Raven's Ladder by Jeffrey Overstreet

bonestalker in just this fashion. He hadn’t seen one of those headless nighttime predators in years, but then, a bonestalker was hard to see at all. With limbs and body as narrow as sticks, the eyeless, bloodsucking insect wore its bones on the outside—coal black and unbreakable. Its knife-claws skewered prey, and a whiplike tongue drew blood as through a straw. He’d seen a bonestalker climb a man’s leg and kill him, and he swore from that point on that he’d seen the most frightening killer in the Expanse. Now he knew otherwise.
    “The dangers we face out here consume my attention.” He brushed crumbs from his beard. “I cannot bother to worry about unknown obstacles just yet. I want you to tell me how we’re going to fight the menace that drove us from our caves.”
    Scharr ben Fray lowered his voice. “Do you think I came just to say good-bye?” Then he stood and walked to the edge of the fire. He leaned in close, then thrust his hand into the fire, seized the writhing sapling, and cast it to the ground.
    “What are you doing?” the captain exclaimed.
    “Hush!” Scharr ben Fray knelt over the black, burning branch, his head cocked as if listening. Then he leapt to his feet and cast the wood back onto the fire, where it exploded in sparks. He fixed Tabor Jan with a summoning gaze. “Follow me.”
    They moved out through the perimeter of the watchful archers until they came to a crowded grove of coil trees. Scharr ben Fray cast an anxious gaze back toward the camp, eyes filling with firelight as if his skull were a lantern.
    “That was quite a performance,” Tabor Jan scoffed. “Don’t you think the people are jumpy enough?”
    “I’ve been across the Expanse since winter,” said the mage. “I’ve questioned birds, lurkdashers, even fangbears. Few animals remain in the territories we’ve traveled, Tabor Jan. Those that do are quick and good at hiding. They speak of a predator rising from the ground. I’ve learned that the Cent Regus know a great deal, for they grumble about something that they call feelers. Birds call them Deathweeds.”
    “Deathweeds.”
    “I gather they come from the Core of the Cent Regus lair. The arms of some underground creature that spreads like a weed. The curse has cast its net. And now, at last, it’s drawing in its catch. It seizes any living thing, save for those already corrupt with the Cent Regus curse. And they seem linked to a single mind—a single appetite. For the living.”
    “We know they’re afraid of fire.” Tabor Jan stared into the distant red flare.
    “So far, our only weapon. If I could find myself a firewalker, I’d make him our chief agent in resisting such a monster. I had my eye on one, but he got away.”
    “Why did you pull that small tree from the fire?”
    The mage scratched his grizzled chin. “It smelled funny. And there was a sound…a strange sound.”
    “These Deathweeds… I recognize the stench. I smelled it more than once deep beneath Abascar in the Underkeep.”
    Scharr ben Fray nodded. “I am not surprised. I have long suspected that what shook House Abascar to its foundations was more than an earthquake, more than a fire. I believe that the menace either rose up to break the ground apart or else the fire came first and awakened it, setting those powerful limbs to thrashing. Either way, I think the Deathweeds helped bring Abascar down.”
    Tabor Jan had the sickening sensation of being trapped, as if he could feel those wretched roots troubling the ground beneath him. “Are we any safer out here?”
    “I’m not sure,” sighed the mage, looking up into the darkling boughs. “If Deathweeds can burrow through ground, they might corrupt the trees.”
    “If they can break through Abascar’s foundation and shatter the stone of Barnashum.”
    “Barnashum’s stone is soft. Abascar must go north. The mountains of the Fearblind North are made of tougher stuff. They might keep out the curse. Difficult to know. The sooner the