The thing about the path less travelled is that it is often less travelled for a good reason. When that reason is not the dangers that haunt the road then it is the road itself. Sometimes it’s both. In Cantanlona the soft edge of civilization becomes very soft, so soft in fact that it will suck you down given a quarter-chance.
“We’re going through?” Red Kent stood in his stirrups frowning at the reed-dotted marshland stretching before us into a greenish brown infinity.
“Stinks.” Makin sniffed as if he weren’t getting quite enough of the stink that offended him.
Rike just spat and slapped at the mosquitoes. He seemed to draw them as if they just couldn’t tell how foul he was going to taste.
The Duchy of Cantanlona lies along what was once the border between two vast kingdoms, the bonding of which was the first step Philip took in forging the empire. It’s said Philip’s mother gave birth on that border, in Avinron, and being therefore a man of two lands he felt he had claim to both. It seemed fitting then that nothing remained of Avinron but a fetid swamp fed by a river aptly named “the Ooze.”
Our route lay through the marshland. Good reasons for it lay to either side. I led the way, on foot with Brath’s reins in hand. The Brothers and I had spent long enough in the Ken Marshes to develop a sense for uncertain ground. The vegetation tells the story. Watch for cotton grass, the first whisper of deep mud, black bog-rush where the ground will bear a man but a horse will sink, sedge for clean water, pimpernel for sour, bulrush where the water is deep but the mud below is firm. Sharp eyes you need, and watchful feet, and the hope that the warm swamps of Cantanlona are not too different from the cold marshes that border Ancrath.
Makin was right about the stink. The heat made it a high summer. An all-pervading rot encompassed us, the reek of putrid flesh and worse.
We made slow progress that day though we covered enough miles to make the way we had come look pretty much identical to the directions ahead, pathless, uniform, and without hope of end.
I found a place to camp where we might be sure of a full complement in the morning. A series of grassy hummocks connected by strands of firm ground offered sufficient room for the men and horses, though we would all be keeping closer quarters than perhaps we would like.
Grumlow set to cooking, using sticks and charcoal that he’d had the foresight to bring with him. He brought out his iron tripod and hung a pot over the little fire and crouched over it, trickling in barley atop strips of smoked venison, the steam rising all about him and dripping off his moustache and back into the stew.
When night fell it dropped heavy and moonless, swallowing all the stars. The swamp, silent by day save for the squelching of our feet, came alive in the dark. A chorus of croaks, whirrs, chirps, and wetter, more disturbing sounds, flowed over us from sunset to sunrise. I set a watch, though the embers of our fire gave nothing to watch, and when my hour came I sat with closed eyes, listening to the darkness speak.
“Makin.” I kicked him, wary lest he take off my foot. “You’re on.”
I heard him grunt and sit. He hadn’t taken his breastplate off, or his gauntlets. “Can’t see a damn thing. What the hell am I watching for?”
“Humour me,” I said. The place just made me feel that if we all fell asleep together maybe none of us would wake up again. “And why are you still clanking if you think this place is safe?”
Dreams took me before Makin could find an answer. Katherine walked them, the dead child in her arms and accusations on her lips.
The morning sun drew a mist from the pools of standing water. At first it hung a foot or two above the cotton grass, but by the time we were ready to move, the mist boiled around our chests as if it were ready to drown us where the mud had thus far failed.
Some stenches you get used to. After a short while you can’t say if they are gone or not. Not the stink of the Cantanlona Marsh though. That stayed as ripe after a day and a night as it did when the reluctant breeze first brought it to me.
The mist managed to make me sweat and give me chills at the same time. Wrapped in it, with my Brothers reduced to wraiths at the edge of vision, I thought for some reason of the woman and her brats at that remote cottage-the woman with her dead face and the children like rats around her calves. Isolation comes in many flavours.
“We could wait it out,” Kent said.
A splash and Rike cursed. “Mud past my feckin’ knee.”
Kent had a point. The mist couldn’t hope to hold out against the heat of the day as the sun climbed.
