"Seventeen trees in all, and not one of them is normal."
The wedge-shaped wood chips lay scattered around the fire, taken from different places and different kinds of trees, and all of varying sizes. The only thing they had in common was the same mottled discoloration eating its way from the inside out. Kraft kicked them into the bonfire one by one. The undried wood crackled as it burned, then quickly blackened. The spongy, discolored patches shrank and curled unnaturally, releasing foul-smelling steam that mingled with the swelling clouds of smoke.
Anyone with a decent imagination saw the diseased wood chips and instinctively looked up. Yet the sunlight, unusually plentiful here, sent a chill through those gazing into the canopy—a chill that seemed to come from somewhere beyond the body.
The branches here were sparser than elsewhere in the forest, letting extra sunlight reach the ground. But that light had not encouraged more low-growing plants to flourish. On the contrary, shrubs and weeds were especially scarce, and even those that survived tended to look limp and stunted, creating an oddly flat, open landscape.
Martin drew his sword and chopped at a clump of mushrooms sprouting beside a tree root, slicing their caps and the wood beneath them in two. Only then did he realize the tender growths weren't growing on the hard surface of the wood. They were rooted in a section of root that had been almost hollowed out, with fine strands intertwined with the wood fibers and pointing underground.
"Dig down," he ordered a Squire holding a shovel.
The spade bit into the soil and turned up roots hidden beneath the surface. No washing was needed to reveal the mottled, clinging web of filaments covering them. The branches, which should have been tough, snapped with ease under the