“There is a map, one map,” said the King, “and the journey is perilous and may not have been undertaken for a hundred years.”
Chapter 15
Unthank Marsh
A few hours later, Aron and his companions were regretting the decision to cross the marsh. It was proving much slower than they had anticipated, much of which was because they could not take a direct route.
They had to pick their way across what they thought would be firmer lines of peat mounds, or where sedge grass grew and its roots offered a little more support underfoot. They dismounted their horses to disperse their weight a little more evenly.
Once or twice they had to backtrack when they came across craters that led to underground brooks, or thicker muddy tracts that sucked their boots off.
Aland led the way, linking up the more sturdy areas that would hold their weight. They picked a navigation point in the mountain range beyond the marshes. They broadly headed in that direction so they would generally stay on course.
Once in a while they would come to areas of stagnant pools. Aland would kneel and plunge his sword into the pool. He would try and figure out how deep the water was or how soft the underlying ground was. They managed to progress slowly through meandering islands of sedge grass that ran along the streams and water pools.
At one point he found himself stranded on a clump of sedge grass with a muddy passage crossing in front of him. It appeared fairly firm and there was more sedge grass four or five feet away across the channel.
He took a step back and leapt across the gap. Falling short of the grass, his front leg sucked into the muddy gunge and disappeared from under him. He pitched forward but managed to spread his arms and grasp clumps of the rough grass in front of him, the stagnant water soaking into his clothes.
Proud Wanderer bucked backwards and managed to find his footing on the bank. Aland lay flat to the surface to stop himself sinking further and leveraged his other leg to the surface to push himself towards the far bank. His arms pulled on the sedge grass and he dragged himself from the mud and lay on his back, gasping from the effort.
He stood on the far bank caked in pungent black mud on the front of his body. “Perhaps not this way then,” he half-joked. “I’ll circle back to the left and meet you farther on.”
At other times they advanced swiftly, following the streams that led to a watershed. The peat had sometimes eroded down to the bedrock and they were able to follow these for some distance.
The first evening they found a larger island to base themselves. The day had been hard going and they were aching and exhausted. It was getting cooler and the companions were pleased when Ailin managed to get a fire going. There had been ample dead wood around from trees sorrowfully sinking into the earth, and dried mosses and lichens provided tinder for the fire.
Leo took in his surroundings. “This really is a godforsaken place; no wonder nothing lives here.”
Daylon nodded. “Well it is a hardy environment to survive in, though around the edges of the marsh the peat provides a source of fuel for those that live nearby. Actually, the marshes are fed by groundwater and hence are a home to lush vegetation, birds and insects.”
A bright blue dragonfly buzzed past them. “Everything has its own beauty, though sometimes it is difficult to see.
“But don’t let that fool you. As our stinky friend over there found to his cost today, one misstep could be the end of you.”
Aland was sitting in his underwear under a rug next to the fire. His clothes were drying on a framework of dead branches that he had constructed. He sniffed and shook his head. “I’ll stink like rotten eggs for a week. You can go first tomorrow if you carry on like that!” he joked.
Daylon continued, “Often the peasants digging up the peat will find bodies of the foolish and unsuspecting that have fallen foul of the marsh. Sucked under and buried in the bog. I heard sometimes they are so well preserved that their skin and organs remain intact. You can even make out the expressions of terror and fear on their faces as they took their last breaths before disappearing into the mud. They remain entombed for years, still hoping to be laid to rest.” Leo shivered at the thought.
While they sat around the fire, Aland asked Leo to play another song for them. He thought for a while and played a haunting tune that drifted away across the marsh.
In the following days, their spirits lifted as the mountains, seemingly so far away when they had begun to cross the marsh, came closer and closer into view. Their snow-clad peaks became clearer as the downy clouds meandered past.
Then the landscape changed around them. The wind dropped and an eerie silence becalmed them. It felt like entering the eye of a storm. The ground dried and hardened underfoot, small hardy shrubs were strewn everywhere, and driftwood was scattered on the ground. They ventured deeper and other larger pieces of wood pierced up from the earth. Branches and twigs clung together, entwined in embraces to create contorted and tormented wooden skeletons. Leo felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up and even the horses appeared on edge.
Leo said, “Is that natural? Perhaps as a result of flooding, though we are far from the coast, it resembles driftwood.” He jumped down to look closer at one of the wooden structures.
“Don’t touch that thing!” shouted Daylon as he leapt off his horse and made to grab Leo around the chest to pull him back.
In his urgency he grabbed the pendant around Leo’s neck. Given to Leo by the old woman. Daylon’s eyes rolled back in their sockets and he was taken to another time, another place.
