That sleep she dreamt of a crystal palace hanging from the sky. She floated up into it. Inside she wandered through many rooms, most of them empty and in shadow. In an ornate dining room an emptyeyed vensari with long silver hair that slipped all the way to the tiles sat. He popped a bloodcurrant into his mouth and looked at her.

“Oh. There you are.”

“Who are you?”

“I am”—the vensari gestured vaguely—“as you make me. So to speak.”

“Are you a dreamling?”

“I suppose I am. Littleling…” He steepled his fingers on the table, smiling. “…the dream can be so much more than this. You’ve no idea the shadow we carry.”

She awakened with a scream. Everything save a few lanterns was pitch black.

“What’s wrong?” her father asked hoarsely.

She got the feeling he may have been half asleep. He cleared his throat.

“A dreamling,” Kova blurted. “He was all green, with white hair…”

She looked up at her father. She tried to remember what the dreamling had said. You’ve no idea the shadow you carry.

“An agent of Nim. Did he speak to you?”

“He said—I don’t know—my shadow.”

She lied a little, twisted at least, and didn’t know why at first. He worried, he had been filled with worry since they left, so maybe that was why she turned this inward. She would think about it in the coming moonfalls.

“Kova, you know not to trust the Carnati. I would keep this dream to myself.”

She couldn’t fall back asleep. There was scant if any indication of night or day in the gloam. The turns floated by. The rootpath ran a narrow downward slope. They came to a place where a jagged shadow of moonlight dwelt like a ghost upon the rootpath. Around, huge roots roiled through a fen of shrubs. The roots were larger around than Kova.

Yaharos paused as he crossed the moon glyph, Kova behind him. He looked up. His face basked in silver. Flowersong swelled. Something else was singing. A flurry of growth and motion. She felt the unbent rhythm of an ancient, unknowing melody like a chant.

The lanternlight flickered. Behind Kova, someone screamed. She turned around in the saddle. A mass of vines and tendrils, a plant-thing, rolled among the warriors in the rear. It had cleanly sliced one of the warriors and his orsid mostly in half. Blood spun in the cavern air, glimmering against flashing everbloom.

The creature took up most of the rootpath as it scurried forward. Its tendrils thick and shinylooking and flexible, a few bearing florets which whirled from pink to red. The plant thing turned to the next riders before they could do more than turn around and swat at it with their lanterns. It pierced them with its tendrils and ripped them apart, their screams cut short, as it rolled over and through them. It came for her. The long shadow.

There were only four riders between her and the plant-thing now. Teovask had his spear ready, his orsid turned. He tried to stab at a large flower near its top, but the flower moved aside before the spear could pierce it, and the florets whirled to blue to black, and the tendrils methodically ripped him apart.

Kova felt the chill of fear.

Her father whispered, “Coloreater.”

Kova had not heard that word before. Yaharos hefted and threw a spear at the plant-thing. It brushed it aside and Kova heard the spear crunch beneath it. He unsheathed the eldmetal hammer and leapt from the saddle. Hit the rootpath with a grunt.

The way the light coheres and binds. She saw it in a way. She plucked a string. It wasn’t really plucking. A long screaming hum. The chord changed and danced. The thing her father had called Coloreater surged forward. Yaharos cracked the hammer against one of its tendrils and the tendril busted off entirely. But there were more.

She screamed, and the scream became a beacon, pulsing, shining. The flowersong trembled. The life she lost, the possibilities of happiness, when she had curled in his lap and heard stories passed from the old worlds.

“Yes, child!” Ryfkha bellowed to her left.

He raised his hands, palms free, humming coming from deep within him, and their melodies met and he went past hers, tried to modulate. The Coloreater shrieked, and Kova dropped her tone down to Ryfkha’s, felt when it snapped like a dark burn. Then Ryfkha’s hands exploded with manycolored prismatic light, hot like fire, she felt it wavering against her face. Some of the drelnai’s extraneous heads withered in the truelight.

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Finally it dissipated, a rainbow collapse, projection fading. Nothing was left of the Coloreater but burning husks. Kova swung down from the saddle.

“Truelight,” someone behind her muttered.

She only had eyes for her father. She found him there amongst the carnage. Wounded and dying all around. Blood everywhere. He had been stabbed and cut. His left arm was gone. The hand he had he used to touch her face. Then he closed his eyes.

Ryfkharnu focused his hands and chanted a hymn. A warm radiance suffused everyone. He was guiding the spirits to the afterlife. Kuras was here among them, Kova realized. He breathed upon them now.

Many the Coloreater had touched died quick, even if they did not bleed out. One man had been slashed, a nasty rake all down his chest, but he seemed like he’d pull through at first. He swelled up and died within a hundred breaths. But Yaharos still breathed. Kovaleska kneeling by his side, her hands upon him, cradling him in her way.

