a Tow-Beast. A normal-sized wild boar could easily kill a man on horseback; this thing could probably take him and Arial out without a second thought.

The rational part of his mind knew immediately what had happened. Pigs were social creatures; this one had smelled more of his kind and had come for them, probably attracted by the scent of the sows, though how on earth something that size would be able to mate with a normal-sized pig—

The rest of him knew that there was only one way this could end if he didn’t want the thing to turn its wrath on people. He threw up his hand, barked two words, and looked away to save his vision as light exploded from his hand. Looking back up while Arial wisely backed away from the thing, he saw he’d accomplished what he needed to do; he’d blinded and stunned it momentarily. As it stood there blinking its tiny eyes, he caught up his crossbow, slapped a bolt into the slot, cocked it, and shot into its eye, just as he heard the dull phut of a Spitter and watched a ring of fire spring up around the thing.

He hadn’t expected to do more than annoy it, but either his shot, or whoever had shot the Spitter, got lucky. The enormous monster squealed in rage and pain, reared up on its hind legs, scattering pigs in all directions, and then fell straight down on its side, stone dead.

The ring of fire went out.

The swineherds scattered with their dogs to corral their charges. He coaxed a snorting Arial closer to the thing, as Ponu and Beltran approached it from the other side.

“Is it dead?” the Herald asked, cautiously.

Kordas dismounted, and made sure that there was no sign of life at all. “Dead as the Emperor,” he said. Beltran winced, but approached on the other side.

“You mean that was it? Just that and it’s dead?” Ponu blurted. “Its skull has to be a foot thick, but the Spitter shot went through the eye into the brain? You’re using up all your luck, Beltran.”

“Hey, I got it in the other eye,” Kordas added. “Maybe my bolt pierced its brain.”

“Maybe the shots met in the brain and kissed. I don’t know, but the thing’s quit the hard work of living all the same. I’m going to take the lucky victory,” Ponu declared.

“Change-creature?” the Baron asked Ponu. The mage narrowed his eyes, drew a couple of sigils in the air, and shook his head.

“No, but magic had a hand in making it that big,” Ponu replied. “Maybe a touch of a Change-Circle but only enough that it didn’t just stop growing when it should have. Nothing else unnatural about it but its size.”

Beltran poked at a tusk with his toe. “Well, the important part. Is it safe to eat?”

“I’m not Sai. Ask a butcher?” Ponu said with utter indifference. “All I care about is that we killed it.”

“I’m not leaving that much meat to spoil if it’s useable.” Kordas turned to Rose. “Get me a crew of butchers and hunters here, please? And a squad each of archer and foot to protect them. Beltran, if it is safe to eat, see that the bits are distributed equally up and down the line. Tonight, we eat pork!” Everyone nearby made at least a token cheer, because “Tonight, we eat pork!” sounded like a memorable thing for their Lord to say.

“Baron Valdemar’s Rallying Cry for Bacon for All,” historians will recall it as. My finest hour.

He was already gone by the time the crew descended on the giant carcass, but the good thing about calling a dozen people to render the beast into component parts was that they were able to take it to bits before the convoy stopped for the night. The verdict of the butchers was that it was perfectly safe to eat as long as it was cooked well, and Beltran’s solution to “equable distribution” was to call for cooks from the common kitchens to show up with a large washbasin each, nearest first. That was fine with Kordas; he didn’t care how the sausage was made as long as it ended up in the larder, so to speak.

And of course, thanks to the edict of “waste nothing,” bones were going to get sawn up for soups, innards would be cooked up into dog food, and that hide would almost certainly end up in pieces to be scraped and stretched and eventually tanned.

Surely that hide is going to be tougher than a bull’s. They were going to get a lot of shoe soles out of that beast. As he headed toward the middle of the expedition and his own barge, an icy wind sprang up, and he pitied those poor butchers.

There was no further disturbance, and by the time he reached his own barges, the giant boar was nothing more than a swiftly spreading rumor.

“Kordas,” Rose told him, as the barge came in sight. “People want to know if there are more of those giant pigs.”

“I don’t think they need to worry—”

“They are not worrying,” Rose corrected him gently. “They want to know if we could send out hunting parties to look for them.”

He almost laughed. Except that there really wasn’t anything funny about it. He had hunted wild boar before this, and even with a fully mounted party, massive boarhounds and mastiffs, and people who knew what they were doing, there were terrible injuries and fatalities all the time. We got lucky. More lucky than we deserved. He reached up to lift Rose down off the pillion, and led Arial to where his horses were being put up for the night. “Tell them no,” he said. “Tell them Ponu thinks it was something caught in a Change-Circle, like the bear that the scouts encountered.” Because the very last thing he needed right now was parties of the inexperienced ranging through the scrub bushes and stunted trees, trying to find more giant boars. It would slow the convoy down, if they only managed to kick up normal wild pigs people could get hurt, and—

“Kordas, your former gamekeeper has an idea,” Rose told him, interrupting his worried thoughts.

