The worst arrives. The R’loth send giant beings that look like starfish to obliterate one island after the other, killing millions. The Starfish drive toward the mainland. Avery and Layanna collect samples of Starfish tissue and mean to analyze them, find some weakness of the Starfish.

The band has been picked up by a whaling vessel, and in its medical bay Avery works on Sheridan, saving her life so that Ani will not be a murderer … and maybe for some other  reason, too. Layanna is very suspicious of that other reason and she refuses to sleep with Avery because of it.

Sheridan, once well, betrays them into the hands of pirates, who seize the whaling ship. Pirates have replaced Octung as the R’loth’s power at sea, and the pirate fleet, ruled by Janx’s former boss and old enemy Segrul the Gray, worships the R’loth. The band is brought to Davic, a Collossum and Layanna’s former husband. He attempts to kill them, but they manage to escape, after having seen Sheridan be sent off on an important assignment, something to do with an Atoshan relic. She’d been dispatched to Ghenisa, but for what they don’t know.

They arrive at the mainland to find Prime Minister Denaris at odds with Grand Admiral Haggarty, a puppet of Sheridan’s and an agent of Octung. The Grand Admiral is trying to stage a coup and take over the government. Denaris gives Avery’s band refuge and allows them to set up lab in which they analyze the Starfish samples.

During this time the Voryses make contact with Avery. His late wife Mari was a distant relative of the old ruling family, the Voryses, commonly referred to as the Drakes. Despised and hated, they had been dethroned half a century ago and their members killed or driven into hiding, like Mari. Ani is a descendant and they want her to rejoin her family, led by a man called Idris, who would be King of Ghenisa like his forefathers. He wants to take power, using the turmoil to his own advantage. Avery refuses the request, but Idris asks him if Ani’s been having strange dreams. Sure enough, she has, and they’ve been bothering both her and Avery. She dreams of singing, and a doorway. Could these dreams be shared by other Voryses, and might they have some insight into what they mean?

Meanwhile the Starfish drive ever closer to the mainland, wiping out one island after another. There is no sign of Sheridan and no news of what her special assignment could have been. Finally Avery and Layanna have a breakthrough in the laboratory. They discover that the nectar of the rare “ghost flower” allows Layanna to establish a psychic link with the Starfish tissue. In theory, if she can ingest enough fresh nectar and can “plug herself” into the brain of one of the giant Starfish, she can send a psychic pulse out to all the Starfish, killing them and saving the world from the wrath of the R’loth.

The hitch is that the ghost flower only grows in the Crothegra Jungle, also known as the Atomic Jungle. A man named Losg Coleel holds the sole rights to the nectar, and he resides in the war-torn city of Ezzez. Avery leaves Ani with her “Uncle Id”, patriarch of the surviving Voryses, hoping for the best, realizing he can’t take her into the Atomic Jungle, and the four members of the band depart for Ezzez at once, only to learn that Sheridan knows where they’re going … and why.

 Chapter 1

Heat boiled around Avery as he emerged from the plane, and sweat stuck his clothes to him as he descended the ladder toward the tarmac. Layanna and the others followed immediately behind. It had taken several days to reach their destination, as the first plane had only flown them so far and they had to wait till the next day before a second plane could take them to the city of Tuzi, which, while somewhat out of their way, offered a third, much smaller plane to Ezzez. Despite its size, few people wanted to come here these days. Around Avery family members met with those arriving, some offering gifts or receiving them. Many embraced. Others looked tense, starting at every sound, and Avery didn’t miss the groups of people rushing here and there about the loading and unloading area as he and the others collected their few bags. In the distance he thought he heard the pops of gunfire. The sounds were far off, but there was no mistake: this was a city at war.

“Doctor Avery?”

The voice belonged to a thin man approaching. Black, like many here, he was scarred and hard-looking, his face etched in a scowl.

“That’s me,” Avery said.

“I was told that you and your friends accompanied a certain woman.” The man stuck a toothpick in his mouth and chewed it as he appraised Layanna. “That you?”

“I need to reach General Vursk,” she said. “Are you Lisam?” It was the name of the contact that was supposed to meet them.

“I am. Follow me.”

They fell in behind him as he led the way through the chaos of the airport. Armed men stormed past, sweaty and grim. Passengers hastened, and baggage unloaders swore and hurried, eager to be indoors. As they were leaving the tarmac, Avery saw something in the distance that made his blood run cold. He stopped and swore.

“What gives?” said Hildra.

He pointed, but the figure was gone. “Probably nothing.”

“But?”

“It … could have been Sheridan.”

“Damn,” said Janx.

“If she were to get in touch with the Octunggen forces still in Ezzez,” Layanna said, “it could pose a major problem for us.”

Hildra glared at Avery. “Godsdamn, bones, if she screws this up, you’re the one to blame.”

Avery couldn’t meet her eyes. “I know.”

Lisam showed them out the disembarkation exit and to a green truck idling at the curb. The sweat-drenched driver slumped at the wheel, breathing heavily in the heat. The sun baked off everything, and the humidity was fierce. More startling, as they headed into the city, were the myriad vegetations growing up the sides of the buildings and creeping along the sidewalks.

“Well, that’s new,” Hildra said.

Avery turned to see her indicating trees and vines growing up the face of a certain building; the Crothegra Jungle was very literally reclaiming the city.

