Almost as tall as the mountains that enclosed the valley, it dwarfed everything around it. Its thundering great branches spread out like open arms covered in sprays of jade leaves that rose high enough to touch the clouds.

From this distance it tricked your eye, looking like any ordinary tree just a few metres away. That was until you noticed there were walls and roofs of buildings all over it. And not just huts or shacks, either. Temples with turrets and steeples. Whole villages of three-storey houses running along branches. Bridges of rope and plank wider than any highway strung between them. Castles and mansions built amongst the roots. And scurrying everywhere, the flea-sized specks of figures that were hundreds upon hundreds of people.

The thing was monumental. God-sized.

Surrounding it, in a ring, was the first of the city circles. A round string of oak trees that belonged to the group of magic users known as arbomancers. Giant, gnarled trunks holding houses of dark wood with roofs narrowed into the steepest of points. Most honoured, most respected, this tribe lived closest to the tree which gave them their powers.

Around that was the second circle: the bushy, round-leaved hazel trees of the stormsingers. They lived high in the branches, in spherical houses like teardrops covered in silver pennants that fluttered in the breeze.

Then came the barkmages, the sapsmiths and the mossherders, with circles of rowan, birch and elm that stretched the city right up to the steep sides of the mountain walls. Each with their own styles of building, from craggy huts that seemed formed from the trunks themselves, to six-storey towers that swayed like the trees around them, decorated with streamers of shaggy lichen and sprays of coloured moss.

Liska stared down at it all as she passed above.

She saw flocks of forest birds fluttering everywhere, searching out spots for roosting. Bats had begun to whirl above the branches, snapping up the juicy moths that were attracted to all the glowing lanterns. Squirrels sat at the doorways of tiny houses that had been built especially for them, cleaning their tails and staring down at the bustling world around them with bright, beady eyes.

Liska marvelled at its order, at the way it all worked in harmony. The Undrentree gave its magic to the wizards of Arborven, and they used it to tend the trees, the wildlife and keep the city thriving. Each thing helped the other to survive. Balance and partnership.

Although it wasn’t perfect, she knew.

The farther away from the tree you lived, the less magic you had. The poor mossherders were considered weak and worthless by the mages who lived near the Undrentree, and the sapsmiths weren’t much better. They in turn were jealous of the arbomancers and stormsingers. Like a family with several children, petty arguments and squabbles were common.

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