by Alex Raizman
Armin smiled in response to this voice. It belonged to Aildreda Kollias, the last member of their little expedition, and Armin was glad to have her here. She was one of the most dangerous human women in the Resistance, a Woodwalker whose grandfather had trained with Lathariel herself, or so they said. Armin couldn’t speak to her grandfather’s skills, but could speak to Aildreda. She could track a mouse after it had been plucked off the ground in a hawk’s talons. Armin had seen her do it.
Oh, granted, the hawk had still been in sight, but she’d sold it well enough to fool him for a full minute, which was every bit as good in Armin’s view.
“Aildreda is right,” Armin said to Guiart. “Let’s get moving again. We’ve got a lot of swamp to cover.”
Guiart pouted – a grown man, pouting! – but he put his hands on the Skitter’s lattice mind and began to walk into the swamp. The long, thin legs that gave the Skitter its name sunk down into the swamp, but the filthy water was shallow enough to allow them to pass. The lattice mind was constantly scanning through the water, looking for solid patches of ground where the narrow legs wouldn’t sink – far better than a horse would have done.
“Alright, everyone,” Armin said as Guiart focused on guiding the lattice mind, “we don’t know exactly what we’re looking for, and Tythel’s directions – what little of them there are – were based on this being a forest, not a swamp. We have to assume missing landmarks, at the very least. Aildreda, I want you sitting up front with Guiart. Try and find anything that might have been a path.”
Aildreda nodded and gave Armin a wink before sliding into the seat next to Guiart.
“Clarcia, I want you on the left. Ossman, on the right. If either of you see anything move out there, give it just a few seconds to prove its not hostile, then light it up and burn it to a cinder. We won’t start any forest fires out here, and I don’t want anyone dying because we decided to be nice.”
Clarcia followed without delay, but Ossman gave Armin a raised eyebrow. “And what will you be doing, oh fearless leader?”
Armin gave Ossman the most disarming grin he could manage. “I’ll be fulfilling my most vital role. I’ll be sitting in the back, charging our arccells.”
He wished that had sounded less bitter than he felt.
***
It only took Armin two hours to decide that, of all the hellish places he’d visited working for the Resistance, the swamps that had once been Dor’nah were the absolute worst, and the reasons for that were so numerous that Armin was able to pass the time by listing them to himself. It was an exercise he kept private – venting to his cohorts would do nothing for morale, and for some reason that idiot Duke had put Armin in charge of this thing. I shouldn’t be leading anyone anywhere, Armin thought, and with that thought came fear, and with that fear came distraction.
Stop it, he chided himself. You’re being childish.
So instead, he took the very mature and adult route of mentally categorizing everything he hated about this swamp.
The first was the smell that had assailed them when they’d still been outside the swamp. Now that they were actively passing through it, their skimmer kicking up brackish water, it was almost overwhelming. A combination of cow dung and spoiled meat mixed with the sulfurous stench of rotten eggs. Clarcia and Guiart had each thrown up once from the stench, and Ossman looked ready to join them. Armin was keeping his stomach from emptying through sheer force of will alone. Only Aildreda seem untouched by the smell, although that was because she was being plagued by the next item on Armin’s lists of gripes.
The bugs. The light damned, shadow forsaken insects that swarmed around them. Every step of the Skitter stirred up more of them, and they seemed to find Aildreda and Armin particularly delicious. Armin was taking advantage of his attachment to the Lumwell right now to keep a number of them repelled, warming his skin to be less appealing to the little pests, but Aildreda had no such defense. She slapped her arm again as Armin watched.
“If you want, I could try to shield you,” Armin said.
Aildreda shook her head. “It’s a pointless waste of Light, but thank you. I’ve dealt with worse than these biters before.” She slapped her neck and grimaced. “Although not so many of them.”
Armin nodded and let the silence return. It was needed right now. None of them really knew what they could be dealing with.
That was the worst on the list of complaints. The tension, the all-encompassing knowledge that they had left behind the world they knew, the world of grass and field and trees and woods and lakes and beaches and seas. They’d entered an utterly alien domain, one that was ruled over by horrors beyond their reckoning, and they were grotesquely unprepared for it. Clarcia was the only one of them who could lumcast, at least properly. Armin could deflect flows of light when they were right on top of a lumwell, but that wouldn’t do any good out here. Outside of her, they were all just good with arc weapons.
“Movement to the right,” Aildreda whispered.
All eyes, save Clarcia, went to that direction, and Ossman raised his arcwand as he sought out the source of the motion. “There,” he whispered.
Armin followed the arcwands point to see what Ossman had seemed. It was just a shape in the mist and vaguely humanoid, although far too large and far too hunched to meet the description fully. It looked like there were vines or lichens hanging from it, and its clawed hands were bringing something unidentifiable up to its lips. It tore and chew, a grotesque sound that cut through the sound of insects and the Skitter’s gentle sloshing through the water.
