Er’ril nodded. “Our leaders investigated, sending out scouts, but they never returned. By the time we realized that Alasea was under assault, it was too late. The Dark Lord was firmly entrenched in his volcanic fortress. It was at this time that his Gul’gothal armies arrived in massive fleets that stretched across the horizons. They attacked A’loa Glen first. For many moons, the oceans of the Archipelago ran red with blood, yet still we prevailed. The magick sustained us.” The plainsman’s eyes were bright with past glory.
Then slowly the fire in his gaze soured. “But Chi abandoned us. As we fought, mages lifted their hands for power but pulled back only stumps. Without our magick, the tide of battle slowly turned. D’warf armies and Gul’gothal dog soldiers reached the coasts and began their march to the Teeth, aided by the Dark Lord’s beasts and black magicks. We could not withstand their forces. After ten winters of slaughter and bloodshed, only A’loa Glen still stood against their ravages, with enough pooled magick in her to sustain a long siege. From this last bastion, we struck at the Black Heart’s dominion of our lands. As long as A’loa Glen stood, there was hope in the people.”
Er’ril faced the floor. “Then one day a mighty quake tore into this region. During this upheaval, not only did the Archipelago sink until only the tallest mountaintops remained above the waves, but even this wedge of coastline tore and slumped from the higher plains. Rivers tumbled over the new cliffs and swamped this region. Ripped open by the cataclysm, hot vents heated these waters, and the creatures of the coastal marshes and bogs spread inland to claim this new territory. And so the Drowned Lands were born.”
Silence met his tale. Finally, Mycelle asked, “But what happened to A’loa Glen?”
Er’ril grew somber. “During the assault, we thought the whole island would sink, but at the last moment, the quake ceased and the highest levels of the city still stood above water. Fearing further attacks, the mages sought to hide the island, to let the Dark Lord think the city sunk and defeated. The Brotherhood used almost all the remaining magick to build a cloaking wall against prying eyes, impenetrable without the magick of one of three wards. From this hidden post, the surviving mages thought to wage a war of stealth against the Gul’gotha. But it was a mistake. With the disappearance of A’loa Glen, the people of Alasea lost their heart.” Er’ril’s face hardened, his brows furrowed deep. “By hiding, we handed the final victory to the Dark Lord.”
“But h-how did he sink these lands?” Elena asked.
Er’ril shrugged. “It was never discovered.”
Jaston spoke up for the first time, his voice a worried murmur. “As I said before, some say it was the swamp wit’ch.”
Er’ril rubbed his stubbled chin and straightened. “Whatever the cause, it grows late.”
No one spoke against this statement. Each was left to his own thoughts as bedrolls were pulled up to necks. Elena’s left arm itched with its vines, keeping her awake for a long time. As soft snores rose around her, Elena’s thoughts were still plagued with all she had learned.
If the wit’ch was powerful enough to sink these lands, what did she want with Elena?
Nearby, Jaston moaned in his sleep and thrashed against invisible attackers.
And if the wit’ch had been hidden for so long, scarring and killing those that approached, why reveal herself now?
Outside, the swamp’s nightly chorus of hunters and prey was a constant reminder of the dangers that lay ahead. Elena pulled the edge of the bedroll over her head to muffle the keening screeches and warbling croaks, and she tried to imagine she was home in her own room in the orchards. She failed. Still, after a time, exhaustion did finally claim her, and sleep swallowed away her fears.
She slept deeply, too tired even to dream, until someone grabbed her arm. Her eyes flew open, a gasp on her lips.
“Hush,” Er’ril whispered, and pulled her from her bedroll.
Elena struggled free of her blanket and stood. She had no idea how long she had been sleeping but sensed it was well past midnight, yet still far from morning.
Er’ril shoved her behind him as he faced the ironwood door. Jaston and Mycelle were already out of their bedrolls. Her aunt had her two swords, and Jaston clutched a long skinning knife.
Beside them, Fardale stood with his hackles raised. The wolf’s silence was unnerving as he stared intently at the door.
