by D. P. Prior
“Lower level’s submerged,” he said. “Mud and slime. P’raps if we go up a floor or two…”
He located another panel, tapped out a sequence, and then led the way into a cubicle. After a moment’s whirring and whining, the wall parted, and they emerged onto an identical passageway that terminated in a blank silver wall split down the middle. More button pressing, and this one slid open onto a vista so alien that Shader could only gawp.
An immense milky disk bathed the encroaching gloam with a consumptive pallor. At first, he thought it was an ailing sun, but once his eyes adjusted and he took in the surrounding darkness, he realized it was a moon—so close it seemed to sit on the horizon. Two more disks hung higher in the night sky, one as large as the moon back home, the other small and remote, seeming to trail its larger companion like the runt of the litter. They were set in deep cobalt skies that draped heavy above stooped mangroves and tangled briars. The ground squelched as he stepped from the plane ship, the loamy surface sucking greedily at his boot.
The sickly light of the closest moon washed the undergrowth with argent, granted it a sheen of unreality.
“Aethir,” Shadrak muttered, pink eyes drinking it all in. “Feels weird… like a dream…”
“Isn’t that what it is?” Rhiannon said. “The Cynocephalus’s dream? That’s what Elias used to say.”
If she still grieved the bard’s death, she didn’t show it. She was too enraptured by the new surroundings.
“Not any dream, though,” Shadrak said, as if Rhiannon hadn’t spoken. “My dream. Like I’ve seen all this before.” He hopped nimbly to a mound that protruded like an island amid the wetland.
Rhiannon gripped Shader’s shoulder for support and lunged up beside the assassin.
Shader fought his boot free of the mire with a slurp of hungry mud and set it down on the firmer ground of the elevation.
“You think maybe Gandaw’s hoping we’ll get stuck in the bog?” Rhiannon said, wrinkling her nose.
Shadrak crouched and felt the grass atop the knoll. He scanned the tangled brush like a predator sniffing for prey.
Something pricked Shader’s neck, and he slapped it away. He struck a pulpy body as large as a sparrow. Rhiannon squealed and whacked at her legs. Shadrak calmly pulled his hood up and all but vanished beneath his cloak.
“So, where to now?” Rhiannon swished her arm around to fend off more circling insects.
“Not sure.” Shadrak’s voice was low and uninflected beneath his hood. He may have been thinking. “I was directed to the mountain. Didn’t say nothing about this.”
Shader did up the buttons of his coat and pulled his hat low over his face. The stench of decaying vegetation rose from the ground like a contagion.
“Can you locate it on the mirrors in the plane ship?”
Shadrak stood. “No need. Assuming this place ain’t completely screwed, the mountain’s south from here. Maybe a little to the east.”
“How can you tell?” Rhiannon’s question was loaded with derision.
“I’m very observant,” Shadrak said. It could have been a warning. “Look.” He pointed into the murk. “The marsh there is studded with islands like this.”
Shader followed the albino’s finger but couldn’t make anything out. The low ground was a black abyss to his eyes. As far as he knew, he could take a step in that direction and plunge into empty space. Shadrak’s eyes were undoubtedly keener. Maybe that was a result of the kind of work he excelled at; either that or something more innate.
“Great,” Rhiannon said. “Let’s play stepping stones and see who goes under first.”
“Just follow me.” Shadrak leapt into the darkness, and it swallowed him whole.
“And how are we meant to do that?” Rhiannon called after him. “Can’t see a bloody thing. And don’t go giving me that crap about you being Shadrak the Unseen.”
Fire flared and then settled into a controlled glow. It came from a stick of light in Shadrak’s hand that revealed his flickering face. Without a word, Rhiannon jumped toward him. Shader drew the gladius and, as he’d hoped, the blade gave off a soft golden dweomer. Holding the sword aloft, he sprang after Rhiannon.
Something about the swamp muffled their footfalls and thickened the air with a pall of foreboding. Rhiannon followed Shadrak’s thin light, gingerly finding her balance before each flurried leap, and Shader went next, the glow of the gladius picking out the white of her Nousian robe.