“You want to stay here a moment longer than you have to?” I asked.
Kent plodded on by way of answer.
Wherever the sun had got to, it was doing a piss poor job of keeping me warm. The mist seemed to seep into me, putting a chill along my bones, fogging my eyes.
“I see a house,” Sim called.
“You do not!” Makin said. “What the hell would a house be doing in a-”
There were two houses, then three. A whole village of rough timber homes, slate-tiled, loomed about us as we slowed our advance.
“What the fuck?” Row spat. I think he invented spitting.
“Peat-cutters?” Grumlow suggested.
It seemed the only even half-sensible explanation, but I had it in my mind that peat bogs lay in cooler climes, and that even there the locals came to the bog to cut peat and then went home; they didn’t build their homes on it.
A door opened in the house to our left and seven hands reached for weapons. A small child ran out, barefoot, chasing something I couldn’t see. He ran past us, lost in the mist, just the splashing of his feet to convince me he was real, and the dark entrance to the house where the door lay open.
I approached the doorway with my sword in hand. It reminded me of a grave slot, and the breath of wet rot that issued from it did nothing to erase the image.
“Jamie, you forgot-” The glimmer of my steel cut the woman short. Even in the mist Builder-steel will find a gleam. “Oh,” she said.
“Madam.” I faked a bow, not wanting to lower my head more than a hair’s breadth.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting company.” She looked no more than twenty-five, fair-haired, pretty in a worn-thin kind of way, her homespun simple but clean.
Between the houses to our left a man in his fifties came into view, labouring under a wooden keg. He dumped it from his shoulder onto a pile of straw and raised a hand. “Welcome!” he said. He rubbed at the white stubble on his chin and stared up into the mist. “You’ve brought the weather with you, young sir.”
“Come in, why don’t you?” the woman said. “I’ve a pot on the fire. Just oat porridge, but you’re welcome to some. Ma! Ma! Find the good bowl.”
I glanced round at Makin. He shrugged. Kent watched the old man, his eyes wide, knuckles white on his Norse axe.
“I’m so sorry. I’m Ruth. Ruth Millson. How rude of me. That’s Brother Robert.” She waved at the old man as he went into the house he’d set the keg by. “We call him ‘brother’ because he spent three years at the Gohan monastery. He wasn’t very good at it!” She offered a bright smile. “Come in!”
A memory tickled me. Gohan. I knew a Gohan closer to home.
“Does your hospitality extend to my friend?” I asked, opening a hand toward Makin.
Ruth turned and led on into the house. “Don’t be shy. We’ve plenty for everyone. Well, enough in any case, and there’s no sin like an empty belly!”
I followed her, Makin at my heels. We both ducked to get under the lintel. I had half-expected the interior to be dripping with the mire but the place looked clean and dry. A lantern burned on the table, brass and polished to a high shine as if it were a treasured heirloom. The place lay in shadows, the shutters closed as though night threatened. Makin sheathed his sword. I was not so polite.
I cast about. Something was missing. Or I was missing something.
Rike stood outside, looming over the Brothers who pressed about him.
Foolish enough they looked, bristling with weaponry as two young girls ran past laughing. An old woman hobbled up with a bundle under her arm, oblivious to Grumlow’s daggers as she grumbled on by.
“Ruth,” I said.
“Sit! Sit!” she cried. “You look half-dead. You’re a just a boy. A big lad, but a boy. I can see it. And boys need feeding. Ain’t that right, Ma?” She put her hand to her neck, an unconscious gesture, and stroked her throat. Pale skin, very pale. She’d burn worse than Rike in the sun.
“They do.” The mother put her head around the entrance from what must be the only other room. Grey hair framed a stern face, softened by a kind mouth. “And what’s the boy’s name then?”
“Jorg,” I said. As much as I like to roll out my titles there is a time and a place.
“Makin,” said Makin, although Ruth only had eyes for me, which is odd because even if I were handsome before the burns, it’s Makin that has a way with…everyone.
