In the Shadow agent's wake, Cob was forced to relay Matriarch Aglavyn's words to Enkhaelen just to fill the silence. He'd expected some sharp reaction from the necromancer: anger perhaps, or sarcasm, some kind of dismissal. Some spiteful reaction to the offered hand.
Instead, Enkhaelen kept his own counsel, absorbing the words and digesting them without comment.
Cob couldn't tell if that was good or bad. His slapdash plan had been met with approval though, so he held on to hope that Enkhaelen would stay cooperative. He didn't know how he could keep the leash if the necromancer chose to resist him.
“Be ready for trouble,” Enkhaelen murmured finally, still watching the stakes. “Remember last time, when someone here alerted the Watchtower as soon as you left? With this much waiting, enemies might arrive at our destination before we do.”
“I've heard the Gold Army got withdrawn,” he murmured back. “Shouldn't be anyone around t'hear.”
“Unless that's what they want you to think.”
“You really believe they'd—“
“I know,” said Enkhaelen, cold eyes flicking up to meet Cob's. “Yes, many of the Trifolders are good people, like your Matriarch Aglavyn. Yes, I have my deeply personal reasons for distrusting them. But I also know that there are traitors among them, and whether they're infiltrators or zealots, it doesn't matter. It never has, because as long as the Trifold can't weed its own ranks, it remains a danger to me. To us. If they plan to attack, now is the best time for it. Now or when the first of us crosses the portal.”
Cob hated to think like that, but he could hear effigies patrolling the hall outside and couldn't deny the threat they presented. If they chose to disobey Aglavyn and swarm through the door, he doubted even Enkhaelen's necromancy could stop them. There were just too many.
Gritting his teeth, he braced himself to wait.
Chapter 12 – Ghosts of the Grey
They were still in the swamp.
No matter how much Lark wished to see the gates of Keceirnden ahead, they never materialized. Step after step, mark after grinding mark, she and her band of soldiers and pilgrims marched on down the decaying White Road, seeing nothing in the distance but more road and swamp, more icy water, more endless darkened sky.
They'd taken two long rests since the fight with the monsters, and many short breaks. No one was at their best, but to Lark's intense relief there had been no mutinies either, and only a few scuffles. Most were too tired and beaten to do more than snap at each other when provoked.
And some still had the strength to go foraging. Lark had been alarmed the first time she saw people go off the road during a break, torches sputtering in the dark. She had pursued them with her own light, sure they would get themselves killed, only to be intercepted by one young woman and sent back with reassurances that they knew what they were doing. They were all wildlands-folk, former farmers and hunters and trappers, with the experience to harvest what they could from the swamp.
Doubting that, Lark had waited anxiously while the others slept by their meager fires, until one by one the foragers returned with the fruits of their labor.
Soren bark for basket-making. Wild roots, plant-pith, spurbark needles to chew or for tea. Huge tree-lung mushrooms. Snails, slugs, swamp crustaceans, snakes. Water-skippers the size of her fist.
She'd eaten bugs before; grilled scorpions were common street-food in Fellen, and burrowing beetles in Bahlaer. She'd never seen them being cooked though, squirming on skewers as they were laid over the coals, and the slugs made her skin crawl. The young woman who'd warned her had made a cunning little soren-bark pot to carry water in, but when she started gutting live slugs in preparation to boil them, Lark's stomach rebelled.
“So don't watch,” the woman told her. “Just start fires and draw water and wait for the soup to be done.”
That, Lark could do—though she hated having to be prompted for it. She hadn't been thinking clearly since the monster-fight, and though part of the reason was hunger and exhaustion, she knew the rest was fear. Fear of the darkness around them, only barely silvered by the mother moon's crescent; fear of the horrors that might lurk beyond the road; fear of letting down these people she'd tricked into following her.
Fear of what they'd find if they ever reached Keceirnden.
