“Whew,” he said, standing shakily on two feet. “That was close.” Although he’d changed back, he still looked a little dog-like. Maybe it was the way the tip of his tongue poked slightly out of the corner of his mouth, or the way he kept flaring his nostrils as though trying to catch a scent.
“I liked the dog better,” Riph Raph said from the branch of a tree.
“Definitely more friendly,” said a voice from the swamp. Kyja turned to see Cascade leaning against a tree, his feet seeming to float on the surface of a puddle of scummy-looking green water.
Marcus picked up his staff, tugged the ribbon from his neck, and shoved it into his pocket. “Thanks for—bark—all your help back there.”
Cascade ran a hand through his white hair and yawned. “You seemed to have it all under control.”
“I don’t suppose you have any advice on which way we should go?” Kyja asked.
“It depends on what your destination is.”
Marcus scowled. “You know where we want to go.”
“We want to find Land Keep,” Kyja said. “But at this point, I’d be happy just to escape the Keepers.”
Cascade pointed toward the south gate. “Returning to the city will lead you neither to the home of the land elementals nor toward escape.”
Kyja sighed. She already knew both of those things. “How soon do we have before the Keepers reach us?”
Cascade shook his head, a slight smile on his face. “They are not following you.”
“What?” Riph Raph squawked. “Of course they are.” He soared into the air and returned a few seconds later. “He’s right. There are at least twenty Keepers back there, but they’re waiting just inside the gate.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Marcus said.
Kyja didn’t either. But it certainly made their choice easier. She looked down the road. It didn’t appear to have been used much. Weeds grew down the middle, and the trees and plants encroached from both sides like stretching arms. There was no sign of fresh footprints in the dirt, and even the wheel ruts looked as if they had been made months, or even years, earlier.
“I suppose this road must go somewhere,” she said doubtfully.
Marcus gripped his staff. “If the Keepers want us to go this way, it’s a trap.”
Kyja agreed but what choice did they have? “What’s through those trees?” she asked Cascade, pointing to the left.
“Swamp,” he answered immediately.
“That way?” she asked, pointing to the right.
“Swamp.”
“Let me guess,” Marcus said. “If we keep going straight we reach swamp, too.”
The Fontasian merely shrugged.
“We could wait here and try to sneak past the guards at night,” Marcus suggested.
“No,” Kyja said. “The gates close at night. I don’t want to be stuck out here after dark. Wherever we’re going to go, we need to do it while we still have daylight.” She turned to Riph Raph. “Can you fly ahead and see where this road goes?”
Riph Raph flapped his wings and took off.
“I still say this is a bad idea,” Marcus said.
“Do you have any better suggestions?” Kyja asked.
In answer, he rammed his staff into the dirt and began heading down the road.
Three hours later, the way had narrowed until it was barely wide enough to be called a trail—a little higher than the swamp to either side of it. Kyja and Marcus could just walk side by side without brushing up against the dense vegetation that clawed for space out of the wet ground. And Kyja had no intention of touching any of the plants if she could help it.
Tall, swaying trees gave way to black-trunked monstrosities. Instead of hanging from the branches, gray moss wrapped itself around them until it seemed to be oozing out of the bark itself. Beneath the stunted trees, huge ferns and spongy-looking reeds grew with a ferocious energy that seemed more animal than plant. She had the feeling that if you got too close, those plants would pull you into the swamp and devour you.
As the sun dropped lower in the sky, the cooler air brought out insects that buzzed around Marcus and Kyja’s faces, darting about their eyes and into their mouths. If they didn’t swat them away, the bugs landed on their arms and legs, feasting on warm blood until they flew sluggishly away or burst in the process.
But the worst part was the sounds. Just out of sight, groans and grunts echoed through the twilight. Every so often, the air was split by a deep-throated roar that shook the trees and made Kyja and Marcus jump. Then there were the splashes that sounded far too big to be made by fish.
“Any sign of civilization ahead?” Kyja asked, as Riph Raph glided down from the sky and landed on her shoulder.
