Explorer's Haven, The

The transformation is slow enough for most people not to notice. But Okramal does. For nearly two decades she has been tasked by the Huldra to listen to the forest and breathe its wild scent. She will not be deceived by the idle darkness, nor by the occasional resurgence of light and warmth. No, where others see happenstance, she sees design; where others see spontaneous fluctuations, she sees a carefully calculated plan. There is one question neither she nor the Huldra have yet been able to answer: Who devised this scheme?

The newly arrived southerners are gathered at their temple, passing judgements in the last light of the setting sun. They accuse Davokar, the woods that for centuries have nourished Okramal and all her brothers and sisters. She rejects the possibility of them being right; they must not be! Yet she cannot accept Yeleta’s suspicions, derived from the deep Halls of a Thousand Tears, that what is happening is merely a reflection of the Ambrians’ ambitions. For behind the howling of abominations and the stench of corruption, Okramal detects the sound and smell of something else, something strange yet very familiar. What it might be she cannot say, but in her dreams it takes the shape of a bleeding heart – a heart beating faster and faster, strong enough for the blood to splatter…