Horizon Storms Read Online Free PDF Page A

never abandon each other. This is the source of our strength, and together we will all get through our ordeal,” Father Idriss had pronounced when, shortly after the attack, he called the survivors together.
    Now support ladders and pulleys, makeshift ramps, and walkways were erected against the main fungus-reef tree as crews salvaged what they could. Adults worked to clear debris and charred mushroom flesh from the lower levels, while cautious younger children crawled onto precarious perches, marking safe routes for the heavier adult workers. Celli remembered when she and Estarra had climbed to the top levels of the giant mushroom to harvest the tender whitish meat Beneto loved so well. . . .
    Fortunately, since their initial attack here, the hydrogues had been preoccupied with a new conflict against the faeros and had not returned to crush the worldforest. But Celli took little heart from that. There was too much death and destruction around her.
    From above, she heard a shout of surprise, then moans of grief. In one of the fungus-reef chambers, a child explorer had just found an asphyxiated woman. Others made their way across the hardened fringes to where they could drag the victim out. Celli had known the woman, a family friend who made delicious treats from forest berries. Her heart sank, but her grief had no further to go; each fresh drop of cold tragedy ran like water off an already saturated cloak. Reynald, Beneto, Lica, Kari, Ren—the names 4

H O R I Z O N S T O R M S
    rolled through her conscience, one after another. She was terrified she might forget somebody—and that didn’t seem fair. They deserved to be remembered. Each one of them.
    Not wanting to be at the base camp when the workers brought down the woman’s body, Celli went to her grandparents. “I want to go where I’m needed most, Grandmother. Send me out.”
    “I know you’re impatient, dear.” Old Lia’s watery eyes seemed extremely tired. “We’re all trying to decide which work is most important.”
    Her grandfather scratched his seamed cheek. “Every day we’ve been doing triage for the forest.”
    Uthair and Lia were busily keeping track of scouting teams, scribing notes and making records that only they could decipher. Normally, the green priests could connect to the worldtrees to see the whole scope of the forest, but the magnitude of the destruction was so overwhelming that many of them could not sort through the visual information to make sense of it all.
    The old couple spread out detailed satellite images taken by EDF
    ships, showing the extent of burned and frozen areas like a blight across the landscape. Reeling green priests had already shared this information with the trees through telink, but the forest already felt its enormous injuries, which made direct and clear communication difficult. Her grandmother pointed to an unmarked spot where hundreds of acres of broken and toppled trees lay flattened as if they had been no more than stalks of grain in the path of a hurricane. “No one has gone into this area yet.”
    “I’ll go take a look.” Celli was glad to have a useful assignment she could do by herself. She welcomed the responsibility. After all, she was now as old as Estarra had been when she’d married King Peter. Everyone on Theroc, down to the youngest child, was being forced to grow up too quickly.
    She sprinted off, picking her way through the haunted forest. The fast blaze had scoured away the underbrush, but the hydrogues’ icewave had been like dynamite, blasting trees into kindling, shattering them into tangles of fibrous pulp.
    Celli moved lightly on graceful legs that were muscular from climbing, running, and dancing. She imagined she was practicing to be a treedancer

C E L L I
5
    again, a profession she’d aspired to for many years. She had trained diligently, seeing herself as half ballerina and half marathon runner.
    As she ran, she encountered more human bodies—broken statues killed by the