Corvan rolled over and a sharp edge dug into his hip. A thin rock from the riverbed must have worked its way inside his clothes when he hid from Leena’s companion by going into the river. Pulling up the Sister’s tunic Atiya had put on him, he searched around in his clothing and discovered a pointed stone jammed into one of the pockets of the pants. He was about to toss it into the river when he realized what it actually was: the blue side of the mirror glass from the High Priest’s Hall that had fallen and broken in half; the magnetic piece that matched the white side he’d given to Gavyn when they’d said good-bye.

Back then, when they each held one of the pieces, he and Gavyn were able to communicate some of their thoughts. He closed his hand around the piece. Could it help him locate Gavyn? If so, Gavyn could lead him to his father, and hopefully Tsarek as well.

Closing his eyes, he pictured Gavyn’s face and smiled to himself at the memory of the happy boy. The disk grew warm against his palm, and a hazy blue circle appeared – a bit like the flowing rock around the labyrinth openings. A man in a hooded cloak came into view standing next to a table covered with open scrolls. A lumien lamp glowed next to him, casting his face into deep shadow under the cowl of his hooded tunic. The man’s head raised toward the blue circle and he walked over, holding out a folded piece of parchment. A child’s dirty hand reached out past the circle to take it from him. That had to be Gavyn. The matching pieces of glass were showing him a scene through the boy’s eyes.

The man in the vision crouched down and pushed his hood back. Corvan drew a sharp breath. It was his father! His face was thinner, he had a gash over one eye, but he was still alive.

The view faded. Corvan shifted the half disk to his other hand, the scene reappeared and played again. He studied the surroundings, but the only thing he could tell for certain was that his father was not in the Kadir library, given the lights on the tables. He shifted hands one more time but there was no more to be seen and nothing in the picture gave any clue as to where or when the events had taken place. Opening his eyes, Corvan looked out over the river in the direction of the new city. If he could find Gavyn the boy could lead him to where is father was.

Crawling along the rock shelf, Corvan pulled himself from under the upstream side of bridge and crouched in behind its low wall. The pale light from the lumiens overhead bathed the white stone of city with their distinctive blue glow. A few people moved about inside the lighted windows of the buildings, but it wasn't firestick light like Kadir. It was the same steady light of the lumien bulbs he had eaten by the falls. This city was more advanced than Kadir. The library his father was likely within those walls, but from his vantage point, Corvan could see two guards above the closed gates. He might be able to bluff his way in by using his grandfather’s cloak to just walk up to the gates but that seemed a bit risky. These people might not be so easily fooled as the ones in Kadir.

Corvan looked behind the bridge. It would be better to explore this side of the river first; stay off the main road and look for another way to get inside the walls. Crouching low, he kept the arch of the bridge between himself and the city gate as he scampered over to the edge of the cavern, just down from where the river emerged.

Tucking himself into a cleft in the cavern wall, he surveyed his surroundings. The city completely dominated the far side of the flowing water, but this side was packed full of gardens. Immediately in front of his hiding place, long sections of trellis in neat rows were thickly blanketed with hanging vines. Between the trellis rows, other plants of various sizes and shapes sprouted from the ground. Leaving his hiding place, Corvan crept along path made of flagstone that followed a trellis, careful to not step in the soft dirt and leave any footprints behind.

At the end of the garden rows, dominating the center of the gardens, was a sturdy stone building. Shafts of brilliant light were shooting out through narrow windows spaced along the sides and also through small cracks between the roof tiles. The lumien light beckoned him from his hiding place and out past the last trellis post. It was a different wavelength from the lumien glow overhead; more potent and yet, in a way, peaceful and soothing. A short dense hedge ran around the building and when he brushed against it he found it was covered in small thorns, just like their caragana hedge at home that was supposed to keep the deer out of his mother’s garden. Following it around to the short end of the building he found a wider path cut through a gap in the hedge, then up to an arched double door, framed by a lighted window on each side. Running silently forward on slippered feet, he ducked in under one of the windows and peeked over the ledge.

The long building was a greenhouse, it’s brilliant light coming from deep within two dense rows of leafy vines that flowed down each side of a center aisle. Seeing no one inside, Corvan stepped to the door and pulled on one of the handles. As the door opened silently outward, the potent scent of lumien power flowed out on a wave of light that fell on the surrounding hedge and up the path toward the city. Jumping inside, he quietly shut the door but when he turned around the wave of brilliant light threatened to push him right back out of the room.

