After rummaging through a bag for food, Jason plopped down beside Tark, chewing salty meat. Tark held up a mangled block of wood. “It was going to be a duck. I may have to settle for a cube.”
“Or a headless duck,” Jason said, “without legs or wings.”
Tark dropped the wood in disgust. “I wish I had my sousalax.”
“You’re the only one,” Ferrin chuckled.
“I’ll second Tark’s wish,” Aram said, sliding a stone along his blade. “He could give me more lessons.”
“Lessons?” Ferrin groaned, covering his ears.
“I was getting good,” Aram protested. “Tell him, Tark.”
Tark chose his words carefully. “You were … one of the few men I have met with the capacity to sound the instrument.”
“I wasn’t good?”
“Good takes practice.”
“I was loud.”
“True,” Tark said. “I revoke my wish.”
“Not many men can blow a sousalax,” Ferrin said. “How did you get started?”
Tark grinned. “In my youth I worked as a diver at Ithilum. The job strengthened my lungs.” Tark puffed out his chest, pounding his ribs.
“I’m certain our enemies would gladly furnish any of us with an instrument,” Galloran said. “We’ve been hard to find.”
On a muggy morning, below an overcast sky, the ten riders reached boggy terrain. They had approached the Sunken Lands from a different direction than Jason had previously used with Jasher and Rachel, but the soupy marshland looked equally dreary.
Drake called a halt. Nedwin walked out of earshot as Drake explained that the horses would not be able to continue.
“Let’s strip any necessary gear,” Galloran suggested. “We won’t be back this way. Our path will take us beyond the Sunken Lands to the Seven Vales.”
“Maybe I could talk to the horses,” Rachel offered. “Try to send them around to the other side.”
Galloran dismounted. “We’re approaching the Sunken Lands from the southwest and intend to exit from the northwest. But the horses can’t go around to the west. They will find the mountains as impassable as the marshland. I suppose they could try to loop around to the east. It will amount to a long journey through dangerous country.”
“What if a couple of us herd the horses around?” Chandra said. “We might be glad to have them on the far side.”
Galloran shook his head. “I don’t want to risk losing anyone. Even by horseback, the journey will probably take too long. The horses would have to circumnavigate three quarters of the swamp in the time it takes us to cut across part of it. Besides, Maldor has strongholds east of the marshlands.”
“The western gate to the Seven Vales does not lie far north of the swamp,” Drake said. “On foot the journey will cost us only two days.”
“If we’re not sending anyone with them,” Rachel proposed, “I might as well try to convince the horses to loop around and meet us.”
“What if an enemy follows them?” Chandra asked.
“Nobody would suspect the riderless horses had a destination,” Ferrin said. “Any who find them will just try to take possession of them.”
“Very well,” Galloran said. “Give it a try, Rachel.”
“Put some extra effort into telling Mandibar,” Drake said. “I’d hate to lose him.”
Jason sidled over to Rachel as the others transferred gear. “Can you do that?” he asked quietly. “Tell them to come?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered back. “I know how to ask the horses to meet me. I’d have more confidence if I could accurately visualize our destination. But I’ve never been there. I’m going to picture us crossing the swamp by boat, and the horses running around to the east, and them finding us on the northwest side. We’ll see what happens.”
Jason watched Rachel move from horse to horse, stroking them and speaking to each one individually. When all of the desired gear was unpacked, she made a general declaration to all of the horses. Jason sensed that she was telling them to run eastward. Moving in a group, they galloped in the correct direction.
“What about Nedwin?” Ferrin asked. “There are many distinctive sounds in the swamp that may reveal our location. Has the time come to lose his ear?”
“I think so,” Galloran said. “Can you manage it?”
“Among his ingredients, Nedwin has salves for burns and infections,” Ferrin said. “He claims to feel no pain, so I’ll use a hot knife. We’ll poke out the eye on his hand while we’re at it. I’ll pretend like I’m just discovering the ear, in hopes they might continue to trust the nonsense he’s been hearing lately.”
Galloran nodded silently.
Jason felt chills as Ferrin strode away, drawing a knife. He was glad he wouldn’t have to watch.
