She undressed, enjoying the morning warmth that was one of the few nice things about the swamp, then waded into the pond. She sighed with, pleasure as the water reached her knees: it was quite comfortable, only a little cooler than a tub bath. Tiamak had given her a small gift, she realized; it was one of the nicest she had been given in a long while.
The bottom of the pond was covered with soft, firm mud that felt good beneath her toes. The willows that loomed so closely and drooped so low, as if greedy for the pondwater, made her feel almost as protected and private as if she had been in her chamber at Meremund. After wading partway around the rim of the pool, she found a spot where the grass grew thick beneath the surface. She sat on it as though it were a carpet, sinking down until the water almost reached her chin. She splashed water on her face, then wetted her hair and tried to loosen the tangles. Now that it was beginning to grow out again, she could not treat it as carelessly as she had of late.
After she had finished, she simply sat for a while, listening to the racket of birds and the warm wind moving the trees.
As Miriamele was belting her dirty and somewhat odoriferous monk’s robe around her waist once more—and grumbling to herself as she did because she had not been foresighted enough to bring a change of clothing with her out of Pelippa’s Bowl—the rustle of leaves overhead suddenly became louder. Miriamele looked up, expecting a large bird or perhaps even one of the marsh apes, but what she saw instead caused her to suck in her breath in shocked surprise.
The thing hanging from the branch was only as big as a young child, but that was still unpleasantly large. It looked something like a crab and something like a spider, but despite its crustacean exterior it had, as far as Miriamele could tell, only four limbs; each was jointed, ending in a recurved claw. The creature’s body was covered in a horny, leathery shell, gray and brown splashed with inky black, crisscrossed with uneven trails of lichen. Its eyes were the worst part, though: their beady black glimmer—somehow so oddly intelligent, despite the malformed head and chitinous body—sent her stumbling backward until she was sure it could not reach her, no matter how prodigious a leaper it might be. The thing did not move. It seemed to watch her in a disturbingly human way, but the creature was otherwise not human in the least; it did not even have a mouth that she could see, unless the little clicking things in the cleft at the bottom of its blunt head served that purpose.
Miriamele shivered in disgust. “Go away!” she cried, waving her hands as she might try to shoo a dog. The glittering eyes stared at her with what almost seemed an attitude of amused malice.
But it has no face, she told herself. How can it have feelings?! It was an animal, and it was either dangerous or not. How could she think she saw feelings in something that was no more than a huge bug? Still, she found the creature terrifying. Although it made no hostile movement, she circled the tree widely as she made her way up out of the little canyon. The thing made no move to follow her, but it turned to watch her go.
“A ghant,” Tiamak explained as they were all climbing back into the boat. “I am sorry it frightened you, Lady Miriamele. They are ugly things, but they seldom attack people, and almost never anyone larger than a child.”
“But it looked at me like a person would!” Miriamele shuddered. “I don’t know why, but it was dreadful.”
Tiamak nodded his head. “They are not just low animals, Lady—or at least I do not think so, although others of my folk insist they are no cleverer than crayfish. I wonder, though: I have seen the huge nests they build, and the clever way they hunt for fish and trap birds.”
“So you would suggest they are thinking creatures?” Cadrach asked dryly. “That would come as a disturbing thought to the hierarchy of Mother Church, I should think. Must they not then have souls? Perhaps Nabban will have to send missionary priests out to the Wran to bring them to the bosom of the True Faith.”
“Enough of your mockery, Hernystirman,” Isgrimnur grunted. “Help me get this damnable boat off the sandbar.”
It was a short journey to Village Grove, or so Tiamak had said. The morning was bright and only comfortably warm, but even so, the ghant had darkened Miriamele’s mood. It had reminded her of the terrible, alien nature of the marsh country. This was not her home. Tiamak might be able to live happily here—although she doubted that such was the case even with him—but she herself certainly never could.
