by Kari Cordis
Rodge, gaping, pulled his collar away from his neck.
“All is well?” Dorian asked her.
“No, Dor,” she answered, still heaving attractively. “I can’t breathe.”
One of the Whiteblades called from the bushes and she turned and made her way—gracefully, for all that theatrical shortness of breath—back into the dark outside the campfire.
“Who,” Rodge said mistily, “was that?”
“Brook.”
“Why,” he said, with great emphasis, “did she leave?”
Across the clearing, the sudden sound of crying made them all turn their heads. It was as if a huge weight was lifted off their shoulders when they saw Cerise wailing noisily and clinging to the other Whiteblade. Upset, maybe, but at least it was something other than that unseeing stare.
“And that?” Melkin asked, brooding.
“Rowena,” Dorian answered, her own relief patent in her voice. “Excellent woman,” she murmured contentedly.
They all turned in that night feeling better than they had in days. Maybe everything would be all right after all.
CHAPTER 28
The next morning, Cerise was pale and subdued but seemed otherwise normal. If she noticed that they all kept glancing at her out of the corners of their eyes, she didn’t acknowledge it.
Ari was down washing out the breakfast pans in the swamp—which he wasn’t sure could count as cleaning—when a whispery sort of sound caught his attention. Instantly on edge, he backed away from the water, hand dropping to his sword. He searched through the mist, a great obscuring bank of it, his heart pounding. Something was out there. And it sounded like it was getting closer.
He was so increasingly certain of it that he was about to shout a warning back to the camp when it came into view. It was a canoe, just floating through the swamp—no, no, there was a tiny person poling it, coalescing out of the mist like she was being created in front of him.
Sylvar. She grinned broadly when she saw him, waving as cheerfully as if he were on the docks of Merrane and she was returning from the morning catch. He just shook his head in wonder; for being so mist-colored herself, she shone like a lamp in the Swamps. The canoe bumped into their camp hummock and, quick and graceful, she leaped off the bow. Grabbing the bow rope, she whirled into it, bending her full diminutive weight into pulling it in.
Ari felt a smile tugging at his face. Reaching around her, he grabbed the rope and with one hand hauled it halfway up the bank. She turned and beamed at him, so close his chin had to almost touch his chest to look down at her. Up close, you could see the fine, ghostly skin was chalk-white, almost translucent. Delicate blue veins throbbed in her temple and jaw. The pale grey of her eyes were lit with an impish silvery sheen, and her lips emerged out of her white face like a pale rose out of a snow bank.
“I’m not sure we’re all going to fit in there,” Traive said in quiet amusement almost at Ari’s elbow. Ari jumped a little, hurriedly getting a little space between him and the exquisite creature staring up at him with such affection.
“Fit?” she quipped. “It’s just to hold on to. You all will be swimming alongside.”
“Sylvar,” Dorian’s unmistakable voice said. Ari turned around and saw that everyone had followed her down to the water, doubtless drawn by the strange sound of the canoe scraping up on the bank.
“Ambassador,” Sylvar said in a deep, impressive voice, sinking swan-like into such an elaborate curtsy her gleaming hair almost dragged in the mud. The effect was only slightly ruined by the clank and shift of her extraordinary collection of weaponry.
Dorian stared over her head, her face a mask of Patience. “I want those orchids disarmed before we reach them.”
Sylvar popped erect. “So let it be done,” she delivered in solemn tones, and turned and trotted lightly out of sight around the hummock. They heard a faint splash as she entered the water on the other side, and Ari thought the Swamps had gotten a little dimmer again.
“She made of mist?” Rodge said, having gotten a good look at her.
“She’s made of whimsy,” Dorian said smartly. “We’ll need to unload this fodder for the horses, then get your saddlebags. We’ll be traveling the rest of the way by boat.”
Banion made the first approving sound they’d heard out of him in a week.
“What about the horses?” Melkin asked.
“Adama and Brook will bring them another way. It’s a much longer, more difficult route, but there’s firm ground and without carrying riders they might be able to gallop it. They may get through before we do.”
“Brook?” Rodge’s head came up alertly.