“Nothing,” the skyte said tiredly. “The sea is off to the right. Between here and there are miles of swamp. Straight ahead is nothing but the same.”
Marcus collapsed to the ground and glared at Cascade. “You led us into this.”
Cascade studied a bloated-looking frog at the base of a tree.
“I’m sorry,” Kyja said, sitting beside Marcus. “It’s my fault we’re here.”
“No. We’ve had enough of spreading blame,” Marcus said. “We’re in this together. But I had a bad thought awhile back. If everyone in Aster’s Bay knows this road leads into the middle of a swamp, why place guards at the gate?”
Kyja shrugged.
“What if it isn’t to keep people out,” Marcus said, “but to keep something else from getting in?”
What kind of something? Kyja wondered. The thought made her shiver. “But if they want to keep whatever is in the swamp out, and no one leaves through that gate, why have a gate at all?”
Now it was Marcus’s turn to shiver. “What’s a harbinger?” he asked suddenly.
“I have no idea,” Kyja said. “Why?”
Marcus told her about the rhyme the children sang at the school. Kyja sat silently for a moment, then said, “I’ve heard songs like that, but nothing about harbingers or a city below. Maybe it’s just one of those things kids talk about to scare each other, like . . .”
“The boogeyman,” Marcus filled in.
Kyja hadn’t heard of “the boogeyman” but guessed it added up to the same thing. “We used to call it Tem Shad, the creature that snuck into your bedroom at night and bit off your thumbs if you were bad.”
“Ouch. It wasn’t a real creature, was it?”
Kyja tugged the sleeves of her robe. “I didn’t think so back then.” She looked at the sun that was now nearly below the horizon, giving the swamp a blood-red glow. “It looks like we’re going to have to spend the night here after all. Riph Raph, can you fly back and make sure the Keepers aren’t following us?”
Riph Raph, who had been nearly asleep on Kyja’s shoulder, lifted his head and grunted, “Anything to get away from his complaining.”
“How much food do we have left?” Kyja asked as the skyte disappeared.
Marcus rooted around in the leather bag they took turns carrying. “It looks like—” He stopped and tilted his head. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Kyja strained to listen, but the only thing she could make out was the buzzing of insects and the croaking of frogs.
Marcus pulled himself up with his staff. He stared into the trees. “It sounded like voices.”
Kyja listened again. Still she heard nothing. “Are you feeling all right? Maybe the charm . . .”
“There!” Marcus pointed into the trees. “Something’s moving out there. And there! And there!” He pointed into several spots of the swamp.
Kyja jumped to her feet. “What is it?” She looked where Marcus was pointing, squinting into the night, but saw nothing. Was this part of what the snifflers had done to him?
“There isn’t anything,” she said, trying to take hold of his shoulder.
He jerked out of her grip, spinning left and right, his face a pale, terrified circle of white. “Can’t you hear them?” he cried. “They’re s
inging the songs of the dead. They’re coming up out of their graves. We have to get out of here.”
Kyja looked around, almost believing he was seeing something.
“Run!” Marcus screamed. Clinging to his staff, he hobbled back up the trail. “They’re everywhere!” he panted. Eyes wide with terror, he looked over his shoulder and stumbled off the trail into the swamp. Instantly, the dark water sucked him up to his knees. Marcus raised his hands, muttering something Kyja couldn’t understand. Then his mouth dropped open with dismay. “My magic. It’s gone.”
“Come back!” Kyja shouted, pulling at his arm. “Whatever you think you’re seeing, it isn’t real.” But if Marcus could hear her, he didn’t show it.
“Harbingers!” he cried. “Look at their claws. Run Kyja. Run-n-n-n-n!”
Kyja stumbled into the water and reached for Marcus’s cloak, when something jerked him into the air. “No-o-o-o!” he screamed, struggling in the clutches of some unseen creature. His staff dropped from his hands, and Kyja watched with horror as he was sucked into the trees and out of sight, his cries echoing in the darkness until they disappeared completely.
Chapter 16
The Swamp
Anything?” Kyja asked as Riph Raph landed in the branches of a gnarled, black tree that looked more dead than alive.
