“This way,” he said, taking the lead south.
“Go,” Jeremy said, pushing Kelada ahead of him. A fair amount of the swamp ran into his mouth as he shouted, gritty, bitter, tasting of rot and ashes. He spat as he ran, and with his free hand tried to wipe his mouth. In the other hand he kept the sword out this time, held at the ready as they raced along the river's edge. The fog still clung thick to everything, distorting proportions, masking distances. They had not gone far when Jeremy heard a booming, drumlike call behind them and to their left. Another, closer, answered from ahead of them.
Without a word Nul veered off to their left, and Kelada and Jeremy followed. They plunged into a cold standing pool of waist-deep water, and Nul desperately lifted his chin as he waded even deeper; then he was out the other side and loping into the fog. They climbed a rise and found themselves on another islandlike hill, this one lower and smaller than the one of the camp. A jumble of boulders broke through its crown, roughly rectangular moss-grown stones the size of automobiles, lying as if dropped there by the hand of a careless giant. Nul scrambled around these, then froze. Sounds of pursuit came from that direction. “Back!” the pika barked to the other two.
But too late, for already running foes had reached the foot of the hill. The three of them retreated to an angle of stone, their backs protected, pressed into a thick, springy layer of moss. “Jeremy,” Nul whispered, “use magic.”
“But Tremien said—”
“Forget Tremien! We dead unless you—there!”
Eight or nine of the frog-creatures were scrambling toward them from the fog. Kelada cursed and brandished her dagger as, using both hands, Nul menaced them with his sword. The monstrosities hesitated for only a moment before coming on, more warily but with the evident purpose of attacking. “Use magic!” he pleaded again. “Make weapon, something!”
The monsters, without pausing, chattered to one another in a language that seemed mainly pops, clicks, and guttural gasps. They charged now in a group, swords out and swirling. Nul clashed with one of them, got in a good blow that spun the thing away with a deeply gashed leg, and then had to take a step back as another closed. Kelada, between Nul and Jeremy, retreated: her dagger was simply no match for the swords. Three of the beasts came toward Jeremy, their mouths gaping, their movements wary, perhaps because of his greater height.
His brain was frantic with formulation, visualization and realization. Words of power, the strongest words he knew—damn! A creature had struck out with a vicious hack that he barely managed to catch—and his sword was broken two feet from the hilt. The spell had to be strong, strong, the best he, anyone, could do. The others were closing in—
Forgetting himself, Jeremy yelled in English, “My sword is NEW and IMPROVED!”
What happened next he could never accurately recall. Certainly a fierce light blazed on that barren hilltop, like a white-hot burst of lightning that went on and on without end or thunder, and certainly the source was the sword he held, no rusted short sword now but a veritable Excalibur, nearly man-long and so ponderous in seeming that he lifted his left hand to the hilt. Not that he needed the other hand, for in his grasp the blade held no weight. It leaped with a life of its own, seemingly, and Jeremy watched the three creatures go down in a tangle of limbs, wounds, and weapons before he fully realized he was fighting them.
One had reached for Kelada. It drew back hissing, leaving its forearm behind, the hand on the ground still clenching and unclenching. Another screamed when its sword was broken—no, not broken, shattered, exploded to flying fragments no larger than grains of sand as Jeremy lashed out again; another two he skewered, just like that, and suddenly the three companions stood alone atop their hill amid the fog and the retreating moans of the wounded monsters.
“Kazazz,” breathed Nul.
Jeremy blinked. The bright blade glowed with wondrous splendor, and the sword seemed to thrum with the desire to find more enemy throats. “Huh? What?” he asked Nul.
“Nothing. Kazazz. What pika says when surprised past words.”
“Oh,” Jeremy said. “You mean ‘wow.'”
“Wau,” agreed Nul.
Kelada had hefted and rejected two dropped swords. She picked up a third, nodded, and handed Nul's dagger back to him. “Come on. There are more, and they're getting closer!”
They stepped over the fallen bodies and descended the hill. “We need to go south along the river,” Jeremy panted, the breath hot in his lungs. “Tremien's sent some friends there. Once we're all together, we can use the travel spell.”