“And is there a Master Millson?” Makin asked.
“Sit!” Ruth said. So I sat and Makin followed suit, taking the rocker by the empty fireplace. I leaned my blade against the table. The women gave it not so much as a glance.
Ruth picked up a woollen jerkin from behind my stool. “That Jamie would forget his head!”
“You have a husband?” I asked.
A frown crossed her like a cloud. “He went to the castle two years back. To take service with the Duke.” She brightened. “Anyhow you’re too young for me. I should call Seska over. She’s as pretty as the morning.” She had mischief in her eye. Blue eyes, pale as forget-me-not.
“So what are you doing out here?” I asked. I’d taken a shine to Ruth. She had a spark in her and put me in mind of a serving girl named Rachel back at the Haunt. Something about her made me unaccountably horny. Unaccountable if you don’t count eight weeks on the road.
“Out here?” Distracted she put her fingers to her mouth, a pretty mouth it has to be said, and wiggled at one of her back teeth.
“Ma” came from the kitchen with an earthenware pot, carried in a blackened wooden grip to keep the heat from her fingers. Makin got up to help her with it but she paid him no heed. She looked tiny beside him, bowed under her years. She laid the pot before me and set her bony hand to the lid, hesitating. “Salt?”
“Why not?” I would have asked for honey but this wasn’t the Haunt. Salt porridge is better than plain, even when you’ve eaten salt and more salt at Duke Maladon’s tables for a week.
“Oh,” said Ruth. Her hand came away from her mouth with a tooth on her palm. Not a little tooth but a big molar from far back, with long white roots and dark blood smeared around it, so dark as to be almost black. “I’m sorry,” she said, holding her hand at arm’s length as if horrified by the tooth but unable to look away, eyes wide and murky.
“No matter,” I said. It’s strange how quickly impersonal lust can slip into revulsion. It probably crosses the tail end of that thin line the poets say divides love and hate.
“Perhaps we should eat?” Makin said.
My stomach rolled at the thought of food. The marsh stink, that had yet to fade, invaded the room with renewed vigour.
Ma returned with three wooden bowls, one decorated with carved flowers, and a chair that looked too fine for the house. She set the bowls on the table, the fancy one for me, one before the new chair. The third she held onto, casting about for something, confusion in her eye. She put her hand to the side of her head, rubbing absently.
“Lost something?” I asked.
“A rocking chair.” She laughed. “A place this small. You wouldn’t think you could lose a thing like that!” Her hand came away from her head with a clump of white hair in it. Pink scalp showed where it came from. She looked at it with as much bewilderment as her daughter, studying her tooth.
“The Duke’s castle you say, Ruth?” Makin said from the rocker. “Which duke would that be?” Makin could take the awkward edge off a moment, but neither woman looked at him.
Ma stuffed the hair into her apron and shuffled back into the kitchen. Ruth set the tooth on the window ledge. “Is it supposed to be lucky?” she asked. “Losing a tooth. I thought I heard that once.” She opened the shutters. “To let the dawn in.”
“What duke rules here?” I asked.
Ruth smiled, the smallest smear of black blood at the corner of her mouth. “Why you are lost, aren’t you? Duke Gellethar of course!”
In that moment I realized what was missing. The dead baby, the box-child, he would lie in any idle shadow. But not here. These shadows were too full.
The front door banged open and little Jamie charged in. Boys of a certain age seem only to go flat out or not at all. He grazed the doorpost as he passed and lost a coin-sized patch of skin to a loose nail.
He ran up to me, grinning, snot on his upper lip. “Who’re you? Who’re you, mister?” Oblivious to the missing skin where dark muscle glistened like liver.
“So this would be the land of…” I ignored the boy and watched Ruth’s muddy eyes.
“Gelleth of course.” She opened the shutters. “Mount Honas is west of us. On a clear night you can sometimes see the lights.”