“Hold fire,” Armin said, watching the shape. It seemed intent on its meal and had given no indication so far it was even aware of their presence. How could it not be? It should be able to hear the Skitter at least.
Ossman kept the arcwand trained on the creature but obeyed Armin’s order. For a few tense seconds, Armin thought that would be the end of it. The creature would continue to eat, and they would pass by unmolested.
Then the creatures head whipped towards them, and they could see its eyes glow in reflected light, wide and bright as will-o-whips.
Ossman didn’t hesitate. He pulled the trigger immediately. A beam of light lanced from the arcwand towards the creature. It bellowed in sudden surprised pain and scampered away.
Armin let out a sigh, and a relieved laugh. “It wasn’t something undead,” he said, taking deep breaths to calm himself.
“How can you be sure?” Aildreda asked, every muscle in her neck standing out from tension.
“Because the undead don’t feel pain,” Clarcia said. The entire time, she’d kept her vigil on the left side of the bank. “Not from light or flame or broken bone. Pain is something reserved for the living.”
Armin nodded in agreement. “We just need to-”
“Turn left,” Clarcia said, interrupting him. She pointed out into the fog. “We’re here.”
At first Armin couldn’t see it, nodded for Guiart to turn the Skitter. As they grew closer, a shape began to form in the fog, one that resolved itself into clarity with each step. It was a stone structure, a tower that was probably once immensely tall but had sunken deep into the mud of the swamp. It loomed out of the fog, its open windows watching them like the eye sockets of an accusatory skull.
Atop the tower was the skeleton of a dragon, an immense shape covered in moss and dangling with vines. It was draped across the tower, somehow held together against the eons, but even from here Armin could tell that, in life, those teeth were each as long as his hand.
Grejax Armin thought. The great dragon died atop his tower, alone and forgotten.
“Take us in,” Armin said, fighting a wave of fear. “We’ll find what we’re looking for over there.”
The entranceway of Grejax’s lair was littered with the long rotten bones of the dead. They were scattered about with the careless hand of a macabre child’s toys, strewn without any rhyme or reason that Armin could see. He could feel the thrum of necromantic power in the air, lik
e a wire drawn taught and plucked by a foul hand, but none of it seemed to emanate from the bones itself. You’re being absurd, he reminded himself. Without a necromancer present, the bones would remain bones, as inanimate and lifeless as the stones they lay upon.
He still gave them a wide berth and told himself he was doing it to respect the dead. He even almost believed it.
The others were giving the bones the same distant respect that Armin was, as if there was an unspoken agreement that none of them wanted to be the one to disturb whatever horror the bones represented. Clarcia’s eyes shone with the light she was holding onto, and she held her hands outstretched, as if ready to unleash a torrent of raw light the moment something even twitched.
Armin approved of that mentality. Guiart and Ossman had their weapons unsheathed, with arclight glowing the blades of both Guiart’s sword and Ossman’s axe. Only Aildreda kept her weapon sheathed, to avoid giving away her position as she scouted ahead. She was a dim shadow at the mouth of the next room and was waving for Armin to come to her position.
“What is it?” Armin asked.
Instead of answering, Aildreda pointed deeper down the tunnel. It took Armin’s eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom. There were vague shadows there, slightly deeper spots against the grey stone. Armin looked a question at Aildreda, who nodded. He held up his hand and formed a globe of light around his fingers.
Five dead bodies sat propped up against the end of the hall. These had not laid here for countless millennia like the ones in that grim foyer. For starters, their flesh was still intact, although flies swarmed around and on them in a nauseating cloud. More importantly, they wore the imperimail of the Alohym foot soldiers. These men had worked for their enemy and had been here recently.
Armin’s black and orange eyes, so like an eclipse, met her emerald green gaze. “Have they moved?” he asked, his voice shaking.
Aildreda shook her head. “Can you feel anything?”
Armin focused on the rays of energy that swirled around him. They had the same sickly taint of death that Armin had been feeling since entering the swamp, like the very power of life and warmth had grown ill. This wasn’t the shadow, which was beyond his ability to touch and even if it hadn’t been, was no fell or foul thing, no was this the repelling power of unlight. This was a more natural phenomena, although it was natural in the same way parasitic wasps were natural.
This is what happened to a lumwell if a slaughter occurred within its dominion. It was twisting the land and air, it was what had turned a forest into a decaying swamp, and it was choking the flows of light with the taint of necromancy. Armin could no more distinguish the source than he could find a candle flame at a hundred yards in a sun-scorched desert. “I can’t tell,” Armin said, although he’d learned one thing.
The flow of corrupt light was stronger here than it was in the entranceway. The only way it could be this much stronger only a dozen feet ahead was if they were directly over the lumwell itself.