Ferrin and Nedwin returned perhaps an hour later. A bandage around Nedwin’s hand had replaced his glove, and he also wore a bandage tied to the side of his head. He smiled, revealing hideous teeth. Jason realized his teeth must have been deliberately damaged while he was a prisoner.
“I injected nervesong into the eye and the ear just before the surgery,” Nedwin reported. “It meant I felt some pain when Ferrin cut and burned me, but not nearly what the displacers felt on their end.”
“Once the ear was amputated, I administered poison to it,” Ferrin said. “The displacer severed his connection. Hard to say whether he did it in time.”
Nedwin could not stop grinning. “At the very least, a pair of spies just had very bad days.”
CHAPTER 14
GRULLIONS
Perched atop a boulder at the edge of the swamp, Rachel watched for snakes. She had seen far too many as she and her companions had squelched across the marsh for the last two days. Big ones and small ones, fat ones and thin ones, light ones and dark ones, striped ones and solid ones and patterned ones. A poisonous snake had struck Dorsio’s boot twice, the fangs failing to penetrate. A nonpoisonous snake had bitten Nedwin on the wrist. Drake had killed at least three venomous snakes as they slithered into camp while the group slept.
At the moment, the only way for a snake to reach her would be to climb across a steep expanse of bare stone. She had a long stick ready, just in case.
Her current vantage point commanded a depressing view of the muddy shore where the sucking marshland gave way to the black water of the swamp. A miasmic haze had muted the recent sunrise. Tall trees grew up out of the water, widespread branches interlocking like great umbrellas. Bedraggled foliage hung in long streamers from trunks and limbs. In the distance a ponderous slug, longer than her arm, slurped across an island of mulch, eyestalks stretching grotesquely.
If Rachel had been allowed to pick one place in Lyrian never to revisit, without pause she would have selected the Sunken Lands. Only poisonous, diseased, disgusting threats lurked in the gloom ahead, including predatory slime, supersized insects, stealthy serpents, and elephantine frogs.
Two crafts awaited on the shore. The sleek skiff looked large enough to accommodate six. The wide canoe could carry no more than three. There was no way to proceed without boats, but fortunately the Amar Kabal routinely hid vessels along the shore of the swamp. Drake had found one, Nedwin the other. Assisted by Ferrin and Dorsio, both were currently off seeking a third craft.
Rachel wished she could have stayed with the horses. No soldiers would have caught her. In an emergency, she could have transferred to Mandibar. With her ability to issue Edomic instructions, she felt certain she could have led them safely around the swamp. After weeks of riding, she had formed a connection with her mare, and hated the possibility of never seeing her again.
Jason came traipsing toward her boulder, boots cumbersome with mud, one hand on the hilt of his sword. She had noticed that as he kept practicing, he seemed increasingly proud of the weapon. He looked up at her. “You might be safe from snakes, but you’re going to fall and break your neck.”
The boulder was steep on all sides. Climbing it had required some e
ffort. “I was trying to get away from the smell.” After sucking gel from orchid buds, her body odor had been magnified, transforming her into human insect repellant. But that was nothing compared to how terrible the others stank.
“Not a bad reason,” Jason conceded. “Nedwin is heading this way with another canoe. We’re going to leave soon.”
Looking over, Rachel saw Galloran and the others gathering near the watercrafts. Nedwin and Dorsio glided into view, paddling a canoe and leaving a V-shaped wake across the murky water.
“Think Corinne is all right?” Rachel wondered.
Jason glanced toward Galloran. “I don’t know. Two of the syllable guardians are already dead. It looks bad. I can tell Galloran is worried.”
“The mushrooms should give her some protection. It’s got to be hard to kill somebody when you can’t remember why you’re there.”
“Let’s hope so.”
Rachel turned around and carefully lowered herself down the least sheer side of the boulder. Jason waited for her, and they walked over to the muddy bank.
“We’re here,” Jason said as Nedwin and Dorsio brought the canoe ashore. All of the others had already gathered.
