Kitai’s father, Doroga, sat upon the gargant’s back, swaying casually upon the woven saddlecloth. “We must hurry, since the valley is running from us. I see. Maybe we should have stayed downwind.”
“You are not as amusing as you think you are,” Kitai said, glowering at her father’s teasing. Doroga smiled, the expression emphasizing the lines in his broad, square features. He took hold of Walker’s saddle rope and swung down to the ground with a grace that belied his sheer size. He slapped his hand against the gargant’s front leg, and Walker settled down amicably, placidly chewing cud.
Kitai turned and walked forward, into the wind, and though he made no sound, she knew her father followed close behind her.
A few moments later, they reached the edge of a cliff that dropped abruptly into open space.
“Look,” she said.
Doroga stepped up beside her, absently slipping one vast arm around her shoulders. She watched as her father peered down, waiting for a lull in the wind to let him see the place the Alerans called the Wax Forest.
Kitai closed her eyes, remembering the place. The dead trees were coated in the croach, a thick, gelatinous substance layered over and over itself so that it looked like the One had coated it all in the wax of many candles. Here and there, birds and animals had been sealed into the croach, where, still alive, they lay unmoving until they softened and dissolved like meat boiled over a low fire.
Kitai shivered at the memory, then forced herself to stillness again, biting her lip. She glanced up at her father, but he pretended not to have noticed, staring down.
The valley below had never in her people’s memory taken on snow. The entire place had been warm to the touch, even in winter, as though the croach itself was some kind of massive beast, the heat of its body filling the air around it.
Now the Wax Forest stood covered in ice and rot. The old, dead trees were coated in something that looked like brown and sickly tar. And in the center of the Forest, the hollow mound lay collapsed and dissolved into corruption, the stench strong enough to carry even to Kitai and her father.
Doroga was still for a moment before he said, “We should go down. Find out what happened.”
“I have,” Kitai said.
Her father frowned. “That was foolish to do alone.”
“Of the three of us here, which has gone down and come back alive again the most often?”
Doroga grunted out a laugh, glancing down at her with warmth and affection in his dark eyes. “Maybe you are not mistaken.” The smile faded, and the wind and sleet hid the valley again. “What did you find?”
“Dead keepers,” she replied. “Dead croach. Not warm. Not moving. The keepers were empty husks. The croach breaks into ash at a touch.” She licked her lips. “And something else.”
“What?”
“Tracks,” she said in a quiet voice. “Leading away from the far side. Leading west.”