Chapter 181: Roots and Droots?
Black Moon Town,
The village center,
Nazu's POV,
The stone mortar-pits had been pounding since the first light of dawn. A dozen clan-women leaned over the hollowed rock in a loose half-circle, the heavy, rhythmic thud-thud-thud of thick wood pestles against fiber settling into a bone-deep pulse that sounded almost musical if your ears stayed tuned to the camp's rhythm long enough.
I watched the mash thicken in Gilgar's stone bowl—pale greenish-blue, faintly luminous, throwing off that sharp, nose-stinging reek of crushed spirit-root that clings to leather and wool for weeks no matter how many times you scrub your gear in the river.
The node ritual our Chieftain needed would demand massive cauldrons of the stuff before the elven instructions from Falhil were satisfied.
Cauldrons meant hands, and hands meant gathering almost every female the Blackmoon clan could currently spare from the skinning racks and the iron forges.
