"These beings come to help," Merrigail said. "Have respect."
"Oh, I have respect," Corvine said in a hush. "I have so much respect I think I may wet myself."
"My people will convey you across the water," Lsst'tok said. "Do not struggle."
"Eep," said Grizzendell.
If anything, being carried by the bog striders was worse than regarding their arrival. Gideon wondered why this was so, for in the Lsst'tok's clutches he didn't need to look at his benefactors. Yet something inside him squirmed desperately, preferring to risk drowning than rely upon the Ses'h.
Then he understood. To be carried by Lsst'tok, Gideon had to give up any struggle, to hold himself completely still. To trust.
A peculiar thing happened then. Having realized the source of his terror, it was as though he'd risen above it. The fear still existed, but it was somehow less significant, passing under him like the water beneath his feet.
On the opposite bank, the bog striders set down their passengers and immediately seemed to melt into the shadows, leaving only Lsst'tok. Adebeyo called a sound-off; all nine of their party, the prisoner included, had made it across.
Merrigail said, "Perhaps we should rest here, out of sight."
"I worry about the fog," Gideon answered. "I'd like to be farther from the river."
In low tones, Adebeyo added, "I don't think rest is the best thing for my shipmates. We had the heart cut out of us. We need a goal, or else something colder than the river will drag us under."
"I see your point," Merrigail said.
And so Lsst'tok guided them through the night forest, dark snowy trees rising all around them, silvery ground shining dimly in the starlight.
Travel became easier during the day, though the sleepless night began to take its toll. They stumbled through the ever-varied terrain of bush and branch, dirt and snow.
In the midmorning, while their breath still made clouds in front of their faces, a new bog strider appeared and passed a tiny scroll to Lsst'tok amid much clicking and chittering. The newcomer disappeared back into the trees.
"A messenger bird reached Bellis," Lsst'tok told them. "We were able to intercept the scroll. It is from a friend of yours."
"Could it be...?" said Viridia. "Ozrif?"
"He was working on that spell," Corvine said.
Viridia took and read the message. "It is from Ozrif! Oh no."
"What is it?" Gideon said.
"'I hope this reaches you, Viridia,'" she read, "'and that you fare well, for disaster's befallen us. A pair of devils set upon the crusader boat in the night and burned it. Only I escaped. This is no credit to me, only to my family for teaching me to swim. I tried to rescue the Eagle Knight Kester, but he drowned and I failed to revive him. I ask forgiveness of Commander Hannison. I managed to reach the fort upon Arenway. They've given me enough details about Bellis to send a messenger there. With all my hope and love, Ozrif.'"
Merrigail lowered her head. "If I survive for vengeance only, O Talmandor," she said, "that's enough." To Viridia, she said, "I'm glad Ozrif lives, at least."
"Thank you. I'm sorry for the loss of your compatriots."
"I should reply," Corvine said.
"I suggest you wait until we reach the Evernest and make our plans," Gideon said. "It shouldn't be long."
In fact, it was midafternoon before they reached Tok-Tshka, and by then the party was battered, worn, and discouraged. The place was a small lake concealed by low hills; within rose a trio of islands linked by marsh-grass and the canopies of trees.
"Here is the Evernest," Lsst'tok said.
"I don't really see anything," Gideon said.
"To be sure. We do not build as you do, though sometimes we shape. My kind prefers solitude. The Evernest exists for times of celebration or defense. Since the return of the fog, there are many of us gathered here. We will carry you to the seer-queen."
The horde of bog striders, invisible throughout the day, now emerged from the trees to grasp the travelers.
And so commenced another journey across the waters, albeit a shorter one this time. The prisoner Waxbill lost his nerve at this point, perhaps because today it was easier to see their insectile hosts. "I know you mean to kill me here! Cheliax will avenge me!"
"The same Cheliax that already tried to kill you?" Gideon asked.
Waxbill went silent.
At the heart of the largest island lay a grove surrounded by evergreens, with a muddy pond in its midst, a snow-covered boulder in the pond's center. The travelers were instructed to sit upon the boulder. Bog striders settled into the mud all around them.