Makin may have been the man for maps, but I knew we were five hundred miles and more from Gelleth and the dust I had made of its duke. You would need the eyes of the god of eagles to see Mount Honas from any window in the Cantanlona…and yet Ruth believed what she said.
She turned from the window, the right half of her as scarlet as if she’d been dipped in boiling water.
31
Four years earlier
I stood up sharp enough, beating Makin out of his rocker. “Ladies, my thanks but we have to leave.”
“We?” the mother asked from the kitchen doorway, half-scarlet like her daughter but on the left rather than the right, as if together they might make an untouched woman and a wholly scalded one.
“There’s only you, Jorg,” Ruth said, the side of her face starting to blister and weep. “There’s only ever been you for us.” She spat two teeth-incisors, one upper, one lower-making a slot in her smile.
Makin slipped past me, out into the mist. I backed after him, sword held ready to ward the women off. Ruth’s smile held my gaze and I forgot her child. He clamped himself to my leg, the skin falling off him like wet paper. “Who’re you? Who’re you, mister?”
“Only you, Jorg,” said the mother, her head bald now but for random white tufts. “Since the sun came.” She lifted her hand to the window.
The mist lit with a yellow glow then shrivelled back, drawn across the marsh as if it were a tablecloth whipped away fast enough to leave everything in place.
Out across the marsh it seemed that a second sun rose, too terrible and too bright to look at, too awful to look away from. A Builders’ Sun.
In horrible unison both women started to scream. Ruth’s hair burst into flame. Her mother’s scalp smouldered. I shook Jamie from my leg and he crashed against the wall, pieces of his skin left adhering to my leggings. I backed away from the house. I recognized the screams. I had made the same sounds when Gog burned me. Justice made those screams when Father lit him up.
Once upon a time perhaps I might have thought two women running around on fire was a free show. Rike would laugh that laugh of his even now. Row would bet on which one would fall first. But of late my old tastes had gone sour. I had grown to understand this kind of pain. And whatever enchantments might have staged this show for me, these people had felt real. They had felt kind. A truth ran through this lie and I didn’t like it.
Outside the sun shone, watching us from a midmorning angle, and the screams sounded fainter, farther off.
“The hell?” Red Kent swung his head. “Where’d the mist go?”
“Ain’t that a thing.” Row spat.
The buildings dripped with mud. They looked rotted. The roofs were gone.
“What did you see in there, Makin?” I asked, watching the doorway. No fire. No smoke. I
t looked dark. As if the sun wasn’t reaching in even though the roof had gone.
He shook his head.
“They’re sinking,” Rike said.
I could see it. Inch by inch each of the houses sunk into the foulness of the marsh. The sound of it put me in mind of sex though nothing had been more distant from my thoughts.
“They’re going back,” Sim said. He kept his distance from the walls.
He had it right. If we were seeing true now the mist had gone, then those buildings sunk long ago and something had made the marsh vomit them up again just for us.
“What happened?” Makin asked, although his face said he’d rather not know.
“They were ghosts,” I said. “Summoned for my benefit.” Some tortured re-enactment of the suffering at Gelleth. People who died because of me. “They can’t hurt us.”
Within minutes the buildings were swallowed and no trace remained above the mud. I scanned the horizon. Nothing but stagnant pools for mile after mile. The retreating mist had cleared more than my sight though. A second veil had been drawn away. A more subtle kind of mist that had been with us since we first scented the marsh. The necromancy tingled in me. We stood on the surface of an ocean and the dead swam below. Something had been overwriting my power, blinding me. Something or someone.
“Show yourself, Chella!” I shouted.
The weight of her necromancy pulled me around to stare at the mire where she rose. She emerged by degrees, black slime sliding from her nakedness, her hair plastered around her shoulders, over the tops of her breasts. Ten yards of dark and treacherous mud stood between us. Row had his bow across his back, the Nuban’s bow lay strapped to Brath’s saddle. Grumlow at least had a dagger in hand. In both hands actually. But he didn’t seem tempted to throw either. Perhaps he just didn’t want to draw her attention to him.
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