When her shoulders were roughly shaken, she looked up to see Frellyx standing over her. She grabbed his hands, pushed him back, and sat up. When this short journey to a sitting position scattered the grassy knoll into a dizzy vortex no less fragmented than the swirling Abyss above, she leaned back on her hands and closed her eyes.
"How long?" she asked.
"An hour."
"I assume you directed the Doorway away from here. Where is here, by the way?"
"Yes. It was the first thing I did, once we arrived on the oasis."
"Oasis?" she asked, and looked around to see titanic grasses, overdeveloped shrubs, and hyperpituitary fruits that looked like they should fall off and make a square yard wet with juice.
The outer fringe of the grassy hillock disappeared not into a horizon, but shadows grooved with cinnabar and violet. Where the sky should be, the Abyss yawned, mottled with other oases and the shadow of two Worlds, one of which she recognized as Alfyria from the redness of its skies. Not twenty feet away, the Doorway spilled through a free-standing fragment of the ancient catacombs, two pillars of gray stone that sucked the life out of even the Abyss above. The Doorway was an unusual shape, distended and nearly oval, as the uncapped pillars did not prevent the Doorway's extension above them, and it flowed above it, shedding gray sparks onto the blackened ground around it.
"I pried your sword away, and cleaned and sheathed it, so that you wouldn't injure yourself during your faint," said Frellyx, "but I was unable to open your left hand, for fear of ripping what you held."
Eurilda unballed her white and sore fingers. Khyte's letter was creased, crushed, and streaked with sweat, and her fingernails had dented her palm.
When the letter began 'Once dear, always remembered, but better forgotten, Eurilda,' she grimaced.
We are pleased to announce our upcoming union, to be observed on the pentad solstice in the Orange Hotel, Wywynanoir, Ielnarona. Mark the date, and when the day arrives, strive not to be on The Dryad World, where you slew the Princess twice-over and grievously wounded her consort. Or come, and in lieu of gift, present yourself to the Bryntenysh Council for judgment, as your punishment would be the best present. Many felicitations,'
Khyte, Son of Kulunun, Son of Vestari, Son of Cianagh.
Princess Inglefras Aetrinala.
"Otoka was brought low by a wedding announcement?" she asked.
"I'm sorry," said Frellyx.
"You're not," said Eurilda. "But if you are, don't be too sorry, as I want you to stay useful." She surveyed the Doorway, and asked, "where is the controller?"
"There's only the one I brought," he said, holding aloft the dagger Khyte stole from Sarin Gelf many months ago. "Very perspicacious of him to lend it to me, though I traveled here by Baugn."
"Perspicacious. That's one word for it. What of the ancient writing?"
"Take a look," said the elf, and when the giantess looked at the blackened ground surrounding the Doorway, she saw names inscribed in chalk: Uenarak, Kreona, Kheire, Ssyrnas, Wywynanoir, Cuvaernei, Drydana, and others.
"What does this mean?" she asked.
"If I had to guess," said Frellyx, "though the daggers let you select previous points of connection, travelers can also name a new destination, even writing them in chalk when none exist."
"So the names on the wall—they're just like carriage timetables? Travelers' graffiti?"
"No, more like points of focus. But a clear mind may not need them. And to answer your question, I used this"--here he indicated Khyte's dagger--"upon our arrival, to move the other end of the Doorway to a different city."
"Which one?"
"Wywynanoir, of course. We're agreed that the hospitality city's the safest location for the students--so long as you play the tourist also, and swear to avoid the wedding."
Eurilda was so intent on Doorway, dagger, and letter that she had forgotten the baggage Otoka entrusted to her care. Not that she had ever felt anything for Jyantu or the other dead students, but clinging to this duty to prove her devotion to the dying sorcerer had put her feelings in a state of contradiction. Though she fervently desired him to live, she hoped he would never learn that of twenty apprentices, nine were dead or captured by the assassins and the survivors had witnessed the murder of their peers. It was doubtful that her master would consider this to be diligent care. If he died, she would grieve, but be spared the shame of failing Otoka.