Shadrak waited for them at the foot of a bank that sloped sheerly above the mire. As Shader reached firm ground, he started. Something plopped in the sludge behind him. The head of a maggot-like creature tasted the air with its circular maw, which was ringed with jagged razors. It was as big as a man’s forearm and segmented like a worm. Shader instinctively took a step back and bumped into Rhiannon, who was muttering and wringing out rank water that had soaked into the hem of her robe. She slipped, but he caught her arm, and when she steadied herself, her face wrinkled in revulsion at the thing squirming in the bog. The maggot emitted a hiss and then rolled languidly beneath the oozing surface.
More bubbles erupted across the mire, and the fetid grubs began to pop up in clusters, their writhing giving the impression that the swamp itself was alive and hungry.
“Ugly scuts, ain’t they?” Shadrak said when he reached the top of the bank.
Shader jogged up the slope beside him, leaving Rhiannon hypnotized by the wriggling horrors and the staccato hisses they spat like sinister whispers.
The swamp spread endlessly away from the far side of the bank, an ocean of mire tufted with reeds and overhung with drooping boughs. Clouds of insects scoured the marsh in search of blood, and the ripples of the emerging maggots seemed to have no bounds.
“This ship of yours—” Shader started.
“Was set to go to the mountain,” Shadrak said, rubbing his bearded chin. “No point trying again. Whatever force hit us last time is most likely still in place. Mind you, I might be able to hop the ship in a random direction. Anything’s gotta be better than this.”
“What’s that?” Shader pointed at a hazy ball of golden light that winked into existence above a strip of dry land to their left. It hovered for a moment, and he had the sense it was watching them. It drifted away a few yards before returning.
“What is it, a dog playing fetch?” Shadrak said.
The sphere moved off again, a little farther this time, then swiftly returned.
“Don’t like it,” Shadrak said. “Marsh gas don’t move like that, and my moth… Kadee,” he corrected, “someone I’d trust with my life, told me stories about lights in swamps that lead people to their deaths. Let’s get back to the ship.”
“Agreed,” Shader said.
They trudged back down the bank, and Shadrak led the way from one small island to the next. If it were possible, everyone was even more careful with their footing on the return journey.
“How come you can find the ship?” Rhiannon asked as Shadrak stood with hands on hips surveying the purplish haze. “All looks the same to me.”
“Perfect memory,” Shadrak said, tapping his temples. “And I’d swear this is where we exited.”
“It is,” Shader said, crouching down to study the footprints they’d left leaving the craft. They emerged from nowhere, which he supposed was where the entrance should be.
Shadrak walked ahead with his arms extended like a blind man’s.
“He’s shogging lost it,” Rhiannon said. “I don’t bloody believe it.”
“It was here,” Shadrak insisted, turning on her with his eyes narrowed to pinkish slits. “Something’s happened.”
“The swamp?” Shader said.
“Yeah, maybe it just swallowed it.” Rhiannon hugged her arms tightly across her chest.
Shadrak chewed at his thumbnail, nodding to himself, as if he were running through all the possibilities one at a time.
“That don’t make sense,” he said. “The ship ain’t solid, ’cept when it wants to be. Least
that’s how it looks to me.”
“So what, then?” Rhiannon said.
“Must’ve left by itself,” Shadrak said. “Unless it was taken.”
Shader looked back across the bubbling mire and drew in a deep breath. “Leaves us with just one choice,” he said, raising the gladius and leaping for the first island, not waiting to see if the others followed.
***
The maggots posed no threat—as long as they stayed out of the water. Shader mistimed a jump and landed knee-deep in the mire. One of the creatures immediately latched on to his boot, but in an instant he scraped it off with the gladius. It left a trail of putrid ichor on the blade, and there were puncture marks in the leather of his boot. After that, he never missed another jump.
The ground became firmer as they made their way south—at least, the way Shadrak said was south. The sphere of golden luminescence took a parallel course, always just behind, weaving in and out of the mangroves, pausing when they paused, resuming when they resumed. Shadrak barely took his eyes off it, and frequently hung back to check nothing else was following them. Finally, he drew his black cloak about him, buried his face in the hood, and slunk off into the brush, as if he planned to stalk the sphere.