Yendrah, the bluff older Riddishwoman, advised her sometimes. The pilgrimage went more or less at Yendrah's pace, her club-foot and her energy counterbalancing each other to rein in the healthy pilgrims while giving the sickly ones a pace to match. She'd become the de facto head of all the Riddishfolk, but still deferred to Lark—perhaps because of the White Flames and the wraith-crystal light, perhaps just because Lark had provided the original push.
Now Lark needed that push herself, and Yendrah was happy to oblige. It was Yendrah who had stirred her from her daze to light the first torches, set the first fires. There was very little good wood in the swamp, all either green or soggy or rotten, but Lark had found that by pushing energy into it like she did with the crystal, she could force-dry and eventually ignite it. One fire had grown to several, the woods-folk had assembled drying-racks, and now most of the group carried torches or parcels of firewood as they walked.
They had clean water too, in bark pots and hollowed-out containers, because Yendrah had spotted Ripple and asked about it. While explaining, Lark had remembered Cob straining salt and debris from the elemental, and managed to replicate that by lacing her fingers together, calling energy into them, then combing them repeatedly through Ripple's substance.
It was a taxing process, so more often she simply directed Ripple down to the water to collect as much as it could hold—about a barrel's worth—then dripped it slowly through the wild-folks' makeshift filters of cloth and gravel and sand. The water that came out then got boiled.
No one had gotten sick from it, and the diet of slug-and-mushroom soup was keeping them on their feet, but Lark couldn't celebrate. The temperature was still uncomfortably chilly, and the wind took every opportunity to slice through the pilgrims' robes. Worse, the road had begun to unravel, its sides hanging in shreds and its center sagging beneath the passage of their feet. She worried that they would lay down to sleep some time and wake up underwater.
The most troubling part was the silence from her White Flame escort. Since the fight, they had split unevenly, Erevard, Talyard and Harbett keeping their usual pace but Vyslin and Mendras lagging behind, Vyslin visibly limping. Though their wounds had all been closed by their armor, the latter two were clearly suffering—yet none responded when she asked, just bulled onward.
Only Maevor talked anymore, and he was limping too. His round, comfortingly Illanic face had gone pallid, his jaw permanently set, and though he admitted to being both light-headed and in pain, he refused to let her check his injuries. He just pulled his tattered coat tighter around himself.
So it was that, maybe a mark into what Lark thought was the sixth day post-darkness, she looked back at the sound of a dull impact to see Vyslin face-down on the road.
She paused, at first thinking that he'd tripped, but when he didn't stir, she said, “Hoi!” Mendras and Maevor, slightly ahead of him, halted to give her near-identical looks of confusion, then turned to follow her gaze.
“Vyslin?” she tried again. The pilgrims around them were slowing, gawking, but no one moved to help; every face in the light of their meager torches was drawn, tired, hollow-eyed.
No response from the soldier. No movement.
Cursing under her breath, she moved to crouch by his side and touch his neck. His skin was fever-hot, and by the torch-light she saw his false white leg unraveling itself to recoil upward over his truncated thigh. Other parts of his armor had already receded, leaving him covered only in patches.
Her stomach clenched. This was not a matter of exhaustion.
“He's sick,” she said aloud. “Help me roll him over. The rest of you—who else has a piking fever and didn't tell me?”
“Our armor deals with it,”
said Erevard behind her, cool and detached as always. He made no move to help; instead, Harbett did, handing his torch off to Talyard then crouching to turn his comrade over.
Lark gasped at the sight. With his armor in retreat, Vyslin's face was stark white and coated in sweat, his eyes rolled up beneath half-shut lids. Though the gashes on his jaw looked to be healing, those in his left shoulder and arm stood practically open, with bruise-like mottling covering the spaces between them. Even with his claw-tattoos muddying the picture, it was clear that the skin from collarbone to elbow was inflamed, the wounds covered in crusted pus, their edges peeling away from his armor's white stitchwork. The reek of fleshy rot struck her, and she gagged and turned away.
Even after her stomach settled, she almost couldn't bring herself to look back. She had a dim understanding of wound-sickness from the Shadow Folk's partnership with the Trifold, but not enough to help. Without a priestess or a medic or some kind of shelter, some civilization, she didn't know what they could do. Perhaps one of the wild-folk would, but they were all ranged ahead at the front of the mob.