As far as she was concerned, they got better than they deserved, and she would have been happy to share that opinion with her master if there was a way of doing so and winning his approval. She supposed she should thank them, for their resentment was the fertile ground in which she thrived; when they called her teacher's pet, she responded by becoming bookish, and mastering her shape and size-changing spells; when they carped of her choice errands, she turned it into food for crowing, and in these brags of soaring to other worlds and dallying with a handsome human, she liked the character she became in these stories better than the one in the mirror. When she could tell no difference between the hero of her tales and her self-image, she returned from Khyte's quest for The Blood Shield, an adventure in which she less assisted than admired, advised, and criticized, to find herself ostracized by her peers, and only her diary would receive the story.
Though these vengeful feelings did not trigger the geas, if she allowed them to lead to gloating, it would no longer be silent. Hoping more to protect herself from its whip-crack than to mollify the survivors, she walked to each of them, learned their names, and pretended to listen to their sorrows before returning to Frellyx.
"I can see why you thought this would interest Uenarak," said the giantess, surveying the lush, green oasis crammed with ponderously tall pondira. As other oases drifted by in the Abyss, their scudding shadows mingled with the shade of the looming trees."Why not keep this Doorway a secret for Alfyria?"
"Though Alfyria has traded its brutal history for decadent luxury, the acquisition of the Doorways would remind them they are tyrants. Which is not to say that before they exploited the Doorways to colonize a new Alfyrian Empire, even they might see the wisdom in throwing this bone to the 17,000 potential cannibals on Uenarak."
"The state of our city is so grim that it's more than potential."
"This mathematical problem has a grisly solution: each giant needs 300 pounds of food a day, and with 17,000 giants, that means five million pounds of food a day. Not only has that little problem kept you contained on the island of Uenarak—for if you double your population, where do you get another five million pounds of food daily—it has also taught you the ghoulish and gruesome habit of eating your dead—at your size, you can't look a gift of four tons of meat in the mouth, no matter where it comes from..."
Eurilda cut him off. "Do all elves know our secrets, or do I talk in my sleep?"
"Though I had not set foot on Nymerea for twenty years before today, I have traveled there eighty times in the last five centuries. I may have taught your ancestors selective breeding to grow fruits and vegetables four times the size, as well as hinted at fish farms and cultivating sea vegetables."
"Choosing not to cultivate us then may have staved off war now. We learned your lessons so well that our swollen population hungers for more than our crops provide, and militants counsel not restraint, but to subsidize our growth by exploiting the food value of neighbor worlds. Our generals call this The Greater Good."
"As I said, throwing you a bone may alleviate these pressures--not only hunger for food, but the giants' craving for space, which either conceals or feeds a lust for empire. If Uenarak claimed these islands, you could squeeze enough produce for a few thousand giants, and transport it by Doorway. Not only is it a quick fix, but in the long term, farming arable oases may be the key to your development."
"There's only one problem," said Eurilda.
"Really," said Frellyx. "Enlighten me." Though not phrased as a question, the elf's grudging curiosity was a petty victory to the giantess.
"Remember the Baugn? Someone else uses this Doorway, someone with plans for this oasis. Whatever happened to the Baugn?"
"Though you may be happy that it recovered, that droopy beast seemed to sulk as it limped into the Abyss."
"It's one of us." Eurilda laughed. It was the first healthy laugh she'd had in years, certainly her most sincere since the geas. "Let's get the students a hot meal and a comfortable bed before they mope away on dark wings." When the joke left her lips, she realized her affections were nesting on the elf as well, not through a deepening of her own heart, but through the Alfyrian's aloof charm. She could see how Frellyx beguiled Khyte into believing themselves the best of friends. Arrogant, yes; egotistical, yes; but charming, a good listener, and in his perfect, well-reasoned responses, like a book with muscles and feet. When the giantess recognized she fancied her first like of Frellyx more than her first love of Khyte, she regretted the beastly lengths to which she'd pursued her passion. Wasn't she better than a mere hankering, a bitch's kennel love? Shouldn't she rather pursue this much more flattering match, that not only agreed with her in intellect and in contempt, but whose appetite for knowledge and experience might dwarf her own? If she had met Frellyx before Khyte, Eurilda would have had no reason to travel to Kreona, Merculo would have tortured Inglefras until Nahure was overrun by Tree-Women, and this thickening hybrid would never have been conceived.
When Eurilda's thoughts went to that forbidden place, Eurilda winced, then took comfort in the cruel pangs, for if the geas yet lived, so did Otoka. The sting of discomfort also popped her illusions, so that she looked at Frellyx with renewed disinterest, or rather, looked through him, both her craving for revenge and the potent arousal of her lust inflamed by the knowledge of who lay on the other side of the Doorway.