Glancing around her, Elena did not understand the danger until the quiet of the room penetrated her. Not a sound disturbed the night—not a single croak, whistle, or hiss.
Beyond the door, the swamp lay dead quiet.
PUSHING ASIDE A wall of dense reeds, the blood hunter crept onto the island, ropes of soggy moss clinging to his shoulders. A flutter of frogs fled from his step, splashing into the shallows.
Ahead, the stone cabin lay at the top of a short hill. He approached its rear cautiously. The scent of the wit’ch led here. He stepped to the rock wall and sniffed at it. Even through the rock, he scented her spoor. His lips pulled back to grin at the night. He had finally caught up with his prey.
He circled the cabin, pleased by what he discovered. No windows opened in the walls, only a single door. There was no escape. His quarry was trapped within this stone prison. He crossed to the only entrance and crouched before the ironwood door. Here her lingering scent was strong. He straightened, glancing behind him to ensure that their boat was still tied to the dock. Through the mist, he saw the punt rocking gently in the night breeze.
Grinning, he faced the threshold, savoring his victory.
Raising his arm, he let fire dance in his stone palm. His polished black features reflected back the flames as they grew fierce. Once satisfied, he thrust his hand to the door. As his ebon’stone flesh met wood, the door exploded away from him, shredding into thousands of ironwood darts that blasted into the chamber ahead. Before the debris settled, Torwren stalked through the cloud of trailing smoke.
He found the cabin empty of all but a scattering of rumpled bedrolls. Dismayed, he marched into the room and searched its corners. No one was here. As flames ran in streams across his stone skin, he turned to the door, staring out at the night.
She may have slipped his snare this time, but now he knew his prey was wary. He took a step back into the swamps, determined to show her the skills of a true hunter.
Soon, he thought as he entered the dark waters. Soon I shall taste her heart.
27
IN THE DISTANCE, a muffled explosion echoed across the swamp. Elena did not need to turn around to know it came from the stone lodge they had just fled.
“The boy spoke the truth,” Mycelle whispered. “Someone is stalking us.”
Elena stayed ducked down as the strange boat sped along the swamp current. She stared at the small naked boy who stood at the bow of the vessel. Redheaded and freckled, he was clearly one of the wit’ch’s swamp children. This time, she did not shy from the dirty child. If it had not been for the boy’s timely arrival, all of them would have been trapped in the stone cabin.
The child had come knocking softly on the lodge’s door shortly after Elena had been pulled from her bedroll. Er’ril had warily peeked out to discover the boy standing there. The fiery-headed youth had hissed at them to leave before they could even collect their supplies. “Leave it,” he had scolded. “Dead men don’t need bedrolls.”
At first, no one had moved. Finally, Mycelle had sighed and sheathed her twin swords. “The wit’ch knows these lands. If she says run, we’d better heed her minion.”
The boy had grabbed her aunt’s arm, obviously relieved to find an ally, and practically yanked her toward the door. “The monster comes. Hurry!”
Er’ril was less convinced. He kept a hand gripped on Elena’s shoulder. At the door, the boy had raised his gaze to the tall plainsman. “I do this to save your wit’ch. If you wish to die, then stay. But let the girl live.”
Even Elena could tell it was not a mere boy that spoke. It was the swamp wit’ch.
Grumbling,
Er’ril had finally relented and pushed Elena forward.
The boy quickly led them out the door and away from the dock. “This way!” he had insisted. He guided them to a crudely constructed craft nestled among the reeds. It was smaller than their own punt, but with no supplies, the boat was roomy enough. It seemed to be constructed of tightly woven strands of some thick vine and was encrusted with a layer of yellow moss.
While Fardale sniffed at it, Jaston had studied the craft doubtfully, then shrugged and stepped into it. The others followed as Jaston searched for the pole to work the boat. Before he could finish his search, the crude vessel had simply slipped away from the bank on its own and glided into the deeper waters.
Now, as the echoes of the explosion from the lodge died around them, the small boat picked up speed.
“It’s traveling faster than the current,” Jaston commented, wonder and fear equally mixed in his expression.