For a moment she just stared, eyes watering. It had been days, and she was cold and afraid and he was dying, clearly dying, because he'd been too stubborn to say anything…
Stop, came a thought unbidden. A little kernel of anger. Don't gibber. Think about the problem. They made it, now you solve it. That's what you do, liaison: you bridge the gap, you reach out with your mind and connect a problem to a solution. What is the problem?
Fever. Infection.
What caused the problem?
Probably the rot and dirt from the bear-thing's claws, or its own spilled blood. If Vyslin's White Flame armor had just stitched him up, it stood to reason that there was still bad material buried in the wound, contributing to the damage.
Solution?
Clean it. Get the bad stuff out. Then...what? She couldn't heal, how—
Start with the first step.
Right. She could do that. “Ripple,” she called softly, and felt the water elemental slither from its shoulder-perch to peek out from her sleeve. Setting her fingertips lightly to Vyslin's chest, she murmured her instructions, and Ripple puddled down immediately to cover the wound. Swirls of blackish-red and greasy yellow came off Vyslin's skin, filling its clear substance as it began to soak through the gore. Vyslin shuddered, twitched, but didn't wake.
“Clean water,” Lark ordered the men who lurked over her shoulder. “Any canteen, any bucket—we'll need a lot. We can make more later, but right now it's vital.”
There was a mutter of agreement. Calls went out to the passing crowd; people slowed, stopped. Someone set a bark bucket by her, and she withdrew Ripple for a moment to comb the sludge out and let it drink up the clean water. An oily residue clung to her fingers, making her throat tighten; she tried to wipe it off on her robe but the fabric seemed to repel it.
Once Ripple had hydrated, she set it to the wounds again, squinting by the crystal's light as more gore dissolved. The further the elemental got, the more the remaining armor-threads retreated, letting the unhealed flesh gape wider. Bit by bit, the blockages gave way, disgorging old blood and infected fluid into Ripple's waiting substance.
“He's still human,” Erevard murmured above her. “The armor hasn't pervaded him as much as it has us, and with his leg… We've been walking so much, it's no surprise.”
Lark glanced up, wondering if she'd imagined the sympathy in his voice. His pocked face looked impassive in the flickering light, sharp teeth showing between parted lips, but there was some emotion there—in the eyes or the brows, she wasn't quite sure.
“Why didn't you say something?” she gritted, looking back to Ripple's work.
“I didn't realize it until just now.”
I suppose none of us are infallible. Not even the monsters.
It wasn't a comfort.
But slowly, bucket by bucket, the mess decreased. Her hands were covered in foulness from combing Ripple out; someone tried to offer a torn-off piece of robe to wipe them on but she declined, wanting to wait until the extraction was complete. It was so difficult to keep from rubbing her eyes, scratching her face, but the greasy feeling between her fingers kept her cautious.
Finally, after what felt like eons, Ripple ran clean—not quite clear, but with threads of new blood winding up from inside. The wounds still gaped their tattered edges, but the obvious sickness was gone: no more greenish-yellow or black in there, just the red of raw flesh. She withdrew the elemental and saw white tendrils immediately poke out to stitch Vyslin shut.
“Doubt he'll ever use that arm again,” mumbled Talyard.
Lark scraped the last of the gunk off, then took advantage of the scrap of cloth, chafing her hands clean as best she could before asking Ripple to do the rest. Vyslin's color looked a little better, his eyes fully closed, and when she set the back of her hand to his brow, it just felt warm, not blazing.
Not that it meant much. The air was cold and he was near-naked, no spare clothing available to drape on him. And they couldn't move him—not now, perhaps not for a while.
“What's this?” came a gruff voice behind her: Yendrah, finally backtracking to see why her entourage had stalled. Lark didn't look up, still watching the armor threads at work. It brought back memories of Darilan in the Merry Tom Tavern, with his own threads stitching up his wounds.
“We need to stop a while,” she said. “Just us if you want to take the rest ahead. There hasn't been an attack since Kyleen ran the monsters off, so it might be safe.”