Not for the first time, Eurilda wondered why the geas did not mediate these dark passions; since they were not too subtle for its magic to detect, perhaps the delicate filaments of the geas triggered these feelings to serve its purpose.
"There are two hospitality cities, you know. We could go to the other one," said Frellyx.
"Ssyrnas is so dull that even you couldn't remember its name. And even if I never wanted to see Khyte, he will not escape my words."
"Wywynanoir it is," said Frellyx. "Shouldn't everyone adjust their size first?"
"Good point," said Eurilda, dismissed Frellyx's enlargement with a nod, then turned to the apprentices. "Since this was a terrible day, this won't be a graded activity, but you must cast your diminishment spells before entering the Doorway."
When they passed through the Doorway into Wywynanoir's catacombs, Eurilda's ears rung with staggering echoes; though they arrived just before the sound that caused it, the reverberations were so deafening that a god must have dropped a world to shatter like a plate.
When she clapped her hands to her ears, she heard the labor of her own breath, gasping in the stale air through a nose wrinkled from dust falling in gray streams from the shaking ceiling. Her eyes burned on the smoky smell of the drifting dust,
"You should have picked Ssyrnas," said Frellyx. His voice warbled in the ringing room, and his cough went in her pounding skull like a nail. "That doesn't sound good."
"It might be nothing," said Eurilda.
"It might be thunder, earthquake, or Nahurian blasting powder. Should we choose another destination?" When he hacked again, the cough spread to the students.
"Otoka needs dryad medicine or dryad song."
"But what of Ssy..."
"Don't say it! Shhh!" she said. The geas could not read minds, but piggybacked on the five senses from its seat in the spine. That component was not unlike an annoying younger sibling reporting what it eavesdropped to the coercive faculty. The up side was that cultivating uncertainty gave Eurilda leeway for disobedience, as ambiguity was not communicated to the geas. So long as Wywynanoir's safety was indeterminate, the spell would not compel her departure.
"Very well," said Frellyx. "But would it not be prudent for the students to wait on the Oasis?"
"Why?" said Eurilda. "This is only a storm. Wounds must be treated, and we want a bed and a hot meal." Though half the students grumbled in the affirmative, the other half abstained, perhaps still feeling the bewildering horror of their bloody day.
As it became apparent that the students knew the route to Wywynanoir, Eurilda lagged back. When Frellyx stayed in the vanguard, and her hope for intelligent conversation was stymied, memories of Khyte bubbled up from the excitation of her reluctant lover being not a world away, but only a mile. She used the long, steeply sloping walk, and occasional climb, to contemplate whether her goal was confiscation of the stolen love, or closure—and if the latter, would she pursue the low road of jealousy and vengeance, or the high road of forgiveness and friendship? If you asked in her first bouts of morning sickness, Eurilda might have bitten your head off, not figuratively, but literally. But she was reminded of her former pride of possession, of owning Khyte body and mind, a prize of such worthiness that it spilled over into other kindnesses. The thought of holding Khyte inspired Eurilda with such a magnanimous thrill that she imagined releasing the half-strangled Inglefras. She laughed. That daydream was too charitable to be anything but fiction.
Having exited through the dried husk of a tree, they regrouped outside the knothole.
"Why a tree?" Eurilda asked Frellyx. "Other catacombs have passages through buildings, ruins, parks, or graveyards."
"This tree is not only a monument but a grave marker; it is the corpse of the dryad that built Wywynanoir, Glesingren."
"I'm not one to judge," said Eurilda, "but is this traditional? Don't they burn or bury their dead to spare the living?"
"No. Not only do Dryads believe death is not the end, but that the dead dwell on Ielnarona so long as their trees stand. Only when a tree falls does a dryad soul pass into eternity."
The sky flashed, then groaned with the sound of cracking stone, and a cloud of dust burst from the city skyline. Smoke rolled up the struck tower and fire climbed its walls. The next resounding flare illuminated a dryad army teeming nearly all the way from Wywynanoir to their promontory. To Eurilda, it seemed an endless swarm that could swallow all the giants in Uenarak.