Grim had already unharnessed and rubbed down the hard-working Tow-Beasts and was waiting—with some impatience—for Kordas to bring him Arial. The grizzled old fellow held out his hand for her reins, and Kordas meekly put them into it. “Go,” he said gruffly. “Ye bain’t a green rider what needs to learn to care for his horse. I et already. Off with ye!”

Grim had, as he was wont to do, managed a very good spot for their horses; there was shelter from the wind and plenty of browse. He must have sent people out into the brush as soon as the convoy slowed to a halt, because there were already piles of cut fodder that the horses were greedily helping themselves to. Grim generally let them eat until they were satisfied, then gave them nosebags with precious grain. He collected the nosebags just before he went to bed. That way he made certain no horse stole another horse’s rations.

“What does the gamekeeper want to do?” he asked, turning and making his way toward the welcome glow of the lights on the prows and sterns of the barges tied up to the bank.

“He wants to know if you want him to organize beaters and drivers to go out and drive game toward the river,” Rose told him.

Oh good gods, no . . . Clearly as the rumor of the giant boar spread, all people could think about was that they were tired of a grain-based diet and that if there was one of these things—

—these giant killing machines—

There must be more.

And as sure as he allowed the gamekeeper, who actually knew what he was doing, to create a driving party, every single person in the convoy who fancied themselves a hunter would take that as a license to do the same.

If I wanted to create a cascade of too many injuries for the Healers to treat, that is how I’d go about it.

“No,” he said firmly. “We’ve already had terror-birds attack us once, and we had to drive off snake-dogs from that village back there. And then there was the bear that the scouts saw. We don’t know what’s out there and we got lucky in killing the boar. We don’t have enough men-at-arms to cover hunting groups. I absolutely forbid it.”

That isn’t going to stop people from doing it anyway, but at least it won’t be half the expedition. Just a few idiots.

“And if anyone does go out there and gets hurt,” he continued, “the Healers are going to be angry enough with the person foolish enough to disobey my direct orders that they are likely to do little more than splint bones and bandage wounds, and tell the offender he can heal up on his own. Tell my gamekeeper that, and while you’re at it, spread it to the other Dolls to pass along.”

Rose uttered a sound that was very like a wry chuckle. “I have,” she said sweetly, and they boarded the family barge.

Isla and the boys were waiting for him; the boys were all perched on his bed, and Isla presided over a covered pot. “No magic boar tonight,” she told him. “But the gamekeeper managed to secure the cheeks for us, and they’ll be in the morning stew.”

“I can wait,” he said, and noted how the three little faces fell. “So what do we have tonight?”

“Something lovely,” she said. “Boys, you can bring your bowls now.”

They jumped off the bed and brought their bowls to the tiny table. Isla opened the pot and a heavenly aroma drifted out that banished all thoughts of pork from his mind. She heaped all five of their bowls with the mashed tuber, studded with lots of grated cheese, bits of bacon, and cooked onion, and put a pat of precious butter into the center of each bowl, scraping the pot so clean he doubted it would need more than to be wiped out.

The boys scampered off to their beds, leaving the two of them “alone” together. He heard Ivy’s voice back there, and the boys had shut up, suggesting she was either telling them a story or drilling them on lessons. They weren’t getting a lot of lessons, but Ivy seemed to have taken it upon herself to act as a temporary teacher.

Is there anything the Dolls aren’t willing to do?

“Ivy told me that you forbade people to go off away from the river to drive game,” she said.

“Broken ankles, falling into holes or stepping on rocks wrong,” he began. “Or broken arms, or broken heads, or gods forbid, broken backs. And of course, not only have we seen mage-made creatures that have not hesitated to attack humans, or at least, attack animals near humans, but we don’t know what else is out there. And—”

She held up her hand. “I agree with you, and I can think of other, equally good reasons. There are other people out here; they’ve not approached us, but Ivar has seen signs of settlements in the distance. They’ll not take kindly to us stripping the land of its beasts and leaving them with nothing to hunt over the winter.”

“We pass, leaving as little mark on the land as we can,” he agreed. “We pass, leaving no enemies behind us.”

But, he thought, as he slowly ate his supper, the time will come when we have to stop. And then—

—we might not have a choice.