“Wait!” Railing called out suddenly. “I see them. A cluster of big, narrow peaks, off to our left. The mist was hiding them. A few miles off, over there.” He pointed.

The Ard Rhys took note. “Good work. You can come down now.”

Railing engaged in a controlled slide that brought him back to the ground. He took off the boots and gloves and started to stuff them back into his pack, then noticed the way Skint was eyeing them and handed them over. “Here. You take them. Redden and I have another pair.”

Skint accepted the grippers, nodded his thanks, and immediately began to examine them.

They set out again on a course for the mountains. Their march took them west and north along the fringes of the marsh over terrain sufficiently level that climbing hills was no longer required but dodging quicksand and sinkholes was. The mix of rock formations and heavy brush and trees continued to plague their progress, and Khyber was aware that the members of the expedition were again spreading out to find passage, getting farther away from one another. She called them in twice, but the problem persisted.

She was just about to call them in a third time when the party was attacked.

At first, Redden didn’t see their attackers but only heard them. Growls and snarls and something that approached screaming shattered the quiet, and then the creatures were charging the expedition from everywhere at once. The Druids, positioned on the four sides of the company, struck back, fire lancing from fingers and staffs and slamming into the attackers. They moved like dancers as they shifted their attacks from one creature to the next, never staying in one place for more than a few seconds. The fire was resilient and sharp-edged, and it both cut and shredded when it struck its targets. But the creatures attacking were too many, and the Druids could stop only a few. The rest got past them and went for those at the center of the group.

Redden, standing back-to-back with his brother once more, summoned the wishsong, singing the magic to life, modulating his voice to shape it, creating out of particles in the air hundreds of sharpened bits of metal that whizzed about like tiny hornets and cut at the attackers as they launched themselves at the pair, either stopping them altogether or causing them to veer away. Redden caught only brief glimpses of what they were up against—small, hunched over versions of Spider Gnomes covered in bristling hair. Hideous to look at, faces twisted and misshapen, they darted in and away again with terrifying ferocity, little more than swift and agile blurs possessed of teeth and claws.