While Eurilda was impressed by the spectacle, she disdained the Tree-Mothers for playing at war with their own substance. If Tree-Women were not people, their gestation was a lengthy investment that embodied dryads' ancient minds in not only a voice but a vessel through which they lived and traveled The Five Worlds. If they were automata, they were automata of desire, and if these responses did not clothe full-fledged thoughts, the feelings they represented should be respected, like a novel beloved by its author. Not that Eurilda respected dryads. She seethed watching the vegetal creatures, regarding them as an insidious equivocation standing in for the slow-living tree that could never interact with flesh and blood; not only were their replies germinated years before, but your words would not be heard by their parent mind for years—and if mischance befell the seed that heard you, your conversation was in vain, recorded but never read by a mind. Essentially, the Tree-Motherss were using neglected, breakable toys to play house with the people that visited their world. It was a joke told by flowers. Though this war game was only another kind of pretending, like real war it spoke to the heartlessness and ennui of dryads.
Even more potent than her contempt for dryads, her wonder at a war waged by nonentities, or her shape-changing feelings for Khyte, was the geas that aligned Eurilda to the needle of Otoka's moral compass. Doubt would no longer shield her will against the spell. "This is no safe haven. We must return to the Doorway and pick another destination."
When the exhausted, despondent students turned back for the Doorway, she did not pity them, but she felt foolish, as the Alfyrian had been right. They should have gone to Ssyrnas. They wasted over an hour in their climb from the catacomb because the giantess hoped to see Khyte. "At least this postpones the wedding." She laughed.
"I doubt it," countered Frellyx. "Since Inglefras declared her love for my weak-willed friend, they've been at war. At first, it was merely what passes for it here—one Tree-Mother asserting their idea over a rival's by force of seed. Now that their alliance of like-minded dryads has made Wywynanoir their political center, the conflict resembles the civil wars of the Human World, where politics are the thrust of spears and swords. Inglefras and Khyte knew announcing their wedding would invite a challenge."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"While I might have spoken when Otoka took me captive, when your stricken master needed dryad medicine only found in Wywynanoir, when we battled assassins, or fled more assassins, we have only now been at leisure. Opportunity is always fleeting," he continued, without a trace of irony. "I have also hoped to enter Wywynanoir during a lull in the battle, but Khyte anticipates the return of his best man."
"No, no, no." Eurilda shook her head. "Though I flatter your great mind with many questions, I will not accept this ridiculous story. Instead of showing off your acumen about giants' stomachs, your ancient contributions to our culture, or the secret history of Glesingren, you might have changed the subject, and told me then. No, you wanted me here."
Frellyx looked at her carefully. After a long pause, he said, "Khyte asked me to suss you out."
"Why?"
"To determine whether your heart has changed."
"Why?" Eurilda's heart skipped. "What do you think?"
"That is the whole point. Though our friend may have second thoughts about his wedding, he is loath to abandon her and incur her vengeance, for Tree-Women range further than a giant's reach."
"Why seek me out?"
"Khyte would prefer a kidnapping to any willful defection which might suggest to his warlike, territorial betrothed a new target—either one of the few friends he has left, or his home tribe of Drydana."
Though Eurilda bit her lip to suppress the broad smile lurking behind the tiny one she permitted, Frellyx seemed to note her smile-wrestling. "To overcome not only Khyte's reluctance to forgive you, but my own disapproval, I observed your ways rigorously."
"Did I pass?"
"There is no urgency to render my decision when Khyte is snug in besieged Wywynanoir."
"If this conflict has not embroiled Ssyrnas, we can lodge the students, seek treatment for Otoka, then extract Khyte from Inglefras."
"Though we each see Khyte as a noble forest to preserve, his forethought was long ago hunted to extinction by swarming reaction and teeming afterthought, and his second thoughts might have already flip-flopped to dog a new whim. For now, our conspiracy is only that you reassure me of your intentions for my friend. Though Khyte is whimsy by nature, you must weave a surer web than the spider."
"That's not fair."
"Since Khyte is my friend, and you are not, I am pleased when he is himself and you are harmless."
On the way back to Glesingren, twigs, branches, and boughs were snapped off at tree joints low and high, fresh wounds in green wood leaking the sweet scent of sap and aromatic bark. "What did this?" asked Eurilda.
"No good thing," said Frellyx, "but a huge thing. Many Ielnaronan behemoths dwarf the monstrosities of your world."
"And if one was a Tree-Mother, dryad warriors will come."
