That, he could talk about. "Most of it is hintera"shattered rock, thick jungle, steaming vents of brimstone. There are few gentle beaches, few harbors. Only three gods made their homes there, each more isolated than the last."

Out the window, the morning sun set fire to the highest peaks.

Dart made a small exclamation, struck by the raw beauty of the sunrise. An ember of pride for his homeland burnt within him.

"Duck down here," he said and crouched below the railing.

As she knelt beside him, their shoulders touching, he pointed toward the brightening land rising from the sea. "The northernmost cliffs that lie ahead are the domain of Farallon, lord of the Nine Pools."

"The Jeweled Pools," Dart said with a thread of wonder. Five rivers flowed out of the highlands to form a cascading series of cataracts and waterfalls, captured on nine separate terraces, a great pool on each. "Is it true each pool is a different hue?"

"That's how they got their name. Master Sheershym, a chronicler at my school in Saysh Mal, says it's because of dissolved stone and water depth, but I'd rather think it's Farallon's Grace."

"It's probably both," Dart suggested.

The rising sun now glinted off the falling water in the distance.

"What's beyond the pools?"

Brant pointed higher, where the peaks glowed emerald in the first rays of the sun, shrouded in mists. "The highland mountains are split by a deep valley, all thickly forested."

"Saysh Mal," she said.

He only nodded. He had no wish to talk much about his home. They would be there soon enough. Instead, he crouched even lower and pointed to the curve of the horizon. There, almost directly south, was a shouldered mountain that towered above the others. Unlike the emerald glow of the highland peaks, the tip of that mountain turned the first rays of the sun into fire. But Brant knew the opposite was true. It was snow that tipped that mountain, an ice that lasted all the seasons, chilled by the thin air near the roof of the world.

Still, the mountain's heart burnt with fire.

"Takaminara," he said, naming god and mountain, a sleeping volcano that would occasionally quake the entire land.

"Truly? It doesn't appear as tall as I've heard tell."

"The distance deceivesa"as it has many men and women."

"And it's true that the god lives in caves at the top of the mountains? No castillion. No handservants. By herself."

"There are the occasional pilgrims who have braved the cliffs and crumbling ice," he said. "And those foolish few who seek merely to touch the sky. But most of those who climb seek to become her acolytes, to be blessed at her feet, to be burnt by her Grace and have their inner eye set ablaze."

"The rub-aki," she said, touching her forehead, "the Blood-eyed."

He nodded. The rub-aki were stained with the fiery blood of Takaminara. Each bore a crimson print of her thumb burnt into the middle of their foreheads.

"Can they truly see the future with their inner eyes?"

Brant shrugged. "It is said that by staring into their alchemical fires, they can portend the future. But few have ever witnessed a true foretelling."

"I once saw one of the Blood-eyed at the Grand Midsummer Faire back in Chrismferry."

"A charlatan surely. Master Sheershym once told me that fewer than two acolytes a decade survive the ordeal of Takaminara and return from her caverns into the world."

"But I've heard of plentya""

"It's easy to tattoo one's forehead and claim to see the future. Master Sheershym said that for every thousand who claim to be rub-aki, only one truly is. And they certainly would not be selling their skills at a fair."

He said the last more harshly than he intended.

"Oha" An edge of embarrassment returned to her voice and manner.

He suddenly felt like a cad. He stood up, drawing her up in his wake. "But in the end, I guess none of the god-realms really matter. Not even Saysh Mal. It is into the hinterlands that we must ultimately tread. Once there, we'll all be on equal footing."

"Equally blind," Dart mumbled.

From the shadows that moved over her features, he had only unsettled her further.

She stepped away. "I should return to my room. I need to collect my cloak and prepare my bag."

"Waita"" he blurted out before he could stop it.

She glanced to him.

He struggled for some way to make up for his poor manner. He didn't want matters to end this way. "Ia"I wanted to ask you something else. Something's that been troubling me."

"What's that?"

"It's about your creaturea"Pupp, isn't it?"

Brant noted her turn slightly to the left, where Pupp must be roaming.

"I mentioned this to the regent, and I didn't know if he told you. My stonea"I can see Pupp if it touches him, and I sense him if he draws near, a warming in the stone that can turn fiery if he's very close. Not like the skull, but still mightily hot."

She nodded. "I heard. That's how you found the room where Pyllor attacked me."

Her eyes found his, no longer shamed but more grateful and open. Under her immediate gaze, he struggled to find his tongue and failed.

She finally broke contact and explained, "Your stone must be ripe with wild Grace. If strong enough, any Gracea"blood or otherwisea"can draw Pupp fully into this world for a short time." After a moment, she gestured toward his hand. "Could I see your stone? I never did get a good look at it."

