“I can’t imagine anything can live out here. Can’t you feel it?” Yulenna shivers. “It feels like this part of the world is a dead branch on a tree.”

That’s a pretty apt description. It does feel like that…like a dead area that needs to be pruned away and instead just lingers on. No, it feels creepier than that. It’s like a dead arm that’s rotting and infecting the rest of the body. I shudder.

I pat the woale’s nose and put his feed-bag on him since he seems anxious. The woales always seem to calm down on a full stomach. Hell, maybe I should try that theory myself. I’m getting nervous just looking around at this place, at the ominous tower in the distance, the equally ominous gray lake that seems to have no end to it.

“I guess we should have a look around,” I say to Yulenna. “I’ll feel better doing something instead of just sitting here.”

Yulenna hesitates. I notice she shies away from the water itself, and her face is pale.

“What?” I ask. “What is it?”

“I was talking to Vitar,” she murmurs.

Oh boy. Fucking Vitar. The man says nothing for weeks and then the moment we cross the mountains, he’s the herald of doom and gloom. “What now?”

“He says there are legends of guardians.” She bites her lip.

“What kind of guardians?”

“Not good ones.” When I give her an impatient gesture, she hesitates and then moves closer to me. “Guardians in the lake that prevent those that are unworthy from crossing.”

“Like…sea monsters?”

She shrugs. “Vitar says no one has ever returned to tell of it.”

I consider this, staring out at the water. If anything was full of sea monsters, I don’t know if this cesspool would be it. “Monsters have to eat, right?” I gesture at the gray, still waters. “What could a monster that lived here possibly eat?”

“Travelers,” Yulenna says immediately.

She’s not helping. “No, really. We’re the only ones that have come this way for a while, according to the Novoro keep. So what would it survive on?”

“What if it’s magic? What if it doesn’t need to eat anything other than intruders?”

I put my hands on my hips. “Then it won’t eat us, because Aron’s a god. If the gods in that tower are the fates, they know why he’s coming here. Right? So they won’t send their guardians out to eat him.”

I hope.

Yulenna looks like she wants to argue, but her face goes chalk white. She stares at something over my shoulder, frozen.

Ugh. I close my eyes, not wanting to look, but I force myself to turn around. There, floating in the water, heading towards us in a gentle drift, is a raft. It moves towards us with barely a ripple, and the hair on the back of my neck prickles, because there’s no breeze, no tide, no nothing that could be propelling it.

“Is that what I think it is?” I whisper to Yulenna.

“It’s a raft.”

I know it’s a raft. Of course it’s a raft. It also looks like no raft I’ve ever seen before. It’s flat, sure, and it floats atop the water, but it’s round instead of square, and it’s made entirely of some white, ropy material I don’t recognize. It continues to drift in our direction and then stops just before where I stand.

Creepy invitation or coincidence?

Aron jogs over to where we stand, his gaze on the raft. “I see we are expected.”

I point at the raft. “You expected this?”

“Of course.” He arches a brow at me. “They knew I was coming.”

More arrogance. I shake my head, crossing my arms over my chest. “Is this safe?”

“Is anything?” Aron gives me an impatient look.

Someday I’ll learn to stop asking him questions.

We tether the woales together, tying the lead to an outcropping of rock. Once they’re set with their food bags, they calm down and ignore us, content to eat. The men arm themselves and carry light packs—all except Aron, who watches them with a lofty expression on his face.

Vitar steps onto the raft first. It dips into the water around his feet, but doesn’t flood, and reminds me of a blanket somehow floating atop the surface. How is that going to hold us? All of us? But I look at Aron and he nods. Vitar holds his hand out to Yulenna, who quickly joins him, looking down in wonder. “It is like stepping atop a cloud,” she calls out to me.

“Goody. I can’t wait.” I watch as the other soldiers step on, Kerren and Markos holding tent poles for some reason.

Then it’s my turn, and Solat—the last one on the raft—holds his hand out to me. Aron growls, and I see Solat blanch.

I slap Aron’s arm. “Stop it already. He’s the one closest to the edge. Everyone knows I belong to you.” I take Solat’s hand and step onto the “raft.” It’s like Yulenna said—it feels spongy but solid. A cloud on the water.

Aron is the last one on and he pulls me close the moment he steps away from the shore. Then, we’re all on the raft, standing around and looking at each other. Slowly, it begins to inch toward the far end of the lake, where the distant pale tower is now ringed by a low-hanging cloud.

Vitar sticks his pole in the water and grunts. “It’s not deep.” He pushes against the pole and we surge forward. Markos does the same, and then we’re moving at a decent rate as they push us forward, stroke by stroke. I notice the poles sinking deeper into the water the farther we move out, but so far, they’re still able to hit the bottom.

We’re close to halfway when something ripples under the raft.

Markos frowns at his pole, stabbing a little harder toward the bottom. “I thought I felt something.”

“In the legends, there is always a test before speaking to the gods,” Vitar tells us solemnly. “Perhaps we are about to be tested.”

Aron blows out an impatient breath. “You are speaking to me, aren’t you? I am a god. Nothing here is being tested but my patience.”

“Oooh, burn,” I whisper.

The others look worried. I notice that Kerren and Solat exchange looks from behind us, and I worry. Are they right? Is this a test?

Vitar pushes his pole deep into the water, silent, then shakes his head. “I don’t mean to be rude, my lord of storms, but you were exiled. They live here. That is different. They could have guardians—”

His pole gives a jerk, and there’s just enough time to see the surprised look on Vitar’s face before it surges forward and sucks him into the water.

The raft ripples in response.

Yulenna screams.

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58

“Vitar!” Solat yells, even as he surges forward. Then, Kerren and Markos pull their swords, Markos’s pole slipping into the water.

I lean over and reach for it, because we need oars. I do it without thinking, and just as I grab the end of the pole, I see something pale and snakelike slither under the raft. It pushes up against the center of the raft, and the entire thing capsizes underneath us.

A moment later, I hit the water, and it shocks the breath out of me with how cold it is. It feels wrong, too, thick and heavy, and I claw at my surroundings, trying to find the surface. I’m utterly terrified, my mind full of anacondas and crocodiles and whatever else this world can cook up that will eat us. I can’t breathe, either. I can’t find the surface, and I swivel helplessly in the murky depths, looking for light.

There’s a bright spot below me, and I realize I’m flipped upside down. I turn over in the water, then surge toward the light. I hit the surface and cough, gasping and choking as I suck in lungfuls of air. Confused, disoriented, I squint, wiping water from my eyes. My traveling robes are heavy and with water soaking them, I’m dangerously close to being pulled under again. It’s cold as hell, and my teeth chatter.