Galloran raised both hands. “This is a hazardous time of year to enter the swamp. The fungi will be in full bloom, disease will be rampant, and the insects are multiplying. Within a few weeks, the swamp will be utterly impassable for more than a month, during the height of insect season.”
“Bind your noses and mouths with rags to filter the air,” Drake said, passing out lengths of fabric. “Never inhale without them. At this time of year, airborne spores will readily infect unprotected lungs.”
“They should add that to the travel brochure,” Jason murmured to Rachel while wrapping fabric over his nose and mouth. “Who doesn’t want some tasty lung fungus?”
“Fun for the whole family,” she muttered back.
Galloran assigned Tark and Chandra to one canoe, and Ferrin and Drake to the other, leaving everyone else to fill the skiff. Drake, Nedwin, Ferrin, and Tark helped push the vessels into the water. Each canoe had two paddles. In the skiff, Dorsio and Nedwin manned the oars. Aram placed a hand on the tiller. Jason and Rachel sat in the prow to scout for slime.
The skiff surged ahead, pushing ripples across the dark water. Before long, Rachel began to notice dull orange masses of fungus, clinging to the tree trunks like wasp hives, giving them an ailing appearance. Cylindrical piles of spongy fungi thrived on decaying islands of muck. Slick puddles of slime rippled across the surface of the water or oozed over obstacles. Jason and Rachel gave directions when necessary to help the skiff avoid the carnivorous slime.
From above and to one side, Rachel heard a startling gasp. The inhalation was followed by a sharp hiss, like air expelled from a blowhole, and a plume of maroon gas jetted from a bloated clump of yellowish fungus, high on a tree.
“Avoid the spores,” Galloran cautioned, as if he could see the powdery cloud spreading above them.
Fumbling momentarily, Nedwin and Dorsio turned the skiff and propelled it away from the drifting spray. The canoes also paddled away from the descending spores.
As they progressed deeper into the swamp, the trees grew taller, lifting the tangled canopy ever higher. The gasp-hiss of fungi excreting spores became frequent. Rachel began to glimpse snakes gliding through the water.
Rachel did her best to ignore the multitudes of spiders, slugs, snakes, and flying insects as she scanned for slime. Her efforts did not keep her from noticing slender dragonflies as long as her forearm, prowling snakes with heads the size of footballs, gooey slugs big enough to wear saddles, and hairy spiders large enough to prey on housecats.
Aram grew at sunset, limbs lengthening and thickening. Since she knew it embarrassed him, Rachel tried not to stare, but it was hard not to peek at something so unusual. After he finished growing, the skiff floated noticeably lower with his added weight. He took both of the oars, and the skiff whooshed forward faster than ever. When the canoes floundered behind, unable to equal the energetic pace, Aram slowed.
“Watch for a place to camp,” Galloran said.
“Why not go all night?” Aram suggested.
“The swamp slumbers during the day. Dangerous creatures patrol the waters after dark. We’ll increase our chances of survival if we spend the night in our boats, up on an island.”
As the swamp dimmed, they pulled the boats up on one of the largest islands they had seen all day, arranging the crafts close together. In the fading light, luminous thumb-size slugs became visible on the trees.
Jason commented on the slugs.
“This portion of the swamp glows all night,” Nedwin confirmed. “By tomorrow evening, we should reach the section of the swamp controlled by the frogs. Few slugs survive there.”
Nedwin handed out orchid buds. Rachel eagerly consumed the flavorless gel inside. Her horrible odor was much better than stings or bites from prehistoric insects.
The clamor of the swamp began as Rachel curled up in the bottom of the skiff, uncomfortable but exhausted. Crickets chirped so noisily, the skiff seemed full of them. From up in the trees came warbling hoots and staccato bursts of clacking. Occasionally she heard long, low moans in the distance. But without the barking croaks of the huge frogs, the night was not quite so uproarious as her previous experience in the swamp.
As always, Drake took watch, since he never truly slept. The slugs seemed ever brighter as the rest of the swamp faded to true darkness.
With predawn light filtering through the canopy, Nedwin jostled the others awake. They intended to set off early to take advantage of Aram at the oars.
