They slept like the dead, though these were, in fact, the survivors. Dragons slumbered beneath the canopy of stars. Soldiers-Metathran, human, and elf-slept in their tents. Not a fire smoldered among the coalition forces. The torch stakes had long since burned out. The festival lanterns had been extinguished. The ship rested on her landing spines in the midst of sandy Koilos. Beyond the bow of Weatherlight was only desert darkness. He could not have seen the figurehead anyway. He did not need to step back to examine his work. In mere moments, the masterpiece was complete. Residing in every vital impulse of the living grain, Multani shaped the likeness.
The woman was a goddess so had no face and all faces. The woman he sought to represent had Hanna's strength and courage and could borrow Hanna's face, for she did not have a face of her own. Certainly, Multani had used Hanna as a mental model. Any crew member who gazed on that face would have thought the features belonged to Hanna, former navigator of Weatherlight.
A face- beautiful, mysterious, and clear eyed-appeared within those rampant locks. Wood formed a long mantle of hair that twined vinelike about strong shoulders. A pair of powerful arms swept dramatically backward. A torso took shape, feminine and muscular. What was a ship without a figurehead? Wood flowed with waxlike ease, seeming to pour itself into an invisible mold. Planeshift forecastle rib was solid again, and the seven inches of magnigoth gunwale above it had filled in.
The growth of centuries replenished itself in minutes. New rings appeared where old ones had been burned away. Charcoal sloughed from the edges of the breach. It brought pain, of course, but it also empowered him to heal the ship. The laceration seemed a wound in his own flesh. That homeland had won its battles, so Multani had taken up residence in the living hull of Weatherlight. His true home was the forest of Yavimaya, where he lived in the endless magnigoth trees. Cellulose fibers were his muscles, heartwood his bones, sap his blood. He had no true body outside of plant life. Multani did not peer at the hull breach as would a mere man but felt it from the inside, for he was a nature spirit. If not for that pack, the bolt might have ripped on through a bulkhead and into the crew's berths. In the hold beyond, the energies had hit an ensign's pack and burned it and its contents away to nothing. It had torn a wide gash through seven inches of solid magnigoth wood and had vaporized the first forecastle rib. The bolt had struck Weatherlight's hull where the figurehead should have been. Chapter 1 Every Claw, Every Fang Multani traced the damage done by the ray cannon blast.
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