from Chapter One

Kas’SaDe knelt down in the thick spongy moss of the forest floor. No discernable path lay before or behind her but she knew the way to go. ToByan was home. She knew the life and routine of the forest as surely as she knew herself even if she had never ventured this far before now. She knew dozens of safe plants and insects to eat, the restorative uses of tera seeds and how to overcome jaglars. She knew all the frog songs and what they foretold. She knew the smell of imminent rain. But she had never, even when deep in the haunts of jaglars, known the experience of being hunted.
The uncomfortable sensation of vulnerability had clung to her for more than an hour now, growing progressively in strength. Goosebumps rose across her arms, the muscles in the back of her neck contracted tightly and every sense tingled with heightened awareness.

As she had done repeatedly throughout the past two days of her journey, she waited, crouched in the tricky shadows of ToByan. One hand rested on the woven pouch belted to her side. She listened. Tiny flies buzzed over her lips and nose but she kept still. Only her eyes moved, scanning slowly through the dappled patterns of light in moss, brush and tree. Vy toads wooed each other in the canopy above and vy irises saturated the air with pungent spice. A bramble snake slithered across the ground within arm’s reach. She made a note of its movement to her left as it circled a large boulder and vanished into the thorny entanglement of bramble tress behind. Nothing else moved over the ground. All was as it should be, indeed as it had been for the past two days, but Kas could not shake her unease.
The hand over the woven pouch tightened subconsciously.
So much trouble for a simple letter!

Kas didn’t need to pull it out of the carrier pouch to picture it clearly before her. The gravity with which the letter was entrusted to her had sealed its image in her mind. A small white square sealed with dark red wax on the front and addressed with a single name in black flowing calligraphy on the back. Besides brief initial direction, that name was all Kas had to guide her. It was unfamiliar to her and her tongue stumbled over the strange pronunciation:
Ùghdair.