At least, some trees. But what she had taken to be a tree a couple of hundred steps away suddenly resolved itself into something else. Tall, spiked with branches, it had far too many straight edges.

“Someone made that,” Rhiana said.

They stared in silence for a beat, all of them thinking the same but leaving it to Nomi to say. “We're not alone.”

WE’RE NOT ALONE. Those words hung heavy in the air as the four of them stared at whatever the shape might be.

Nomi moved first. She slipped away from Beko's hand as he tried to hold her back, and ran. She heard the footfalls of the Serians following, and by the time she reached the shape, her legs were shaking again, and her body was telling her that there really was no energy left. She fell to her knees, leg muscles cramping, and looked up at what they had found.

It had been a tree, once. But its branches had been removed, its bark hacked away, trunk carved straight, and into the pale wood were impressed a series of faces and symbols. The faces were long and oval, eyes painted black. And projecting from the carving, at various heights, were long, thick sticks. Things hung from these false branches, and it took Nomi a moment to make out what they were.

Fetuses. Mummified somehow, but the curled shape of arms, legs and head were unmistakable. They had been painted along with the structure, elaborately decorated with heavy dyes that held the elements back.

“Piss on me,” Rhiana said quietly.

“They're not real,” Beko said.

Nomi shook her head. “They are.”

“They look wrong,” Noon said. “Like they were stretched when they were born. Look at their heads. And their arms: too long.”

“These are unborn,” Nomi said. “Not fully formed.” She tried not to think of where they had come from, how they had been removed from their mothers.

Rhiana stepped forward and reached out for one of the lowest hanging things.

“No!” Beko said. “We don't know anything about this place. We can't just storm in and do our own thing.”

“I just wanted to—” Rhiana said, but Nomi cut in.

“Beko's right. We have to be careful. We need to respect whoever did this.”

“Or whatever,” Noon said. “It's monstrous!”

“We don't know anything about them, or what this is about, or why they did it,” Nomi said. The responsibility of what they were doing struck her then, and she could say no more.

“We should move on,” Beko said for her. “Maybe this is something holy for whoever lives up here. We should find the lie of the land. But we have to be careful.”

Rhiana chuckled. “I'm down to two arrows, Noon is out of crossbow bolts. And I don't think I could lift my sword in both hands if I had to. How careful do you think we can be?”