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. Some meetings are all but foreordained.
Near the edge of the wood, the trail stopped abruptly,
leaving only brush and a dense wall of plants. On the
outside were false vallenwood, which looked like the great
trees but grew no taller than a dwarf, some berry bushes,
thorned and unthorned, and bright wildflowers.
On the inside were stands of twisted nightroot, the bane
of all animal life; guantvine, dense enough to bind the
unwary; and Paladine's Tears, the tiny blue flowers that
grew and wove into an upright mat between tree trunks.
Though the wall kept curious folk out, the stag knew how
many reckless souls it had kept in.
As he watched, the brush swayed and shivered under
the pressure of hands.
Hands - of a sort. The stag stared at the first clawed
fingers that emerged, waving in the air blindly to push
more branches aside, finding none. The scaled man-thing
that followed them out, blinking, into the sunlight stretched
batlike wings in the open space.
"Kin to dragons." There was no question in the stag's
mind, though the stag had never seen these creatures before.
He knew also how few would know that:
if the stag's appearance to Huma was barely legend now,
the dragons were less than that
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