Page 14 of The Hurricane Wars

Although most of Sardovia was cold year-round, Talasyn had spent fifteen years of her life on the Great Steppe, a region of extremes. She was used to the scorching, arid heat of a northern summer, not Nenavar’s damp variety that lay heavy on the skin and filled the lungs even in the dense, overgrown places where sunlight was a distant dream. She’d stripped down to a thin white smock and brown breeches, and she still felt as if she was being crushed in the World-Father’s unwashed armpit, drenched in perspiration and her breath emerging in harsh bursts after five hours’ hiking beneath a canopy of various types of trees that she had no names for. Their branches were draped in profusions of vines that she had to hack her way through with a light-woven cutlass.

The undergrowth contained a host of vegetation that was new to her as well. There were ferns that fanned out in plaited rows along the tree trunks, creeping shrubs whose leaves folded shut when she brushed past them, and plants that dangled red-lipped sacs filled with a clear liquid in which all manner of small creatures drowned. There were black flowers shaped like bat’s wings, yellow petals that looked like frothy trumpets, and enormous velvety blooms speckled white that gave off a foul stench of decaying flesh, making her gag.

The jungle also teemed with insects and birdsong, the branches overhead replete with jewel-scaled reptiles and furry brown things that could have been either rodents or primates skittering out of sight at her approach. There didn’t seem to be another human around for miles.

It was worlds away from Sardovia in every sense.

Talasyn hadn’t objected much to being sent on this dangerous mission because she had another goal—one that she’d kept fromher superiors and even Khaede. No one knew about the disquieting sensations that hearing about Nenavar made her feel. No one knew about the uneasy familiarity that she felt for it. She’d set out for the Dominion expecting...something. What that somethingwas, she couldn’t rightfully say. She was searching for answers to questions that she couldn’t put into words.

Thus far, however, there didn’t appear to be a lot of answers here. She was tired, coated in grime, and sweating out more water than she could drink without prematurely exhausting her supply.

In the afternoon, Talasyn climbed a tree to work out where she was. The tree looked sort of like an old man, hunched in on itself and covered in wispy leaves, its gnarled branches dripping with aerial roots. The bark was twisted as well, as though made of ropes of wood braided together, and it was riddled with hollows.

With the help of a grappling hook and the juts in the rough, thick trunk that served as natural footholds, it was an easy ascent, and along the way she encountered dozens more of those furry brown creatures that she realized now weredefinitelyprimates, even though they were no bigger than her palm. Most fled, but some froze where they clung to the branches with elongated digits and watched her guardedly through round golden eyes that took up nearly all of the space in their tiny skulls.

“Don’t mind me,” Talasyn huffed as she scrambled past three of the creatures. “Just passing through.”

These were the first words that she’d spoken out loud to another living thing in over a day. Far from being honored, though, the three little rat-monkey-things chittered indignantly and—disappeared.

There was no fanfare to it. One moment they were there and the next they were gone.

They hadprobablyjust scurried into the leaves too quicklyfor her to catch, but the overall impression was that they had willed themselves out of existence to avoid her talking to them any further.

“Story of my life,” Talasyn muttered.

By her reckoning, the tree was four hundred feet tall. When she hoisted herself onto one of the uppermost branches and broke through the jungle canopy, it was to the sight of this foreign wilderness spread out all around her in ridges that were carpeted a deep, dense green. The pale blue silhouettes of even more mountains loomed in the distance, wreathed in fog. Flocks of birds soared past her perch, their plumage splashed with every bright hue imaginable, their tailfeathers streaming out behind them like sprays of aether, filling the air with the flutter of iridescent wings and the mellifluous lilt of a song like glass chimes.

The wind blew cool on Talasyn’s face, a staggering relief from the humidity. It carried with it the scents of rain and sweet fruit. It carried memory on its monsoon currents, vague and fleeting but enough to make her tighten her grip on the branch for fear that she might fall from how it made her reel.

I’ve been here before.The notion took root in her mind and it refused to let go.I know this place.Images and sensations raced through her in a tumultuous stream, swiftly shifting, ever shapeless. But she thought that she could grasp—

Rough hands on her face. A city of gold. A woman’s voice telling her,I will always be with you. We will find each other again.

Wetness spattered Talasyn’s cheeks. At first, she assumed that the rains had come, but, when the liquid dripped in through the corner of her mouth, it tasted like salt. She was crying for the first time in years. She was crying for something she couldn’t name, for someone she couldn’t remember. The wind rustled through the swaying treetops and it whisked her tears away.

I’m sitting in a tree in the middle of the jungle and sobbing,she thought mournfully.I am the most ridiculous person alive.

Then there was a sound like thunder. A pillar of light rose up from one of the northern peaks. It suffused the jungle canopy with golden radiance, a firebrand so bright that it was almost solid, rippling with threads of silver aether as it shot toward the sky.

Talasyn stared at the conflagration, her heart pounding. The Light Sever beckoned to her; it called to something in her blood. She nearly cried out in protest when it vanished, the pillar swirling and crackling with renewed intensity before it finally winked out of existence and left no sign that it had ever been there at all.

She began clambering down the tree. She vowed that she would find out why Nenavar felt so familiar. The answer washere, somewhere. It was within her reach.

But first things first—she had to get to the Light Sever.

It rained in the late afternoon, a deluge that turned the ground to mud. Talasyn sought shelter in another old-man tree, tucking herself into one of its many hollows with her legs curled against her chest.

She dozed in that position while waiting for the downpour to subside. It could hardly have been helped; she hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep since she left the Wildermarch. She dreamed of Hornbill’s Head again, and of the stormship that had taken everything, although she hadn’t had much to begin with. This time, at the end of the dream—when the hurricanes had shattered all the wooden bridges, when the grasslands had reclaimed the city and dust had flooded through its ruins—there was a woman, holding her close, stroking the back of her head, telling her that things would be all right and she had to be strong.

The woman in the dream called Talasyn by another name.One that wasn’t hers, one that faded from her memory as soon as she woke up, along with the woman’s face.

Talasyn’s eyes flew open. The rain had stopped, and the jungle was damp and drowsy in the twilight. She eased out of the hollow and resumed her trek, conscious of how much time she’d wasted. Her every step vibrated with nervous energy as she tried to recall more details from her dream.

Was the woman the same person whose voice had come rushing back to her on the crests of the Nenavarene wind? Who had touched her face with rough hands?

And what about that city of gold? She’d never been to any such place as she’d glimpsed amidst those wild monsoon currents. Why had her mind’s eye afforded her that image only now? Had it been a cityhere, within the borders of the Dominion?

There was a part of her that fled from that thought the moment it surfaced. It filled her with fear, because she wasn’t supposed to tell anyone...

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