"Rainspot, sit in the middle and wish for rain," said Wingover. Rainspot complied, and the water was captured by the improvised funnel and led to the waiting bucket. Rainspot sat on the soggy blanket, soaked and bedraggled, wishing over and over for rain.
"I wish for rain." The cloud formed and sprinkled him. "Wish for rain." Water ran in the bucket. The gnomes changed buckets and filled it, too. "Rain," said the sodden, tired gnome. Poor Rainspot didn't enjoy it at all, but he wished for plenty of water to save them from the agonies of thirst. "Happy to do my part," he said flatly when they finally let him off the blanket, squishing in his shoes all the way.
"I wonder who will get it next," Wingover said as they plodded into the first gully.
"Get what?" said Bellcrank.
"We seem to be acquiring new powers," Sighter said. "Kitiara's strength, Rainspot's rainmaking. The rest of us may get new abilities, too."
Sturm pondered Sighter's claim. His dream (if it was a dream) had been so vivid. Was it part of this mysterious process, too? He asked Sighter if he could think of a reason why they should be affected like this.
"Hard to say," said the gnome. "Likely, there is something on Lunitari that has done this to them."
"It's the air," said Bellcrank. "Some effluvium in the air."
"Piffle! It's all due to the red rays reflecting off the ground. Red light always has strange effects on living creatures. Remember the experiments done by The-Clumsy-ButCurious-Doctor-Who-Wears-The-Tinted-Lenses-InFrames-On-His-Face — "
"Hush!" said Kitiara. She held up a hand. The others watched expectantly. "Do you feel it, Rainspot?" she asked.
"Yes, ma'am. The sun's coming up."
A brace of shooting stars raced across the heavens from west to east. The crests of the red hills glowed, and a subtle ringing sensation filled the air. They all felt it. The line of sunlight crept down the hillsides toward the shadowed ravines. As the explorers watched, the soft, spongy covering of the hills writhed. Bumps appeared in the turf. The bumps moved in an unpleasantly animal fashion, twisting and swelling under the crimson carpet. The explorers had to hop about to avoid the moving bumps. Then a single spear of pale pink poked through the turf. It grew longer and thicker, rotating in slow circles as it pushed itself toward the sunlight.
"What is it?" breathed Fitter.
"I think it's a plant," Cutwood replied. More pink spears bored through the ground and climbed on wine-colored stalks. Other bumps erupted into different types of flora. Fat, knobby puffballs sprang up and inflated themselves. Carmine sticks popped after growing straight out of the turf, and dozens of spiderlike flowers floated to the ground from their ruptured stems. Toadstools with purple spots on top and lovely rose gills underneath emerged and grew visibly as the explorers looked on. By the time the sun shone fully into the ravine, every inch of the hillsides was covered with weird, pulsating life. Only a narrow track at the bottom of the ravine, still shadowed by the surrounding hills, was clear of the speedily growing plants.
"An instant forest," said Sighter.
"More like an instant jungle," said Sturm, observing the clogged path ahead of them. He drew his sword.
"We'll have to cut our way through." Kitiara drew her sword. "It's an insult to honest steel," she said, eyeing the garish plants with distaste, "but it has to be done."
She raised her arm and slashed into the growth crowding the path on the right. With her greater strength, she had no difficulty hewing the pink spears and spidersticks cleanly off. Kitiara stepped back. The chopped-off parts lay on the ground, wriggling. The stumps oozed red sap that looked amazingly like blood. She noticed her sword was smeared with the same fluid. Holding the blade near her nose, she sniffed. "I've been in many battles," she said. "I know the smell of blood, whether it be human, dwarven, or goblin." She dropped the blade from her face. "This is blood!" The gnomes thought this was terribly interesting. They bunched together over the bleeding stumps, taking samples of the bloodsap. Bellcrank picked up the shorn length of a spiderstick. It popped, and eight white flowers burst out. Bellcrank yowled in pain. Each tiny flower had ejected a thorn into his face. "Hold still," Rainspot said. With a pair of bone tweezers, he plucked the thorns from his colleague's face. The gnomes filled fifteen jars and boxes with specimens of the Lunitarian plants. Sturm and Kitiara had a head-to-head talk and opted to travel a little farther. If they didn't find any ore by nightfall, they would return to the ship. Steeling themselves, they started hacking. The plants groaned and screamed; when severed, they bled and twitched horribly. After a mile of this, Kitiara said, "This is worse than the massacre of Valkinord Marsh!"
"At least they don't appear to suffer long," Sturm said, but the screams and blood were wearing on him. The gnomes wandered through the path the humans had cut, poking and sniffing and measuring the dying plants. For them it was, as Cutwood said, "better than a train of gears."
The trail led down a broad draw. Being well shaded from the low sun, there were fewer plants growing there, and Sturm called for a break. Kitiara borrowed a bucket from the gnomes' cart and filled it with rainwater. She dipped a soft rag in the water and wiped the sticky bloodsap Erom her blade. The sap dissolved easily. She lent Sturm the rag and he cleaned his weapon.
"You know," she said, as he rubbed the sap off his sword hilt, "I'm no coward, and I'm certainly no delicate lady who faints at the sight of blood, but this place is disgusting! What kind of world is it where plants grow before your eyes and bleed when they're cut?"
"How's your sword arm?" Sturm asked. "How does it feel? I noticed that you're not even breathing hard. Look at me; I'm tired, as you should be, having swung a heavy sword for more than a mile through that weird jungle!"
"I feel fine. I feel — strong. Want to wrestle?"
"No, thank you," he said. "I wouldn't like to trust a broken arm to gnomish medicine."
"I won't hurt you," she said mockingly. Kitiara's smile faded. She scraped a shallow line in the turf with her heel. "What are you so worried about? We're alive, aren't we?"
"There are strange forces at work here. This new strength of yours is not normal."
Kitiara shrugged. "Lunitari isn't my idea of paradise, but we haven't done badly so far."
Sturm knew this was true. So why did he feel such foreboding?
He said, "Just be wary, will you, Kit? Question what comes to you — especially what seems like a great gift."
She laughed shortly. "You make it sound like I'm in personal danger. Are you afraid I'll fall into evil ways?"
Sturm stood and emptied the sap-stained water from the bucket. "That's exactly what I'm afraid of."
He wrung out the rag and left it to dry on a stone, then walked away to speak with Wingover. The empty canvas bucket sat by her boot. Where Sturm had poured out the water, the turf was dark and slick. It looked like so much blood. Kitiara wrinkled her nose and kicked the bucket away. The toe of her boot split the fabric and sent the bucket soaring over the tops of the pink and crimson foliage.
Chapter 11
The trail wound between the hills in no particular direction. Among the fast-growing plants, there was no way for the adventurers to identify landmarks or remember where they'd been. Sturm discovered that the path they had made grew tall again after they had passed. The explorers were virtually cut off in the living jungle. Sturm halted the party finally and announced that they were lost. Sighter promptly tried to find the latitude by shooting the sun with his astrolabe. Even though he stood on Sturm's shoulders, the sun was too low for him to sight correctly, and he fell over backward trying. Fitter and Rainspot picked Sighter up and dusted him off, for he'd fallen on a puffball and was coated with pink spores.