Gideon felt like a ladybug who'd flown onto an anthill. He had trouble telling the bog striders apart, and by now he had lost Lsst'tok among the chittering mass of Ses'h.
"They're going to eat us," said Waxbill. "We spared them the effort of carrying our meat."
"Don't be foolish. Most of them were with us the whole time. They've had nearly a day to eat us. Now, maybe they want to sacrifice us to their gods..."
"I'm a simple barber," Waxbill wailed.
Now the bog striders went silent all at once, and one of them edged a trifle forward. It was smaller than average, and its hide looked ragged. "I am Rik'visk, seer-queen to this gathering. Gideon Gull I know. You are the one in communication with the fog."
"I greet you again." Gideon felt dizzy. "What you say is true. Though I don't know how."
"I believe you, and thus you still live. Do you vouch for these others?"
"All but this man, Waxbill, our prisoner. Until recently he served the country of Cheliax, which has been controlling the fog."
Waxbill laughed hopelessly. "You still don't understand. It's too late for you. For us all."
"Silence," said Rik'visk. "For now. Gideon Gull, know that the fog has turned even bog strider against bog strider, though we resist its effects better than your kind. If I believed you in league with it, we would destroy you now."
"We seek to end it."
"Then we will aid you. We will not lend our strength in battle, but in all other ways we will help. These lands are our home, and we will not abandon them lightly. Yet if war begins, we cannot be safe, and we will depart for safer waters."
"I understand."
"I ask now that your prisoner speak."
Grizzendell kicked at the barber. "Be about it! Explain yourself. Are you part of Cheliax's army? Do you serve their queen? Speak up!"
The barber looked here and there, finding no friends or allies. "Very well...It won't help you, but I'll tell you what I know. My group wasn't military, or government. And I'm not Chelish myself. We were freelance diabolists, operating out of Cheliax's capital, Egorian. We were fixers and investigators—dirty job people. Once in a while we got the high-risk, high-pay work. Government projects of the deniable kind."
"If we bring this to the Chelaxians," Gideon guessed, "they'll claim you were just criminals, acting alone."
"You have the right of it. Our current assignment was to start a war. Someone in Taldor had an army ready to annex the part of the Verduran Forest that lies within Andoran. Our job was to set up shop in Bellis and start building up resentments up and down the river, and beyond. Devils are wonderful tools for such work. We had agents, too, like our man Savaric down in Cassomir. We were ready to deflect the blame everywhere, of course. Qadiran daggers for murder, Andoren gold for bribes. If discovered, we would say we were Chelish freelancers, and that it was all our doing. But meanwhile our Taldan silent partners had their ghoulish fog, and other tricks, to stoke the flames. Eventually everything would burn."
Savaric. Gideon remembered the vision of the man dead, Qadiran dagger beside him. Savaric would never give away his true employers.
"The Verduran Forest," Corvine mused. "All that Andoren timber, ready to go down to Cassomir, no druids to get in the way."
Viridia said, "And Taldor's troops could dig into the wooded terrain. The Andorens would have trouble extracting them, without access to t
he Sellen."
"You went to a lot of effort," Gideon told Waxbill. "What did Cheliax get out of it?"
"Augustana, and everything north, if all went well. The whole eastern third of Andoran."
"Sebastian wouldn't have had the authority for such a deal."
"Authority is what you take," Waxbill said. "And success is two-thirds of forgiveness. That's the Chelish attitude, anyway. They figured Taldor wasn't about to surrender any territory that got seized, and neither would they. Meanwhile your democratic brethren could vote, I suppose, on which fate was worse for the remaining third—bowing to the Grand Prince or to Queen Abrogail."
"A gamble. Cheliax would strengthen Taldor at the same time as themselves."
"Cheliax's star is rising, Taldor's is setting. Cheliax's relative position would still be strong. Is still strong, Andoren—nothing you've done has reduced tensions along the border. Perhaps the opposite. The plan may still proceed. Let me go, and I'll put in a good word for you."
