ARITA
When Arita and Collin flew back to the Wild, they did not stop to see Sarein. Rather than bringing her into their current mission, they went deeper into the unexplored verdani wilderness, where even Collin had lost contact with the isolationist green priests.
Something terrible was happening here.
Arita marveled at the vast lushness. Every one of those tall trees was a conduit for information that any green priest could touch and access. Yet Kennebar and the others had just vanished. How could the trees not have noticed?
Arita was glad to be with Collin, but they were both tense. Beside her in the flyer, he gave her directions, and they cruised over the pristine green sea of the canopy. She felt a chill as she flew, though. From the sky, she could see disturbing brown stains below, sections of the worldforest that had died off from the mysterious blight, just like the swath of withered trees she had spotted on her last visit. It did not look natural. A poison was seeping into the worldforest.
Tears welled in Collin’s eyes, but he insisted on looking closer. He pressed his face against the window of the flyer. “This is the area, Arita. We need to land.”
She circled, looking for a natural break in the thick canopy, an open clearing where she could set the ship down. Finally, she spotted a broad meadow garnished with white flowers. She had established numerous base camps like this for her scientific research, but she hoped this would be more of a rescue mission. She landed easily.
When they emerged from the cooling aircraft, the worldforest seemed oppressively silent around them. Arita turned around, straining to hear insects or the rustle of fronds … but everything was still and quiet, as if trapped in a kind of stasis.
“Even the worldtrees are hushed,” Collin said in a breathy voice. Though his skin was emerald green and his body completely smooth, Arita saw the same vulnerable boy who had run through the forest with her, talking about the future, flirting with her, kissing her in a stolen moment. Now it felt as if they were all alone on the entire continent.
Collin’s look of concern increased as he hurried deeper into the forest, and Arita followed him. He gazed up into the trees, sniffed, then closed his eyes. He touched the trunk of a worldtree, then withdrew his fingers, as if burned. He blinked. “I can’t find them. They should all be close—this is where we lived.”
Arita called out. “Hello? Kennebar! Any green priests?” Her own loud voice startled her, but no one responded.
Collin stopped beneath a tree with low branches and swung himself up, climbing hand-over-hand. Arita hurried to follow him, scrambling from one frond to another. After all of her years in the worldforest, she was as good a climber as he was. Together, they ascended through the lower branches and up into the thicker fronds.
Arita noticed flat platforms, woven benches, and other indications that Kennebar and his followers had made a primitive settlement here. Green priests considered the entire forest their natural home, yet they still had designed some comforts.
Kennebar had led his group away from the rest of the population, wanting to be isolated from the Confederation and the Spiral Arm. But this place was entirely empty. Could they have retreated farther into the Wild, seeking even more complete isolation? Had they been taken? Or killed?
Collin touched the woven platforms and sleeping areas; then he grasped a branch again, sinking his thoughts into the worldforest mind. He emerged and shook his head. “No answers. It’s … blank.”
The forest remained silent as they moved from one section of the trees to another. They still noticed signs of habitation, but the green priests were all gone, leaving only a primeval emptiness.
Collin looked confused, his eyes wide with lack of understanding. “I’m afraid of this, Arita.”
She answered quietly, “We should be afraid.” Arita had lived in the worldforest, felt a kinship with it, even though she wasn’t an actual green priest. For the first time in her life, the dense trees seemed claustrophobic, sinister. She felt as if she didn’t belong here.
Collin’s eyes snapped open and he withdrew from telink, looking around in alarm. “Kennebar is coming.”
Making virtually no sound as he slid through a wall of fronds, the leader of the separate green priests stood before them like a human-shaped void in the air. Arita gasped as a cold hand closed around her heart.
Kennebar had always been a tall and powerful man with a hard personality, a determination that gave him the strength of his convictions. Collin, like all green priests, had shed his hair, and his pale skin was filled with chlorophyll, turning him the rich, healthy green of the forest.
But Kennebar had undergone yet another transformation. He was no longer a green priest—instead he had been tainted by an inky blight. His face, bare chest, arms, legs, eyes, even his mouth and teeth were entirely black, as if all color had been leached out and replaced with the deepest night.
Collin backed away to stand next to Arita, and they faced the ebony priest. Arita said, “What happened to you?” But she received no answer.
Collin found his voice. “Kennebar, do you know me? Where are the others?”
The ebony priest’s eyes blazed bright. “There are no others,” he said in a frigid, hollow voice. “There will be no others.”