The Margrave

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I think you should confide this fear to your master, the tree said gently.

Raffi gave a sour laugh. “No point.”

He is, I admit, difficult to approach. A small sparkbird, brilliantly red, fluttered among the branches; the tree rustled thoughtfully over Raffi’s head. If he was one of my kind, he would be holly. Or dark firethorn that grows in the chasm of Zeail. Such a one is Galen.

Raffi nodded. He lay on his back in the dappled green light, eyes closed against the sun. The tree was a birch; young, and very curious.

Tell me where it takes you, this Deep Journey.

“It’s a vision.” Raffi sat up and gazed out hopelessly into the depths of the warm spring woodland. “It happens in your mind. The Litany says there are different “ stages—the Cosmic Tree, the Plain of Hunger.”

Hunger is a sensation?

“Emptiness. No food.”

Indeed. The tree sounded fascinated. Our roots are always storing. Rootless creatures, it seems to me, are most vulnerable. The Makers were wise, but sometimes we feel you were something of a failed experiment.

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