Then a roar shattered the misty heavens, full of enmity and incendiary spite. The fog darkened above them, a hulk slicing through the air and vanishing into the void of the weather. Conflict had drawn it, and only the trees of the forest held it at bay—the dragon had found them.
“Ride! Get out of here! I’ll be right behind you!” Thomas forced his enemy back with a hard push and ran after his wounded horse. “Go!” he screamed one last time.
Sorin tugged at the reins and rode hard, nestling into Creek. Freed of its master’s control, the horse rushed into the forest, away from the chaos and conflict. The rain had lessened to drizzle, but it still blinded Sorin. Wet fir limbs smashed into him, threatening to unseat him, but he held on through sheer force of will. He did not know where he rode; he only hoped it took him from his enemies and the dragon.
Today he would not fail at surviving on his own merit.
He peered back over his left shoulder. Aneri pounded into the sloppy ground, trying to catch Creek, red froth foaming at the horse’s bit. The two arrows still protruded from the Aneri’s chest and terror filled the mount’s eyes—as promised, Thomas followed Sorin. Their enemies from the Broken Leg Inn were left behind.
They had fallen into a dangerous situation, but Thomas had handled the three marauders with ease. The old man may have been tormented by inner demons from his past, but he had demonstrated he was also well trained in swordplay. The defeat life had visited upon him had vanished in the melee.
Sorin realized he was lucky to be alive. Thomas had saved him again.
The forest thinned as he followed the defile, the valley’s hillsides flattening, and the mist became a thick fog. Creek still pulverized the wet ground, his coat glossy with sweat and rain. Passing in a smudge of muted colors, the trees had suddenly changed from dark greens to muted grays and as Sorin slowed Creek he saw most were leafless and those leaves that did grow were blackened and small, twisted as if ravaged by sickness. Soon even the ghostly fingers of dying tree limbs faded. At their feet, skunk grass grew. Rotting foliage permeated the air, a stink that caught Sorin reflexively holding his breath. Wet, gurgling sounds breached the silence, but Sorin could not tell how far away they were in the dead air or where they had come from.
He looked back to view his companion, but Thomas was no longer there. Sorin reined Creek to a stop. The forest they had been riding within had disappeared, a gloom unlike any he had seen in the Krykendaals enveloping them in all directions. The horse snorted into the humid air. Sorin waited, straining to hear his companion. Thomas did not appear.
Sorin’s pulse quickened anew, a more cloying, patient danger shrouding him in fear. He knew where he was. It was a place he had heard spoken of by travelers who came to Thistledon from north of Silver Lake. Those travelers always appeared gaunt and tired, lending weight to their tales of where they had been. That place was poison to life, and he had stumbled into it.
He was in the haunted Grayoin Marshes.
And he was alone.
Chapter 7
As a young boy, Sorin had been lost in the wilderness for a night.
It had happened before he knew any better. One moment he was tracking through the thickly forested lower hillsides of the Krykendaals near his home, and the next he discovered he did not know where he was. All he had was a knife, a warm cloak, and a pack containing two meals. It had been one of his first hunting forays with his father, who had asked him to scout ahead. The autumn morning tendrils of mist had blurred the world, a thick gray blanket flung over the land obscuring it from the sun. He had been nine winters old.
But the sun had been unable to break the fog’s grip, and as morning progressed, Sorin was disoriented. No hills or peaks looked familiar; no valleys or landmarks recognizable. He was unsure from which direction he had come. At first, he had kept calm as his father had counseled, but that soon changed to screaming for his father. Nothing happened—his voice had echoed back to him as though a dead thing. The mist thickened and the temperature dropped. The forest animals faded into their own burrows, nests, and beds. The colors had drained back into the earth, and he knew he was lost.
The fright of this acknowledgment had spread to his imagination, and suddenly bodiless faces watched him from the fog, and the silence bred whispers all around him. In a panic, he had fled deeper into the very mountains his father had always warned him about.