Shielding his eyes, he wandered down the center of the long room. On either side, in behind curtains of vines and leaves, a row of lumiens hung under long support beams. He breathed deep, absorbing the sweet aroma and microscopic bits energy from the lumien infused air. A dizzy rush overcame him, like his head was suddenly floating free of his body. He stopped and steadied himself against a wide stone trough that ran below the lumiens.

As his eyes adjusted to the light, he noticed that the lumiens were oddly shaped. The large bulbs not only had a thick stem anchored to the stone beam above, but there was another vine grafted onto the bottom of the lumien and tied into a stream of luminescent fluid flowing in trough below. The tension between the upper stem and the bottom vine was giving the lumiens their strange, elongated shape.

Looking into the water he discovered that the vine grafted on to the bottom of each lumien was securely fastened to the water trough by a flattened disk that looked a lot like the end of a krypin rope, except much larger. Like a krypin, the submerged disk was extending many tiny tendrils into the current. As he watched, minute blobs of light formed at the ends of a few tendrils, then popped out and were swept along with the current. His fingers twitched at the thought of scooping the blobs from the water. His mouth grew dry, along with strong desire to drink from the trough.

Forcing himself away, he focused on his feet and moved on along between the rows. An overwhelming desire to touch one the lumiens grew with each step, but Corvan averted his eyes. Just as in the water tunnel, these interlinked lumiens would likely set off another alarm and the guards from the city would come running.

He reached the far end of the room where the twin troughs of lumien infused water spilled on an angle into a round holding tank and swirled about. A thick vine ran around the top edge of the tank, sprouting thousands of smaller vines that cascaded into the pool. The thin branches were being swept along in a living circle as the fluid in the tank spun in a slow whirlpool. It seemed that the glowing blobs from the water troughs were being absorbed by the trailing vines.

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Off to his right, on the far side of the glowing tank of water, the thick trunk of the main vine pierced the wall of the building and, through one of the narrow windows, he could see the vine snaking along the ground in the direction of the city. When it reached the river, stone supports held the thick vine high over the water until it entered the side a squat, grey building, that hung a ways out from the side of the city wall.

At the base of the grey building, a large pipe hung out over the river and brown slime oozed out to become a smear of slimy foam that disappeared with the flow of the water under the far cavern wall. The whole scene reminded Corvan of the coal burning power plant at home. The people of this new city had created a way to store the energy of the lumiens during the day and then use it to power their buildings at night.

Turning away from the pool, he headed for the entry. If he followed the thick vine to the river, his special slippers should allow him to walk on top of it, then use his krypin to climb the wall of the power plant and get into the city. His intention faltered and his pace slowed as he reveled in the lumien power filtering into his body through his lungs. He hadn't felt this good in a very long time and he didn’t want to leave this special place, not just yet.

He paused before one of the globes and examined it closely. The skin of the fruit was different from the lumiens in Kadir; thinner and more fragile, like the rice paper of a Japanese lantern. Cautiously he touched a fingertip to the surface. A soft pulse of energy shot up his arm into his head. It felt amazing. Wrapping both hands around the globe, he let the myriad of pleasant sensations sweep through his entire body. Closing his eyes, he let every cell of his being fill with the gentle energy. There was no pain in his heart, nor was there a craving to consume its seed.

Opening his eyes he gazed past his fingertips at a huge lumien seed shimmering within the translucent skin. These plants had been specially bred to produce this kind of power. If he could carry one of the seeds with him, he could continually absorb its energy without having to eat it. Corvan stroked the membrane and his fingernail pierced the fragile surface. A drop of juice fell into the trough, and the lumien quivered in his hands. Letting it go, he stepped away, ready to run for the door but suddenly the room was spinning around him, the row of lumiens bouncing crazily upside down below his head.

It took a moment to realize he was hanging from the beams overhead by vines wrapped tightly around his ankles. Smaller vines began pushed out from behind broad leaves to surround his arms and legs, pulling him in close and caressing his skin. A longer vine covered with small tendrils coiled itself around his chest and then he felt his strength ebbing away. Like a Venus Flytrap, the plant was extracting the energy stored inside him. Corvan struggled to get free, but the vines only tightened and pulled him higher toward the trellis beams overhead.

