by Toby Bennett
There is a figure standing beyond the glass but he can tell little more than that since whoever it is seems to be wearing a great coat like his own and a hat which shadows its owners face, despite the splash of light coming from the compartment, Blake on the other hand is all too aware that he is no doubt easily visible in the well lit compartment.
“There is no need for those, Captain.” A familiar breathy voice whispers through the glass. At the same time the latch clicks and in walks the skeleton of Etine Moore.
“How in the name of all that’s holy did you get in here? How did you find me?” Blake hisses, stepping past the boney troubadour and hauling the compartment door shut. There is no lock so he opts to hold the door closed with his back against the glass pane in the hope of obscuring his visitor from any late night passers by.
“There is no need to concern yourself, Captain,” the skeleton assures him, “they are all soundly asleep I do not think we will be observed or interrupted.”
“I don’t care what you think! They’ll burn me if they see me talking to your puppet! How did you even get it on the train?”
“Oh, it’s quite amazing how small a skeleton can become, once you remove the need for muscles and tendons, any suitcase is a good means for travel; these old trains are full of compartments and overhead lockers, there’s little or no risk. At worst my servant merely plays dead and there is a mystery and a little digging in a couple of days. As to how I found you, it was me who put you on the train in the first place. I couldn’t personally spare the time but Etine was as amused, to the degree that his kind can be amused, by the holy man’s bleating about the sanctity of the line, while he lay in a compartment just out side the door. The dead do not have a sense of humour but they do have a certain appreciation of irony, Captain Blake.”
“I think I’ll lose my sense of humour as well, if we are caught together.”
“Which is why I waited until now and why I must be quick. I could have caught up to you once you left Brigton, with you being none the wiser as to how I’d followed you so swiftly. However things have changed.”
“Why?”
“The girl is no longer on route to her father’s. I had hoped all you would need to do would be to escort her…”
“Then you hoped wrong! I’m here for the Gate. If the girl can aid me then that’s what she will do, do not make the mistake of thinking you can order me here and there like one of these … things.” He gestures at the skeleton
“I meant no insult, I simply believed she would be safer.”
“If the leeches are seeking her, then nowhere is safe. They have her already, don’t they? That’s why you’re speaking to me now.”
“Yes.” The bone clown confesses on its master’s behalf.
“Do you know where they are taking her?”
“We cannot be certain. Our spy was destroyed during the struggle, but the marshes were mentioned.”
Blake frowns, it is enough indeed, in the vast dryness of the Bowl the reference was explicit.
“Pellan!”
“You know the Strigoi in question?”
“I know of him by reputation. Every year, during winter, merchants go missing in the marshes. Of course, normally, they wouldn’t go anywhere near the place, in summer only the Snake’s Tongue keeps the marshland alive.” Blake’s words refer to the two off shoots of the Blue Snake that were popularly seen as its forked tongue. Of course, for most, these were just two blue lines on the map; the area had a foul reputation and was too sodden to produce lumber or crops reliably. He continues, “Come winter though the marsh expands and many routes which were safe in summer become precarious. He finds one way or another to lure them in fog, a bridge that seems to save time or bypass some obstacle, he’s even been known to trick whole barges into his swamps, if the river’s flowing hard enough.”
“Surely you are just talking of the curse? Peasants might believe it but a marsh in winter is dangerous for men, who have gained most of their experience travelling in the forests around the river or in the desert. As for the lost boats, well the river is dangerous as well, if it flows too hard.”
“No, he is simply cautious. Never too greedy, unless he thinks what he takes will not be missed. During the crusade a whole troop of cavalry got lost in the marshes; so many died that year that no one wondered what had happened to nearly three hundred men! It is credible that the marshes are simply dangerous but the truth is Pellan is the curse and the danger is that little happens in the marshes which he does not allow.”
“So Pellan is the one who took the girl?”
“Almost certainly not. Pellan is a monster, even by the standards of the Strigoi, he is the victim of some strange malady that has twisted his body beyond anything even vaguely human.”
“The creature that took the girl was inhuman enough! It flowed beneath the door then formed into an inhuman creature that had horns and tentacles.”
“It was not Pellan. He has sired fewer vampires than other Elders, due to his malady, but those that are of his blood seem to have gained the power to control the flesh from their sire’s corruption.”
“You know all this by reputation?”
“The leeches have their own communities, bone mage, much as I’m sure you have yours; Pellan was always looked on as a demon among demons, he is an Elder but you can be sure that, whatever his reasons for abducting the girl, they are not in line with the others of his kind.”
Why? What do you mean?”
“Pellan has no interest in the Gate, he has accepted his corruption. If he takes any interest in the girl it is to use her as a bargaining chip with the other Elders.”
“There are other Elders, then?” The skeleton whispers, its inflectionless voice giving away none of its master’s eagerness for an answer to this very question.