Astride Creek, Sorin looked at the Grayoin Marshes and those same feelings rose from the fount of memory. His father had finally found him the next day, those seven winters ago—ill with fever and exhausted from fear. Sorin had sworn to never allow his emotions to override his common sense.
And as then, he now had many paths to choose from with no discernible outcome.
Upon reflection, it was not so much the fact he could become lost—he knew he was somewhere. It was not about lacking direction. It was the accompanying panic that arose from having to make the right choice—the one that would lead to safety. Choice could paralyze a person. It was the inability to make a choice to save their life that eventually led someone to desperation and madness and sometimes death.
The Grayoin Marshes was the epitome of choice. It was a giant swamp, marking the northwestern fringe of Silver Lake, created from several small creeks merging in the same flat, barren place as they bled into the lake. With no banks to run between, the water spread out like fingers, saturating and stagnating the earth. Bogs floated through the swamp, continually shifting the labyrinth. Those who traveled around the north end of Silver Lake avoided the Grayoin Marshes, believing it haunted by those who had become lost and never seen again. Sorin had not been here before; he had to be careful or risk being as lost as in his youth.
“Well, Creek, what a mess we’re in.” He patted the horse’s wet neck. Creek whickered at his master’s assessment. Shielding his eyes from the steely drizzle, Sorin looked to the sky; it was blackening, and night would soon fall.
He had food and a waterskin mostly full. It would have to be enough.
Sorin retraced the horse’s hooves back the way they had come. The holes were filling in with water, mud, and muck. He traced them back several kingyards before they vanished. The rainfall was swelling the creeks that fed the swamp and the putrid water of the marshes was slowly rising. Every moment, his passage was disappearing.
He rode on a bit further to see if he could pick up the trail again, but it was gone, wiped from the world.
Irony clutched him. The rain—the very thing supposed to hide him from the jerich—now prevented him from saving himself.
The fog and gray surrounded him in a circular wall. Sorin navigated Creek to the highest point of ground he could see in the fading light. Bogs floated here, giving a false sense of solid ground. The Marshes were riddled with snakes, swarming insects, and putrid smells that gagged the unsuspecting. Creek was smart, choosing his path with tentative care, and they stopped on the tiny hillock choked with skunk grass. The world was blank.
He could not just sit and wait it out. The Marshes would not disappear. The more he traveled the more he risked being immobilized by mud or falling into a sinkhole.
He dismounted from Creek to think and mud suctioned at his boots. Hunkering down into his cloak, the first kernels of hope slipped from him. It made no difference in the end what he did. He could stay where he was, try to survive the night, and hope Thomas was able to track him to the swamp and somehow save him. The only other option placed him immediately in danger. Fear bubbled up and the terror of never seeing the sun again surfaced to drown him.
Two faces materialized in his mind, sad and offering no advice—his mother and father. Stone weighted his heart, as heavy as one of his father’s anvils, and he knew he would never be free of it. The pain radiated from him into the darkening night. Sorrow overtook him, bleak and self-serving, and he did not know he was crying until well after the first tears had fallen.
Then through the blurry tears, Sorin saw movement.
It was a fl
utter of shadow at his periphery, but gone when he turned to look at it. He wiped his grief away and concentrated. Nothing. He looked over to Creek, who was attempting a meal of the skunk grass without much success, but the horse was unaware of the phenomena. The rain continued and the fog swirled along the top of the oily marshes as if alive on its own.
He wondered if madness had found him already.
More movement occurred, again at the edges of his vision. He looked around, trying to capture it. The Grayoin Marshes were haunted, of that he was now sure. It was a place where the lines between his world and the All Father’s domain blurred, the walls protecting each somehow insubstantial. From the stories he had heard, the ghosts ached to enter warm flesh, to feel life once more, and in so doing drove the intruder mad with their insistence. Sorin did not know how incorporeal spirits could affect the physical world, but he did not much care to find out.
