Chalam Othworld wanted an apprentice, and Black Oak had none to give. He stood in the muddy square with his staff and his open blue robe, watching children work. He had spent his life reading bindings left by contained gods. Now he wanted a boy or girl to teach before his own skill died with him. But every child here was already promised. One hauled water for the stonemason. One shadowed the smith. The trades had claimed them all. Tucker Hoskins found him staring at a girl who carried grain sacks twice her size. Tucker was Black Oak's Master of Port and Trade. He knew every deal in the town and every soul behind it. He wore two gold chains that caught the gray light. "You've got that look," Tucker said. "Like a man shopping with no coin." "They're all sworn to a trade," Chalam said. "I can't take what belongs to another master." Tucker leaned on a post. "Then don't shop here." He tipped his head toward the gate. "The Crossing takes in strays. Runaways. Kids nobody claimed. Marco counts them every day." Chalam knew Marco Valentino by reputation. Marco kept the eastern gate for Black Oak. He read thoughts and caught lies, and he never took off his gold bracelet. If any child passed through with a hidden gift, Marco would feel it. They rode east through cold air. Marco met them at the gate with two sworn men behind him. He looked at Chalam, then at Tucker, and did not waste words. "You're here for the boy." Chalam frowned. "What boy?" "Came through three days back. Alone. No family, no trade, no lies in him." Marco pointed to a lean shape crouched against the wall. "His head's loud. Loud like yours, wizard." The boy looked maybe ten. His clothes were torn and his feet were bare. He was drawing shapes in the dirt with a stick. Chalam knelt and looked. The boy had scratched a ring inside a ring. It was the same mark that bindings left in stone. Chalam's breath caught. "Where did you learn that?" The boy shrugged. "Saw it in a dream. It hums." Chalam set his staff on the ground beside the drawing. The staff detected binding signatures. It gave a faint, low pulse, the way it did near contained gods. The boy heard it too. He grinned. "He feels the bindings," Chalam said. He looked up at Tucker and Marco. "He feels them without a staff." Marco crossed his arms. "Then he's yours. But he's a stray with a strange head. That's trouble following you now, not a trade." Chalam took the boy's dirty hand. "Will you learn from me?" The boy stood. "You'll teach me the humming?" "I will." Chalam smiled. He had his apprentice at last. But the boy dreamed of bindings he had never seen. And someone unknown was still reaching those sites first.

The morning after Chalam took the boy, they walked the wall outside the Crossing gate. Chalam wanted a first lesson somewhere quiet. A binding lay buried in old stone nearby. His staff had pulsed near it the day before. He meant to teach the boy how to listen to that hum without fear. The boy walked ahead, dragging his stick in the dirt. Then he stopped. His head snapped toward the wall. His stick fell. "It's loud," the boy said. His voice shook. "Too loud." Chalam turned. The boy's face had gone white. His hands pressed against his ears, though the sound was not in the air. It was in his blood, the way it lived in Chalam's staff. The boy's knees buckled. He dropped into the dirt and curled tight. "Look at me," Chalam said. He knelt fast. "It can't touch you. It's shut in the stone." The boy did not hear him. His eyes rolled. His breath came in short pulls. Chalam had felt raw sensing once, when his staff cracked. It had taken his mind for two weeks. The boy had no staff to soak it up. He was taking all of it, bare. Chalam grabbed his own staff and drove it into the ground between the boy and the wall. The staff drew the signature toward itself. It gave a low, steady pulse. But the boy still shook. The staff alone was not enough. Chalam had to teach him to steady himself. He took the boy's cold hands and pulled them from his ears. "Feel my staff instead," Chalam said. "It hums too. Slow and even. Count it." The boy's eyes found his. "One," Chalam said, when the staff pulsed. "Two." He kept the boy's hands on the wood. The boy's mouth moved. Three. Four. His breath slowed to match. Boots crossed the ground behind them. Marco Valentino came from the gate, unhurried, his gold bracelet catching the light. He watched the boy count against the staff and did not rush to help. "Told you," Marco said. "His head's loud." "He hears too much," Chalam said. "He needs the staff to hold it, until he learns to hold it himself." Marco crouched. He looked at the boy, not at Chalam. "You're louder than the wall now, kid. That's good. Means you're winning." He said it plainly, then stood. The boy's shaking stopped. He kept his hands on the staff. Color came back to his face. He looked up at Chalam and grinned, the same grin from the day in the dirt. "It stopped screaming," the boy said. Chalam breathed out. The boy could be steadied. But only with the staff between him and the stone. Take the staff away, and the sensing would swallow him again. Chalam had one cracked staff and a boy who could not walk near a binding without it.

Chalam's cracked staff had steadied the boy once. It would not do it twice. He turned the wood in his hands that night and found the split running deeper. The boy needed his own staff, one that could soak up a binding's roar without breaking. Chalam had no wood strong enough. He knew a man who might. He found Rowan Fisk at the edge of a quiet grove, kneeling over a fallen branch. Rowan had been raised by dryads. He knew which wood held enchantment and which bled it out. He was pulling bark loose with his thumbnail and smelling it. He did not look up. "Rot," Rowan said. "Out of season. Something's killing these trees." He dropped the bark. "You didn't walk all this way for my company." "I need a staff," Chalam said. "One that won't crack under a binding. For a boy who hears too much." Aldric Thornwick stepped from the trees behind Rowan. Chalam's old friend held a rolled map under one arm. He spoke plain, as he always did. "I told him you'd ask. I also told him what happened to your last staff." "Then you know why I need a better one," Chalam said. Rowan stood. He studied Chalam a long moment. "The dryads could make one. Yew for power. Ash for hold. It would take days, and they don't work for coin." He nodded at the grey trees. "They're sick. Whatever's rotting these groves, it's spreading. Ask them for a staff, you're asking them to spend strength they don't have." Chalam looked at the dying wood. He thought of the boy curled in the dirt, hands over his ears. A staff would save the boy. But taking one now might cost the dryads a tree they could not spare. A dryad came through the trees then. Her skin was grey bark. Leaves hung from her like a dress. She carried a bunch of flowers, though the grove around her was brown. She looked at Chalam, then at the branch Rowan had dropped. "You want wood," she said. Her voice was soft. "We are losing wood faster than we can grow it." "I'll trade," Chalam said. "Not coin. Help. This rot has a cause. I know binding magic. Rowan knows your craft. Find what's killing your groves, and I'll give you that. First." The dryad watched him. Then she reached into her leaves and drew out a slim length of pale wood, half-carved already. "We began this before you came. Yew and ash, bound together." She held it out. "It is not finished. Finish it, and it is the boy's. But you finish our trouble first." Chalam took the wood. It hummed faint against his palm, alive. The boy would have his staff. But not yet. Now Chalam owed the dryads a cure for a rot he did not understand, and the sickness was spreading through the trees while he stood there.