“This way, then.” Now they followed Kelada as the thief led the way. Off to their right, from somewhere in the direction of the river, they heard still the rumor of pursuit, gabbling voices and the slap of running feet. Kelada led them away from the sounds, but in the slippery, clinging mud they had a terrible time making any progress, and their pursuers were built for just this kind of travel with their flat feet and their indifference to water. The fog, roiling heavy and dark, helped not at all. Jeremy was just thinking they had surely gone more than two thousand when once again shapes appeared before them, as if materializing from the swamp itself.
For a heart-lifting moment Jeremy thought they had found the others, but then the newcomers stepped forward, and he saw they were once more beleaguered, and this time by more than a patrol. At least twenty of the frog-creatures came forward, heads lowered, eyes glowering. “Behind us, too,” Nul groaned. “Any more magic in your head?”
None was, desperately as he tried to conjure some new spell, but the magical sword was in Jeremy's hand, and once more it shone with a harsh, pure light as it leaped and struck as of its own accord. Six of the creatures he hewed down nearly as quick as thought, while Kelada and Nul each accounted for one as well. Then the survivors drew back but not away. “They've ringed us in,” Kelada said. “They're all around us.”
It was true. Others had come out of the fog, and now the three seemed to be surrounded by a small army of the things. But they kept their distance, glowering, hissing among themselves. “Look,” Nul said as one stepped forward.
This one, no taller than the rest and no more distinguished in equipment or dress, had one badge of office: a small eye, red as a berry, blinking in its own socket in his forehead. The creature paused ten steps from them and swayed. Its own bulging eyes seemed to go vacant and blank as the huge mouth worked to shape words breathed rather than spoken: “It isss you! I thought you eksssiled and probably dead!”
“The voice of the Hag,” Kelada whispered to Jeremy. “She sees through the third eye, and her will can possess those vilorgs who have it. She thinks you're Sebastian.”
Inspiration came with Kelada's voice. He stepped closer to the swaying thing, hoping the tiny eye could not see sharply. “Yes,” he said. “I have returned, through many difficulties, and look! your servants attack me. Is this the way the Mistress of the Meres repays friendship?”
“Friendssship?” hissed the swaying creature. “We knew no friendssship, ssssave that thrussst upon usss! Ssstill, your ssspeculum hasss increasssed my power, even asss that Dark One promisssed.”
“And now,” Jeremy said, “I have captured one I found running from your palace.” Turning, he whispered, “Drop the sword, Kelada.” She glared at him but complied, and he reached to drag her roughly forward. “Is this your captive?” he demanded.
“Yesss, the one we sssought—but othersss are in the valley.”
“Then let me help with the search, Mistress of the Meres. Take me to your palace, so we may confer—and without these servants of yours.”
“How many of you?”
“My helper here, the woman, and me. That is all.”
“Very well, Sssebassstian Magissster. It isss done.”
For a moment it seemed to Jeremy that nothing had happened, aside from the fog's thickening. But then he realized the travel spell, or one very like it, was in effect. He, Kelada, and Nul stood in the dimly lighted void, and the monsters of t
he swamp were nowhere to be seen.
“Wonderful,” Kelada said. “I spent days escaping from that place, and now you're bringing me right back to it!”
“We've got something to do,” Jeremy said. “Nul, can the Hag hear us or see us?”
Nul, his sword still out, shook his head. “Nah, nah. We in no-time, no-place now. Whole ‘nother reality from Thaumia. Why?”
“We've got to make plans.”
The pika gaped at him. “Plans? You mean we going into Hag's palace and you have no plans?”
Jeremy shrugged. “It was that or try to fight a hundred of those—what did you call them?”
“Vilorgs,” Kelada said. “Damn. My sword didn't come with us.”
“A hundred vilorgs. And even with my new and improved sword, I don't think we would have stood much of a chance. Now the Hag thinks I'm Sebastian—”
“It's the beard,” Kelada said. “What you can see of it through the mud.”
“You're lovely yourself,” Jeremy returned. “She thinks I'm Sebastian, and that gives us a little time. Kelada, what happened after you were caught?”
