Tyrus lifted himself from Declan’s body, realizing the man had probably fainted from the pain. His breath was so shallow it wouldn’t have rustled paper.

“If we stay here, we all die,” Aboujaoude said.

Tyrus stared down at Declan’s shrunken face. His eyelids quivered and then he blinked awake.

“Declan?” Tyrus said.

The Preachán let out a grunting breath. His teeth were clamped together. “Tyrus,” he hissed.

“What is it, my friend?” Tyrus leaned closer.

“Must . . . leave me. I cannot flee. I am . . . not going to survive this. You all go on.”

Merinda’s face flushed with sorrow.

Mathon shook his head angrily no.

“Logical . . . conclusion,” Declan said. “One dies. Five live. For now. Maybe none of us will live through this. Improve . . . the odds. Must . . . survive and warn. Must leave a record. The trees, Tyrus. The trees aren’t dead.”

“What does that even mean?” Mathon said, wiping tears from his eyes. “For pity’s sake, you’ve never made sense to me, Declan!”

“Tyrus,” Aboujaoude warned. Glebbon gathered around as well, his face smeared with blood.

Staring down into the fading eyes of his friend, Tyrus knew that what Declan had said was true. But it did not make the truth any easier to accept.

“I did what I could,” Mathon said, wiping his face. “This is impossible. How could we have known what we would face? Birds that turn you into stone if you look at them? They nest in these woods. The Weir. Or those scorpion beetles. Oogh, how I hate those. The poisons in this place. Everything is poison here. No food to eat. No clean water.”

“We still have provisions,” Tyrus said. “We can make it two more days. We are getting closer. The attacks come more swiftly because we are nearing the center.”

The Cruithne Glebbon chuckled darkly, his voice echoing like a deep kettle. “We’ve poked a stick into a living hive. We are nowhere near the honeycomb. These are just the outer defenses. They are swarming us, Tyrus. The next wave comes.”

“A bee swarm,” Mathon said, nodding. “Good analogy. I’m feeling the stings. What do we do, Tyrus?”

Tyrus saw that they were all looking at him. Every one of them had trusted their lives into his hands. The Arch-Rike had warned him that it was folly. Possidius the Archivist of Kenatos had said they would likely all perish. The lack of information about a threat did not lessen its reality. Only scraps of knowledge existed about the Scourgelands. Those scraps had been carefully and methodically collected by the Archivist over a period of years, if not decades. Small little scraps. Little hints. Danger and threats masked in a fog of history that was too impenetrable, a fog dating further back than the founding of Kenatos itself.

The city of Kenatos had been founded to survive the Plague so that each race and each culture might endure despite the ravaging diseases that afflicted the world. Yes, Tyrus had gleaned everything he could from those scraps and tales that Possidius collected.

But Tyrus never shared his own knowledge with others. He hoarded his secrets like a miser hoards coins. He did not tell Possidius that he knew something the older man did not, that he had learned it while living in Silvandom as a young man when the Plague had struck previously and the gates of Kenatos had locked Tyrus out.

There was another source, a book that had never been copied into the Archives of Kenatos. It was a book he had found in the vast library of the royal house of Silvandom. On an obscure page, written in the Vaettir tongue, was a single word, scrawled onto the margin. It was an ancient word. It was a word that bore no direct translation. Tyrus had fussed over that word for a long time before finally giving it a name in his own Aeduan language.

Poisonwell.

It was a defense, a barrier—a locked gate deep in a cave that barred the only way into Mirrowen that mortals could travel. A shaft that connected both worlds. The umbilical cord of the worlds. How to summarize those meanings in a single word? Tyrus had stared at the page for days, thinking thoughts so deep that he desired neither food nor drink. He was just a young man, of course. And he had stumbled upon a great secret that seemed to shout in his ear. Poisonwell was the lost gate to Mirrowen, a land beyond the grasp of death. There was a way to get there, to be free from death after all. Poisonwell was not just the cause of the Plague. It was also the cure.

And no one knew where that word was inscribed except for Tyrus. If only he had shared that knowledge with someone else—like Possidius.

He looked up at the others, who were each staring at him with looks of hopelessness and despair. They could see nakedly that he had no answers for them. He had no plan that would guarantee their survival. He had led them into death itself.