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trunk, caught one of its branches, and dragged himself out and onto it. The rising mire was at least chest-deep now, and the consistency of porridge. If he sank into it, he would die in its cold clutch. His move had brought him much closer to Selden. He extended a hand toward the boy, who leapt from his sinking island, fell short, and then scrabbled over the soft mud to reach him. Reyn pulled him up onto the fallen evergreen’s trunk. The boy huddled shivering against him. His clothing was plastered to his body with the same mud that streaked his face and hair.
    “I wish I hadn’t lost my tools and supplies. But they’re long buried now. We’ll have to break these branches off as best we can and pile them up in a thick mat.”
    “I’m so tired.” The boy stated it as a fact, not a complaint. He glanced up at Reyn, then stared at him. “You don’t look so bad, even up close. I always wondered what you looked like under that veil. In the tunnels, with only the candle, I couldn’t really see your face. Then, last night, when your eyes were glowing blue, it was scary at first. But after a while, it was like, well, it was good to see them and know you were still there.”
    Reyn laughed easily. “Do my eyes glow? Usually that doesn’t happen until a Rain Wild man is much older. We just accept it as a sign of a man reaching full maturity.”
    “Oh. But in this light, you look almost normal. You don’t have many of those wobbly things. Just some scales around your eyes and mouth.” Selden stared at him frankly.
    Reyn grinned. “No, not any of those wobbly things yet. But they, too, may come as I get older.”
    “Malta was afraid you were going to be all warty. Some of her friends teased her about it, and she would get angry. But . . .” Selden suddenly seemed to realize that his words were not tactful. “At first, I mean, when you first started courting her, she worried about it a lot. Lately, she hasn’t talked about it much,” he offered encouragingly. He glanced at Reyn, then moved away from him along the tree trunk. He seized a branch and tugged at it. “These are going to be tough to break.”
    “I imagine she’s had other things on her mind,” Reyn muttered. The boy’s words brought a sickness to his heart. Did his appearance matter that much to Malta? Would he win her with his deeds, only to have her turn away from him when she saw his face? A bitter thought came to him. Perhaps she was already dead, and he would never know. Perhaps he would die, and she would never even see his face.
    “Reyn?” Selden’s voice was tentative. “I think we’d better get to work on these branches.”
    Reyn abruptly realized how long he had hunkered there in silence. Time to push useless thoughts aside and try to survive. He seized a needled branch in his hands and broke a bough from it. “Don’t try to break the whole branch off at once. Just take boughs from it. We’ll pile them up there. We want to intermesh them, like thatching a roof—”
    A fresh trembling of the earth broke his words. He clung to the tree trunk helplessly as a shower of earth rained down from the ruptured ceiling. Selden shrieked and threw his arms up to protect his head. Reyn scrabbled along the branchy trunk to reach him and shelter him with his body. The ancient door of the chamber groaned and suddenly sagged on its hinge. A flow of mud and water surged into the room from behind it.

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