The Wrannaman, poling now with the oar handle, directed them down an ever-turning succession of interwoven canals and streamlets, each one hidden from the next by the thick shield of vegetation that grew along its sandy, unstable banks—dense walls of pale reeds and dark, tangled growth festooned ,with bright but somehow feverish-looking flowers—so that every time that a side course took them from one waterway to the next, the previous one had vanished behind them almost as soon as the stem of the boat had crossed over to the new one.
Soon the first houses of Village Grove began to appear on either side of the waterway. Some were built in- trees, like Tiamak’s; others loomed on tree-trunk stilts. After they had floated past a few, Tiamak pulled the boat up beneath the landing of a large stilt-house and loudly hailed the occupants.
“Roahog!” he called. When there was no reply, he banged the oar handle against one of the pilings; the rattling drove a bevy of green and scarlet birds shrieking from the trees overhead, but brought no other response. Tiamak shouted again, then shrugged.
“The potter is not home,” he said. “I saw no one in the other houses, either. Perhaps there is a gathering at the landing-place.”
They poled on. The houses that now began to appear were closer together. Some of the dwellings seemed to be composed of many small houses of different shapes and sizes that had been grafted onto an original hut—clumps of muddled shapes pocked with irregular black windows, like the nests of cliff-dwelling owls. Tiamak stopped and called at several of them, but no one ever answered his hail.
“The landing-place,” he said firmly, but Miriamele thought he looked worried. “They must be at the landing-place.”
This proved to be a great, flat dock that protruded halfway out into the middle of the widest part of the watercourse. Houses gathered thickly around it on all sides, and parts of the landing-place itself were equipped with thatched roofs and walls. Miriamele guessed these areas might be used for market stalls. There were other signs of recent life—large decorated baskets set back in the leafy shade, boats bobbing at the end of their painters—but no people.
Tiamak was clearly shaken. “They Who Watch and Shape,” he breathed, “what has happened here?”
“They’re gone?” Miriamele looked around. “How could a whole village be gone?”
“You’ve not seen the north, my lady,” Isgrimnur said dourly. “There are many towns on the Frostmarch that are empty as old pots.”
“But those people have been chased out by war. Surely there’s no war here. Not yet.”
“Some in the north have been chased out by war,” Cadrach murmured. “Some by fear of things more difficult to name. And fear is everywhere in these days.”
“I do not understand.” Tiamak wagged his head as though he still could not believe what he saw. “My people would not just run away, even if they were afraid of the war—which I doubt they have even heard about. Our life is here. Where would they go?”
Camaris stood up suddenly, setting the boat rocking and filling the other passengers with alarm; but when the old man had balanced himself, he merely reached up and plucked a long yellowish seedpod from one of the tree branches hanging overhead, then sat back down again to examine his prize.
“Well, there are boats here, anyway,” Isgrimnur said. “They’re what we need. I don’t mean to be cruel, Tiamak, but we should pick one and be on our way. We’ll leave our boat for trade, as you said.” He made a face, trying to think of the knightly thing to do. “Maybe you can scratch a letter on one of your parchments or somesuch—let ’em know what we’ve done.”
Tiamak st
ared for a moment as though he had suddenly forgotten the Westerling language. “Oh,” he said at last. “A new boat. Of course.” He shook his head. “I know we have need for haste, Duke Isgrimnur, but would you mind if we stopped here a little time? I must look around—see if my sisters or anyone else left word of where they have gone.”
“Well ...” Isgrimnur peered at the deserted dock. Miriamele thought the duke seemed a little reluctant. There was indeed something eerie about the empty village. The inhabitants seemed to have vanished quite suddenly, as though they had been swept away by a strong wind. “I suppose that’s all right, certainly. We thought it might take us the whole day, after all. Certainly.”
“Thank you.” Tiamak nodded. “I would have felt ...” He started again. “So far I have not done all that I could do for my people. It would not be right just to take a flatboat and float away without even looking about.”