Without a lantern, the swamp was a black cave around them. Even the stars and moon were masked by the night’s clouds and mists.
“Only a fool travels the bog at night,” Jaston mumbled near the stern.
The boy glanced back at his words, his face twisted with exaggerated fear. “Then I’d better run home,” he said, and toppled overboard.
Er’ril’s arm reached out for the boy; then he caught himself with a dour shake of his head. “I hate when they do that,” he said under his breath.
“I think the wit’ch tires,” Mycelle said from beside Elena. “I wager it takes immense concentration and strength to create one of her moss children. If she’s forced to move and guide the boat, she probably can’t maintain the child any longer. There are limits to an elemental’s ability.”
“We should’ve used more caution,” Er’ril said. “Who is to say the boy’s talk of monsters was real?”
“I felt a stirring,” Mycelle argued. “Something strangely muted, but corrupt. I couldn’t tell for sure what it was, except that whatever pursues us has been touched by black magicks.”
Her statement silenced the conversation. It felt uncomfortable to speak in the darkness anyway, as if their mere voices would bring some new foul creature into their midst.
Yet the swamp held no such qualms. The music of the night returned to claim the darkness. Strange, warbling cries echoed back and forth across the waters, and under it droned a constant croaking, chirping, and creaking.
Something huge suddenly splashed into the water only a stone’s throw away—or at least it sounded that close to Elena. She huddled closer to Mycelle. Her aunt put an arm around her. “Why don’t you try to sleep?” she whispered in Elena’s ear.
Darkness hid Elena’s incredulous expression. Sleep would never claim her this night.
As the boat glided through unknown dangers, her eyes slowly grew accustomed to the blackness. The darkness was not as complete as Elena had first suspected. In the distance, strange glows would shine forth in the mists for a few heartbeats, then fade away. Closer, swarms of sparking insects swept away in huge clouds from their passing boat. Occasional hanging ropes of moss glowed a soft green from branches overhead; some even pulsed languidly in the night breeze. At one point, the vessel swept through a dark pond, but in its wake, the disturbed algae blew bright with an azure hue, leaving a brilliant trail behind them.
The wondrous sights were not lost on the others. “There is much beauty here,” Mycelle whispered.
“But beware its pretty face,” Jaston answered her. “Among the bogs and fens, beauty is often used to lull the unwary to their death. Remember the pleasing scent of the moonblossom.”
As if to support his claim, a viper swam past the bow of the boat, its body gleaming a radiant crimson as it twisted through the waters.
“Still, beauty is beauty,” Mycelle said with a sigh.
So the night passed. No one slept. But as nothing directly threatened them as they traveled, they were able to relax and, in some small way, appreciate the wonders hidden among these lands. For brief moments, Elena could almost understand Jaston’s ability to call the swamps home.
At long last, the skies to the east began to lighten with dawn. And while the sun was welcome, the calm of the night was shattered by what the new light revealed.
Around them, trees had grown so high that their crowns vanished into the foggy clouds above. Boles of these swamp giants were as big around as the stone lodge they had fled, and monstrous tangles of huge roots rose from the waters, creating twisted arches over the channel. Creatures of leathery wings and sharp claws hung upside down from these roots as they passed beneath them, wings wrapped like cloaks around their sleeping bodies. Walls of webs also lay draped across the snarls of heavy roots, with spiders the size of small dogs hunched in their center, fangs dripping a red oil as their boat passed.
Elena glanced away. The spiders reminded her too much of Vira’ni’s poisonous demons that had plagued them last spring, like an ill omen warning them away. She turned to study the swamp channel.
Under them, the waters were no longer green but a deep black like a starless night sky. In the dark channel, beasts churned and swam. Schools of fish darted around the boat, and even from above, their sharp teeth could be clearly seen. Wide wakes marked the paths of unseen beasts, obviously curious and drawn by their boat. For a brief moment, a huge white fin rose from the waters ahead, then sank back down.