“Gods,” Avery said, looking closer. “Is that … ?”

Slabs of rust-colored lobster carapace sheathed the trees, whose limbs drooped oozing and pink and tentacle-like. The trees’ roots dug deep into the concrete building, and where they did cracks spread out from them. Vines bearing misshapen fruit erupted from the fissures, and strange, vaguely monkey-like animals (if scaled and striated), clinging easily to the vertical jungle, munched on the mottled, unwholesome-looking fruits as they scampered about. A claw sprouting from an armored limb of one of the trees snapped around a pseudo-monkey and shoved it through a pulsing sphincter. The nearby monkeys hooted and scampered away.

“Wasn’t like this last time I was here,” Janx said. “The locals’ve always had to fight the jungle back, but they’d never let it get this bad before. Guess their troubles with Octung’ve got them busy, and they’re keeping the Octs too busy to worry about it.”

Avery watched blood drip from the pincer, which had gone still again, though the monkeys were keeping their distance now. “How many trees in the area are like this?”

“Oh, there’s a load, or there was. What I hear, there’s more now. But that is the one and only Atomic Jungle out there beyond the city, Doc, and it’s a wild and woolly place, however it got that way. Some say it’s the rivers that became infected and brought the corruption to the Crothegra, but there’ve been a lot of rivers around the world that’ve been infected and it didn’t do this. Maybe some mix with the local alchemical shit. Well, gods knows how the sea really infected the plants here, but it sure did. Better hope our mission doesn’t take us outside the city.”

Avery tried to imagine traveling through the alien jungle and shuddered. He thought it would be like swimming through a breathable version of the Atomic Sea.

He and the others marveled at the sights of the city, and Avery enjoyed the sunlight on his skin, even though the air conditioner was broken and they had to leave the windows rolled down. The wind that poured in was filled with grit and dust, and he coughed often. The air was filled with other things, too, though—the scents of spices and roasting meat from a nearby market, the vaguely fruity reek of something growing from a nest of vines along a brick wall, and the stench of shit from a back-upped sewer system. The recent conflict had evidently diverted attention away from the sewer crews, as well. Yet another reason to hate Octung.

Great, colorful minarets rose here and there through the fog, as did grand, elegant golden domes, some of them scored by artillery, one completely collapsed. Other, more foreign architecture showed itself, too—an amber fortress reared by the Gveshtrac Empire (whose buildings had inspired the Amber Ziggurat of Azzara), black, sinister buildings spawned by the Ysstral Empire, even some jade columns left by L’oh. Many countries had conquered and occupied Kusk throughout history, enticed here by the wealth of resources, especially the alchemical kind, and the locals, though numerous and advanced in many ways, had not been able to fend them off. The cities of Kusk were scattered, divided by the jungle, and their bureaucracy was mired in corruption and superstition. Not only that, but a myriad of peoples lived here, not all of them human, and each belonged to its own faith. The result was a hodgepodge of a place, not cohesive enough to defend itself, but that had never mattered. No foreign power had been able to occupy the country long. The very corruption and disorganization that stymied cohesion also defeated the occupiers’ ability to instill order, and the locals did not take the yoke of a foreign power lightly. Armed with strange alchemical weapons and, some said, magical spells, they whittled away at the occupiers’ forces at a deliberate and inexorable rate, so much so that no foreign power had been able to retain its grip on the country for more than twenty years. Octung was just one in a long line of doomed conquerors, or so Avery hoped.

Buildings of the natives thrust up here and there amongst those of would-be conquerors, and they were grand, mysterious buildings of green stone. Fog coiled through the streets, and Avery marveled—the famous Breath of Ezzez. Legend said that it spilled out of the exhaust pipes of various alchemical processing plants and was thus unnatural—some said cursed, some said enchanted. There were many tales told about it. Some were romantic. Some were horror stories.

Through the eerie greenish vapor, Avery saw people going to work and about their errands, though they glanced over their shoulders as they did. Some sections of the city appeared to be under the control of the Resistance, some by Octung. Once Avery’s group had to pass out of one checkpoint, cross a no-man’s-land peppered by ruined buildings and bloodstains, and enter another, policed by local soldiers with a variation on an Octunggen armband about their biceps. Fortunately they proved bribable, and they didn’t inspect the vehicle or its occupants very carefully.

Occasional gunfire cracked in the distance, and once the thunder of bombs. Roadblocks slowed traffic, and several times the convoy had to stop and tolerate more inspections. These were always carried out by local soldiers under the direction of a small team of tense, sweaty Octunggen, and at each one Lisam simply passed a wad of bills to the soldier in charge of the inspection and the convoy was waved through. Avery didn’t know what the Octunggen were hunting for, but it wasn’t them. Likely they were hunting for General Vursk and his people—Lisam included. Luckily the local soldiers were sympathetic to their cause. The Octunggen were stretched too thin to carry out the searches themselves and were evidently afraid of appearing weak by attempting to compel the local soldiers to perform their jobs with more thoroughness. They’ll be looking for us soon enough, Avery thought, thinking again of the figure at the airport.

The car entered a darker, more frightening area, with large buildings all but completely overgrown with unnatural foliage, great fish-scale-covered branches jutting from their faces, some even meeting overhead and blocking out the light, plunging the car into shadow. With the windows open, Avery could smell the reek of the vegetation, of ammonia and salt and brine and more.