Chapter 23
T he scribe found us halfway back to the infirmary.
Xandros slowed when she came hurrying between the trees with a roll of parchment tucked beneath one arm. Her breathing didn’t ease even when she stopped in front of us.
“The maps are ready,” she panted. “The First Thorn has the rest of the patrol reports.”
The future I had been carrying with me from the springs stayed for one more heartbeat.
Then Xandros' fingers shifted through mine, and the Grove returned around me.
“We’re coming.”
The scribe nodded and turned back toward the sanctuary.
I kept hold of Xandros as we followed.
The maps covered two tables when we entered.
Some were familiar Grove records, drawn on thin sheets of cured hide and marked with patrol boundaries, settlements, rivers, and the old family regions that had long since blurred into the larger Deepwood.
Others looked old enough that the edges had begun to crack.
Those had been weighted with stones and opened carefully beneath the light filtering through the living walls.
Caelan stood over the largest one.
Maren and Griffin waited across from him while several other scribes worked through a stack of smaller records nearby.
Xandros stopped beside me, his hand leaving mine when we reached the table. I missed the contact immediately.
Caelan had already marked five places with charcoal.
Three corresponded to the patrol reports he had mentioned that morning. The other two sat beyond the Deepwood’s borders.
“We received missives just after our meeting in the sanctuary.” Caelan pointed to the northern edge of the map, beyond the Deepwood’s boundary. “The Wolves sent word that strange creatures have been attacking along their border.”
His finger moved south, past the last Druid settlements and into the human lands.
“The humans are reporting the same, along with stretches of farmland dying without explanation.”
A knot tightened low in my stomach.
The trouble had already spread farther than our patrols.
My attention moved between the northern and southern borders before returning to the marks scattered through the Deepwood. The pattern pulled at something I had seen in Asterra, though I could not place it quickly enough.
Xandros leaned over the table beside me.
His finger hovered near the northern disturbance before tracing south along the map. He stopped near one of Caelan’s western marks, shifted slightly east, then continued toward the human border.
The archive returned in pieces beneath my hands: old parchment, faded celestial lines, a weave spreading across Asterra in directions that had meant little until I had another world to set beside them.
I reached for the charcoal.
The first line came easily.
The second required me to turn the Grove map slightly. A river curved through the Deepwood where the Asterran record had shown the edge of a mountain range, but once I found the bend, the shape settled into place.
Xandros' fingertip touched the hide beside mine.
“There.”
I followed the angle he indicated.
By the time I set the charcoal down, the marks no longer looked scattered.
The disturbances near the Wolves and humans sat near the outer reaches of the same branching pattern we remembered from Asterra. Three of Caelan’s reports fell directly along it. Another rested close enough that I could have covered the distance with two fingers.
The fifth sat almost beneath my hand.
I frowned.
It was west of the sanctuary, close enough to the Grove that I knew the ground around it.
A narrow stream cut through a shallow hollow there before disappearing beneath a shelf of roots and stone.
Thornwardens crossed it often enough on short patrols that I had never thought of it as anything more than another piece of forest.
I looked at Caelan.
“How close is this?”
“Less than half an hour from here.”
My gaze returned to the mark.
Something that old had been sitting almost beneath our feet while generations of Druids walked past it without knowing what lay below.
Xandros braced one hand against the table.
“The northern road on the Asterran map ran toward the silverwoods.”
I looked at him.
The muscles in his forearm had gone tight.
My mind supplied the forest he had described that morning, silver trunks beneath a sky crowded with stars. The image had been easy to hold when we were walking through the Grove with our fingers threaded together.
It hurt differently now.
“And the southern branch?” Caelan asked.
Xandros studied the lines before answering.
“Toward older settlements. Farther than I could place from the map alone.”
I dragged my fingertip along the charcoal path between the two borders.
Whatever was waking was no longer contained within Druid lands.
Wolves were already being attacked.
Human fields were dying.
The Deepwood was changing around the buried paths between them.
Caelan shifted closer.
“Our patrols noticed animals avoiding the ground near three of these sites. Roots have begun pulling away from stone at another. West of the Grove, the Wild thinned badly enough yesterday that the patrol turned back.”