“The term is deceptive. Most of the true Elders were destroyed long before we reached the Citadel. Those we encountered were their offspring, a Strigoi gains potency as the years pass, as they become more undead and forget their links to the flesh, the first thing to go is lust, replaced by hunger; then emotions, at least those understandable to humans, at last they lose all sense of time; being timeless creatures they no longer think of days or weeks but of years, centuries. That is why they were still dreaming when the Citadel was attacked and why the Citadel was so ill-prepared for the assault, its masters had no sense of the urgency required. They prefer to work within the political system that they themselves instituted as if it were some vast game, the Crusade was simply too fast, too unexpected.”
“For some! Others were missing.”
“Indeed it would be a mistake to assume that their apparent disconnection from the day to day flow of events was entirely a weakness, their view of time and their immense power mean that they usually have a long view of things. Perhaps the Crusade was an anomaly that happened too fast for them to counter or perhaps it was a stepping-stone to something else. The mystique, which used to surround the first Elders, is gone, nowadays the term really refers to those Strigoi, whose condition has worsened to such a state that there is little of their original humanity left. Obviously the process can take centuries, thus these creatures can be called Elders, Pellan is definitely one, probably the oldest yet living and there are three others left who avoided destruction at Golifany, perhaps those three saw it coming. They might even have used the General to remove the others.”
“Don’t you mean four?”
“What?”
“There were five sarcophagi empty at the Citadel, if Pellan should have been in one then that leaves four others.”
“It was the fourth who showed me the vision of the Gate.”
“You believe these three will also be seeking the girl?”
“If she is as important as you say, and the fact that Pellan has become involved seems to bear that out, then they will attempt to meet whatever price Pellan wants. That gives us some time.”
“How can you be so sure that Pellan will not seek th
e Gate himself?”
“The same way I know it was not Pellan who abducted her in the first place, Pellan has not left his marshes for more than a century, by now I would imagine that his bulk has become such that only there can he hide from the sunlight.”
Chapter 6:
‘The Leech’s Garden”
It is still dark when Dale enters the fringes of the marsh, his quick limbs, long and tireless, have brought him back in time, despite his burden. Now he can feel the earth growing soft beneath his hoofed feet; smell the thick scent of the river that runs thin fingers through the sodden earth and trickles into the fetid basin at the heart of the marshes. Here and there a toad chirps and pale alligators slip between the reeds in search of them, while the water fowl chide him from hidden burrows and blighted tree tops for interrupting their doze. There is life here on the fringes, enough life to hide the true nature of the marsh but Dale knows better, there are deeper pools and darker soil where he must travel, he is not yet home.
It still dark but light is coming quickly. Already the rotting vegetation that covers the deep sticky mud is beginning to steam, as if in anticipation of the sun. Thick mist billows around his ankles, coiling up past his double-jointed knees, reaching almost to the lump of distended flesh that hangs from his chest and abdomen. He has had to travel on all fours to accommodate the extra bulk. Dale extends his neck to the sound of crackling bones and tearing cartilage and stares into the glazed eyes of his passenger.
“Not so long now,” he assures her through his thin slit of a mouth, “we just have to wait out the sun. You don’t mind getting wet do you?” Dale sniggers.
Lillian listens distantly from within her cocoon of skin but she can make no sense of the monster’s words. The need to maintain her sanity has driven her from her body inch by inch over the long miles between Olstop and the marsh. Only the constant pumping of the muscles around the tube in her throat ensure that she even breathes regularly.
“I’m disappointed, beloved,” the broken necked monster says, its upside down face hanging in her vision, “we’ve had time to get to know each other now, so I think it’s only fair to say that I’d been told you would be a lot more fun.”
When he gets no response Dale swings his head closer, so that it dangles mere centimeters from Lillian’s face, bobbing on its rubbery moorings.
“Nothing to say to me then? I do value a frank exchange. Here let me help you.”
With a sudden jerk the tentacle that has been wedged in her throat for most of the night tears itself free, leaving her raw and choking.
“How about now? Anything to say?” the blue eyed monster mocks. “You can scream now, as much as you like.”
It is not due to any inner reserve that Lillian denies him the satisfaction of those screams but she is simply too numb, too disconnected to do more than gasp more air into her burning throat and lungs.
“That’s very disappointing and you started off so well. It wouldn’t encourage you if I used some other motivation would it?” A long tongue, as cold and dead as the rest of the creature, slides over her cheek. “There are ever so many variations I can make to this body, that might inspire you,” Dale looks up to the pink glow building on the horizon, “but we have no time for such distractions now.”
Distantly Lillian feels them beginning to move again, cold water splashes upwards with each plunging stride, wetting her face and dragging her against her will back into full awareness. Reeds and mud flash by under her, until they reach a pool of stagnant water at the base of an unhealthy looking tree, whose dark roots twist into the stagnant soil, forming an overhang inches above the surface. Dale wades towards the tree on all fours and begins scooping out the mud beneath it with paddle shaped paws.
When he is finally satisfied the monster allows his head to loll again so that he can look his passenger in the eye.
“Done, and none too soon, beloved,” it leers, revealing rows of yellowed teeth.
Lillian closes her eyes to block out the sight of the grotesque face, but she cannot block out the feeling of something wet and damp trying to force its way past her lips and into her mouth. At first she thinks it might be the thing’s tongue but then she realizes that it is the recently removed breathing tube.
