It was late afternoon by the time they rode out of the valley, and as the western horizon caught fire and the damp air gave them a glorious sunset, they rode into the forest to escape the river's clammy influence. They were exhausted, wet and hungry, and their ears were ringing from the thunderous river. They could still hear it in the distance, but now it was merely a murmur.

Rhiana vanished so quickly that it took them a few beats to register what had happened.

Her horse galloped away between the trees.

“Rhiana!” Noon shouted. The other Serians had drawn their bows and spread through the trees, taking up defensive positions as Beko rode close to Nomi and urged her across onto his horse.

“Hold on to me,” he said quietly, as she sat behind him.

“Hey!” Rhiana's voice cut through the loaded atmosphere, but still they could not see her.

“Where are you?” Noon slipped from his horse and moved forward cautiously, looking down at the ground and up at the trees, probing undergrowth and stepping carefully over trailing tree roots.

“Watch your step,” Rhiana said. Her voice was muffled. She started singing a bawdy song to guide Noon, and by the time she reached the second verse he was kneeling on the ground thirty steps from Beko and Nomi.

They gathered around and looked down into where Rhiana had fallen. It was a trench in the forest floor, maybe twenty steps long and taken up with five wide, deep, violet plants. The plants' leaves were cylindrical and ten steps deep, and Rhiana had become wedged at the bottom of one.

“Hurry,” she shouted. “I don't like the company I'm keeping down here.”

Noon lowered a rope, Rhiana grabbed on and he began to pull.

Nomi winced at the stink that wafted up from the trench. It was sickly sweet, a bewildering odor that made her hungry and nauseous at the same time. When Rhiana crawled over the edge of the rent in the forest floor, her trousers were glistening and sticky with some noxious liquid.

“Oh nice,” Noon said, leaning over the Serian and looking down into the giant plant leaf.

Nomi looked as well. There was a corpse down there, mostly submerged in liquid, flesh black and rotten, bones showing through in places. It was human, but beyond that she could tell nothing. As if seeing it brought the truth home, she caught another waft of rot. The smell was so thick and meaty that she was sure it coated her skin.

“Clever,” Beko said.

“Clever?” Nomi turned away, clasping her stomach and trying to hold on to her last meal.

“What, this doesn't fascinate you? It's perfect!” Beko knelt by the trench's edge, trying to restore the carpet of roots, moss and dead leaves that Rhiana's horse had stumbled into.

Nomi shook her head and glanced at Rhiana. The Serian was wiping down her trousers with handfuls of dirt and dried leaves.