When he channelled self, all he saw was the book in his mind—he wasn’t present as he was here. That he might be in control of how he appeared here hadn’t occurred to him. T’aakshi glanced around, checking that the dreadful silence around him remained, and that nothing lurked in the dark between the trees that surrounded him. Certain that he was alone here, he closed his eyes and imagined himself clean-shaven again. Then he reached up and touched his face. This time, his jawline was as smooth as the day he had been born. He grinned in triumph, before focusing his attention once more on the task at hand and the direction the towers lay in.

  Years ago, he’d read a southern book that described a journey through something they had called a jungle. The place he was walking through now matched that description almost perfectly. A mixture of sodden soil and leaf litter lined the floor, soaking his boots and feet, and heavy plant-life blossomed in every conceivable nook and cranny. Vibrant flowers dressed in purples, pinks and blues dotted his surroundings like jewels, but more than anything, the sheer volume of green was utterly overwhelming.

  T’aakshi never would have believed it possible to have so much green—so much life—in one place, were he not seeing it for himself. In fact, he still was not sure such places existed outside of the strange world held within the tanae. Yet, for all its vibrancy, for all the jungle seemed teeming with life; the further he walked, the more something tickled at the back of his mind, until the thought screamed at him in its urgency.

  For all of its wonderful life, the silence remained.

  His book had described a place like this, but seething with the movement of more creatures than the author could ever possibly describe. A thousand insects, buzzing and scuttling around their tiny worlds, and the hundreds of animals and birds, coloured as brightly as the flowers scattered around them, that hunted the insects. The larger beasts that lurked in the undergrowth, with lightning stripes and fangs like swords that would hunt even the people that lived there.

  Here, there was nothing. Not a hint of movement troubled the corners of his eyes, nor had he seen any animal or bird since he had come. Even the countless leaves of the trees were deathly still until he brushed past them. T’aakshi found that the longer he walked in the insufferable stillness, the more his hands curled into tight-gripped fists, and the more his mind told him that the unnatural lack of anything meant that something surely lurked just outside of his vision.

  Then, just as the dense trees he’d been travelling through parted, revealing a sparse clearing at the base of the central tower, a single piercing sound cut across the silence, shattering the illusion of isolation. It was a sound T’aakshi knew well: the baying howl of a wolf in the distance. He spun, trying to work out the direction it had come from, and his spear materialised in his hand without him ever consciously thinking he would need it.

  T’aakshi scanned the surrounding trees, the long, haunting note of the wolf’s call trailing off, leaving the silence it had destroyed in its wake. There was still no movement, no more sound outside of his own panicked breathing.

  “That toy will do you no good here, boy,” a rasping, nasally voice called out from beside him, close enough that T’aakshi could feel the stale heat of the speaker’s breath against the bare skin of his neck.

  T’aakshi whirled, heart in his mouth, and lashed out with the spear wildly. He felt the shock of impact rattle his elbows, and found himself staring into a pair of pale blue eyes, like chips of glacial ice sat in dark hollows. They belonged to an elderly man with skin pale for even a southerner, wrinkled like cloudberries left out in the sun. He looked down, and saw his spear embedded in the man’s brown-robed chest, crimson seeping rapidly out into the heavy cloth.

  T’aakshi’s mouth worked in silent horror and he stumbled back, fighting back the urge to be sick. He hadn’t meant to—

  The man, T’aakshi’s spear still in his chest, cocked his head back and laughed. The shrill, bone-grinding sound filled the clearing, standing the hair on T’aakshi’s arm upright. His head snapped forward, and he aimed a toothless grin in T’aakshi’s direction.

  “I told you, boy,” he said, grin never slipping, even as blood pooled around his worn and tattered boots. “This won’t do you any good here.”

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  The strange man cackled again, the sound scratching at some primal part of T’aakshi’s mind and screaming at him to run. There was no smile on his lips to match the laughter, and his eyes were unnaturally wide, as though the sound coming from his own throat horrified even him.

  Unlike before, as the laughter died, the man’s head did not snap back into place. This time it happened slowly, the bones in his neck cracking and snapping, and T’aakshi could not shake the image of somebody trying to bend the body of a frozen fish.

