There has to be a way.

Why couldn’t he think of what it was?

Why couldn’t he think of something?

shouldn’t his magic be able to help him? He had been chosen for this journey expressly because his magic would give him a way to communicate with the tanequil. If it would allow him to do that, shouldn’t he be able to find a way to use it here? It had possibilities he had never dreamed of; the King of the Silver River had revealed as much. One of those possibilities ought to be available for use here. If he could think of it. If he could get past the feeling that his magic was small and insignificant, no matter what anyone said—spirit creature or human. If he could persuade himself that it was good for something more than drawing the interest of moor cats like Bandit and reading the danger signs in the flight of cliff birds. If he could just do that, he ought to be able to use it to help Cinnaminson.

He was looking for a place to restart the conversation with Khyber when Tagwen walked back out of the rocks, brushing off his hands and looking less owlish than earlier.

“You can’t imagine what I just found,” he said. Pen and Khyber exchanged a quizzical glance. “Broad-leaf rampion. Hardly ever find it in low country. Prefers higher elevations, cooler climates. No snow, mind you, but a hint of frost seems to favor it.”

Both the boy and the Elf girl stared at him. He looked quickly from one to the other. “Never heard of it? It’s a plant. Not very big, but fibrous. It secretes a sticky resin from splits in its skin. You break off stalks, crush them up, fire the whole mess to release the resin, separate it from the plant material, mix it with wort moss and albus root, cook it all until it thickens, and you know what you get?”

He grinned through his beard with such glee that it was almost frightening. “Tar, my young friends. Very sticky tar.”

So now they had a means, of sorts, of gaining an advantage over their enemy. If they could manage to lure it into a patch of that tar, everything it touched would stick to it, including the ground itself, and it would quickly become so bogged down with debris that it would have great difficulty functioning. Better still, if they could find a way to bring it into contact with something as immovable as a tree, it wouldn’t be able to function at all.

They spent the remainder of the morning distilling resin from the plant and turning it into a small batch of tar. They were able to find the albus root and wort moss needed to make the mix, and they cooked it over a smokeless fire using an indented stone for a bowl. When it was ready, they formed it into a ball, allowed it to cool, and wrapped it in young broad leaves tied together with strips of leather. The tar smelled awful, and they had to consider the problem of disguising its presence as well as tricking the creature on the Skatelow into stepping into it.