A gurgling splash drew Elena’s eyes to the right of the boat. A striped python as thick around as an og’re’s chest was writhing from its perch in a fork of a tree and slipping into the black waterway. Before its full length slid into the depths, the boat had passed out of sight. But other snakes lay around them on all sides. Nests of pale vipers lay as thick as piled snow along the muddy banks, while their more colorful cousins hung in choked tangles from low-lying branches.
Everywhere Elena looked, the swamp squirmed and crawled with deadly menace. Yet nothing approached the boat directly or threatened immediate harm.
“They . . . they let us pass,” Jaston mumbled.
“The wit’ch’s magick,” Mycelle said. “It must be keeping them back.”
Er’ril spoke from behind Elena’s shoulder. “And what if this wit’ch decides not to be so accommodating after we meet? How will we ever get out of here?”
No one had an answer.
As the boat shied around a slow bend in the channel, what Elena had thought was a small island buried in a bed of floating moss opened a huge black eye and stared at her. It then sank from view in a swirl of bubbles.
Elena hugged her arms around her body. Even the rising warmth could not dispel the chill that had settled around her heart. Her hand rubbed at the moss under her left sleeve. How were they ever to escape these swamps, especially without her magick?
Jaston stood near the stern of the boat and grabbed at fruit hanging from a vine overhead. He managed to collect half a dozen, dropping them at his feet, before the boat slid past the fruited canopy. “Fen apples,” he named them, settling back to his seat. “Though I’ve never seen them so large.”
He passed them around. Without their supplies, they did not even have water to share. While Fardale rolled one of the large red-skinned fruits across the bottom of the boat with his nose, sniffing at it, Elena needed both hands to grasp her own. Her eyes crinkled. This was like no apple she had ever seen. Following Jaston’s example, she simply bit into it. As her teeth pierced the fruit’s skin, sweet juices ran down her chin, and she found the flesh of the “apple” crisp and oddly cool. It wasn’t until her mouth was full that she realized how hungry she was. She devoured the fruit in silence, as did the others. Too soon, she had gnawed it down to its core. But even then she did not stop. She chewed on the seeds inside and discovered they tasted a bit like hazelnuts.
Satisfied and full, she found the nervous chill in her chest strangely abated. Just the act of eating, this small achievement of survival in these poisonous lands, fortified her resolve. She leaned back, the tension fading from her sh
oulders. She would live today.
So the remainder of the day passed.
Elena even found herself dozing during the late afternoon as they glided, undisturbed, past horrors that would turn a brave man to stone. As she watched, now less concerned with something attacking her, she was able to appreciate the cycle of life in this strange place: the mother kroc’an with her tail wrapped around a nest of eggs, a pair of long-legged cranes with beaks like swords leading a line of fledglings and showing them how to hunt the shallows, the obvious courting ritual of a pair of rock turtles as big around as mountain boulders. Even here, poison could not keep life from continuing.
Eventually night again swallowed away the swamps, and Elena sought truly to sleep. Her belly was full from a late meal of something Jaston called a “potato weed,” a fibrous tuber growing in chains that he had snatched from the waters. It was not all that tasty, but it was filling. Content, she drifted toward slumber, her head cradled on Fardale’s side as the wolf lay curled at the prow of the boat.
At least this night, nestled among friends, Elena felt safe. Still, deep inside her, she suspected this peace would not last for long. So she would savor this moment. Tomorrow’s worries could wait on the dawn.
She closed her eyes and let the poisonous lands lull her to sleep.
THE BLOOD HUNTER pushed through the deeper swamps. Here the waters ran with creatures far larger than himself, but still they shied away when he drew near. The foulness of his stone skin repelled the beasts’ keen noses.
Torwren surfaced again to check the scent of the wit’ch. A trace of lightning burned in the air. Back at the island, he had soon enough caught his prey’s scent. He had studied the trampled rushes and reeds. Another boat had awaited the wit’ch, one hidden in the shallows.
After tearing apart the muddy bank for further clues about her unknown support, he had discovered nothing. He was forced to pursue her on foot, slogging through muck and fighting the ever-thickening growth of roots and moss. He had trailed her throughout the remainder of the night and the following day. From the way her trail grew faint, she traveled faster and was leaving him far behind.