  He wanted to run. But this man—this creature—stood between him and the tower door. Between him and the answers he needed. His jaw tightened, and a second spear materialised in his hand, moments before the desire reached his conscious mind.

  Opposite him, the man’s toothless grin widened. It was unnaturally wide, like somebody had taken a real smile and stretched it across his face. Slowly, his hand reached down to the wooden spear haft still protruding from his torso. He gripped it slowly and yanked hard, tearing it free of his body. There was no blood.

  T’aakshi swallowed, clinging desperately to his resolve. How dangerous was it here, inside the tanae? How real?

  “Your eyes give away too much, boy,” the man rasped at him, and T’aakshi took a step back. The man’s lips moved, flashes of near-black gums showing between dry, peeling lips, but the sound came from inside his own head. “Just another grub reaching for things far beyond them. But what form of scuttling parasite are you, hm? Thief? Fool? A—”

  Suddenly, his eyes narrowed, and he jerked forward. T’aakshi’s heart felt as though it might burst free from his chest as the man strode towards him, and he brought up the spear between them. The man didn’t stop. Not when the spear point touched his torso again, nor when it slid into his torso and burst out of the other side of him.

  His hands were upon T’aakshi’s face before he could react, pulling him closer like taking a curiosity from a shelf to examine. T’aakshi could feel his stale breath against his face, the warmth of it off-setting the deathly cold of his touch, as the man jerked his head left and right, eyes peering out at him from the dark pits of his eye-sockets.

  “You are Saamu’s boy.”

  It wasn’t a question. The man’s bony hands held his head still, eyes staring with an unsettling intensity.

  “For you to be here…” he trailed off, his words no longer feeling directed at T’aakshi. “A shame, to be sure. Saamu was… Impressive.”

  A flash of something passed through those sunken eyes, before his hands finally let go of T’aakshi’s face and he stepped away. T’aakshi was about to breathe a sigh of relief when he realised he was no longer holding a spear, nor was there one left in the strange man’s chest.

  “Who are you?” T’aakshi finally forced out, mind spinning.

  “The grub finds his voice, at last. Though, of course, the question is the wrong one.”

  A smile crept back across the man’s face, and T’aakshi shivered.

  “What you should be asking is how you are going to find what you require? Are you truly ready for what awaits you—spirit and will as one?”

  “Can you show me how?”

  “I can,” the man answered, “but why should I, boy? I already give more than you have earned.”

  “What is that?”

  The man raised a single, skeletal finger. “Once. I will allow you past this door once unimpeded—for your father’s sake. What comes after is down to you.”

  “And if I come back?”

  “Then—” The man hesitated, smile slipping away from his face like a mask, and suddenly, he was gone, as though he had never been there in the first place.

  T’aakshi looked around wildly, scanning the jungle for any sign of him. “Then wh—”

  The question died in his throat, as a blinding pain erupted in his chest. He tried to speak, to cry out, but the impact had taken the breath from him, and the only sound that left his mouth was a wet rasp as he felt the metallic tang of blood across his mouth. He looked down, eyes drawn wide in horror, and took in the spear-point dripping with crimson that had been thrust into him from behind.

  Hot breath touched the back of his neck as the old man’s voice filled his mind. “Then I will not allow you past.”

  A hand clapped his shoulder. “Good luck, boy.”

  The pain disappeared, along with the spear and the old man holding it, leaving T’aakshi standing alone in front of tower door in the eerie silence. Trembling, he pressed his hand against his chest where the spear had been. There was nothing. Not even his shirt showed any sign of the mortal wound that had been there a moment ago.

  He let the hand fall away, and took a slow, shaky breath. What in the name of the God’s had that been? Who had that been? Whoever he was, he seemed to have known his father well enough to recognise T’aakshi. Fear began to boil into anger at his own ignorance. There were so many unanswered questions, so much that he didn’t know that he needed to, and he still hadn’t gotten what he came for. Until he did, these questions would have to wait.

  He glanced back towards the door. It felt somehow plainer than it had any right to be, standing a little taller than him and not much wider, made of a simple, chestnut-coloured wood. Its handle was a dirty brown, with specks of brighter metal shining through in the places where hands would touch it. It was now or never—there was nothing to be gained by hesitating now. T’aakshi strode towards the door, taking the handle in hand, and stepped through before he could think too much on what might lie on the other side.