"Sister… Jeska…" Kamahl closed his eyes and clenched his hands on his knees. He had caused it all. He had struck the unhealing blow across Jeska's gut, the blow that even mantis druids could not heal. If she lived, no doubt the wound remained. If she had died, no doubt she had died at his hand.

Kamahl's armor was suddenly too heavy. Red and massive across his shield arm, it was like the claw of a crab. He reached up and undid it. The plates slid to crash on the forest floor. Once, the armor had counterbalanced Kamahl's huge sword. Now it too was gone.

The sword. The damned Mirari sword. It had killed dozens in the pits and hundreds in Kamahl's homeland-and Jeska herself. He hated that sword. If Kamahl still had it, he would have broken it and tossed it away. It was too late for that, though. The sword had found its final resting place, buried in another unhealing wound.

"Laquatus." Kamahl scrubbed the stubble of his shaved head.

Instead of tending his sister, Kamahl had battled Laquatus. He had driven his sword down through the merman and spiked him to the forest floor. There could be no more fitting end for the Mirari sword than that-a grave marker. Once, it had led Kamahl into murderous warfare. Once, it had driven him to slay endlessly. Now he was done with killing. The Mirari sword marked not only Laquatas's grave but Kamahl's own.

What was a barbarian without a weapon? What was Kamahl without killing?

He lingered there beside Seton, where his sister had lain. The old Kamahl would have snatched up his sword and gone out for revenge. The new Kamahl knelt. He was a changed man. A strange stillness filled him. He had never been still in his life. Always before fire had burned within. He had channeled its fury, had ridden the power of chaos. Now the fire was quenched, the chaos diverted. Stillness reigned.

Kamahl did not feel peace but panic. How could he live in utter stillness?

But it wasn't utter stillness. Even beneath his knees, there was movement. Growth. The power of the forest was not like the power of the fire. It was slow, patient, inevitable-creative rather than destructive. Kamahl sank his fingers into thick tufts of grass. Hot air breathed from the blades. Cool water moved through the veins. Smooth roots sank through crumbling soil. The grass trembled with life.

Kamahl's breath softened. He listened, felt, sniffed. Stillness deepened around him, and the whispers of life grew to shouts. Always they had spoken to him, but he had never heard. Now he listened.

This is not our true voice, they told him-not in words but in significances. This is the sound of travail. This is the sound of your sword buried in the heart of the wood.

Kamahl trembled. His sword had claimed one more victim. To spike Laquatus, he had pierced the ground. The Mirari sword, which had wreaked such havoc in Kamahl's own homeland, now stabbed the heart of the Krosan Forest. He had seen the ravages begin-rampant growth in the grove around the sword. Trees thrust up into the sky. Vines swelled and tangled. Flowers budded and burst in wide glory. These strange mutations hadn't come from Laquatus. They came from the Mirari.

Kamahl had to rise, to act. His damned sword called him again.

It almost hurt to move, to break the stillness. Still, Kamahl stood. He had listened to the forest and could not ignore its plight. Let him draw the sword and heal the wood. If he was to save his sister, let him begin by saving the forest.

Kamahl turned and strode back the way he had come. Soon the trail became difficult. The forest shuddered and groaned with startling life. Vines snaked along the ground and fattened. Leaves sprouted and rattled while the ancient boles that bore them cracked, grew, and cracked again. The rampant growth had spread far indeed.

Pausing, Kamahl stared forward, past pitching treetops and undulating carpets of moss. He glimpsed the royal ziggurat at the heart of the forest. At its base lay Laquatus, pinned by the sword. It was the epicenter of the growth wave. Kamahl climbed toward it.

He plunged into a thicket. It deepened around him. Burrs scratched along his limbs, and thorns lengthened to pierce his skin. Branches doubled and redoubled. Kamahl wished for his sword to hew inward, but the impulse immediately felt false. Kamahl could not take the heart of the forest by violence. He was part of the wood now.

Wrapping fingers about a pair of branches, he drew them steadily aside and stepped between. Tendrils twined around his wrists. They released only grudgingly as he straggled through the thicket. Thorns ripped his wolfskin cape to tatters.

Kamahl escaped the thicket, but the forest floor was no more forgiving. Roots writhed across the ground, grasped each other, clawed and dragged at his boots. Stumbling over one jealous root, Kamahl barged against a swollen tree. Bark grated his bare arm and opened a series of abrasions.

It seemed the forest would demand a blood toll to let him pass. Kamahl was prepared to pay. It was absolution for what he had done to Seton, to Jeska, to the very wood.

A great willow reared up before him and tossed its ugly head. Branches lashed the ground, ripping away humus. They would rip away Kamahl's skin just as easily. A single man could not battle a whole wood.

Kamahl knelt. He dug his fingers into a deep carpet of moss. The voice of the wood clamored to him again, but this time he did not listen. He only spoke. "If ever I am to right the wrongs I have done, I must survive to do so." He said the words quietly, as if to himself.

Someone or something heard.

Through lashing branches and thrashing roots, a path formed. It seemed like a part in thick hair, rising straight up the hill toward the ziggurat.

Kamahl shivered in wonder. He was becoming part of the wood, and it was becoming part of him. He rose and picked his way up the slender trail. He could not have taken the forest by violence, but he now walked a peaceful path inward.

To either side, chaos ruled. Trees grew so massive they lay down like giant strands of hair. Some stretched for miles and continued to grow. Around them, briar thickets mounded. New shoots rammed their way up into sunlight, thickened, and flowered.

The growth wave struck more than just flora. A line of beetles on a nearby log split their skins and emerged larger to split again. A crow followed them up the log, growing as they grew. It feasted on the smallest bugs, its black wings bristling wider with each beakful. The last beetle it snatched up was the size of a cat-and the crow the size of an eagle. Deeper in the wood, a stoat fled an encroaching bramble. The creature's legs lengthened. Soon it seemed a lanky wolf, and then a shaggy pony.

All this mutation came from the blow Kamahl had struck. He leveled his eyes up the narrow way. Even the royal ziggurat was warping. It had become a mountain of tangled wood. Formed of four ancient trees in five tiered terraces, the ziggurat once had lifted hanging gardens above the forest floor. Now the four trunks had nearly fused, and their bough clashed brutally. Foliage choked the one-time gardens, and massive caterpillars gnawed everywhere.

Ten more strides brought Kamahl to the tumulus where he had stabbed Laquatus. The ground had mounded up like an infected boil, but the source of that infection…

"Where is Laquatus?" Kamahl paused and stared.

The body and the sword were gone. At the peak of the tumulus opened a narrow hole. He strode to it and looked down a deep black well. It shook violently, the epicenter of the tremors. Kamahl squinted down the shaft. Something glinted there, something unmistakable.

"Mirari."

Kamahl had chased that bauble across the continent. He had been rid of it. To take it back was to doom himself. To leave it was to doom the forest.

Kamahl knelt. He reached down into the shaft. His hand slid easily over the familiar hilt. The Mirari burned feverishly, violently. Kamahl tightened his grip. He took a deep breath. It would be simple. He needed merely to pull it out. One simple move would change everything.