Page 57 of A Drop of Corruption

We all stared at it. Then I hacked at the vine-figure, splitting it open like a hunter field-dressing an animal.

I found within the vine-person several talint coins, five buttons—and many bones. Rib bones, two femurs, a handful of vertebrae. Yet far more troubling than any of this was where I found them, for I discovered all these objects in places where I might find them on my own person: the buttons on the shirtfront, the ribs in the figure’s side, a femur in its thigh.

“Kol,” said Malo softly. “What is this thing? A totem?”

“No…I think I know what this is,” I said. “As well as what happened to the man in the waters.”

“Then what is this devilry?”

The memory of a few words bubbled up in my mind:The purest of titan’s blood—orqudaydin kani,as is the proper name—is powerfully metamorphic. When it comes into contact with a significant concentration of living tissues, it mixes with them, forcing a strange blending. Flesh becomes as leaf, and leaf as bone, and so on. All is warped.

“I think it…it is titan’s blood,” I said. “That is what has done this. For this was a person once, but no longer.”

“By hell,” murmured Tangis. “You think…”

“Y-yes,” said Malo, shaken. “I see. The man in the river—he hadtubers growing from his skull, like the hina root I chew. Yet…his very face had been transformed into them.”

“And now these people, positioned in the brush,” I said. “But they have been turnedintobrush, as if they were mixed, warped, or muddled with the world about them.”

“Such things have been seen within the Shroud,” said Malo quietly. “But—how do we find them here?”

A call from the bank: the warden who’d climbed the tree emerged from the brush and gestured to us. He shouted something to Malo, his voice high and panicked, indifferent to being overheard.

I saw Malo’s green eyes grow wide and her helm’s glass bulbs grow hazy with hot breath.

“What is it?” I asked.

“There are more of them, he said,” she said. “More plant people, standing in the jungle. And…something else. Something he saw from the stand.” She tugged at the reins until the boat drew closer to the bank. “A growth of plants, so thick he could not see through it.” She put her bow on her back and buckled her quiver of arrows tight. “Very strange—and right where the camp should be.”

—

We moored our boat,leaving two wardens behind to guard it, and slipped ashore, weaving up a narrow trail into the jungle. The trees were close and dark, and after the sights we’d seen and with our warding helms affixed atop our heads, the forest seemed otherworldly.

We found that the warden had been right: standing among the jungle paths were three humanlike statues made of vines and ferns and grass, and even clutches of mushrooms. Yet these were not crouched like the first had been: rather, they seemed frozen in midstride, often with one foot rooted and stuck to the soil. It was like they were running away from something up the path—the very direction in which we now moved.

After a few turns I found Malo and the other wardens stopped ahead, for the way was blocked by a huge, thick wall of interwoventree branches and vines, all sporting many strange blooms. The wardens were hacking at the wall with their short swords, but they made little progress.

“Here the trail ends,” Malo said to me. “We would need axes to go farther.”

I studied the strange blooms on the wall of vines. They seemed a mad mixture of flowers: rosy trumpets, spidery cruciforms, and dainty little blue cups, scattered among the dark leaves.

“I’ve seen blooms of this kind before,” I said quietly. “In the Plains of the Path, before Talagray. Where the leviathans of the old days had fallen.” I thumbed one of the blue cups. “Malo…how does this blood normally function?”

She shuddered. “Titan’s blood affects nearly any porous organic matter. If it gets on your skin, or if you breathe it in—or if it lands on leaves, or soaks into the ground to be absorbed by the roots of plants—then it begins changing things, often in unpredictable ways, very quickly. This is why we wear glass and metal and algaeoil when near it, for it does not affect such materials. But there is only so much known of what it can do. Few witness its warpings and survive.”

I gazed at the wall of trees before us. “And we’ve not seen or heard any smugglers about? No sign at all?”

“The helms make it hard, but I have heard nothing,” she said. “I think we are alone here. Which should not be so…”

I thought for a long while in silence. “If this is titan’s blood,” I said softly, “how do we still live? Shouldn’t we be affected by now? For helms alone can’t be enough. We’d need entire suits to protect ourselves.”

“I…don’t know,” said Malo after a long while. “I cannot comprehend any of this.”

I grasped the handle of my sword and said, “Stand back.”

“You think you can cut through?” she said.

My eyes fluttered, and the memories returned to my muscles. I twisted the handle of my sword, unlocking it from its mechanical sheath, and then my glimmering green blade was free.