He caught hold of one of the tie posts and made their boat fast to the landing-place.
The people of Village Grove did seem to have left in a hurry. A cursory inspection showed that many useful things had been left behind, not least of which were several baskets of fruits and vegetables. While Tiamak went off to search for some indication of why and where his people had fled, Cadrach and Isgrimnur began to harvest this unexpected bounty, loading their new vessel—a large and well-constructed flatboat—until it floated rather lower in the water than Tiamak might think was best. On her own, Miriamele found some flower-colored dresses in one of the huts near the landing-place. They were baggy and shapeless, quite unlike anything she would ever have worn at home, but in these conditions they would serve nicely for a change of clothing. She also discovered a pair of leather slippers, thong-stitched, that seemed as though they might make a nice change from the boots she had been wearing almost continuously since leaving Naglimund. After a moment’s hesitation over the propriety of taking someone’s belongings without leaving anything in return, Miriamele steeled herself and appropriated the clothes. After all, what did she have to exchange?
As morning slid into afternoon, Tiamak returned occasionally to pass on his news, which was generally no news. He had discovered the same curious evidence of hasty retreat, but could find nothing to indicate why the flight had occurred. The only possible clue was that several spears and other weapons were missing from the hut where the village’s elders met—weapons that Tiamak said were not the property of individuals but of the village as a whole, important weapons which were only taken down in time of battle or other conflict.
“I think I will go to Older Mogahib’s house,” said the Wrannaman. “He is our chief elder, so anything important would be there. It is a good distance up the watercourse, so I will take a boat. I should be back before the sun hits the treeline.” He pointed to indicate the sun’s westward path.
“Do you want to eat before you go?” Isgrimnur asked. “I’ll have the fire going in a moment.”
Tiamak shook his head. “I can wait until I return. As I said, there will still be much of the day left when I get back.”
But the afternoon waned and Tiamak did not return. Miriamele and the others ate turnips—or at least something that looked like turnips, bulbous, starchy things which Tiamak had assured them were safely edible—and a squishy yellow fruit that they wrapped in green leaves and baked in the coals of the fire. A brown, dovelike bird that Cadrach captured with a snare, when boiled for soup, helped to fill out the meal. As the shadows lengthened across the green water and the hum of insects began to rise, Miriamele became worried.
“He should have been back by now. The sun went below the trees a long time ago.”
“The little fellow’s fine,” Isgrimnur assured her. “He’s probably found something interesting—some damned marsh-man scroll or something. He’ll be back soon.”
But he did not come back, not even when the sun had gone and the stars came out. Miriamele and the others made their beds out on the landing dock—more than a little reluctantly, since they still had no idea what had happened to Village Grove’s vanished citizens—and were glad for the embers of the fire. Miriamele did not fall asleep for a long time.
The morning sun was high when Miriamele awoke. One look at Isgrimnur’s worried face was enough to confirm what she had feared.
“Oh, poor Tiamak! Where is he? What could have happened!? I hope he isn’t hurt!”
“Not just poor Tiamak, Lady.” Cadrach’s studiedly sour tone did not entirely cover his deep unease. “Poor us as well. How will we ever find our way out of this godless swamp by ourselves?”
She opened her mouth, then shut it again. There was nothing to say.
“There’s nothing else to do,” Isgrimnur said on the second Tiamak-less morning. “We have to try and find our way out by ourselves.”
Cadrach. made a bitter face. “We might as well give ourselves to the grandfather crocodile, Rimmersman. At least it would save time.”
“Damn you,” Isgrimnur snarled, “don’t expect me to crawl off and die! I’ve never given up in my life, and I’ve been in some tight spots.”
“You’ve never been lost in the Wran before,” Cadrach pointed out.
“Stop it! Stop it now!” Miriamele’s head hurt. The wrangling had been going on since the middle of the day before. “Isgrimnur’s right. We have no other choice.”
Cadrach seemed about to say something unpleasant, but shut his mouth instead and stared off at the empty houses of Village Grove.
