“Then quit pretending that the books are more important than he is!”

“Stop it!” Silvie cried.

Darsal grunted.

Here they stood, three new recruits to the Forest Guard—Silvie and Johnis just sixteen; Darsal seventeen—chosen for this mission that no amount of fighting or wit could accomplish.

Silvie was wearing a white cotton dress, an oddity for the fighter with short, tangled, blonde hair, who typically walked about in battle dress. She preferred to have knives strapped to her thighs.

Johnis had cleaned up as well, draped in a tunic as if he were as much a part of the council as the elder members. Even Darsal had attended the council meeting, from which all four had just come, dressed in a frock. Only Billos had turned up in battle dress.

Here they stood in a small clearing a ten-minute gallop beyond the outskirts of Middle Village, faced with a predicament that was more important than any could know—any of the hundred thousand or so Forest Dwellers who lived in the seven forests, now busying themselves with a meal or a dance or the sharpening of swords.

Or any of the millions of Horde who lived in the desert, cursing the forests and their dwellers, eating wheat cakes while they sipped wheat wine to ease the pain of their cracking skin.

Darsal walked around the stone, eyeing the bare surface. For as long as she’d known him, Billos had always been an impetuous little bulldog, getting them into as much trouble as he saved them from. She loved him; she was bound to him; she would die for him. But at the moment, she would just as soon strangle him.

His capture by the Horde had been beyond his control. But this time he’d run off without her. He’d abandoned her. She couldn’t live with being abandoned by Billos. In fact, she wasn’t sure she could live without him at all.

“You’re right,” she snapped, unable to stem her anger. “He may be a fool. But he’s a fool whom I love.” She rushed on, not eager to explain herself. “We have to find him! These books, this fate-of-the-world nonsense—yes, of course—but we have to find Billos!”

Johnis touched the stone and drew his hand back, rubbing his fingers. His eyes on her. “How do you search for someone who’s left no tracks or scent?”

Silvie studied Darsal. “He did leave a scent. The smell of ambition—isn’t that right, Darsal? He went into the books because of his thirst for power.”

“And you wouldn’t do the same to satisfy your thirst for revenge?”

They all knew Silvie’s passion to avenge the death of her parents, who’d been killed by the Horde. She’d joined the Forest Guard as much to slay Scabs as save the forests.