“I think your cousins saw us leave,” she told him.

He turned and cursed as he saw the pair hurrying through the forest edge toward them.

“I bet they’ve been watching us the whole night.”

“Fools,” she murmured. “Anyone who thinks they can win a girl over by being cruel to others is stupid. Follow me. Try not to make any noise.”

They crept through the forest. In the dark it was impossible to avoid stepping on twigs or dry leaves, but the ground had been cleared and smoothed into paths by many years of traffic. Tryss concentrated on following her and on their pursuit, so when she stopped it took a moment to realize where they were.

At the end of the path was a large bower. The walls glowed from a light within.

“That’s the Speakers’ Bower!” he exclaimed. “We’re not supposed to come here.”

“Shhh!” She put a finger to her lips and looked over his shoulder. “They won’t dare follow us. And nobody will be at the bower. They’re all at the festival.”

“Then why’s there light inside?”

“I don’t know. One of the Speakers probably left a lantern burning, to guide—”

Tryss froze as three figures appeared from the trees to one side and strode toward the bower. The newcomers did not look in their direction, to his relief, but marched up to the bower and went inside. The light within threw their distorted shadows up against the walls.

Drilli was breathing faster now. She turned to look in the direction his cousins had been approaching from, then abruptly crept closer to the bower and crouched down at the base of one of the huge old trees.

“If your cousins find us they’ll turn us in,” she told him. “Better we hide here and risk discovery by the Speakers.”

She looked toward the bower again. Voices could be heard now.

“We were attacked,” a man said darkly. “But not by men. By birds.”

“Birds?” Tryss recognized Speaker Sirri’s voice.

“Yes. There were maybe twenty of them. They came out of the treetops as one.”

“What kind of birds?”

“None I’ve ever seen before. Like a large black kiri.”

“Very large,” a third voice added. “Their wingspan was almost equal to ours.”

“Truly?”

“Yes.”

“What harm did they do?”

“They tore at us with beaks and claws. We all have scratches,” the first visitor said grimly. “Niril lost an eye, Liriss lost both. Half of us have torn wing membranes, and both Virri and Dillir may never fly again.”

Silence followed this.

“This is terrible,” Sirri replied with genuine distress. “What did you do then? How did you escape them?”