Lethos was suddenly the oldest warrior save Yaharos. He wore his red hair in a severe knot atop his head. His beard, usually kempt and close-cropped, was becoming wilder. Cracks streamed back from the edges of his narrow eyes.

“Jhoir. B’renki,” he said softly, almost like a song. “Ajhelos. Shuna.”

They were the younglings, the green warriors, and they turned to him. “Dig a grave in the fen. We must bury the dead and move on. Who knows what else comes to us.”

The green warriors set to work. Lethos came over to Kova and Yaharos.

“Let me see him.”

Lethos bent down. They had called him strangeling behind his back in the village. He was a mystic and a shaman. He followed the Carnati and did not pretend otherwise. He touched her father a little, looking closely, then went and retrieved a cloak from a fallen saddlebag and ripped it into strips.

“It’s not a good bandage. We will have to make do.”

He got the wounds wrapped. By the time he was done, the green warriors had made progress in their digging. Kova sitting there looking at her father. Forlorn. She must have seemed it. Lethos touched her arm.

“I think he will live. I am sorry littleling.”

Once the shallow grave had been dug Lethos had Deveros—covered in spattered blood from head to foot—help him carry the bodies and pieces as best as they could to the grave. The orsid corpses they left.

“I am sorry moon flowers,” she heard Lethos mutter.

Once they’d covered the grave, they said a few words. People who knew them spoke. Lethos lit and posted one of the discarded lanterns near the pit. Jhoir and B’renki knelt a bit away, they had dragged some of the saddlebags from the dead orsids and were going through the supplies. Some said a few words who knew them or remembered things they had done.

Afterward, Lethos and B’renki hoisted Yaharos up into the saddle and tied him there laying down. Kova sitting behind him in the backsaddle with the orsid’s reins.

“We were littlelings together,” Lethos said of her father. “When Kirhala swelled with child, I brought you into the world.” He inclined his head to her. “Little did we know you were touched by the gods.”

“Kuras,” she reminded him.

The few remaining rode onward to Nasos with all haste. There was no more time to be wasted. Kova sat her father’s orsid. He had been tied laying down in the saddle and she sat behind him in the backsaddle clutching the reins. The rootpaths became dark sinuous caves. With the change, a cobbled road began. They entered a larger cavernous antechamber which echoed with silence, the twinkle of crystal or gem far above in the dark.

They went on into tunnels. Passages snaking off from the road. Kova tried to peer down, but they were too dark to see much. Flashes and lost pages.

Soon they found themselves approaching a wide wooden gate that took up the whole path. The path itself was now formed of stone rather than wood. They stood at the gate for a time.

“Well there’s no use waiting around,” Lethos muttered, sliding from his orsid and going to inspect the gate.

A bell had been hung from a protruding brick. Lethos rang it and waited. Presently a low slat was removed from the gate. A gruff voice spoke.

“Present yourself in front of the gate, travelers.”

It startled them. No doubt they looked like a sight for sore eyes. Lethos hurried back to the group and they all convened in front of the slat. Kova saw a pair of pale red eyes staring.

“What is your business?”

“We were attacked by an aedra, less than a day from here,” Lethos said.

“Day,” the voice snickered. “There is no day here. Not in Tarlanis. Shamara. Forever night.”

“We come from Setrana. We ride with an Executor of Kurasant, toward the Witch King’s War.”

“Here? Heh. King Kael is far and far from here, and under the blaze of the sun.”

“We have been keeping time…”

“Dancer, well that’s something. I ask you convene with Jhaska. He is our Master of Time.”

“Twelve of ours were killed,” Lethos said testily. “Ten orsids as well. We are but a few left. I am Lethos, I am in command. Our eldest warrior has been gravely hurt by the aedra—we seek aid within the city. I travel with Ryfkharnu, Executor of Kuras, and the warriors of Setrana: Yaharos, Deveros, B’renki, Shuna, Ajhelos, Jhoir. The girl Kovaleska also travels with us.”

“Girl,” the voice croaked, “why do you ride to war?”

“I am taking her elsewhere,” Ryfkha said before Kova could open her mouth. “It is for her own good. Do you need to hear more?”

There was a pause. Presently the voice said, “You would take her through E’lant then?”

“Yes. We would take a sember.”

“Then there are a few things to know before you enter Nasos. If you seek shelter, find the inn Dreamer’s Delight in the Godshollow. For your wounded, seek out the healer Pantam Rheyada. What else is there? If you are to leave on the roads, I advise you to hire a deepguide. No matter you made your way here.”

The eyes disappeared, the slat closed, they heard the ratcheting of metal then the gate swung out. They saw the speaker. It was small, a little bigger than Kova maybe, pale and albino, with wispy iridescent hair and clawed hands. A darkling. Clad in silken pants and patterned shirt, both dyed sky blue and white.

“I am Salat Dhelorr. I invite you into Nasos. Nightruby.”

“The hospitality of Nasos will be remembered,” Lethos said.