The empty sky over the estate puckered in a vast slow field of ripples, one for every branch, and the branches pushed through.
At the beastkin fire, a thousand miles east, the clouds over the compound rippled in the same rhythm.
"The sky," a cub's voice said somewhere behind the woodpile. "Instructor, the sky is moving."
His daughter began to drink.
The pillar on the horizon went from white-green to white. Heat rolled over the palisade a second time, hard enough to flatten the war-lodge fire sideways and send sparks streaming east across the compound.
Under Quinlan's boots the ground began to hum, a note too low to hear that came up through his heels and sat in his teeth.
Blue script bloomed beside the counter.
[The Eternal Tree is draining the local reserve.]
Whatever held that counter up was drawn from the same well she had her mouth on, and every swallow she took came out of his day.
The counter was moving.
[Domain Protection: 21:40:12]