There were actually several canoes, tied together. Ari wanted to go with Kai, in the scout boat, but Dorian seated him firmly with her and Traive got the honor. Or maybe he had the honor; he was torn between wanting to establish his usefulness and the amazing feeling that he was of considerable value…finally to someone in the world beside the Asps.
They went quite a bit faster by canoe, but there was a trade-off in being so close to the water. The bugs were horrendous, no see-ums, midges, gnats that flew in every unprotected orifice, flies, winged insects of every size. A dragonfly the size of a robin buzzed so suddenly into Ari’s face that he almost dropped his paddle. Dorian stood like a golden pillar in his bow, statuesque as a Fleet ship figurehead, and unbothered by the bugs.
Unbelievably, out of all the leagues of water, all the endless pools in every direction, a Whiteblade messenger found them around midday. She came whizzing up to them in a wily canoe powered by Jordan, so quickly that they’d barely registered the soft slap of paddles before she was on them.
Jordan whisked her boat around, back-paddling expertly so that the lithe, beautiful woman standing in her bow was brought within inches of Dorian. She was another Dra, and the whole contingent of canoes stopped to get a look at her. Unlike Vashti, she was tall, almost as tall as Dorian and reed-slender, with dark eyes. A great tawny mane of hair was pulled off her face by a band, stirring romantically in the canoe’s contortions as she balanced with one foot up on the prow. A long ashbow clung to her back, and Ari raised his eyebrows in surprise when he spotted it. He would not have thought a woman could pull the Imperial warbow, with its formidable draw.
She was murmuring unemotionally to Dorian, in such an imperceptible voice and tone that Ari could barely make anything out. He thought he heard “Queen,” and saw a sharp spasm of concern move fleetingly over Dorian’s face. Straining forward, not caring if he looked obvious, he stared until his eyes watered, but the new Whiteblade’s lips were barely moving, her voice pitched so low it was drowned out just by the sound of the water against the sides of the canoe.
Dorian gave her some instructions, and Jordan began to move away.
“What is it?” he asked her. She ignored him, dignified face a mask of concentration.
“’Lanta!” she called after the two, as if she’d just thought of something. The beautiful woman turned with perfect balance in her canoe’s bow, not even wobbling or putting out her arms to steady herself. Ari was afraid to even move too quickly, sitting—these canoes were as narrow as a blade edge.
“Did Rox make it?” Dorian asked urgently.
She didn’t answer, but neither did she look away. Those expressive eyes, set in that wild, silent Dra face, stayed on Dorian’s until she’d faded back into the mists.
Dorian was similarly communicative, regardless of how many times or different ways Ari asked.
It seemed increasingly improbable the floating landscape could produce anything even resembling solid ground as night drew on, but Dorian was unfailing. It had trees and enough earth on it that there was even a faint strip of trail worn into the sickly grasses. When they disembarked onto the foul-smelling mud bank late that afternoon, she cautioned them, “Follow right behind me. Do not leave the path.”
Which was a generous name for what they were on. They were meandering down it when Rodge cried in delight, “Blueberri
es!” and darted into the scattered bushes.
“Do not leave the path,” Dorian’s voice floated back to them with the patience of a primary teacher, “and please do not eat the poisonous berries.”
“They look like blueberries,” Rodge said in disappointment, fingering them.
“What’s that?” Loren said from the trail. About a foot away from Rodge something was sticking out of the mud, entangled in the nearby brush.
“I think it’s a thigh bone,” Ari said, peering.
“EEEW!” Rodge said with emphasis, dropped the berries, and went to back hastily away. But his feet were firmly encased in the local mud and he had to windmill violently not to fall over. He stood there for several minutes trying to extricate himself while Ari and Loren laughed themselves breathless from the trail. Finally, he complained, “I’m stuck. No, seriously, I can’t get out.”
His voice changed. “I…I think I’m sinking.”
Loren and Ari stopped laughing. He was. He was in over his ankles.
“DORIAN!” Loren yelled, all seriousness now. Ari walked tentatively toward Rodge, testing the ground. It was all muddy, but he hadn’t gone more than a step or two before he felt it change under his feet. He backed quickly away as it pulled at him.
