here. Rrrwwlll. Look at it stare. Seems to have taken an interest
in you.”
Wren kept her eyes on the little creature. “Did the Elves
make the Tree Squeaks, too?”
Stresa settled himself comfortably in place, paws tucked in.
“The Tree Squeaks were always here. But the magic has changed
them like everything else. See the hands and feet? Used to be
paws. They communicate, too. Watch.”
He made a small chirping sound. The Tree Squeak cocked
its head. Stresa tried again. This time the Tree Squeak re-
sponded, a soft, low squeaking.
Stresa shrugged. “It’s hungry.” The Splinterscat lost interest,
his blunt head lowering onto its forepaws. “We’ll rest until mid-
day, then go on. The demons sleep when its hottest. Best time
for us to be about.”
His eyes closed, and his breathing deepened. Garth glanced
purposefully at Wren and settled back as well, finding a smooth
spot amid the rough edges of the lava rock. Wren was not ready
to sleep. She waited a bit, then reached into her pack for an-
other chunk of cheese. She nibbled at it while the Tree Squeak
watched, then gently eased across the floor of the crevice until
she had closed the distance between them. When she was no
more than an arm’s length away, she broke off a bit of the cheese
and held it out to the Tree Squeak. The little creature took it
gingerly and ate it.
A short time later the Tree Squeak was curled up in her lap.
It was still there when she finally fell asleep.
GARTH’S HAND ON HER SHOULDER, firm and reassuring, brought
her awake again. She blinked and glanced about. The Tree
Squeak was back on its ledge, watching. Garth signed that it
was time to go. She rose cautiously in the cleft’s narrow confines
and pulled on her pack. Stresa waited by the entrance, quills
spread, sniffing the air. It was hot within their shelter, the air
still and close.
She looked around briefly to where the Tree Squeak
crouched. “Good-bye, little one,” she called softly.
Then they moved out of the darkness and into the misty
light. Midday had come and gone while they slept. The vog that
shrouded the valley seemed denser than before, its smell sulfuric
and rank, and its taste gritty with ash and silt. Heat from Kil-
leshan’s core rose through the porous rock and hung stubborn
and unmoving in the air, trapped within the valley’s windless
expanse as if captured in a kettle. The mist reflected whitely the
diffused sunlight, causing Wren to squint against its glare. Shad-
owy stands of acacia rose against the haze, and ribbons of black
lava rock disappeared into other worlds.
Stresa took them forward, making his way cautiously
through the vog’s murk, angling from one point to the next,
sniffing as he went. The day had gone uncomfortably silent.
Wren listened suspiciously, remembering that Stresa had said
the demons would sleep now, mistrusting the information all the
same. They worked their way deeper into the valley’s bowl, past
islands of jungle grown thick with vines and grasses, down ridges
and drops carpeted with scrub, and along the endless strips of
barren, crusted lava rock that unraveled like black bands through
the mist.
The afternoon wore quickly on. In the haze about them,
nothing moved. There were things out there, Wren knew-she
could feel their presence. There were creatures like the one that
had almost caught them that morning and others even worse.
But Stresa seemed aware of where they were and made certain
to avoid them, leading his charges on, confident in his choice
of paths as he picked his way through the treacherous maze.
Everything shifted and changed as they went, and there was a
sense of nothing being permanent, of the whole of Morrowindl
being in continual flux. The island seemed to break apart and
reform about them, a surreal landscape that could be anything
it wished and was not bound by the laws of nature that normally
governed. Wren grew increasingly uneasy, used to the depend-
able terrain of plains and mountains and forests, to the sweep of
country not hemmed about by water and settled upon a furnace