“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.

Nomi smiled. “Any of you seen or heard about anything like this before?”

“I've heard of them,” Beko said. “Rokarian traps. Don't know anyone who's ever seen them.” He peered into the other huge leaves to see what meals they had caught.

“Then it's now renamed Rhiana's Trap!” Nomi said. “A fitting plant to give your name, Rhiana?”

Rhiana grinned. “At last, I have my place in history!”

Nomi and the Serians laughed, mounted up and moved on, riding more cautiously now that they knew of another peril to avoid.

When they made camp that evening, Rhiana and Noon went hunting for meat and collecting roots and herbs. Ramin patrolled their perimeter. Beko and Nomi built the fire together, their glances lighting fires elsewhere.

And that night, after food and tale-telling and before love, Nomi began to feel that her voyage was on course again.

AFTER FOURTEEN DAYS traveling through the forests, Ramus and Lulah at last reached their southern extreme, beyond which lay a bizarre landscape of interconnecting waterways and standing stones.

And then the gray people came.