“I don't want to think about it.”
“You have to. We don't have all that much time.”
Kelada took a deep breath. “The creatures that grabbed me used a travel spell. They held me as tight as they could the whole time we were in it. They're nasty, these things. Their flesh is cold and clammy, and they smell of rotten fish. Anyway, I couldn't move, and they never let go, not for the whole time of the travel spell. We materialized in the corridor of a stronghold—it's away over the river, by the way, and probably where we're heading now—and they threw me into a room and locked the door. There was one small window, high, and from it I could see I was up in a tower. The door was iron, closely woven bands of it, and very heavy. Nothing in the cell but a pile of dirty straw, a few stiff blankets, a pisspot, and a drain hole about as big as my fist cut into the floor against the outer wall and leading down and out. I could see through it—probably it ended in some kind of spout. It seemed to be about an arm's length, but it was no good to me. A mouse might get out that way, but I couldn't.
“Anyway, they left me there for a fairly long time, the better part of a day at least, and I slept, on and off, through most of it. I think the damned things poisoned me when they pretended to be an old man and woman—but Nul will have told you that. Finally, about nightfall, I did wake up. Then someone hit me with another travel spell, and I was alone in one of these damn bubbles for an ona and a half. This time when I came out of it, I was with the Hag.”
Nul growled, and Jeremy said, “Hush. What is she like?”
“Ugly.” Kelada absently put her finger to her broken nose. “Uglier than me, even. And puzzled by me, I think. She asked me questions and at first I pretended to be stupid. Didn't everybody going from Langrola to Arkhedden travel this way? I think she was growing angry with me and might have done me harm if she hadn't been, well, summoned away.”
“Summoned?” Nul asked. “How?”
“I don't know, and I can't put it any plainer. She got a call of some kind, and even I felt it. I've been around magicians, and you know how the air gets sort of ticklish—oh, I don't know—how you feel the magic working? This was like that, but so strong it was painful, like millions of needles pricking into your skin. The Hag straightened on her throne—she has a throne made of iron cast into the form of skulls and bones, did I mention that?—then got up, very stiff, and just walked out. There were three passages opening off the room, and I tried to go down one right away, but there was a magical ward there, a strong one, and it held me. The same with the other I tried. The only other one was the one the Hag had taken, but any chance seemed worth it by then. I could get into the corridor, all right, but it was blind. It led to a little room at the end and no farther. The Hag stood in the room, in front of a mirror, and she swayed like one of the vilorgs does when she possesses its mind. Something was going on, something with a lot of magical power behind it, but what it was I do not know.”
“I think I do,” Jeremy said. “The Great Dark One was speaking to his servant.”
“I don't know,” Kelada said again. “I went back to the throne room, but there was nothing there, no way of escape. Nothing even to use as a weapon to hit her with—just a big empty stone room with a heavy iron throne, three passageways leading north, east, and west from it, and a ball of wizard-light hovering away up twenty feet above my head. I sat on the floor and waited.
“Presently the Hag came back. ‘I will deal with you later,’ she said. ‘There's no reason he should know about you,’ she said. And she sent me back to the cell with another travel spell. I was stuck there for the rest of the night. Not long after I found myself back in the cell, a vilorg came to bring me water and food. Maggoty cheese and stale bread, that was all. But when he came, I heard him use a key; so the door was kept by lock and not by magic. And I'm no thief if there's a lock anywhere I can't pick, if I have only something to work with.”
“Did you have anything?” Nul asked. He was getting swept up in her story, even as he had with Jeremy's tale of Hamlet back in the swamps.
“Nothing. The vilorgs ripped everything metal away from me, even my buttons. I had to tie my shirt together with strips I tore from the hem. But the next time my supper came I had a good look at the lock. It was an old one, though it sounded well-oiled when the key turned, and there was a tiny hole, just the smallest hole, for the butt end of the keyshaft on my side. Now all I needed was some tool to work with.
