Chapter 3Tarin wasn’t sure how long it took for the fog to lift—it could have been five minutes or fifty for all he knew—but when the fog did leave, it vanished as quickly as it had fallen.
The forest seemed to have thinned out a little, retreating away from the road. He shook his head. That wasn’t possible. According to the maps he’d studied before leaving on the trip, the forest remained thick right along the road that passed through it. Must be just an optical illusion caused by the fog and the twilight.
He frowned at the odd grouping of trees to his left. They weren’t kauri trees like the rest of the forest, no, they were rata, and their red flowers had bloomed more than two months early. That’s not normal. On his right stood a lone skeletal tree which inexplicably gave Tarin the shi