“She can hear me talking to her, can’t she?” Her captor’s voice suddenly breaks into her fractured consciousness. “I have no more time for games, you will need to breathe, beloved, I need you to breathe ….could crack your teeth if I had to,” the thing promises, thrusting the hollow tentacle against her incisors.
Somehow, despite all she has been through this night, Lillian cannot unclench her jaw. Even though only minutes before, she had been all but broken, the thought of that dead flesh in her throat, the revulsion at the idea of it once more reaching deep into her lungs and breathing for, her lends her the strength to refuse the monster’s increasingly urgent demands. Dale quickly tires of both pleading and threatening, instead something occurs to him which sets his blue eyes twinkling with malicious glee. He would not have dared such a thing with the girl, as she had been half an hour before for fear that she would not respond, now though...
“Very well beloved, I will not come where I am not invited, you shall not have it until you open your mouth and let me in of your own accord. Not until you welcome me inside you.”
The demonic visage raises itself out of her vision, distantly she hears the sound of the vertebra in the monster’s neck realigning, and then she feels the alien body tense around her.
“Keep your eyes shut, if you can.” Dale says, just before he launches himself into the foul smelling water, thrusting his body deeply into the soft earth and burrowing his way beneath the tree’s roots. For a few seconds Lillian tries to refuse his warning and keeps her eyes open, thin white tree roots like worms or hanging bits of flesh undulate in the murky water, then she is forced to close her eyes altogether as they wriggle deeper into the sticky earth.
To her credit Lillian keeps her mouth tightly shut as they slide through the ooze; she fights her panic and her shock at the temperature of the night-chilled water. Soon, though, it becomes warmer as the mud settles around her, filling her nostrils and ears, her already tortured lungs begin to protest at the lack of breathable air. Her attempts to struggle are feeble and instinctive and seem only to allow more mud and slime into her nose. Then she feels it brushing back and forth against her clamped lips, the tentacle waiting patiently for her to relent, for her inevitable surrender. Pride and revulsion last a matter of seconds, need takes over and all too soon she finds her lips parting, welcoming in the rotting mud and black water of the marshes and with them the carrion taste of the tentacle that resumes its place, sliding into her aching throat and beginning to suck air from the shaded darkness between the tree’s roots. The air is foul and dank but to Lillian it seems sweet as life itself, a few bubbles drift up and float out onto the still churning waters of the tiny pool, other than that there is no way to tell the two were ever there and no way to know if the large bubbles are caused by Lillian’s last desperate gasp or Dale’s mocking laughter.
*
By the time the sun has risen in the sky, Samuel Blake is travelling on the river, a pair of saddlebags hitched over his shoulder. He had left quickly, as soon as the train had come to a stop in the small hours of the morning, leaving behind Caroline and her besotted confessor; it gave Sam some small amusement to think that the padre would inevitably make a play for the very innocence that he believed protected her. Still he doubted that Caroline would miss it much and after decades of watching such pantomimes play themselves out, he had neither the interest nor the time to see how things resolved themselves. It was not the importance that the Necromancer and his puppet had placed on the Carter girl, so much as the fact that Pellan had become involved that prompted such haste. Many images remained in his mind from vampires that he had consumed, but none featured the malformed Lord of the Marshes in person. That old spider was almost never seen but he spun his webs fa
r and with care, if he had taken an interest in the girl her importance could not be in doubt. Of course, another part of himself warned, he had only the skeleton’s word to go on, this might even be a trap orchestrated by the old trickster himself. Whether it was the Necromancer or the Elder who had set him on this dangerous course though didn’t matter, he simply couldn’t afford to lose any chance to reach the Gate. He would just have to tread carefully and be quick, ascertain whether the girl even existed and then proceed from there. With luck, if it were a trap, he would be in and out before the bloated patriarch even noticed.
The craft he travelled on now was not one of the lazy barges that bobbed up and down the river, she was a sleek river boat with narrow lines and a low draught, since the wind favoured her she even had her sail up, that and the current meant that they sped along as fast as any horse could gallop. A fair exchange, since it had cost him his horse to book passage so early. The purse given to him by the Necromancer was still heavy enough to have allowed him to pay for the journey and he already deeply regretted the loss of a good mount but a boat like this would never have taken a horse and besides what good would a horse be in the marshes? Far better to have the money to buy a new mount, when he reached his destination.
The boat itself was more commonly used for mail and vital supplies, its speed meant that any space on board was at a premium so Sam has at least one night of squatting out on an open deck to look forward to. The three other people on board do their best to ignore him, but Sam has no objections, he is happy to keep out of the way and watch as the lush land on either side of the river flickers past. Having spent the last five years in the desert the sight of so much greenery seems nothing short of miraculous. It appears to Sam that they pass a barge carrying lumber up river almost every hour, an unimaginable wealth for those more used to living out at the end of the line, where having more than four wooden chairs and a table is considered wealth and paper is only used in bibles. He fades into the background so completely that none of the crew needs to speak to him even as much as to ask him to step out of the way until that evening.