“Several more days passed, and I began to think I would never get it. Once a day the froggy thing brought my meal. One time I hid, or tried to, in the pile of hay, but the thing simply stood there shaking and said in the Hag's voice, ‘I sssee you, my dear. Be patient. I will have time for you sssoon.’ That was when I realized that the three-eyed vilorgs were the Hag's special servants, somehow in touch with her so that she could see and speak through them. Anyway, I waited and thought, and all the time I had that same feeling that some deep magic was working in the place. The throne room was to the north of the tower and below it—”
“How did you know—oh. Your direction talent. Sorry,” Jeremy said.
“Anyway, that seemed to be the focus of the energies. Finally, just yesterday, in fact, the Hag sent for me. This time she didn't use the travel spell. I didn't know why until I saw her, but then I realized that she was exhausted, worn out. Whatever she'd been doing had left her all but dead.
“She questioned me again, and still I refused to answer. Somehow she had it in her mind that I was a spy from Tremien, but she seemed to hesitate about torturing an answer from me. I think something frightens her even more than Tremien. This Dark One is up to something—and if I'm right, somewhere in the back of the Hag's mind was the notion that if the Dark One's plot failed, she might somehow throw in with Tremien and escape destruction.”
“Tremien sensed that the Dark One was moving,” Jeremy said. “She must be helping him in whatever he plans.”
“Tremien not afraid of her,” Nul snorted. “No, or of Great Dark One either.”
“She's raising something terrible,” Kelada said slowly. “Something dark and without substance, but fearful all the same.” She shuddered. “After half an ona or so, she ordered the vilorgs to take me back to the cell. Only this time two two-eyes were my guards, and the three-eyes remained behind.
“We went back the way we had come, through a long passage, up some stairs, along another passage, then up more stairs. There was precious little along the way—some carpeting trod into muck, a few rotting tapestries, nothing useful. But I had seen something that interested me on the trip down from my cell, and close to the second stair on the way back, I saw it again: a door roughly boarded up, with planks already hanging loose and rotting. I pretended to stumble there and fell against one of the vilorgs, and the other tried to drag me upright again. I floundered against the wall, went to my knees, and put my hands on the boards
to pull myself up. The guards grabbed me and jerked me upright, but I had what I wanted: a rusty nail that I tore from one of the crumbling boards.
“After that it was easy. I waited until night, then went to work on the lock by feel. I had to file down the nail against the stones, and that was weary work. But at last I had it thin enough, and the tip of the nail bent at just the right angle, and when I pushed on the lock tumblers, they moved. Slowly, but they moved, one by one. Sometime past midnight the door was unlocked. I opened it and looked into an empty corridor, lit by one smoking torch in a wall sconce. I knew that I couldn't get out the way I had come, so I took the torch and explored the other direction. There was another room a little past mine, this one not in the tower but in the main body of the fortress, and it had a window big enough for me to wriggle through. Then I had to let myself down without breaking my neck. Then I was in the courtyard, and all that was left was to slip past the guards and out into the open. I did it, by the way, by finding a sewage drain. I don't know whether I'll ever be clean again. Anyway, once outside the fortress, I sensed the quickest way back toward Whitehorn and took it. I found a bridge and crossed the river, and then I was headed out when I came across your trail. Of course, I had no way of knowing it was you, but since I had no weapon, I thought I might raid a vilorg party for something to fight with, and came at you before I recognized you—and you know the rest.”
“Then you can show us how to get to the Hag's mirror.”
“Yes. What are you going to do with it?”
“Break it.”
Kelada's lips tightened, and she shook her head. “It's protected by spells, I think. There's great magic in the room, anyway.”
“I'll find a way.” Jeremy held up his great flashing sword. “I think first I'll need to disguise this. Nul, is there danger in my working a spell while we're in the travel spell?”
“Who knows? Pikas don't use this kind of magic. Maybe yes, maybe no.”
“Well—let's see.” Jeremy concentrated. “All right,” he said after a moment. “Maybe the two of you had better get behind me, just in case.” Kelada and Nul moved, and then in English Jeremy half-chanted: “It's a whole new sword! It's a fabulous sword! But it looks just like any other sword until YOU use it—and only YOU know the SECRET!”
Moon Dreams (The Jeremy Moon Trilogy Book 1) Page 22