The movement of the vines ceased as a low door in behind the whirlpool opened and a tall figure dressed in one of the tunics worn by the women by the waterfalls, stepped inside. The figure leaned over the edge of the whirlpool, scooped up a handful of the bright liquid, slurped it, then spit black fluid on the floor, lips smacking. The person walked past the pool and up the aisle to approach where Corvan hung overheard, like a fly wound up in a spider’s web. The vines pulled quietly higher, carrying Corvan with them until he was fully encased by a curtain of leaves.

The person below reached for the lumien Corvan had pierced. Corvan was certain it would sound the alarm to report his intrusion but as one hand reached out, its other arm stuck out of the cloak: a long white forearm that ended in a severed stump. Corvan sucked in his breath; it was the leader of the Rakash, the one who had lost his hand to Tyreth's black blade when the Chief Watcher had died. The Rakash wasn’t wearing one of the women’s tunics. Corvan had been deceived, for the leader of the Rakash was wearing the special cloak he had stolen from Corvan’s father up at the Red Creek Mine.

Corvan let his breath out quietly, but the thin man paused and turned his sightless eyes toward him. The hood fell back from the head of the Rakash, exposing patches of thin white hair over a network of blue veins that pulsed across the surface of his skull. The blue tongue worked to click and seek out the source of Corvan’s breathing but it couldn't seem to distinguish him from the leaves and vines tangled around him.

Finally, the Rakash turned his attention back to the lumien. Thrusting his good hand inside the lumien’s skin, he gave a sharp twist and ripped out the seed. A powerful ripple shot through the vines wrapped around Corvan's body but the plants didn't attack the man below. Instead they pulled back even further.

The Rakash did not bite the lumien heart. Instead, it held the seed over the water and squeezed, the tendons in its remaining hand bulging. Drops of pure white liquid formed across the surface of the seed, then trickled over the long thin fingers, and dripped into the water. The Rakash leader tossed the wrinkled seed in the trough where it bobbed along towards the pool. The creature licked its fingers, then turned his attention to the next lumien in the row. As he reached for it, all the lumiens in the room glowed fiercely and pulses of energy ran through the vines like snakes swallowing eggs.

Corvan squinted against the light. Even the Rakash had its arm up over the depressions where its eyes had once been. The front doors flew open, Corvan blinked, and the Rakash vanished.

Three young women, all dressed in a tunic like the one Atiya had given him, ran down the corridor between the rows of plants, swords at the ready. The tallest of the three stopped directly below Corvan to examine the wrinkled skin of the empty lumien hanging over the trough. It was Leena, the same young women who had been in charge at the falls. Another ran to the pool and used her sword to fish the remnants of the lumien heart from the water. The third opened the short door at the back of the power station and stepped out into the night.

In a moment they were all back and standing directly below Corvan.

"Look at this." The shortest one held up the squashed lumien heart.

"No one would have that much strength unless they had already eaten another,” Leena stated, “yet this is the only one they consumed."

The shorter girl nodded eagerly. "Perhaps the lumiens torn down in the water tunnel were not from the man drowned in the net. I think there must be another one of the Broken from Kadir who escaped the Volisk. We must alert the city."

The tall girl nodded and turned on her heel to leave. As they moved along the aisle the vines around Corvan's ankles relaxed and lowered him down behind their heads. The women were almost to the door when the vines abruptly dropped him and he landed awkwardly, face down in a heap.

"Are you injured, sister?" Gentle hands rolled him over. "What are you doing out here by . . ."

One of them gasped and a sharp point bit into his neck. "Who are you? Why are you dressed in our uniform? What are you doing here?"

"Pull your sword back and let him talk," Leena commanded.

"If he ate the lumien seed, it would be better to kill him now while he is dazed," one said.

"He looks pretty weak." A round face moved closer. "What's your name?"

Corvan swallowed hard and felt the tip of the sword prick his Adam's apple. "Corvan."

Leena shook her head. "Another one gone mad with eating the seeds. He thinks he is the Cor-Van. He likely attacked one of the sisters and stole her uniform."

Beyond the tall girl's head, a pillar supporting the overhead beam appeared to split apart. The leader of the Rakash hadn't left. He was standing beside the pillar, wrapped in the camouflaged cloak he had taken from Corvan's father. The white face stared at him from the recesses of its hood, then gazed at the tall girl with the sword. Blue lips mouthed a single word in a whispered sigh. "Leena."

Corvan tried to shout a warning, writhing to point out the creature, but all that escaped his mouth was a garbled cry before the hilt of a sword slammed into the side of his head.