Yendrah huffed. “We've come this far as companions, and we'll stay that way. We don't go splitting off unnecessarily.”
“I don't know how long we'll have to stay...”
“Pish. A lone wolf is a dead wolf, my dear. I'll not have you fall prey because we marched away and left you.”
I wouldn't be alone, she thought, but with the condition of the rest of her White Flames, Yendrah's concern had merit.
“Another break, then,” she said, “for everyone. Sit, sit. —Maevor, Mendras, and the rest of you too, you were all beat up. Please don't tell me you're hiding the same shit as Vyslin.”
Talyard, lowering himself cross-legged, shook his head and rapped his knuckles against the white coating on his chest. “Tired and achy, but surviving.”
“I feel like shit—sorry,” said Mendras, slumping down nearby. Lark made a face at him; not like she hadn't just sworn herself. “But I don't think I'm that bad. Wobbly sometimes.”
She remembered the blood on him at shoulders and thighs. “Show me.”
Grimacing, he ran a finger along his upper armor as if tracing a seam. It parted to show several ugly-looking lines of stitchwork, the flesh around them slightly red. He repeated it down below, revealing more leg-hair than she'd ever wanted to see but the same mildly-inflamed sutures. “It hurts pretty bad, but heh, that's because I'm walking on it,” he said apologetically. “I think it'll clear up with rest.”
She insisted on testing his brow for fever, then frowned at him sternly until he dropped his gaze. “You lay down too, and stay there. We'll make some tea or something. Maevor?”
“Nothing you can do about it,” said the bodythief tiredly.
“Show me.”
He hadn't sat down. Frankly she couldn't remember him sitting since the fight; laying on one side, yes, or kneeling, but not putting his back or buttocks to the road. As he reluctantly shrugged from his coat and pulled away his tattered tunic, she saw why. His back-side from ribs to knees was covered in deep gouges, most tightly stitched but others suppurating like Vyslin's. Worse, patches of skin on his lower back had gone dead-grey.
“Punctured some of my organs,” he said softly, “else I'd be fine. I'll still be fine. I'm fighting it. We're made to withstand this sort of thing and recover.”
“Or hop to a new body if you can't,” she noted.
In profile, she saw his jaw tighten. “I'd rather not.”
“Lay down,” she told hi
m, and he complied without fuss. Beside the grey patches and the disgusting discharge—and the visceral horror of all those stitched-up gashes—he did seem in better shape than Vyslin. No sign of infection in the upper and lower wounds, just in the middle where the enemy had ripped into his guts. Below that, his shredded breeches hung on by a sash and a prayer.
She frowned. “Ripple could clean those bad wounds out, but they're stitched shut...”
“Leave them. I'll mend. I just need...food. Light. Sleep. Anything.”
“An anchor?” Her gaze fell to his bracer, peeking out from his sleeve as he pillowed his head. “That's how I kept you here.”
One dark eye caught hers. “You're too taxed. I'll—“
“Can anyone do it?”
“I— Yes, I think so...”
“A volunteer,” she said, looking around at the gathering. More than just the White Flames surrounded her now; Yendrah's people had clustered up close, with other pilgrims strung out beyond them, building fires to warm themselves. “Anyone?”
“I will,” said Harbett, rolling up his sleeve. “Didn't get hurt in the first place.”
She watched with clinical interest as he slid his arm beneath Maevor's. The bodythief's hand clamped just below his elbow, then the black bracer flexed, one side of it pulling free from Maevor's arm to extend thin spikes into Harbett's. The big soldier grimaced but took it without complaint, and immediately the threads in Maevor's back began to twitch.
Have I become so used to this, or am I just too tired to be sickened? Lark wondered as she watched them do their work. There was a certain blind artistry to it, and if she focused on the sewing metaphor, she could almost appreciate what their Maker had done. A human would have died from those wounds, no contest. Maevor, Mendras and Vyslin would all have fallen to the monsters in the village.
The Drowning Dark (The War of Memory Cycle Book 4) Page 33