He was about to grab Creek and go anywhere when he became aware they were surrounded. Before, the shadows had been hesitant, a small few furtive as they watched their new addition to the swamp. But now fog had brought new shades and they swirled along the ground in diaphanous bodies, no longer wishing to hide. Faces with hollow eye sockets drifted slowly by him, brushing against him as if seeing he was real. They floated on the air, cloaks and hair trailing after them as if underwater, slow and fluid. Cold invaded him at their negligible touches; the gooseflesh along his arms and neck rose against his will. They did not try to overwhelm him; they merely came close enough to observe and move on, giving way for others. In a matter of moments, hundreds had come to him and more waited.
Creek did not acknowledge the presence of their visitors. Apparently either Creek could not see them, or they served no threat to him.
Remembering his childhood, Sorin would not let panic rule him.
The shades’ odd observation of him ceased. A new ghost weaved in their midst, different than the others, large and more defined. The rest fell back—in deference or fear Sorin could not tell—creating a free lane for it to enter. It floated closer to him, the lines of its body firming, its breadth towering over the others even in death. Its features coalesced into a wide face, with pale cheekbones and a thick beard molded around its jaw. Sorin squinted in the fading light, shock plunging him into an icy river. It was the face only a son could know so well.
Something inside Sorin’s chest broke. It was his father.
The world swam in Sorin’s blurry vision. Something about the shade’s vacant eyes and mouth wanted to speak but could not. Instead, it moved ahead of Sorin and then waited, inviting him to follow. When Sorin absently grabbed Creek’s reins in compliance, the ghost wove areas of the marshes that were firm despite their appearance. The other shades followed, their empty sockets watching. If he were to die, it would be following his father.
Creek came to a halt several times, his forelegs disappearing into the deep muck, but he eventually extricated himself with massive heaves of his body. Even though the swamp was an ever-changing mass, the shade never faltered. Even when Sorin thought they were heading for an area of water that was over his head, it appeared to be only an illusion, a trick of the light. The procession forward was slow, the Marshes unchanging and as dead as a graveyard. Sorin spent as much time ensuring he survived the morass of the swamp as he did watching the shade.
When Sorin finally came in sight of living trees, his heart leapt in his chest at the sight. Creek’s hooves again on solid ground, the shades disappeared behind them like smoke caught in a strong wind.
The shade of his father was no exception.
* * * * *
Thomas found them an hour after dawn brightened the eastern clouds, riding a different horse. The rain had stopped sometime during the night, and the storm had mostly cleared, the sun rising to renew the world with light, color, and warmth. He materialized from the gloom like one of the shades, but whereas the latter were gray and opaque, the former glowed with life, though the crimson evidence of death stained his clothing. Sorin’s heart lifted at the sight of Thomas, but he was too tired and shaken to greet him.
“I followed your tracks to the edge of the Marshes. Searched all night.” He looked into the expanse of marsh before them. “How did you end up in there?”
“By the time I realized where we were, it was too late,” Sorin said, huddled under a fir tree. His cloak was drawn tight to ward off the morning chill, and drying mud covered him to his waist. Creek was tethered nearby chomping at soft green grass.
Thomas knelt by Sorin. “How did you get out? The Marshes are not an easy place to escape. Most do not.”
Sorin shrugged. “What happened to you?”
“Aneri didn’t make it,” Thomas sighed, his eyes dark and intense. “One moment we were behind you. Then Aneri went down, didn’t get up again.” Thomas patted his new horse’s side; it was light brown with white splotches on its flank. “Good thing about dead men—they no longer need to ride.”
Sorin nodded absently. The events of the previous night—and the emotions they had evoked—were still with him.
Thomas pulled himself into the saddle. “You seem…quiet. And no questions.”
“I’ll be fine. I just need some sleep. Where are we going now?”
