She was still speeding like a bolt of lightning, and she shot away over the treetops. Somewhere behind, her mother was shouting, but she was too fast and far away to hear. The Undrentree was right in front of her now and nothing could stop her.

It had been a moment’s decision, made in a blink. A single instant that would change the entire course of her life. But right then, hammering across the forest city, she had no idea about any of that.

Liska threw back her fox head and barked with laughter.

*

As she neared the Undrentree, Liska pricked her ears and focused her eyes upon the enormous branches. Alongside the mages, there were other inhabitants of Arborven, ones that she always sought a glimpse of whenever she had a chance to visit the city: the treekeepers.

There were only a dozen of them and their job was to speak the will of the tree, to guide the quarrelling tribes that grew and tended the city. In a way, Liska supposed, they were the rulers of Arborven itself.

They lived in the Undrentree – on it and under it – in wooden buildings that towered above all the other structures, with rooms the size of barns and roofs like small mountains.

Just like the shapewalkers, they had been changed by magic. They had once been human mages – although Liska found that hard to believe – before being chosen by the Undrentree. Now their bodies had been turned to living wood, blending with the trees themselves to become a mixture of plant and human. Their faces peering out from the bark and grain like moving carvings.

Three times taller than an adult person, they had hair of moss and creepers and limbs of gnarled branches. They were almost as old as the tree and moved with slow creaking steps; spoke with measured, booming voices. Everything about them oozed power. The magic in their scent made Liska’s animal senses tingle, filling her nose with electric zaps, as if she had just inhaled a nest of tiny fire ants.

She had spotted Edda, the leader, before. And Twiga, Taproot and Aspen. She had always wanted to see Craggit though. She had heard he was half the size of the others, twisted and covered in moss thicker than hair.

As she curved her flightpath around the Undrentree, she kept an eye on the house-covered branches, on the walkways and rope ladders that sprawled everywhere like spiders’ webs.

She saw arbomancers casting hexes on limbs and leaves to make them grow into new platforms and paths. They drew patterns of green light that hung in the air. They sang songs in the language of root and twig.

Hanging in baskets from the highest branches, mossherders coaxed lichen into swirling patterns. Their long hair and flowing beards, as green and shaggy as the moss they summoned, waved in the evening breeze.