Rook Fenwall's Arc

Chapter 2 of 11

Rook followed the glowing leaves until the trail broke apart. Ahead, the paths split in every direction. Pink and green blooms scattered across the ground, dozens of clusters, each pointing a different way. No single road anymore. The ranger's mark on his gauntlet had smeared to nothing. Rook stopped. He knew the rule now. Follow the bloom and you follow the true road. But the bloom was everywhere, and only one path led to the ridge. The sun already hung low. Take a wrong turn and dusk would find him lost, far from where he needed to be, with the creature already awake to his scent. He knelt by the nearest cluster. He crushed a leaf between two fingers. The juice ran clear. He crushed a leaf from the next patch. That juice ran thick and dark, like sap. Two kinds of plant. Both glowed. One was the true bloom the ranger showed him. The other was a copy, grown to fool him. He smelled both. The clear one stung his nose, sharp and green. The dark one smelled of nothing. Rook stood and looked for the sharp-smelling patches only. They ran left, toward a stand of tall trees with iron-gray trunks and rugged bark. He crushed a leaf from each cluster as he went, testing, throwing out any that ran dark. The sharp trail led him straight into the grove. Something chittered above him. He looked up. A cluster of tiny dragons clung to the iron branches, no bigger than his hand. Their scales flashed red, gold, blue, purple. Bright eyes watched him. One dropped and snatched a false leaf from the ground, then spat it out. They ate the sharp true leaves. They left the dark false ones. Rook watched where the little dragons flew. They swept ahead through the grove, landing on cluster after cluster, always the true ones. They marked his road better than his own nose could. He walked fast now, following the dragons from tree to tree. The false paths fell away behind him. The true trail climbed. His boots found stone under the leaves. The ground rose, and the trees thinned, and the glowing clusters funneled to a single line again. The dragons scattered upward and were gone. Ahead the land lifted to a bare stone spine. The last ridge. He had not lost his way. Rook reached the top and looked over. Below lay a hollow choked with dark trees. The sun touched the far edge of the sky. Dusk. He felt the forest change around him, a stillness, a listening. Something in the hollow had turned toward him. He had made the ridge in time. But the ranger's warning was true. He was here alone now, and the thing below already knew he had come.