With a nod, he tugged the cord to pull the stone free from his shirt. She leaned closer to examine it.

Brant caught the scent of her hair and noted the curve of her neck as she cocked her head to study the rock. He suddenly found himself warming all over. He wanted to step away, but at the same time to step closer. Trapped between, he stood very still, as if he were being hunted.

"It's beautiful," Dart said, fingering the stone. "I hadn't realized. The way it catches every bit of light."

He felt the gentle tugs on the cord around his neck as she turned the stone in her fingers. It all but unmoored him.

Then underfoot, a slight tremble reverberated through the ship's planks. They both took a step back and glanced to the windows. The flippercraft turned inland and passed over the first of the black cliffs that shot straight out of the churning white waves and treacherous currents.

"We've crossed into the Eighth Land," Dart whispered.

As the flippercraft angled higher and the sun cleared the seas to the east, the entire land suddenly ignited, awash in morning light. Past the climb of the Nine Pools, the highlands awaited, framed in green peaks, thick with mists that glowed as pink as the clamshells of Farallon's Ruby Pool.

But as the sun rose, it revealed a disturbing sight farther up in the highlands. A black pall mingled with the mist.

Dart noted it, too. "Smokea"

With a growing sense of unease, Tylar stood on the captain's deck, sharing a rail with Rogger and Krevan. "Still no word from any of the ravens we sent?"

"Not one's returned," Rogger said.

They had sent four birds flying with each bell as the flippercraft crossed into the Eighth Land. They bore messages toward Saysh Mal, announcing their arrival, inviting welcome and tidings. Tylar had ordered their craft slowed when smoke was noted rising into the skies.

Smudge smoke, Krevan had assessed with his more experienced eye. It did not churn and writhe with the breath of fresh flame. The pall here seeped from an old fire, one still smoldering in ember.

"What about the raven we dispatched to Farallon?"

Rogger shook his head, then shrugged. "No surprise with that one. When I stopped at the Nine Pools during my pilgrimage, Farallon was lost to his own dreamsmoke, wallowing in a torpid state from inhaling too deeply on his water pipes, bubbling with the dried and burnt petals of the realm's water lotus. You could burn his palm-thatched castillion down around his ears, and he'd still not move. His household had been little better."

Krevan pointed to the mountainous peaks with their vertiginous cliffs draped in greenery. The cloud forests still lay hidden in the valleys beyond, blanketed behind mist and smoke. "We should continue forward. We waste the day's light. I'd prefer to be there before night falls."

Tylar agreed and motioned for the captain to stoke the alchemies and gain the height necessary to climb from the Nine Pools into the highlands. The flippercraft rose with the barest shudder. Two massive peaks stood as sentinels before them, framing the gateway into the forests of Saysh Mal.

They had no choice but to trespass.

The flippercraft circled out and back, gaining the height to push over the falls, but just barely. The ship sailed forward between the towering peaks, fording the waterfalls from a distance close enough for spray to sparkle the flippercraft's glass Eye.

Then they climbed higher yet, following a twisting concourse that switched up between jagged peaks until at last the squeeze of the mountains released them. A vast valley opened ahead, a gulf of mist cupped by green peaks. A few taller sentinels of the forest poked through the clouds and patches of open jungle shone brilliantly, like emeralds half-buried in snow.

But all was plainly not well.

Except for a few green pockets, the entire western edge of the valley floor lay exposed like a charred scar. Rising heat held back the morning mists, revealing the devastation. The forest had burnt to embers, leaving black trunks sticking out of the burnt ground like planted spears, a fiery palisade between Saysh Mal and the hinterlands that stretched out from the border there.

"What happened?" Lorr asked.

The tracker led in Brant and Dart. Brant wore a grim expression.

"Has there ever been a fire like this before in Saysh Mal?" Tylar asked.

"No. The Huntress controls root, leaf, and loam, protecting any ravaging fires from spreading. The only time I've seen such wild burns is in some of the lowland jungles of the hinterland. But never up in the highlands."

"Until now," Rogger murmured.

"Could she still be raving?" Brant asked. "Could a simple fire have been started by lightning, and in her madness, she did not stanch it but let it burn?"

Tylar looked to the thief for answers. Rogger was the one of them who had most recently visited this land, when he stole the skull.

His eyes held a worried glint as he rubbed the scraggly beard under his chin. "Eylan," he mumbled and flashed Tylar a significant glance. "You saw her state when Brant broke the seersong's grip on her. Her mind all but tore apart in the struggle. Taking the skull and hauling my arse out of there may not have been the wisest theft."

Krevan made a grumble that clearly agreed with Rogger. But he kept any further accusations to himself.