Rachel helped shove the skiff into the water, slipping and planting one hand deep in the mud. She jumped aboard the skiff as it drifted away from the island, dipping her hand in the lukewarm water to wash off the worst of the clinging muck. While wiping the black mud from her fingers, Rachel discovered a leech attached to the back of her hand. She ground her teeth to suppress a shriek.
“I think I picked up a leech,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady as hysteria welled up inside.
“Translucent?” Galloran asked.
Rachel inspected the membranous creature. “Yeah, almost transparent.” Jason stared at it over her shoulder.
“A jelly leech,” Galloran said. “What size?”
“No bigger than my pinkie.”
“Do not seek to detach it,” Galloran warned. “Such action will provoke the injection of a most irritating venom.”
“What do I do?” Rachel felt painful suction and stared as her blood began to flow into the translucent leech, a spreading red stain inside the rubbery body. “It’s sucking!” She bit her lower lip, trying not to scream.
“The creature will detach when sated. Be grateful it is so small.”
Jason rubbed her shoulders. “You’ll be okay,” he encouraged.
Rachel watched in disgust as the creature reddened, bulging with the inflow of blood. Just when she thought the leech looked ready to burst, it detached and fell to the bottom of the skiff.
“It finished,” Jason said.
“Throw it overboard,” Galloran said. “As far as you can. We must keep away from the scent of blood.”
Jason tweezed the leech between thumb and forefinger, stood, and tossed it away with a motion that rocked the skiff. The red leech landed on a little island strewn with messy webs. Rachel rubbed the back of her hand, where a purple bruise was forming.
With Aram at the oars, and the canoes keeping up, they made rapid progress. The trees became spaced farther apart, and the trunks seemed thicker. Off to one side of the boat was an open area with no trees.
“I see some open water,” Aram grunted softly.
“Keep away,” Galloran advised. “We do not want to trifle with the great beasts who inhabit the deep places of the swamp.”
“What are they?” Jason asked quietly.
“Winari,” Galloran said. “Some of the oldest and la
rgest organisms in the world. Theirs are the groaning calls we heard in the night. We would all perish if one caught us. They’re typically dormant during the day, but we’ll avoid the risk.”
As they rowed onward, the swollen masses of fungus became more plentiful on the tree trunks, in dreary shades of yellow and orange. Towering fungal columns rose from muddy islands, stretching toward the leafy canopy above, swaying away from the boats when they came near.
They were rowing through a grove of colossal, widespread trees with no muddy islands in sight when Galloran whispered, “Too quiet.”
“What?” Aram asked.
Galloran lifted a cautionary hand. “Something is amiss.”
Rachel peered around. With dawn approaching, the still waterscape looked almost bright. The daytime noises of the swamp did not rival the nighttime cacophony. But there always seemed to be some hooting in the trees, or buzzing wings, or little clicks, or faint chittering, or distant splashes. With the paddles out of the water, Rachel heard nothing.
To one side, Rachel heard the gentle slosh of disturbed water. Twisting, she saw a translucent snake wriggling up and over the side of the skiff.
“Snake!” she cried.
“Leech!” Jason corrected, drawing his sword.
As Rachel scrunched away from it, Jason’s blade hacked through the membranous body. Part of the leech withdrew into the water, but about two feet of it was left squirming in the bottom of the skiff. Aram scooped an oar underneath it and catapulted the gelatinous segment overboard.
Splashing up from the water, another serpentine jelly leech hung poised in the air before whipping at Jason. Swinging his sword defensively, Jason saw the flat of the blade slap the leech aside before he toppled backward into Rachel, who steadied him. As the leech stretched toward Dorsio, knives flashed in his hands, slicing off the tip of the leech and then two more segments. What remained of the leech reared away, rising even higher out of the water. Only then did Rachel realize that the leech was actually a tentacle.
“Grullions!” Nedwin shouted.
A new tentacle seized the skiff at the stern, making the vessel buck and spin. The sudden motion jolted Rachel down to a seated position. Jason dropped to his knees. Diving, Nedwin slashed the tentacle with a long knife, severing several feet of it. The rest withdrew over the gunwale. Nedwin skewered the squirming section and flipped it into the water.