Behind her Jair’s wagon rumbled over a ridge, leading the rest of their horses behind it. Byn led them on, hunched over with his arms out. His eyes were feral, and he kept his nose close to the ground. He tracked the gnarls that had taken the others by smell alone, though Kara could make out signs of their passage. A broken stalk here. A big muddy footprint there. Watching Byn move and hunt impressed her. Though he walked on two legs, he might as well have walked on all four. Sera’s absence was a knife in Kara’s gut. She should have scribed Sera’s eyes back to green herself, but there had been no time with the gnarls. They headed downhill until they emerged on open plains thick with sleeping wildflowers and shorter, scratchy grass. Kara’s heart sank. Open land stretched in all directions, and she saw no sign of the gnarls who had taken Sera. No sign at all. Kara searched the map inside her head and realized they had left the Azamoth Plains.