Rogger continued. "Seersong is like a worm that takes root in a body rich in Grace. Look how it persists in the bones of Keorn, well after his death. Once embedded deeply enough, like with Eylan, or long enough, like with Keorn, the song becomes irretrievably entangled in mind and flesh."

"And when you took the skulla" Tylar said, beginning to sense the depth of the error.

"Are you familiar with tanglebriar?" Rogger asked.

Tylar frowned. There was no need to answer. Everyone knew about tanglebriar, the thorny and stubborn growth that could be found everywhere throughout the Nine Lands. It proved almost impossible to kill, even with fire.

"Tanglebriar," Rogger said, "is like any pernicious weed in a garden. You rip it free, only to have it grow back wilder. But tanglebriar is even more insidious. You tear off what's above the soil, and its roots respond by digging deeper, spreading wider, bursting forth more robust than the original thorny stalk."

"And you think seersong might be like tanglebriar?"

"If it fully gets its roots in you." Rogger turned to the fire. "Taking the skull might have been like ripping tanglebriar. Whatever had already been planted in the Huntress over the years may have responded in kind. Driven deep, spread wider, bursting forth with an even more ravening madness."

"Mad enough to let her own realm burn?" Tylar asked.

Rogger just stared toward the devastation. "There's only one way to find out."

Tylar's eyes drifted away from the charred forest and turned to the tallest sentinel of it. Its crown of leaves caught the morning light and glowed with green fire. An ancient pompbonga-kee. The oldest of all the foresta"and home to the Huntress.

No matter the risk, they would have to venture down there.

They needed answers from this realm. If they were to follow the footsteps of Keorn back into the hinter, they would need to start in the lands here, where his tracks ended. Additionally, Brant said a chronicler from the school in Saysh Mal possessed a map of the neighboring hinterlands, centuries old and sketchy at best, but better than having no guide at all.

But most important of all, Tylar had another reason to point his arm toward the castillion rising above the mists. He preferred not to enter the forbidden hinterlands with a ravening god at his back.

Obeying his silent command, the ship smoothly banked out over the wide jungle, turning its stern toward the smolder, and aimed for the tallest tree in the forest. With the dying fire behind them, the spread of cloud forest appeared like a vast emerald lake, swept by fog, untouched. And as the sun climbed above the horizon, the mists thinned, slowly revealing the breadth of canopy and the fervent vitality of the steaming and damp jungle beneath. It was a pristine world, beyond man and god. Seeing it like this, Tylar wondered how it even could burna"and who would be coldhearted enough to let it.

Brant joined him. "In the shadow of the Huntress's castillion, a large bowled meadow lies open to the sky. It should be wide enough to land the flippercraft."

Tylar nodded across the deck. "Inform Captain Horas. Help guide him to the spot."

As the boy left, Tylar turned to discover that others had gathered here, the remainder of their party, drawn by their approach into Saysh Mal.

Krevan's woman, Calla, had entered and stood at her leader's shoulder, staring out toward the spread of misty jungle. Though she still wore the gray cloak of her guild, she had shed her ash for this voyage, a rare sign of trust. Tylar had been surprised to find her skin as pale as milk, softening her considerably, until you looked into her eyes. They remained as hard as agates and as sharp as the daggers at her wrists. She may have washed her face, but she was still a Flagger at heart.

Filling the doorway was the last member of their party, the loam-giant Malthumalbaen. Tylar had spent the previous morning talking to the man. While the giant's tongue might be thick and coarse, there was a quick wit about hima"though perhaps tinged a bit more darkly by his brother's passing. Still, a certain easy companionship developed between them, a balm for Tylar's own misgivings. Perhaps sensing this, the giant had filled the emptiness with tales of his brother's exploits, mostly involved with the bottomless pit that was his brother's belly.

With everyone gathered, Tylar spoke to the group. "Once we land, we'll leave the mekanicals stoked high in case a hurried departure is necessary. Krevan and I will inspect the state of the immediate area. The rest will remain with the ship."

Malthumalbaen spoke from the doorway. "Mayhap I should go with. A strong arm may serve where a quick sword fails."

Tylar bowed his head at the offer. "I would prefer that strong arm guard the ship and those inside."

Other objections were voiced Tylar held up his hand and dismissed each in turn. "Lorr, I know your skills at tracking, but even in the best of moods, the Huntress has forbidden the Grace-bred from her lands. Calla, your gray cloak is no match to our shadowcloaks. And Dart, I will be bringing more than just Rivenscryr." He patted his belt, where a diamond-pommeled sword was sheathed, a shadowknight's blade. "And I have a tiny repostilary of your blood should it prove necessary to anoint the Godsword."

He turned to Rogger.

The thief held up his own hand. "I'm fine with staying inside the flippercraft."

"Keep the skull hidden," Tylar said.