“Nothing,” the skyte panted, resting his mud-caked wings.
Kyja yanked her sodden and stinking robes up to her knees and climbed onto one of the tree’s lower branches. The bark felt slick, like the rubbery skin of a slime-nymph, but it was the only way to get out of the foul water for even a few minutes.
“Your body needs rest,” Cascade said. Although Kyja and even Riph Raph were both covered in mud from head to toe, the water elemental looked like he’d just stepped out of a pristine lake. “You haven’t slept for two days, and you’ve barely eaten. In your current state, you are far more likely to pass out from exhaustion than accomplish anything of value.”
“But I need to find Marcus,” Kyja snapped. She scratched at the hundreds of bug bites that covered her skin and peeled mud suckers from her arms and legs.
Riph Raph snapped a bug out of the air and scraped the dried mud from his wings with his rough tongue. “Maybe it’s time to give up. There’s nothing out there. Nothing but miles and miles of . . . this.” He waved his tail at the hopeless morass before them.
“We can’t give up,” Kyja said. “We’re the only help he has.” She’d tried everything to locate Marcus, including pushing him back to Earth. But somehow, he was beyond her reach. She wouldn’t believe he was dead, but the idea kept coming back to her that maybe he was. The last thing he’d heard before being carried off by whatever attacked him was her doubting him. Now he was alone, somewhere in the middle of this endless muck. Maybe injured and in pain—but please, alive—and she had no idea whatsoever how to find him.
Hot tears dripped down her face as she clutched his staff to her chest, running her fingers across the surface worn smooth by his hands. “Are you sure you can’t find him?” Kyja asked Cascade. “I’ll give you anything you ask.”
“I can protect you from the animals that roam these waters.” The water elemental stared down into the dark surface of the muddy water, his eyes reflecting its bleak surface. “But Marcus is beyond my sight.”
“Can you at least tell me if he’s . . . alive?” Kyja cried. “I thought you could see everything. I thought that was the power of water magic.”
“There are places even I cannot see.”
Kyja slammed her fist against the bark of the tree, cutting her knuckles. “Then tell me where Land Keep is. Tell me where the land elementals are so they can help me.”
“I cannot.”
Kyja could hear the pain in the water elemental’s voice. But that wasn’t good enough. No wasn’t a good enough answer. There was a way. There had to be. “Where do we search next?” she asked Riph Raph.
The skyte looked up from licking his wings. “There’s nowhere to look. We’ve searched for miles. I haven’t seen any sign of him. Do you really think he’s worth all this effort?”
“I won’t stop.” Kyja felt her eyes begin to droop, so she jumped out of the tree to wake herself up. Instantly, her feet sank into the thick goo, and the murky water rose nearly to her chest. Using Marcus’s staff to probe the ground ahead, she began walking in the direction she thought she’d been headed before she stopped to rest.
“We’ve already covered that area,” Riph Raph said, taking to the air.
“Then I’ll cover it again.” Head down, she blinked the sweat out of her eyes and took one step at time. She’d keep going for as long as it took. With whatever energy she possessed, she would keep searching until she found him or until finally she succumbed to the swamp herself. Half asleep, she concentrated on taking one step after another, calling out Marcus’s name in a hoarse voice.
She was so exhausted she nearly walked into a figure that stepped out of the trees. With bleary eyes, Kyja looked up at the stick-thin creature with ragged clothing and too-long limbs. He was so tall the top of her head barely came to his waist.
“Screech?” Kyja asked, wondering if she was seeing things. She thought that surely she’d left him behind when they entered the city. Yet here he was, combing his long fingers through his greasy clumps of hair, looking as though he wasn’t quite sure whether to stay or run.
Finally he hunched over so their eyes were nearly on the same level then ran his long tongue over the few remaining blackened teeth in his mouth. “I can help you find the boy.”
“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” Kyja asked Screech for what felt like the hundredth time.
