Three-leg speed turned out to mean two days.
They slept the first night under a rock overhang. Ren fed Kaelen smoked boar from her inventory every time they stopped, and every time she checked, his eyes were gold. The last of the boar went on the second morning. By the second afternoon, the pines had given way to stunted, waterlogged trees, and the air smelled like rotten eggs.
Ren stopped at the top of the slope.
Below them, a wide strip of black mud ran between the grass and the water. The mud was moving.
"No," Ren said.
"Yes," Kael said.
The worms were out in force. Fat, pink, and glistening, they churned through the muck in a slow, writhing carpet that went all the way to the waterline.
Then Ren saw what was sitting at the end of it.
A long, flat-bottomed boat was nosed into the mud at the water's edge. A crude paddle lay across the floorboards, with strips of bark still clinging to the handle.
It was the boat Vex had rowed her back in. Nobody had come for it.