Corvine put a hand over Gideon's fist before he realized he'd clenched it.
"Your colleagues tried to kill you," she reminded Waxbill.
"A misunderstanding. I objected to the Taldan side of the operation—their decision to saturate Bellis with the War Fog. Those townsfolk were my customers. I suppose my cover business got in the way of my real business. But what's done is done. I've still got contacts back in Egorian."
Corvine made a face. "Who's your contact with the Taldans?"
Waxbill shook his head. "My superior Karcuna handled all that."
"You ranted before about 'the future.' I don't think you simply meant a war. What was that about?"
"It's what the Taldans have. The face of future war. I've seen it, in the river. You think it's a ghost ship, right? That's just a disguise. An illusion that works on any mind that views it. The real ship is a vessel that travels under the waves. Karcuna rode with them and told me about it. Some mad inventor up in Ustalav inspired the design. Its got metal barrels on board that store the War Fog until it's needed—all squeezed in tight until they pop the cork. With their submersible, the Taldans can deliver the fog anywhere near the water. Bellis, Cassomir—you name it. They've even been to Almas and Oppara—if you want to start a war, you want the muckety-mucks to get crazy, too."
"Ah," said Adebeyo. "I've been wondering how Captain Tambour was managing to hatch this plot while maintaining his other duties. But as a Lion Blade he would often leave us, on mysterious errands."
"And maybe go off to meet his underwater contraption," Grizzendell said. "We could be operating down by Garund, and he could be off to Oppara and back."
Viridia looked at Gideon. "That's why Xeritian died, I'd wager. He was too close to uncovering an operation in Oppara."
"Warfare waged underwater," Gideon said in awe and dismay, "and within the mind."
Waxbill laughed. "That's the future I've seen. Submersibles and poison gas and mind control. And whole countries hungry for slaughter."
"You can't think this funny," Merrigail said. "You nearly died defending the people of Bellis."
Waxbill stopped laughing. "It's different when you see their faces. But what can anyone do? The future comes whether we like it or not."
"You're wrong. We bring the future, all of us. Ladies and gentlemen, we have to find Sebastian's toys and break them. And we have to alert both our capitals of his plot."
"Agreed," said Adebeyo. "But we need to know more. Especially what the bog striders mean by Gideon's connection with this fog."
"Please tell me," Gideon told Rik'visk.
The seer-queen said, "This fog, or something much like it, was seen many seasons ago. When you were a child, it was unleashed against Bellis. There was a mind behind it, within it, even then. It contacted you. I believe it took pity on you, Gideon Gull, because it was the mind of a mother, who had a boy of her own."
"Tell that to my brother," Gideon said. "It's the spirit of Sebastian Tambour's mother, isn't it? The War Fog is some creation of his father's, and his mother's mind became linked with it."
"I know not the names or origins. Only the essences. But the mind of the fog spared you. It also took an interest in you. And because it is an unhealthy mind, it tugs at you in dangerous ways. It inspires you, but it also lures you toward self-destruction."
"My muse."
"Perhaps. For many years it lay quiescent, rarely stirring. But it has reawakened. She has reawakened. And she remains interested in you."
Corvine said, "All this time...Sebastian must have known you were linked to the fog. He's been trying to sway you to his point of view, make you ready to join his plot. Your connection would've made you his ideal agent." She shook her head. "To think I admired him."
"It's easy to admire passion," Merrigail said, "especially passion for one's country. I also sensed this in Sebastian and...respected it."
"Why didn't he kill me at Bellis?" Gideon said.
"Old friendship, maybe," Viridia said. "Or maybe he wasn't sure the fog would approve."
"Is he not fully in control after all?" Corvine asked.
Gideon remembered the vision of Captain Crookwing of Demonwake, pointing at him and hiding the gesture from the image of Desdimira. He still didn't not know what it meant, but he said, "Sebastian spoke of the War Fog tugging at its leash. You're right; I don't think he has total command."
Adebeyo said, "It seems to me this is our hope: Gideon using his link with the fog. He can seek out the source."