Rhiannon walked with Shader, so close they could have been a couple. Once or twice, Shader thought she was going to take his hand, and even moved a little nearer, hoping that she would. There was something discomfiting about the marsh, he told himself, and Rhiannon’s presence seemed to anchor him.
The largest of the three moons was sinking, the cobalt sky darkening almost to black as it crept beneath the horizon. The swamp, however, did not sleep. Insects buzzed, and things splashed and bubbled in the distance. Even the ground they now walked upon was slick with slime and writhed beneath their feet. Mosquitoes the size of rats bumped into them, drawn by their body heat.
They crested another rise and found themselves upon a stretch of grassland that was relatively dry. Shader cast around for tinder for a fire, while Rhiannon flopped to the ground with a weary sigh. Shadrak was nowhere to be seen. For all Shader knew, the assassin could be neck deep in a quagmire, led astray by the eerie glowing sphere. That would wreck any chance they had of getting back to Earth. Even if Shader could find the plane ship, he wouldn’t have a clue how to pilot it. Still, it was a moot point if they couldn’t stop Gandaw in time. Then there’d be no Earth to return to, no Aethir, no anything.
There was plenty of damp wood beneath the bent trees, but whenever Shader tried to break branches off, the trees swayed and lashed at him with barbed lianas. It seemed the flora was sentient, watching their progress, herding them, even, and defending against their intrusion.
Gathering what he could from the ground, Shader rummaged in his pockets for some matches. His fingers brushed against the bowl of the pipe Aristodeus had given him the day he’d left for Aeterna. It was a sort of joke: the philosopher had smoked frequently, particularly when laboring a point in one of his lectures. Shader had never used it, but right now he could feel the appeal. Maybe if they got back to Sahul, he’d search out some tobacco. Right now, the chances of that seemed pretty slim.
The wood took, but smoked and popped so much as to make them cough and move away from the little warmth the fire shed. Rhiannon shivered, her arms hugged about her, hair lank, and robe sodden.
“How’s he know this is Aethir?” she asked.
“Shadrak? Doesn’t he have some secret advisor? Besides, just look at the sky. You can’t seriously believe we’re still on Earth.”
Rhiannon looked up at the unfamiliar stars, shaking her head ever so gently.
“Aethir’s the Dreaming, isn’t it?” She stared into the darkness for a while then lowered her gaze. “The spirit world of the Dreamers,” she said to the ground. “Do you think this is what Sammy sees?”
“He’s not gone, Rhiannon.” Not abandoned you. “The boy’s just hurting, like we all are. Your parents—”
“Not that it matters,” Rhiannon said. Her tone was sullen, tinged with despair. “What’s left to worry about, if Gandaw’s going to end everything?”
Shader crouched beside her, touched her arm. “We don’t know that,” he said. “Maybe there’s still a chance.”
Rhiannon looked him in the eye. She needed someone to believe in, Shader could see that. She was assessing him, wondering if he was up to it. He stood and looked toward the horizon as the largest of the moons vanished, limning a range of distant mountains with pearly light.
“Where is the stunted shogger, anyway?” Rhiannon said.
“Ain knows. But if he’s not back in the morning—assuming there is a morning here—we go on without him.”
“Go on? Go on where?”
“South’s what he said.” Shader said it with more confidence than he felt.
“And which way’s that?” Rhiannon asked.
Shader chose not to answer. What could he tell her? That he didn’t have a clue? That they were lost without Shadrak, doomed to wander the marsh in circles till Gandaw put them out of their misery.
They sat in stony silence for a minute, and then Rhiannon turned her head toward him.
“Don’t trust him, Deacon. Not after what he did.”
Shader’s hand went to his back. It was becoming an automatic reflex. “I know,” he said. “But what choice do we have?”
“We’re here. That’s all we needed him for. We’re better off without him.”
Shader nodded to himself. She may have been right, but how could he tell? Whatever they were caught up in, whatever cosmic drama, it was too big to comprehend. If he allowed himself to think about it, he’d either go mad or be paralyzed by the enormity of any decisions he might make. One step at a time. That was all he could do. And if it wasn’t enough—well, how could he be held accountable for the fate of worlds? If Nous wanted his service, then wasn’t it about time he showed his hand?