"That too."
"Move faster," Eurilda commanded. If Frellyx's speculations frightened the students, to their credit they didn't show it, nor did they bother looking for the monster in the darkening dryad wood, which had trunks wider than prides of elephants and leafy canopies that could swallow flights of dragons.
Though they weren't following the monster, their breathless jog eerily matched its tracks no matter which direction they veered, and they arrived to see Glesingren's centuries-long sojourn was finally over in the canonical sense, as the dead lumber that might have housed a spirit, and definitely housed the Doorway, was pulverized into countless shards, not only a thick mat of splinters around its trunk, but scattered piles of kindling, as if something destroyed the colossal dryad with methodical intent and mulched the remains.
When Frellyx's eyes lingered on a fragment, and rather than investigating it, he turned away, Eurilda stepped over, brushed aside debris, and picked up a wooden message tube. Without the Alfyrian's telltale glance, Eurilda would have overlooked what looked like nothing more than an unusually smooth log. Though curious of the contents, she was warier of why the elf avoided it—or had he hoped not to divert, but to direct, Eurilda's attention?
The ground grumbled, the smaller trees shook, and even the mighty Tree-Mothers quivered, when nine giants stepped from their hiding places in the grove around Glesingren's shattered lumber. Red embroidery patterned their black robes after the illuminated Abyss, so that it seemed a spectral reflection of the Abyssal day that filtered through the treetops.
One pointed an iron-banded, red-painted staff. "Speak no spells, or die slowly." While he had the same face as the sorcerer that pursued them, the horror of this recognition was doubled when Jyantu's head swayed from a coarse braid in his long, tangled beard.
"Run!" shouted Eurilda. When two students dismissed their diminishment spells to have the advantage of their giant gait, the copious vegetation impeded their escape, and they were run down by the assassins. Those that kept their borrowed Alfyrian stature ducked the branches, skirted the trunks and shrubs, and ran and ran until Eurilda's bursting heart seemed about to leap out of her mouth. When the underbrush broke way into a large clearing, the apprentices rushed down a dirt path toward far-off and besieged Wywynanoir. Eurilda's warning died in a gasp, though the whisper cost her much effort, and Frellyx pulled her into a knothole in the half-exposed roots of a titanic white-barked tree.
The giants laughed, and their shadows darkened the clearing. Having only taken a few dozen strides compared to the apprentices' hundreds, they were fresh enough to bellow uninspired taunts, like "Stupid grubs!" and "Dead meat!"
"The worms want a race! Give them one!" When the sorceror pointed his staff, a blue bolt set aflame the grasses bordering the road, so that the children could not escape into the woods. The other giants dashed towards them.
Able to resist the geas no longer, Eurilda elbowed Frellyx in the ribs and sprinted from the knot-hole, shooting to giant size and drawing her sword in one fluid motion, so that it seemed she wrenched a fourteen foot blade from a three foot scabbard. A looming shadow in her peripheral vision, blaring trumpets, and Frellyx's shout were drowned out by the prick of the geas and her own adrenaline. When the sorcerer's descending staff met the upswing of Eurilda's sword, the force of her charge flung him into the flames.
Though fire clung to his robe and charred Jyantu's dangling head, the unsinged sorcerer only hissed, and when gathering flame heated the iron-banded staff white hot, he swung it like a meteor at Eurilda—but was bowled over by the charge of kiuvathi-mounted dryad cavalry, when the sorcerer proved not to be immune to hooves and lances.
While most find the headless animals of the dryad world unnerving, the six-limbd Kiuvathi are the most fearsome beast domesticated by dryads, as the behemoths stand nearly twice the height of a Tree-Woman, and have an enormous under-maw ringed with three rows of teeth. While they weigh a little less than a giant, the immensely strong hexapods could drag five times their weight.
When the assassins turned to receive the charge of a dozen armored Tree-Women mounted on the enormous, acephalous steeds, a piercing cry signaled a tremendous blast from a wooden structure on the back of a kiuvathi. Three giants fell stone dead—two with gaping holes in their chests, and one split into two smoking pieces. The other giants were blasted back by the charging kiuvathi, trampled, and gored by lances.
