Kamahl was glad. Such places as that desert should not be.

Shaky fingers drew aside the ragged bandage that wrapped his stomach. Beneath lay an unhealing wound, jagged counterpart to the cut on his sister. The wound, the desert, and the follower had conspired to kill him. They had failed.

The Krosan Forest had its own conspirators. Even now, creatures approached. They quietly converged in a wide ring.

How ironic to survive desolation only to be devoured by a crowd.

Kamahl clutched a gnarl of wood, and through galvanic impulse, conveyed his fears. The prayer, if that was what it was, was heard.

The creatures that approached slowed. Their leader stalked silently around to the mouth of the niche. A wicked-headed lance jabbed in, two bulbous eyes hovering above. The spear withdrew, and the mantis-man bowed his head. He spoke the common tongue, but with an uncommon clack.

"Kamahl. You have returned. We had been watching but did not recognize you. You seemed… someone else."

A rueful smile spread across Kamahl's face. "It is no wonder." He nodded down toward the wound across his stomach. "You must have sensed this."

The nantuko captain peered down. Above his weird green eyes, antennae moved slowly, tasting the air. He laid down his spear. As lithe as a spider, he ambled into the niche. On rodlike legs, he hovered, studying the cut. "A fresh wound, then?"

"No," Kamahl replied, "not fresh. Ever bleeding, unhealing."

The creature nodded his triangular head. His mouth parts shifted, and he emitted a low whistle. It was a patrol signal-quiet enough to be mistaken for birdsong.

From the tangle of brush, another nantuko emerged. This one bore the pods and blooms of a healer. Medicinal leaves hung in bunches across her thorax. She arrived with the same rapid grace as her captain, eyes studying the wound. All the while, her arms worked at a poultice-cutting, mashing, mixing.

'Take no offense, healer," Kamahl said, "but this wound will not heal. Druidic medicine could not heal my sister, and it will not heal me. Jeska gave me this in repayment of what I did to her. This wound will not be healed until I have brought her back."

The mantis healer nodded. She heard his words, but the chunky poultice she loaded into the wound told that she didn't believe him. "You are a champion of the forest. You cannot succumb."

"I will not succumb." Kamahl's eyes gleamed brightly in his dusty face. " I have crossed the desert with this ever-fresh wound and fought off a fell presence that lurks there even now. I will champion the forest, even with this wound in me."

"Lie still," the healer cautioned. Her claws poked at the leaf pack. "Even if it cannot heal the wound, it will strengthen you. The vital essences of the leaves are seeping into your flesh."

Kamahl stiffened at the bite of the leaves. "Yes. I will lie here awhile; then you will bind this wound again, so that I may march once more."

The healer tilted her angular head. "You only just returned. Where will you head now?"

'To the heart of the forest," Kamahl replied. "Something evil follows, and it will brings greater evils. AH of this is of a piece. If I am to slay this thing, I must heal my wound. To heal my wound, I must save my sister. To save her, I must have an army. I go to the heart of the forest to heal, slay, and save… to gain my army."

The First stood on a sand ridge and peered toward the Krosan Forest. He waited for dark, when his powers would be greatest. For three nights in succession, he had nearly slain Kamahl. Veiled in death-scent, the First had crept up beside the man, behind him, before him, and jabbed. That touch would have killed any other, but not Kamahl.

Even wounded, he had proven powerful. Perhaps it was the staff he clung to, brimming with the life-force of the wood. Perhaps his blood had saved him, as it had saved his sister. Twice now, the kin of Auror had survived the First's death touch, and even he could not guess why.

That power had made Phage the ultimate ally. It had made her brother the ultimate foe.

"Kamahl will die," the First told himself.

Swollen, the sun sank toward the sea of sand. The First's shadow lengthened, crossing the desolation. It grew until it stood like a titan on the Krosan head wall. Soon the whole world would be swallowed in shadow, and the First would stalk the Krosan. Soon Kamahl would die.

The First stood and waited, dark magic tingling on his fingers.

It could no longer be called simply a mound-the swollen ground where Kamahl had stabbed Laquatus. Rampant growth had changed it. It was now a veritable mount. Some called it the Gorgon Mount for the snaky growths across its emerging head. The tumulus rose a hundred feet from the forest floor. Dreadlocks of wood and vine draped its sides. The cycles of fecundity, sprout to blossom to fruit to seed to sprout, ran in daily loops. The forest wove flesh out of air, soil, water, and sun and blanketed the ground in a foot of new humus each day. Among the burgeoning boughs trundled beasts like swollen ticks. They ate and rutted, dropping their vasty broods amid the roots.

Kamahl stood in the literal shadow of the Gorgon Mount. He squinted against the sun, which brought its fiery bulk down upon the rioting branches. A similar sunburst covered the bandage across his waist. The poultice had been unable to heal him, and the milkweed packing was unable to stop the bleeding.

The druid healer and the honor guard of mantis warriors stood around him. Suspicious, they watched Kamahl. "No one ventures onto the Gorgon Mount except the druid elders," said the captain. "It is a place of wild spirits, sacred and vicious."

"That's what I need. Wild spirits," Kamahl said, "a whole army of them."

"You see what that place does to the creatures on it," the captain said. 'They are grotesque. The same will happen to you, my friend."

Kamahl smiled, his face red with the setting sun. "No. I'm already grotesque. You can't parody a parody." With that, he left them and strode up the mount.

Kamahl forged forward like a man against the tide. His staff split the currents of growth that poured past him. Fecundity made the air curdle and boil. It hurt to breathe. Vitality burned Kamahl's lungs and tingled through his bloodstream.

"Move aside," he calmly told a roiling thicket.

Its thorns ground against each other as if a pair of giant, invisible hands dug into the patch and parted it. Kamahl stepped within. He marched up the passage. Thorns on all sides proliferated. If the wood so chose, he could be trapped and picked apart. The forest spared him. He emerged from the hedge of briars, but the forest ahead had braided itself into an impenetrable jungle.

Kamahl did not bother asking the branches to part. Instead, he hung his staff from his belt and climbed. Hand over hand and foot over foot, he ascended the wall of boughs. Near their summit, the way flattened, and the branches thickened. He walked atop their twisted backs. As the tentacles of a sea monster lead inevitably toward the thing's mouth, the tree boughs led toward the spot where Laquatus lay pinned. While the mount had risen, its heart had sunk. This was no simple hole but the vertical mouth of a twisting cave.

"The spirit well," supplied a stump sitting by the edge of it.

Kamahl glanced in surprise at the stump, noticing only then that it was a nantuko woman. She hunched beneath a gray cloak and stared down into the black pit. Her eyes reflected the darkness-wide, empty, and unblinking.

"It holds a wicked spirit. Its blood transforms the wood."

Kamahl's hand strayed to his own bleeding wound. He then reached for a fat vine at the edge of the pit and set his foot on a ledge within. "I'm going."