The hopping rodent squealed as the first arrow cut into its back, then ceased making any sounds when the second went through its neck. Kaye approached to make ensure that it was dead. She had seen …

“Wake up!” Someone screamed in Hogog’s dream, but the voice was Uruoro’s. He jostled awake, jumping, feeling his body stiffen in protest. His vision was dark, but there was some light pouring into …

“You don’t seem cold,” Loho said, eyes drooping. Hogog finished munching on his piece of dried meat, swallowed. “That’s because I’m not. Where I come from, it snows through half of winter.” They ha…

Aien mumbled behind her. Kaye turned to see him slowly rising to a sitting position on the bed. He stood up quietly, glancing to Gima who was still sleeping, trying not to disturb her. Their eyes m…

“Good, we don’t have to risk going back to the road,” Aien said when Kaye read him the words carved into the arrow. “That was smart of your uncle.” “It might not have been him. Uruoro wrote this, I…

Hogog saw the two men approaching. One old and the other young, both scrawny little things wielding nasty knives. He ran at them, machete in hand. The young man halted for just a moment, and Hogog …

Aien thrusted and Kaye ducked, her arm swinging down and up, one foot firmly planted on the ground. Still sheathed, the dagger struck his clavicle with a thud and Kaye threw herself back with a pus…

Kaye twisted the cloth and dirty red water dripped through her fingers and into the bucket. When they dragged Loho away from the temple, a figure broke free from the crowd. Kaye recognized her uncl…

“You didn’t practice this morning,” Kaye said to Aien when they left the house. “Things might turn ugly, you know.” He gestured forward, where Loho was pacing ahead of them. Since three men had iss…

Charcoal to paper, Kaye drew lines, glancing back and forth between the statue in front of her and the notebook on her hands. The figure’s hair was short for a girl’s, barely reaching to the height…

Dagger in hand, Kaye assumed a defensive stance, tip pointing forward, knees and shoulders lowered to allow for fast movement. Aien lunged. Kaye reacted a moment too late, barely managing to divert…

Still shackled, Loho moved ahead, driving his sword through a guard’s back with a thrust powerful enough to jolt the man forward. Others turned at the unexpected attack, but he was already tracing …

The caravan kicked into a desperate run when Kaye and Hogog brought the news. Coachmen whipped the camels; those on foot ran ahead; some were abandoning luggage to lessen the carts’ weight. Kaye wa…

Without the sun to guide them, Kaye and Hogog had, in their desperation, overcorrected and met the road ahead of the caravan. No fresh tracks were worked into the soil, and they turned south. They …

Shoshin was a gaunt, paranoid-looking man whose eyes skipped all over. He walked through the camp with guards and followers, long white beard wagging like a tail mistakenly put in the front, his ga…

Hogog hunched down, poking the cold embers with a stick. Kaye turned, following the footprints. Two people, unless they had erased some of the tracks but not all, though she thought that unlikely a…

A week in Riin wasn’t nearly enough to get them used to the climate. The city wasn’t dry, being so close to the sea, but the air was stuffy, dusty and somehow hotter than all of that. Their furrowe…

Helping in the kitchen became one of the few things that Kaye could bring herself to almost enjoy; it meant that there was going to be a special meal that day. As she had found out, the fat man who…

Jane had scant seen her mother after her condition worsened, and none of them were good memories. They spoke without emotion, asking questions and giving answers as if they were checking out a list…

Her sleep came and went in waves that left Kaye feeling more tired than if she hadn’t slept at all, until Taya arrived early the next morning. For a long time, Kaye remained under her furrows, clut…

The decapitated head of a cat had been left in front of Rair’s door. Kaye was on her way back from drawing the farming fields outside the city when she spotted it, and despite the knot in her stoma…

The walls of Kakinse were a long line of straight tree trunks with their top ends sharpened, behind which wooden platforms had been built, at least close to the gates where there was need for guard…

Huge gray stone slabs had long ago been dragged to the hilltop and assembled in a triangle, the tip of which pointed somewhere southeast. The way upwards to it was half trail, half stone, and on th…

Kaye was ten the first time they had taken her to Korok’Kan. Before then she would stay behind with her mother, the children and the old while Gairin and Hogog traveled southeast. Since that first …

The oxen leisurely pulled their cart along the well-worked trail, with Hogog sitting at the front and Gairin sleeping on the back, furs wrapped around him. Walking behind them, Kaye stared at the Nanur village below. About half the buildings were tree-houses which connected to each other through suspended bridges or to walkways around particularly large trees. In the ground there were log-houses, several of them with ladders leading up.