My finger stopped over the nearby mark.
The same changes had come before the Cedarstone road woke.
Heat gathered in my palm. I turned my hand over.
Gold had brightened beneath the eight-point star.
Xandros noticed before I could speak.
His gaze lifted to mine.
A pressure rolled beneath my boots and I steadied myself against the table.
The sensation came again, deeper this time.
The Mother Tree’s roots shifted beneath the sanctuary floor, and the Wild moved through them in a direction I had never felt before.
Sideways. Away from the Grove.
My palm came down against the living wood.
Fire rushed through my skin.
The Mother Tree spread beneath us in more directions than I could follow, her roots threading outward through the Deepwood until the individual pathways disappeared into one vast living presence.
Several of them were pulling now.
One drew north.
Another reached south.
A sharper tug came from the west, so close that my body turned toward it before I consciously understood why.
My pulse quickened. “They’re waking up.”
Caelan came around the table. “The roads?”
“I can’t feel the roads themselves.” I let my awareness sink deeper. The pressure shivered through my arm. “But I can feel the forest changing around them.”
Xandros' hand settled between my shoulder blades, and my lungs loosened enough to take a deeper breath.
Another pull moved beneath the roots.
This one lasted longer.
One of the weighted maps shifted across the table. A scribe caught the edge before it could slide free.
The pressure beneath my palm continued to build.
“The archive said the roads were part of one weave.” I looked over the charcoal lines. “If they keep waking separately, every damaged piece of that weave is going to start pulling against the others.”
Maren’s attention stayed on the map. “What happens if we wait?”
I lifted my hand, the golden star glowing bright enough to spill across the map.
“We already know what happens when one tears open without anyone holding it.”
Bile climbed my throat.
Xandros moved closer to the table. “We don’t need to open each one individually.”
Griffin narrowed his eyes, his mouth forming a thin line.
Xandros ignored him and touched the charcoal line nearest the Grove. “One living road can reach the wider weave.”
His gaze found mine, but there was no satisfaction in it.
We had known that since the archive, but knowing it had still left us the illusion of time. We had imagined maps, preparation, another careful conversation with the Circle.
The ground shifted beneath us again.
The Wild pulled west.
Whatever waited beneath that hollow was already answering.
I looked at the mark closest to the Grove.
“We use this one.”
Maren followed my finger.
“You’ve never opened it.”
“No, but it’s close enough that if anything changes, the Mother Tree can still tell me before a runner ever could.”
Xandros studied the line connecting it to the larger pattern.
“And if the archive was right, the road itself does not matter nearly as much as whether we can reach the weave through it.”
Maren looked between us.
I could see everything she wanted to object to in the tension around her mouth. The Circle had spent generations surviving by leaving these things buried, and every road we uncovered gave them another reason to believe those generations had been right.
I had buried people because one opened.
I had also watched another one push the corruption back enough to give us hope.
I placed my right hand flat on the map.
“We know where the pressure is gathering, and we know the roads are waking. We can wait for another one to tear open on its own, or we can try to give the power somewhere to go.”
Griffin studied the gold beneath my palm. “You believe you can control all of them?”
“I believe Xandros and I can reach the weave.”
Anything more would have been pretending certainty I did not have. Rhian was alive because Wild and Everlight had worked together. The archive had shown us that the roads once shared their burden instead of forcing everything through a single passage.
That was enough to try.
I looked at Xandros.
He gave me no answer to hide behind. His attention stayed on me, waiting.
Only a few hours earlier, I had chosen him with nothing between us but warm water and gold light. Now he stood beside me while I chose this too.
“I want to try.”
His expression softened slightly. “So do I.”
Another pull moved through the Mother Tree beneath us, strong enough to shift the hanging lamps.
Maren looked down at the map.
Her knuckles gripped her staff tightly. “If the Deepwood begins losing more than it receives, you stop.”
Xandros nodded beside me.
Maren gathered the nearest map. “Then we use the western road.”
Before we could leave the library, Caelan stepped into my path with a sword held across his palms.
My brow pinched as I looked from the polished blade to him.
“To replace the one you seem to have lost.”
Of course he had noticed.