Faro stared out to sea, shivering. The cold wind, pin-pricked with sharp salt spray, whipped his hair and his clothes. The sky was the color of slate, and the sea was angry. Gulls shrieked as they faced the wind, hovering in place without beating a wing. The waves pounded against the huge dark boulders that formed a bulwark along the north extremity of the peninsula.

He had never seen the sea before. He had seen nothing more than streams in the Mingling. Nor had he felt such cold. It was a foreign sensation, both exhilarating and frightening.

"Falo." Vireel approached with something draped across her arms. She was wrapped in a thick garment, long and hooded. "This will keep you warm." She held it out to him. It was a garment like hers, hooded and made of a triple layer of heavy linen. It had sleeves, and it was so long that it would reach down to his shins. The color was deep blue with fine yellow hem-work.

"Where did you get these?" he asked, feeling the cloth between his fingers.

"The quth have carried them for us," she answered. "Here, turn."

He obeyed, and she held as he slid his arms inside. Turning him back, she fastened a brooch of silver at his shoulder. The brooch was fashioned as an oval with radiating ridges that appeared to imply ripples of water. A braided silken cord of dyed yellow hung at the waist of the robe, and Vireel took it and tied it in a knot on his hip, giving it a tug.

"There," she said. "That's better, no?"

He watched her face during this doting. It was always hard to read her, a task made no easier by the patches of flesh stiffened by the Change—beautiful, frightening, but opaque to interpretation. Her voice was a more reliable indicator, but not by much. He detected nothing to indicate that she was upset or remorseful. She had dwelt in her glade for a hundred years or more. Forced to flee her home by an attack from the Nethec. . . she appeared unaffected. Perhaps he could not comprehend someone of her age. So far as he had ever figured, she must be approaching four hundred years. She was reserved about her own life. Maybe a result of living so long was the expectation that things would end, sooner or later.

"You had the quth carry them," he said. "You knew we would come here."

"I knew this would be the safest place for now," she answered.

"I do not sense much of the Current."

The temperature had plunged over the last miles, almost as soon as he had smelled the salt. The trees had changed from the tangled deciduous and palm trees of the Mingling to conifers, shrinking into twisted forms before dying out a mile or more before the shore. As these physical changes occurred, Faro also felt the Current weaken.

"The Current rises and spreads out from the Wellsprings, but the flow can be irregular. They eddy in places, or fall still. The Currents meet most strongly in the south, the center of the Mingling. In the north they wane, and here, they nearly separate. It will be hard for anyone to sense your presence."

Faro stared out at the distant northern sky. He had never seen so much space, yet even there he saw signs of land beyond the sea, mountain peaks rising above the horizon like dark shadows. Nearer, patches of something white lay upon the surface of the sea, sometimes jutting upward like hills.

"What is that?" he asked, pointing.

"Ice," she said. "This whole land from the southern shore to the northern would be a blasted, frozen waste were it not for our people and the power of the Current."

"How?"

"Not tonight. Let us return to the treeline. The quth will have prepared us shelter. Tomorrow, we will see if there is enough Current for gardening."

***

Jareen lay her head on the vien's chest. She could hear the fluid crackling with every breath he took.

"I will give you some more," she said. "It will ease the pain."

"I almost wish I had gone to the Mingling," he replied, his voice barely above a whisper. The words were a labor. "How much longer?"

"Soon."

"Maybe I should go, now. To the Mingling." He started to rise, but she put a hand on his shoulder.

"I will give you more."

She moved to her table and measured a few drops into a wooden spoon before turning back to the hammock. He watched her, his hair damp with sweat. It was too late for him. Of all the cases she had seen, no one had ever recovered after their lungs were so affected. Regardless, she had not yet brought herself to test her theory. Something about it felt wrong. . . not without his permission, even though he would already be dead if she hadn't stopped him from walking into the Mingling. She had not even asked his name, and he had not given it. With what she intended to do, she wasn't sure she wanted to know.

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He must have seen her expression.

"Do not worry for me," he said.

"I'm not worried," she answered. "It's just. . ."

"What?" It was difficult for him to intonate the word, now. He pitched it low.

"I want to try something," she said. "It might help prove what causes the affliction."

He didn't speak, but his eyes asked the question.

She stepped closer to him, lifting his right hand with her own. While the Malady had progressed quickly up the vien's left side, his right arm and hand were untouched.

"I want to see if I can infect this hand. If I can infect it, then I know what spreads the disease."

"How?"