"I'll do it," Gideon said, "though I fear it. But I don't need to make contact to find it. I think Sebastian already told me. Maybe on some level he wanted me to know. His family's old castle lies up the Verduran Fork. The description he gave fits the vision we saw at the Isle of Arenway. That's where we'll find him."
"We can't search every bend of the river," Grizzendell said. "There's no time."
The seer-queen said, "If you can describe it, or draw it in the mud, perhaps we can help you find it. Every place the waters touch, we know well."
"I can do better than that," Gideon realized, and brought to mind his illusion spell.
What will I dream when the hangman hauls?
The air shimmered, and there appeared the granite cliff, and the dark waters swirling beneath, as if in a cauldron.
"We know this place," rose the voice of a bog strider—Lsst'tok?—from the crowd of Ses'h. "It lies on the southern bank of the Verduran Fork."
"That's still a long way from here," Grizzendell said. "Tambour'll have attacked by then."
"It is a long way for you," Lsst'tok said. "We can reach it in a day, perhaps two."
Adebeyo said, "In two days it's the dark of the moon. A good time for ambushes."
"A good time for revenge," said Grizzendell.
Corvine nodded. "I'll send word to Ozrif."
Gideon thought of his friend Sebastian, who'd helped him rise from the gutter. But he also thought of his brother Gareth, and snowball fights, and raft rides, and summer days in Carpenden.
"Revenge," he said. "But maybe peace as well. So be it."
Chapter Eighteen
Ballad of the Desperate Bards
The journey to the Verduran Fork was a trek unlike any Gideon had experienced.
A human alone in the forest might seek paths or animal trails, or aim for high ground to get bearings. The Ses'h saw the woods differently, as a web of waterways interrupted by the inconvenience of drier ground. Thus their route meandered with the waters' flow, a disorienting pirouette beneath the dark twisting arms of bare trees, until it seemed the forest itself was juggling the journeyers in giant, frosty hands.
"I have no idea where we are," Gideon said to no one in particular. His breath turned golden and vaporous where the afternoon sunlight cut through the forest canopy.
Lsst'tok, who was the only Ses'h on this trip to yet speak to the humanoids, answered. "We make good progress. We will reach the castle of your enemy tomorrow."
"'Good progress?'" Corvine sai
d from behind. "I've never traveled so fast in my life. It's exhilarating!"
"My enemy," Gideon repeated, letting the word settle in his ears. He was practicing the listening techniques of the Lion Blades, letting sound wash over him. The air was cool and still beneath the branches, but by the creaking twists of the upper canopy and the distant whispers in the treetops, Gideon knew the wind was picking up, and that this snowfall would pass inland toward the Tandak Plains, just as it had no doubt whitened the Carpenden Plains in Andoran. And he reflected that for the clouds and the woods, there was no "Andoran" nor "Taldor," and all the lines on maps were just ink, human things that splintered seeing.
Do the druids perceive things in this way? Endless detail, with no attempt to judge, divide, classify? He doubted he truly had their perspective, but perhaps he was closer than usual.
The openness left him receptive to something else. A voice sang brightly in his mind, as if far off, beyond the trees.
Never knowing ever flowing
The river claims its own
You are water for the slaughter
Mud to join the stones
Down the river you will shiver
Till you meet the sea
Ever broken till you've spoken
Words of love for me.
"Gideon," Corvine was whispering. "Gideon."
His perspective was gone, and again he was merely a stupid town-dweller lost in the woods. Corvine had convinced her Ses'h companion to come closer to Lsst'tok, and the stream was wide enough here to allow them to walk over the waters side by side.
"Gideon, are you all right? Your face looked awful, and you were whispering to yourself."
"Oh. Well. I felt her."
"Ah."
"It's a unique sensation, realizing your muse is actually your former friend's mother's ghost. I prefer other feelings, all things considered."
"We need to get you some better feelings," she murmured. "There's no fog here. How?"
"I think that with my mind quiet and open, it's easier to hear her. And maybe she's getting stronger."
"Does she sense you?"
"To a degree, I think."
Corvine looked grim. "Will she know we're coming?"
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