“We will go the same direction Tiamak went,” declared Isgrimnur. “That way, if something has happened to him—I mean if he is hurt or holed his boat or something like—at least we may chance upon him.”
“But he said he was not going far—just to the other end of his people’s village,” she said. “When we leave the last houses, we will not know where he meant us to go next, will we?”
“No, curse it, and I was too foolish to think to ask him when I could have.” Isgrimnur scowled. “Not that anything he said would have made much sense—this damnable place just turns my head around.”
“But the sun is still the same, even over the Wran,” Miriamele said, a touch of desperation now making itself felt. “The stars, too. We should be able to decide which direction is north toward Uncle Josua, at least.”
Isgrimnur smiled sadly. “Aye. That’s true, Princess. We will do our best.”
Cadrach stood suddenly, then walked to the flatboat they had selected, stepping around the old man Camaris, who was dangling his feet off the dock into the green water. Earlier Miriamele had dangled her own feet similarly and been bitten by a turtle, but the old man seemed to have established more amicable relations with the river’s inhabitants.
Cadrach bent and hefted one of the sacks piled on the dock. He heaved it to Camaris, who caught it with ease and dropped it into the boat. “I will not argue any further,” the monk said as he stooped for a second sack. “Let us load what food and water we can. At least we will not die from hunger or thirst—although we soon may wish we had.”
Miriamele had to laugh. “Elysia, Mother of God, Cadrach, could you be more gloomy if you tried?! Maybe we should just kill you now and put you out of your misery.”
“I’ve heard worse ideas,” grunted Isgrimnur.
Miriamele watched with apprehension as the center of Village Grove disappeared behind them. Although it had been empty, nevertheless it had clearly been a place where people had lived: the marks of their recent habitation were everywhere. Now she and her remaining friends were leaving this bastion of comparative familiarity and heading back into the unknowable swamps. She suddenly wished they had decided to wait a few more days for Tiamak.
They continued to float past deserted houses well into the morning, although the dwellings were becoming ever more widely separated from each other. The greenery was as dense as ever. Watching the endless mural of vegetation unroll on either side, Miriamele for the first time found herself wishing they had not followed Tiamak into this place. The Wran s
eemed so heedless in its vegetative enterprise, so busily unconcerned with anything as meaningless as people. She felt very small.
It was Camaris who saw it first, although he did not speak or make any noise; it was only by his stance, the sudden alertness like a hound on the point, that the others were drawn to squint down the waterway at the drifting speck.
“It’s a flatboat!” Miriamele cried. “Someone’s in it—lying down! Oh, it must be Tiamak!”
“It’s his boat, all right,” Isgrimnur said, “—the one with the yellow and black eyes painted on the front.”
“Oh, hurry, Cadrach!” Miriamele almost toppled the monk into the waterway as she pushed at his arm. “Pole faster!”
“If we tip over and drown,” Cadrach said through clenched teeth, “then we will do the marsh man little good.”
They approached the flatboat. The dark-haired, brown-skinned figure lay curled in the bottom with one arm hanging over the side, as though he had fallen asleep trying to reach his hand down to the water. The boat was drifting in a slow circle as Miriamele and her companions pulled alongside. The princess was the first to cross over, setting both boats rocking as she hurried to the Wrannaman’s aid.
“Careful, my lady,” Cadrach said, but Miriamele had already lifted the small man’s head onto her lap. She gasped at the blood that had dried on the dark face, then a moment later, gasped again.
“It’s not Tiamak!”
The Wrannaman, who had obviously suffered much in recent days, was stouter and a little lighter-skinned than their companion. His skin was covered with some sticky substance whose odor made Miriamele wrinkle her nose in discomfort. Nothing else could be discovered, though, for he was completely insensible. When she lifted the water-skin to his cracked lips, Miriamele had to be very careful not to choke him. The stranger managed to down a few swallows without ever appearing to wake.