Rhaif, for one, would not mourn their passing.
A huge log, as high as his waist, blocked their path, frothy with glowing mushrooms and sprouting saplings. Once they drew nearer, its length bowed up, sprouting thick scaled legs, and sauntered off into the jungle.
Rhaif glanced back at Frell to see if he recognized the creature.
The alchymist only shrugged, his eyes wide and unblinking.
As they continued, the forest grew higher. The drips became a steady rain. The clouds darkened. The ground underfoot grew muddier. Only a thick layer of moldering leaves kept them from miring into the muck. Still, it felt like wading over a rotted corpse, one that threatened to give way under them at any moment.
The only heartening bit was that they’d left the bones behind. Though Rhaif imagined that was only because so few people had made it this far before succumbing to this place.
The Kethra’kai continued their chanting to the woods. Even Shiya had begun to add her voice, though to his ears there was a sad longing in her wordless strain.
One singer, though, remained conspicuously absent from this chorus. Fear had surely drowned any music in her heart.
“Look,” Nyx whispered to Frell.
She pointed to a forest of ghostly stone pillars that appeared ahead, spreading to either side of the path, disappearing into the shadows. Rhaif imagined them continuing all around this summit in a big ring.
Rather than quarried out of the black rock of this escarpment, the pillars were made of a bone-white stone. Figures and faces had been carved into their surfaces. Men and women, all writhing in agony. Stark faces screamed at them, as if warning them away. The sight alone left Rhaif shivering. His feet dragged slower.
What are we doing here?
It was as if this entire summit had been designed by a god who sought to keep people away by any means. Flora, fauna, weather, and now rock. With every step gained, this landscape pushed harder against them.
Maybe we should heed such a warning.
“Do not slow,” Xan called back, her command flowing with her song. “There is worse yet ahead.”
Rhaif wanted to balk.
Worse?
“Everyone will need to use their voices,” Xan intoned to them. “When I tell you, sing. Or hum, if that’s all you can do.”
With that dire portent and feeble instruction, she led them past the pillars and into the deeper forest. They continued for a long stretch, the jungle weeping atop them. Somewhere distant, light flashed through the darkness, briefly illuminating the underside of the dark clouds. No thunder followed, which only set his teeth further on edge.
A brittle crackling underfoot drew his attention back down. A knobbed femur poked out of the muck. Rhaif stumbled away, only to crunch through more bones.
Not again …
He nearly twisted an ankle as his muddy boot slid off the crown of a yellowed skull, white teeth grinning out of the bone.
The group slogged through this new graveyard and reached a narrow clearing that cut across their path in a wide arc. The dark skies glowered down at them. The ground ahead was tangled with bones.
Rhaif breathed heavily, his heart pounding, his vision narrowing in terror.
I’m not crossing that cadaverous river.
Even the Kethra’kai slowed, but Xan urged them onward. “Sing now. And do not stop moving.”
Rhaif had never felt less like singing. His mouth was stuffed with the roughest cotton. He could not catch his breath. Still, he was pushed forward by Frell and Nyx. Nyx meekly added her voice to the continuing choir. Even Aamon growled louder, as if trying to do the same.
Herded forward to that bony clearing, Rhaif had no choice but to stumble onward.
Frell coughed and started humming. It was tuneless, with a pitch that could never settle. Still, the alchymist’s poor effort encouraged Rhaif to try to do better. He took a deep breath, held it, and let loose a noise stuttering between a wheeze and a whistle. He sought to steady it but failed.
Still, the effort distracted him enough to keep moving.
Halfway across, a skim of mud flowed out of the jungle to either side. It flooded over the bones and coursed toward them. He tried to hurry, fearful of getting mired down. Their group fought faster across the treacherous bone field.
Frell suddenly gasped, losing his humming. But Nyx grabbed his elbow and got it going again.
Rhaif saw what had so frightened the alchymist.
It wasn’t mud racing toward them.
Spiders …
Each creature was the size of his palm, their clambering legs stretching even wider. Their dark brown bodies were striped in venomous yellow. Rhaif’s humming strained into a long whine of terror.
Then the horde swept through them. Spiders skittered up their legs, crunched underfoot. They fled across his chest, burrowed under his loose shirt, tickled his neck and cheek, crowned his head.
He kept humming, only to stop himself from screaming, to keep his lips pressed closed, lest they scurry inside, too.
Aamon shook a blanket of the creatures from his fur.
Still, their group all forged on—but that was not even the worst.
One of the spiders sped up his forearm, stopped there, clamping its legs in place. Then from its back, from those vile stripes, tangles of coppery filaments burst forth, writhing in the air, then diving into his skin. Scores of others did the same. There was no sting to their violation. Only the feel of maggots crawling under skin.
He shuddered, near to thrashing.
The hum died in his throat.
One spider had latched to his cheek, those coppery threads dancing before his eyes. He lifted a hand to rip it away, but fingers caught him. The firmness of bronze steadied him.
He turned to find Shiya’s eyes glowing at him. She sang—but no longer to the forest—only to him. She drew him onward, step by step. Behind her tune, he heard his mother’s lullaby. As it grew louder in his head, the crawl of spiders transformed into his mother’s fingertips, gently calming him.
His panic ebbed.
Finally, after an interminable time, the horde fell from his body, from the others, too. The spiders retreated away, seeping back into the forest. Rhaif knew the creatures were not of natural origin. They were masks, hiding coppery constructs inside, maybe related to Shiya.
If he had any doubt, a loud crashing to his left briefly revealed something massive, stilted on tarnished green legs, moving through the trees. It stalked the edges of the clearing, seeming to draw the horde back to it. The shaking of the canopy elsewhere marked the passage of more of those huge sentinels.
Rhaif rubbed his arms, tried to stop the crawling of his flesh, the pebbling of his skin. He knew the spiders had been a test of some sort. Like how a medicum used leeches to examine what was hidden deeper in a body. He gave his shoulders a final shake of revulsion, knowing one thing for certain.
Thank all the gods that we passed that test.
Xan had stopped singing, as if knowing the jungle would let them continue from here. “It is not far ahead,” the elder declared.
“What’s not far?” Nyx asked.
Xan turned and started off again. “Dalal??a,” she answered.
Rhaif swallowed hard, remembering Pratik’s translation of that name.
The deathly stones.
* * *
NYX MARCHED THROUGH the dark jungle behind the others. She believed the forest would never end, despite Xan’s earlier assurance. Nyx could still feel the dance of bristly legs over her arms. She kept brushing away spiders that were no longer there.