The Burning City (2000)
“The flame-path didn’t cramp them, but it wasn’t quite a road. There were stumps Whandall had to burn out. The horses were grown visibly stronger. They pulled with little effort, but they shied at Carver’s touch on the reins.
Whandall tried it. Both ponies stopped and turned to look at him along spiral spears as long as a forearm. Willow took the reins from his unresisting hands, and the ponies turned and began to pull.
That first night they stripped a dozen crabapple trees for their dinner. Children didn’t need to be instructed to hurl the cores away: they did it by instinct.
Carver suggested that Whandall sleep between the wagon and the vineyards. Lordkin might follow the scorched path, he said. Carver was trying to protect Willow. Whandall went along with that.
But in the morning he told Carver, “We don’t need a guard at night. Only a madman would walk through the forest in the dark.” He pointed back down the trail. A blackened ruin, ash and mud, with a few flecks of green growing into it.
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