Though Eurilda was no stranger to one-sided combats, this was usually due to an insurmountable difference in skill, such as that demonstrated by Khyte or Frellyx, and this was her first eyeful of a marked advantage plied artlessly with superior firepower. No, she corrected herself; it was the second, as the assassins had harried and harassed them due to a similar discrepancy in armaments. But though these fearsome assassins had dogged their steps and halved the students' number, they were dispatched in seconds by the dryads, and Eurilda was duly impressed.
Eurilda realized she was being addressed by one of the riders. The Tree-Woman smiled woodenly, pointed her lance at the ground in a peaceful gesture, and said, "if you drop your sword, they will let go." For as Eurilda reeled from the shock of battle, two mounted dryads had hooked their barbed spear points in her robe, so that the giantess could be quickly pulled to the ground—and dragged for yards by the kiuvathi.
Eurilda dropped her sword. "Thank you. In saving us, you earned the goodwill of Otoka the Wise."
"And one Alfyrian," said Frellyx.
"Do not thank me yet," said the Tree-Woman, "as you must answer for your presence here to our Councilor Generals. Leitara, Cugtaru, take her sword."
"Though we are happy to answer any questions, we are also exhausted, hungry, and thirsty, and surviving assassination has made us so nervous that our statements will seem lies to your Councilor-Generals."
"I am so sorry that you have suffered, that on my authority, you will enjoy a meal before you are questioned. Moreover, though someone must answer, the remainder might rest."
Eurilda smoldered. She did not like the thought of sacrificing five minutes of sleep for the sake of her peers, but the geas already made it law. "I will answer."
"Then walk next to me, giantess. I would hear of your ordeal."
"I am called Eurilda."
"You may call me Gitala."
After the captain satisifed her curiosity of everything that befell them, she asked about Uenarak, the lives of giants, and Eurilda's day to day life as an apprentice sorcerer. In turn, the giantess learned there were doctors and medicine-makers among the besieging troops--good news not only for Otoka, but for several wounded apprentices, including one the giants left for dead that the dryads found only half-dead and bore back on kiuvathi. Not only was Eurilda not gladdened by the saved life, but in realizing that Otoka's cure would be soon followed by his understanding that only ten apprentices remained of twenty, she so feared the sorcerer's opinion, that she dwelt only on this, not her upcoming interrogation by the toy generals.
Eurilda also learned of the fearsome weapon that slew three giants with one volley. The cwamtu's wooden tube used chemical vapors from Nahurian blasting powder to propel hardened clay with the force of large stones, that then fragmented into devastating shards and frightening injuries. According to The Kertanian Histories, the goblins outlawed similar weapons more than a century ago. Though the Nahurians crafted theirs from metal, the principle was the same.
The skies turned from the Abyss toward blackness by the time they arrived at the encroaching army, which camped in deep darkness.
"They know they're under siege, so why are you hiding?" Eurilda asked.
"Unlike the armies of other Worlds, dryads are not on friendly terms with fire." Leitara then turned to another Tree-Woman. "Bacarte, gather fresh food for our guests." The dryad salute was strange, with both hands flanking and turned towards the face. Bacarte then turned, and in a quick burst of dryad language, formed a detail, then left.
"That isn't necessary. We're hungry enough to eat your leftovers."
"If we bring no food, there will be none for you." At Eurilda's look of surprise, Leitara continued. "Tree-Women eat so infrequently that we have no mess hall in our camps. If this siege drags on, we may schedule a meal next week."
Bacarte returned with four lidded, woven baskets. While they ate the uncooked greens, root vegetables, tree nuts, and fruit, a kiuvathi was slain in front of them, salted, and served raw. Though some students were hungry enough to taste the slimy, stringy, and bitter meat, most left theirs untouched.
"I know it is not your way," Eurilda said, "but could we build a fire? Some of us cannot stomach raw vegetables and roots, let alone uncooked animal flesh."
"Our scholars write that this is healthy even for your animal bodies, and that you slay yourselves slowly with your cook fires. But if you insist, I will summon fallen wood so that you may build your accursed flame." With a show of brave reluctance, Leitara issued the order, but before the fallen wood was brought, Gitala returned for Eurilda.
After Frellyx's fire spell lit the dry wood, they roasted the kiuvathi. Though Eurilda's appetite was barely slaked by the syrupy root vegetables, her thirst wasn't quenched, and the savory smell of kiuvathi crackling dripping into the fire made Eurilda's mouth water, at Leitara's signal, she sighed and followed.