He gave Rhiannon a wry smile. “I have no idea which way is south.”
“Me neither.”
Rhiannon settled down beside the smoking fire. She coughed and muttered something under her breath but stayed stubbornly facing the flames with her back to Shader.
Shader unwound his prayer cord from his belt and thumbed his way to the Gordian Knot. He sat cross-legged at a distance from Rhiannon and worked at the lines of the knot, which proved as ungiving as ever. His eyes swayed to Rhiannon’s white-robed form, the graceful curve of her hips, the starkness of her black hair falling almost to her waist. Her breaths came heavily, her robe shuddering with each intake.
He opened his mouth to say something, but the words dissolved on his tongue. He longed to reach out and touch her, stroke away her pain, but he feared her rejection even more than he feared where such tenderness might lead. He shut his eyes and focused on the unsolvable problem of the knot, praying silently in his futility for Ain the Unknowable to reveal his will.
Shader knew that his dwindling faith was linked to his mounting disappointments; knew that he couldn’t blame Ain for the loss of Rhiannon, the manipulations of Aristodeus and Huntsman. Even the Ipsissimus and his failure to act was no reason to impugn the faithfulness of Ain, and yet the knowledge alone was not enough to keep his heart from turning to ice. Ain was big enough to take it, Shader had no doubt about that; if not, then he wasn’t the infinite deity the Templum claimed he was. But that was the problem—even more than the wedge that had been driven between Shader and Rhiannon; even more than Shader’s shame at what Gaston had done: how could he trust anything the Templum said? The Gray Abbot had told him the Liber was a hotchpotch of philosophies and religions from the Ancients’ world, sewn together for popular appeal by the Liche Lord, Otto Blightey. At the time, Blightey, in the guise of a friar, had been considered holy by the fledgling Templum, but even here they had been proven wrong. If the Templum was not infallible, what would possess someone to give their life to its teachings?
A cry sounded from the darkness. Shader’s hand went to the gladius, a
nd he stared into the gloam but could see nothing.
“That the midget?” Rhiannon said, rolling over and facing him.
The golden sphere—assuming it was the same one—appeared amid a clump of gorse, maybe fifty yards distant. It moved away a little and then returned to its starting point. A muffled scream punched through the murk, and Shader stood.
Rhiannon placed a hand on his leg. “What are you doing? You know this is a trap.”
Shader sucked in a deep breath. She was right. It was too obvious, but at the same time, what if Shadrak was in trouble? What if they could reach him in time?
“You stay here. I want to take a look.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Rhiannon climbed to her feet. “If you’re drowning in quicksand, I’m coming with you. There’s no way I’m staying here on my own.” Suddenly, she gripped his arm. “What the shog’s that?”
Shader followed her finger and saw a figure drift through the undergrowth like a ghost. Within seconds it had vanished from sight.
“Shadrak?”
“Too tall,” Rhiannon said.
Shader drew the gladius and strode in the direction the specter had gone. Rhiannon went with him, her fingers clamping about his free hand. Vines writhed above them, and a curling briar lashed at Shader’s boot. The gladius swept down and severed it before it could coil around his leg.
As they pushed deeper into the thicket, the gladius’s glow diminished, as if smothered by the malevolence of the swamp. Shader slowed, and Rhiannon’s grip on his hand tightened. The way back was as black as pitch. Even the limning of the horizon had perished, and the two smaller moons were obscured by the undergrowth. Shader held the gladius before him like a torch. He could see the blade itself, but it shed no light on the way. He turned, seeking the route back to the fire, but thick tangles of creepers now blocked their passage. He could have sworn the mangroves had shifted to form a barrier behind them. Rhiannon pressed closer.
“What the shog is happening?”
Shader wheeled her to face the way the figure had headed. He could see nothing through the darkness. Feeling in front with the gladius, he led Rhiannon onward, testing the soft ground with every step. A low tremor passed beneath their feet, and from somewhere to the left, there came an answering slosh, like the lapping of viscous waves.