The cave trulloch looked over his shoulder and grinned. At least, Kyja thought it was supposed to be a grin. With his long, gaunt features and rotten teeth, it could just as easily have been a snarl. He stopped, broke a small branch off a tree, and lifted it to his nose. “Yes, yes,” he said as though sniffing a delicious meal, then pointed with a long, boney finger. “The boy passed this way.”
“I don’t trust him,” Riph Raph whispered into Kyja’s ear.
Riph Raph didn’t trust anyone—at least, anyone other than Kyja. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t right this time. Kyja wasn’t sure she trusted the cave trulloch, either. They’d been traveling most of the day and as far as she could tell, were wandering aimlessly. Out here, everything looked similar, but she was pretty sure they’d passed the same blackened stump at least twice.
Cascade had been even more silent than normal. The longer they walked, the more sullen he became.
“Are we getting any closer?” she asked. But Screech only gave his snaggletoothed smile and pointed ahead.
“Can you tell if we’re doing anything other than walking in circles?” Kyja whispered to Riph Raph.
The skyte flapped his leathery ears and blinked. “It’s hard to say. Flying up there is like flying over the ocean. Everything looks the same in every direction.”
As Screech waded into a thick bank of reeds, Cascade suddenly came to a stop.
“What’s wrong?” Kyja asked.
The Fontasian planted his hands on his hips. “I stop here.”
“Why?” Kyja asked. “What do you mean, you stop here?”
Cascade said nothing, but stood as steadfast and immoveable as a tree.
“Cascade, you said you’d help me.”
The water elemental clenched his teeth.
“Who’s going to protect me from whatever’s out there?”
“Splash and spray!” he said at last. “Don’t you understand? I can . . . not go . . . with you into this . . . this place.” He spat the words as though Kyja had asked him to swim through raw sewage.
Understanding dawned on Kyja, and with it, new excitement. “It’s Land Keep, isn’t it? We’re getting close. That’s why you can’t go any farther. Is it some kind of rule? Elementals don’t go into each other’s keeps?”
Cascade turned away. “I will wa
it here for you.”
“Okay.” Kyja leaned forward and hugged the elemental, whose eyes opened wide in surprise. “Thank you. Thank you for all your help. I knew you’d get me here.”
“Be careful of the trulloch,” Cascade whispered so silently Kyja could barely hear him. “He has reasons of his own for helping you, reasons he is not revealing.”
“I’ll be careful,” Kyja whispered back. “Come on,” she said louder, looking into Riph Raph’s big yellow eyes. “Let’s find Marcus.”
Interlude
An Unexpected Prisoner
Terra ne Staric
High Lord Dinslith heard the first faint screams even before he reached the end of the dim hallway. He paused in front of the heavy, iron-bound door. His legs trembled and his stomach curdled at what awaited him at the bottom of the long spiral staircase.
“My Lord?” The guard standing to the right of the staircase entrance stepped forward, but the high lord held out a weathered hand.
“I will be going down—alone.” At least his voice didn’t tremble. The guard on the left responded immediately, removing a chain with a bronze key from around his neck and unlocking the door.
As Dinslith began his descent, the thick, stout wood slab clanged shut behind him, and the high lord shivered. The air rising from the depths of the tower dungeon carried a dank cold that gnawed at his old bones with sharp, hungry teeth. But as he walked the worn stone stairs, it wasn’t the cold that made his knees and elbows feel as loose as the limbs of the flip-me-up dolls that entertained small children in the square.
For the last seventeen years, he had ruled as Terra ne Staric’s High Lord. For the twelve years before that, he’d been chief arbiter and magistrate. Twenty-nine years he’d been part of the leadership of this city. In that time, he could count on two hands the number of people he’d sent to the dungeons. The capital of Westland had always been an island of peace in a world of turmoil.
But now, now . . .
As the cries grew louder, the steps seemed to grow more slippery beneath his feet. He coughed wetly into one fist and ran a hand along the icy wall to keep his balance as he descended into the gloomy depths. How had things come to this? In the last sixty days, he’d consigned more than a dozen—more than two dozen—people he’d thought of as friends to the forsaken chambers beneath the city—a city that had always stood for knowledge and understanding.
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