“Stay on the trail,” Dorian’s voice snapped out crisply behind him, and he jumped. He hadn’t heard a whisper of her approach. In seconds there were four more Whiteblades on the trail, materializing soundlessly out of the fog. In one smooth move, Vashti and Rowena shrugged out of their weapons and with just axes in hands, trotted together to a nearby tree. Nerissa began darting here and there, looking at trees, fingering them, then moving rapidly on. Dorian and Jordan split around the mud pit, testing the ground for its boundaries.
The rest of the party from the north came running back up.
“Quicksand,” Loren explained breathlessly. The sound of chopping began, and Ari and Loren whirled around, nerves on edge from the infectious, focused energy of the Whiteblades. The thick sapling Vashti and the healer were working on wasn’t very big, but it had about the largest diameter of any tree they could see. The boys rushed over and the Whiteblades let them take over the chopping, which was enacted with so much vigor that the tree was downed before Rodge had sunk more than another inch.
Traive was already skimming branches off of it before it even hit the ground, his Cyrrhidean axe flying like it was self-propelled, while the Whiteblades looped the cut end with a long coil of rope. They started hauling it toward Rodge while Traive was still working on it.
A scratchy shriek sounded, and everyone stopped to look worriedly at Rodge. But he was standing there quietly, albeit a little forlorn, mud climbing towards his knees. The sound came again; it was coming from Nerissa. More precisely, it was from the freshly cut bush in her hands, which was squalling and twisting bizarrely around in her firm grip.
“Black-hearted hickory?” about five dubious voices asked in unison. She nodded, trotting agilely up to them. “The sap is actually more caustic in the younger plants.” She nodded with hurried encouragement at Jordan, who was walking rapidly toward them, trimming a branch with a flying knife as she came.
“Hurry,” Rodge said plaintively. He was up to his knees and a shudder of horror went through Ari. He couldn’t die. Especially not like that.
Jordan carefully held out the branch, exposing one of the cut ends, and Nerissa upended the hickory, centering it over the top of Jordan’s branch so that black sap dripped on the pithy part in the middle. The stick began to steam, and the Northerners gathered around watched in amazement as the nasty sap began to dissolve the center of it. It was bizarre, like something out of a witch’s cauldron, Nerissa struggling to hold the shrilling plant, tarry black liquid dropping out of it to burn its way into the other wood…
Rodge, who should have valued the science of it more than any of them, seemed unappreciative. He licked his lips nervously. “Uh,” he said, “I hate to nag, but…”
“He’s going faster!” Loren said in alarm.
“Rodge,” Dorian said calmly.
“Yeah, right here.”
“The mud you’re in should be watery.”
“Yeah, but I’m really not interested in geology right now,” he begged a little desperately.
“It’s creating a suction around your feet and legs—”
“Yeah, I…I got the concept pretty good here.”
“You need to break that suction. We’re going to give you a tube: stick it into the mud right around one of your feet and blow into it as hard as you can. You should feel the mud loosen—lift the foot up right away.”
Rodge looked at her in silent despair. “Don’t think I’m not grateful. It’ll be great to die with one foot breathing clean air. Do…do you think there’s something maybe a little more, well, comprehensive, like, whole-body, that can be done?”
“We’re going to throw a log across the mudsink—you’ll step on to that.”
They were? Looking around, Ari had to confess to some amazement. It couldn’t have been more than five or ten minutes, and the bog had been demarcated, with various Northerners and a Merranic standing at pertinent edges. There was a cut and trimmed tree waiting at one side, with a long trail of ropes leading from one end of it into the bushy area on its unseen far side, and there was a science experiment developing rapidly into an air tube a few feet away. Loren, looking around, said, “They’re…prompt.”
“Sylvar?” Dorian called.
“Almost…there!” came her disembodied voice. Peering into the deepening gloom of dusk, Ari finally made her out. She was up in a tree, swaying wildly as it was hardly thick enough to hold her, doing something with rope. She shimmied down in a shower of leaves and called out merrily, “All ready!” as if the cart had gotten hooked up to take them all to the fair.