He glanced back to Ossman, who had almost caught up with them. His hair had never fully grown back from his early exposure to a lumwell. Armin hated seeing his baldness. Ossman claimed he didn’t mind, but…I should have been strong enough to stop it. “Ossman,” Armin said, stepping away from the rest of the group. “I think we need a rearguard. There are Alohym soldiers in the hall – I want an advance warning if they send more.”
Ossman nodded. “Agreed.” Armin was ready to leap for joy. He was certain this was going to be a fight, but Ossman saw the wisdom and- “Send Aildreda. She has the best eyes and can catch up with us quickest.”
Shadow forsake it. “Actually, I was thinking-”
“Guiart. Also a good call. He can use the Skimmer to escape if he can’t get to us at least, let command know what happened.”
Armin pursed his lips. “Ossman, I wasn’t going to send either of them-”
“Well, you certainly weren’t going to send Clarcia, because you need her Lumcasting,” Ossman said, talking over Armin without hesitation. “And I know you weren’t going to send yourself, because you’re in command of this operation. And you definitely aren’t sending me, because if you keep treating me like I am a ceramic doll I’m going to break your flathing neck to prove I’m not fragile, so I’m not sure what you had in mind.”
Armin stared at Ossman, shocked into silence by the fury in his voice.
“Stop blaming yourself, Armin,” Ossman said, his voice low and harsh. “You did what you could to protect me. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m fine. I only hear things sometimes, and I know damn well you want to send me away because we’re near a lumwell and you’re afraid. I understand that. I know guilt. But you did your best.”
“It wasn’t good enough,” Armin muttered, unable to meet Ossman’s eyes.
Ossman put a hand on Armin’s shoulder. “I stood by you at the collegium revolt. I stood by you in the resistance. I don’t care if your best is good enough, Armin. I only care that you tried. But if you keep treating me like spun glass, you’ll actually manage to offend me. Let me decide what risks I can take. Trust me as much as I trust you.”
Armin noted mutely and turned back to the group. “Let’s go,” he said, taking a step further into the hallway.
The moment he did, the eyes snapped open on the corpses at the end of the hallway, and the rotting husks began to lurch to a shambling semblance of life.
Armin could only stare at them. He’d been so concerned about Ossman, he’d completely forgotten about the danger waiting for them.
Light help me, I’ve damned us all, he thought, fumbling for his arcwand.
Chapter 26
As much as Haradeth dearly wished they were gone and had rejoined the Resistance, he was enjoying the comforts of living among the Sylvani. Now that they were past the initial shock of his arrival and the demands to meet with their goddess, the Sylvani were making remarkably good hosts. The comfort of their beds were unmatched by anything Haradeth had slept on before, and they made sure their guest did not lack of entertainment. Their fluting music, while strange and alien, still held an ephemeral beauty that Haradeth immensely enjoyed. Their storytellers were skilled, unparalleled by anything Haradeth had seen before.
Beyond those, however, were the plays. The same machines that allowed Anortia and the Tarnished One to provide three-dimensional images woven from light were also utilized to put on the most fascinating plays that Haradeth had ever seen, plays where he could pause them at any moment and resume them, plays that simulated death and war and adventure and love more accurately than anything Haradeth had imagined. Combined with the Sylvani’s ability to shapeshift, the end result were prefect recreations of some of the great moments from history, as well as completely fabricated stories brought to life.
By the end of the third day, Haradeth found himself shunning the music, avoiding the storytellers, and even spurning sleep to spend his days in the room, watching these plays dance for him in the most intricately beautiful displays he’d ever seen.
They also had images brought from around Alith. As Shaaythi had explained – she was much warmer to him now that the initial disagreement had been cleared up – they had small lattice minds that could fly around the world, disguised as simple dragonflies. Only twenty of them still existed from the initial three hundred the Sylvani had arrived with, and they had to be used with utmost care since the Sylvani had lost the art of fabricating more. However, with tiny glass eyes like those of the Tarnished One, they could beam what they saw back to the Sylvani on tiny beams of light, and they could be recreated as these images.
Through these, Haradeth learned much of the world beyond the kingdom. In Xhaod, the warrior maidens had fractured, with half believing the Alohym were part of the Light and worthy of worship, while the other half believed them to be demons of the dawn and needing destruction. Their war raged on, but the half that supported the Alohym had access to their ships and unlight weapons, and were driving their once-sisters back. In Shunah, to the so
uth, rebels with poisoned bows hid in the jungles and hunted the Alohym’s soldiers before vanishing back into the foliage, assassinating but never engaging in a standard fight. To the north, the Aegirin had taken to the sea in great ships, raiding Alohym ports where they could. They’d managed to slave Arc-drives and lattice minds to their ships, and now those ships could travel beneath the waves like great whales. Across the bay, the Kiryn – who had long ago tamed Aeromanes – rode those great beasts into battle, although the arrival of Skimmers were cutting them down.