"I would cut you, and press a powder into the wound."

Her tests on the hide had convinced her enough that she was willing to make the attempt. None of the fungus had grown on a patch of her own blood, but after days, it had produced dark hairy tendrils on the patch of the vien's blood. As for the bottled blood, the inside of the glass was speckled with growths.

The vien grimaced, and Jareen felt sure he would refuse. But after a few moments, he said:

"Will you give me enough. . . so I don't know when?"

"Yes," she said.

He nodded, tilting his head and barely opening his lips. She tipped the spoon and poured the drops under his tongue.

Three days later, he died, his right hand streaked and swollen with the Malady.

***

Laevi trudged onward. He was tired. If someone had asked him before the riders of the Synod came to take him away, he would have said he knew tiredness. After all, he had taken care of babes, had gathered and worked for his family's needs, harvesting the shores of Veroi. It would have been a lie; he had never known tiredness before.

He had lived in bliss as an ignorant fool, never knowing true suffering. Oh, to be such a fool again! The Transgressors' nights were harassed by the beasts of the Mingling. They didn't even have names for many of the monstrosities that robbed their sleep. One or two sleepless nights in a row were of little account, but Laevi could not clearly recall the last time he had slept for more than an hour at a time.

His eyes blurred and he placed one foot in front of the other again and again. The vien around him had not fallen or complained, and so he would not. Something drove them on beyond the words of their plume. He wasn't sure what it was, but it drove them to exhaustion. They had lost the trail of the quth, yet so far as the winding trails of the Mingling allowed, they kept north in the last known direction of their quarry.

Had they found the trail again, or was that merely a waking dream?

He heard shrieks, remembering the sounds of the night . . .

No. Laevi startled and looked up. Three beasts swept down on them from above, dark wings beating and talons outstretched. He tried to raise his bow and draw, but the claws swept towards him, slashing at the exposed faces of the archers. He barely ducked in time, twisting on the ground. A few arrows sped upward, but the shrieks continued, and more talons raked across the column beneath huge beating wings. The beasts snapped branches as they passed. One gripped a tree with its front legs, crawling higher like a squirrel before diving down at them again.

Laevi rocked forward and gained his knees, drawing an arrow back, leading the swooping beast.

Pain stabbed his shoulder and he lurched forward and upward. He dropped his bow in shock and grabbed at the talon crushing down on his shoulder, piercing through his coat of hardened silk. The beast raised him from the ground, blasts of air unfurling downward with the beat of its wings. With a cry of pain, Laevi let his weight hang from the talon and grasped the hilt of the dagger, pulling it down from beneath his coat. With one continuous scream, he twisted, feeling the talons dig in further, and raised his arm, slashing the beast's foot.

It twisted, shrieked, and dropped him. He landed hard in a tree, thorns slashing his legs. He caught a branch under his armpit and held, sheltered by the branches he had barely missed. The shouts of the archers and the shrieks of the beasts continued close by. More thorns wounded him as he climbed lower in the tree, sliding down its coarse bark. The beasts had come upon them in a small clearing that exposed them to the sky. He wasn't quite sure how far he'd been carried, but he could hear vien voices. He had to crouch and crawl to move through the thick brush.

When he reached the edge of the path, he saw vien clustered together, bows drawn and trained on the sky. A few knelt next to the wounded.

"I'm coming out!" Laevi yelled. "I'm coming out!"

Slowly, he emerged, looking upward.

"Laevi!" one of his companions yelled. "Findel's ears!"

Scanning the sky to make sure all was clear, he stood and hurried to the cluster of archers. A few were bloodied, faces raked by talons. Not far away, one beast lay motionless, pierced with many feathered barbs. Laevi looked around for his bow and found it on the ground. He had lost his arrows when he'd fallen into the tree and he hadn't thought to search for them, but there were more among the bodies. At least four of the vien lay still and unmoving. One of the dead was their plume, slashed across the throat, the only vien in their contingent to have a steel helm. It had not saved him.

Further down the path, Laevi saw Melanu rushing up the trail, flanked by two other vien with arrows at the ready. Melanu approached the body of the fallen plume and stared down at it. He knelt there and unbuckled the helm, lifting it and the striped plume away. After a moment, he looked back at them.

"I am next," he said. It was true; he was next in order. Melanu lifted the helm and set it upon his own head, adjusting the strap.

Laevi looked around.

"Where is Shun?" he asked an archer who still knelt with arrow nocked. The vien shook his head and motioned up and away with his chin.

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