The rope began to move, drawing taut and lining up over Rodge’s little mud plot just a scant foot or so from him. He lunged for it, face lighting up, and Dorian said sharply, “Don’t move. You’ll sink faster.” Deflated, he relaxed, standing there obediently and sinking while the rope hovered in arm’s reach. It grew even tighter, then the sapling the boys had felled began to move as the slack was taken up, inching across the ground toward Rodge.
“All right,” Dorian instructed. “You’re lined up—go!”
They must have sprinted, because the log zipped briskly across the slimy mud, missing Rodge with expert precision and coming to rest at Dorian’s sharp call just where the rope had lain. Ari stood on the branches left on their end, stabilizing it. They all looked anxiously at the witch’s brew experiment, then at Rodge, then back to the air tube.
Finally, the seconds weighing heavily in the still air, Nerissa moved the hickory away. There were chunks and thick black juice dripping out of the bottom of the branch Jordan was holding now, and Nerissa poured a water skin into it, flushing out the goo.
The rest of the Whiteblades had come out of the trees back around to their side of the action, calling out encouraging things to Rodge like, “The black-heart sap will blister your lips when you go to blow on the tube, but, hey, it’s better than not having any!”
Nerissa, after flushing one more time, shoved the tube at Sylvar, who was prancing impatiently close by, and she set off in a sprint along the narrow sapling. Almost skidding to a halt by Rodge, she balanced effortlessly, courteously handing him the tube like it was a glass of wine at a cocktail party.
He grabbed it, blowing frantically into it long before the other end even got close to the mud. They plunged in together, his lips and the tube, never mind poisonous sap, and soon bubbles began to appear around his foot. He yanked at his foot, bent over the tube, his body contorting rather oddly. His leg would jerk, he would blow frantically, his leg would jerk and spasm, he would blow frantically. But the foot came loose, to a great supportive cry from the onlookers, and Sylvar helped him balance it up on the log while he worked at the other one.
But the anxiety had just begun. Ari had
never seen anything so dramatically suspenseful as Rodge trying to walk the log out of that mudsink. Trembling in every limb, face a mask of concentration, he very carefully would slide his foot a quarter of an inch along the log, then stop, breathing heavily and shaking like he’d run a marathon. Sylvar danced around him anxiously, trying to hold him from the front, trying to let him just take her hands for something to balance against, defying the laws of physics and somehow getting around behind him to support him from back there.
It was a little anticlimactic when he finally walked off the end. Most of the Northerners were sitting down, bored and crashed from the adrenaline let down. The Whiteblades had vanished back out into the Swamps except for Dorian and Sylvar, and it was full night.
Sweat was pouring off him, but even Cerise hugged him. It was a night of Northern firsts. He even apologized to Dorian.
He smelled atrocious the next day. Clean water was limited, so of course there was no way to bathe, but it was his trousers that reeked so bad—like the foul mud he’d been playing around in. Loren, who shared the canoe with him and Melkin, ran a steady commentary on it all day, clearly audible despite the pea-soup fog.
They were introduced to man-eating fish that day, but Banion only lost a little bit of the finger. And Rowena, after he finally allowed her to touch him, pronounced he would recover and maybe even grow back a little of it, though it would be misshapen.
“It’ll match the rest of you,” Rodge consoled him.
It was pretty mild for a day in the Swamps. They’d all gotten to the point where they expected catastrophes. There was no more solid ground, and the huge grey trees looming out of the silent stretches of water were all black now, bark scarred and slimy, strands of gauzy grey-green moss sticking in decomposing smears to their trunks.
They were in the canoes until late, and just starting to wonder if maybe for the first time Dorian was lost, when they saw a light ahead. It was almost smothered by the mist, but still, it was a light of some sort. Kai, after a confirmatory nod from Dorian, picked up their speed and headed toward it. To their amazement, they were soon pulling up at a rough dock. And there were people there. Little people, smaller than Sylvar and Nerissa, even, with dark brown faces and big, solemn eyes and shaggy black hair. They bowed when they saw Dorian, calling her “Lady of Light,” and welcomed them all into cramped little structures built on stilts up out of the water.