“Away from here. Never enjoyed being so near that swamp.” His disheveled beard and hair gave him a crazed look, a man even the shades would be afraid of. “You want answers, right? Well, I don’t let anyone try to kill me and live to tell about it without knowing why.”
“The scarred man escaped?” Sorin asked.
Thomas looked into the hills. “Yes, although he can’t have gotten far in last night’s storm and with the dragon about. If we can catch him and his friend quick enough, they will have nothing to report to the jerich—or anyone else for that matter. And we might get some answers.”
“That is what I want,” Sorin said flatly.
Thomas arched an eyebrow before clicking his horse forward.
Sorin wanted answers. Seeing the shade of his father only strengthened his resolve for revenge, and discovering why his parents had been murdered was second only to punishing the thing responsible. The hot pit of anger that had blossomed inside him at the sight of the brigands remained, one of their deaths not enough to satiate his needs. At the sentuarie, he had prayed for forgiveness, but an emotion hotter and more visceral had taken a hold of his heart. His long-held Godwyn beliefs struggled with those of a darker purpose, and the latter burned bright.
He wondered if Thomas could see it in him. He wondered if something similar had happened to drive Thomas away from the light.
“You know where they went?” he questioned.
Thomas nodded. “Only two men, on horses and heading west. If we head north over these hills we may cross their trail and pick it up now that the rain has stopped.”
They rode for the rest of the morning and into the early afternoon, steadily climbing out of the Grayoin Marshes’ flats and into the higher hills that surrounded Silver Lake. With the new elevation, the shimmering body of water came in and out of view to the southwest, the marshes a wide gray leprosy to their immediate southwest. Giant fir trees covered the immediate world in darkness, their thickly-needled limbs blocking out the sun, and mosquitoes buzzed while various animals scurried in the underbrush. Cool dirt gave the air the sweet, musty smell of growing life.
Thomas found the trail the two men left easily, the torn earth betraying their passing.
“They are not trying to conceal their tracks,” Thomas said, searching the ground.
“Where are they going and why?” Sorin asked.
“I don’t know,” Thomas answered. “The jerich would not suffer failure, and yet they are not searching for you now. At least Rissus is wounded. He won’t be much in a fight.”
An hour after their midday meal of bread and cheese, Thomas and Sorin ran across the body of Rissus.
The corpse was crumpled on the trail, face down in the muck of the steep hillside they tr
aveled. Thomas turned him over and took a quick look through the dead man’s pockets. Greasy hair fell thinly over sightlessly staring red-rimmed green eyes, his jowls jiggling even in death. The hilt of a knife extended from his neck, the blade buried deep, and the red slick of blood from the wound coated his chest. The wound still seeped while shock froze his features.
From the dead man’s pockets, Thomas retrieved a small wooden box carved from dark wood, a short-handled knife, and a jingling bag. Thomas fumbled with the cloth purse; a few copper coins rattled free into the old man’s palm.
“Why wouldn’t his companion take the coins?” Thomas said, thoughtful. “Money is money. It makes no sense.”
“Because he has no need for it?” Sorin asked.
While crouched, Thomas looked around the trees as if a trap had been set. “Perhaps.”
“Why would the scarred man kill his own hired man?” Sorin questioned.
“I don’t know,” Thomas said. “But I’m willing to bet they were not friends.”
“And now there is only one left,” Sorin said, his answers residing with the scarred man.
Thomas touched the moist ground, the two horse trails continuing in the distance. “The man who led that group is a coward. He obviously didn’t want to become involved, but he still had to get the job done. Now he has us and the jerich after him, more than likely.” Thomas stood and handed the knife to Sorin. “Next time you won’t be entirely defenseless.”
Sorin took the weapon. It was a simple blade, a wooden handle with a dinged steel blade. He put it in a pocket of his cloak.
Thomas grabbed his horse’s reins and proceeded along the trail anew, stepping over Rissus.
“You are just going to leave him out here? Not bury him?”
Song of the Fell Hammer Page 9