*
It was time. By the end of the night they would be discovered. He was sure of that. But by then it would be too late. His master would be walking the earth once more. He picked up a chisel and hammer and looked at the markings on the wall either side of the altar. Markings of his realm’s totem. He passed his fingers over them. The ancient markings were as a much part of him as the freckles on the back of his hands. He wondered how many times he’d done that now. He remembered the day he’d crafted them. They were rough-hewed and sharp-edged, but now they were smooth, worn down by the touching of the hands of the grove.
They arrived in pairs and silently took their seats in the pews. They were all cloaked, as was the custom, their hoods covering their faces, bowed in the shadows. The last couple brought forth the child. A boy, perhaps four years old. They led him to the altar and handed him to the Elder. The boy was seemingly in a trance as the Elder picked him up and placed him prostrate on the altar.
Around the chapel a slow chant could be heard under their breaths:
“From darkness bring forth light.
From hardship bring forth power.
From pain bring forth strength.
From death bring forth destiny.”
The mantra was repeated again and again.
One by one, each of the Druids stepped up to the altar. They drank from a chalice, took a dagger and sliced an incision in the palm of their hands and let their blood drip onto a pendant throbbing red that lay on a silver platter.
Once the last Druid had stepped up, the Elder took the pendant and cupped it in his hands. The candles in the chapel flickered and dimmed. The chanting of the Druids slowly grew from murmuring to a cacophony of noise, their bodies swaying in the pews.
The Elder raised the pendant into the air.
“Channel nature’s powers through me.
Bring forth mine master.
Once more to walk this earth.”
He slowly brought down the pendant and pressed it against the forehead of the child.
“Bring forth our master,” the chants continued.
Suddenly the doors of the chapel flung open and a howling wind blew through the door and filled the room.
An old woman, stooped with the years, stood in the doorway. She leant on an old gnarled staff of oak. “You will not have
this innocent child.”
“I know you. Knew you would come. It is too late, the power of my master is within him,” the Elder hissed.
The old woman held out her palm and thrust a blow at the Elder, sending him tumbling to the ground. “If you know who I am you also know there is a chance for the boy.”
The old woman walked down the aisle towards the altar. Druids grabbed at her but she cast them aside with the wave of her staff. At the altar she touched the staff on the boy’s forehead and his eyes opened. She took the pendant and dropped it to the floor. She stamped on it and the crystal shattered and blood oozed from the broken crystal and stained the stone floor of the chapel.
“Come with me!” she spoke to the child. He nodded, took her hand, and she led him to the doorway of the chapel. It closed and bolted behind them as they left. The old lady wielded her staff once more. Inside, the chapel burst into flames. As they walked away she could hear the screaming of the Druids and their desperate pounding of the door to escape. They stood together watching the chapel; his small hand in hers until the last of the screams was silenced. “I am known by many names. But you can call me Grandmother.”
*
Daylon staggered back from the shock of the knowledge that was once hidden and now revealed.
“Daylon, are you all right?” asked Aron.
Daylon recovered himself. “Yes, yes.” He gathered his scrambled thoughts together and held his tongue. “I sense an unnatural energy here. It is pervasive with malice and abomination.” He paused for a moment, stared at Leo, then picked himself up and tentatively approached the wooden structure, holding his palm towards it. He bowed his head, poised in a trance. His body shuddered and he staggered backwards.
Daylon shook his head and stared ahead into the distance. “We have come too far to go back, but be clear there is evil here, hidden from view in the heart of the marsh. It does not want us to go any farther.”
“What do you sense?” asked Aron.
“These structures, they are cages or prisons. Look inside, you will find a fragment, a bone hanging. Remnants of others that have trod this path in the past. Those that have suffered perhaps a gruesome fate. Their spirits prevented from being set free but instead held suspended here, wandering the marshlands. I can sense their melancholy, weeping, the despair.”
The Prince grimaced. “So many of them. At least the earth is firmer here; we should be able to cover the ground more quickly. Draw your weapons, stay close, let’s be ready for anything.”
Daylon nodded, but was still confused by the vision. He watched Leo. What did it mean? What lurked inside this boy and was it a threat?
Aron paused, weighing up something in his mind. He drew his dagger from its sheath and steered Wildwind next to Leo. “Leo, you better take this in case, just be careful, don’t stab any of us with it whatever you do!”
“Is that wise?” said Daylon, suddenly fearful of Leo’s purpose. “We know nothing of this boy.”
“And I thought I was the one who did not trust you, Leo. We all deserve the right to defend ourselves,” said Aron.
Daylon bit his tongue. The boy was looking at him strangely. Did Leo know what he’d seen? And what may he do?
They walked forward. “I don’t see anything,” said Daylon. “But I sense eyes on us.”
“Any idea how many?” asked Prince Aron.
“No,” said Daylon, “but I believe we won’t escape from here without some form of skirmish. Whoever has made their home here, the conditions are very bleak. Given the pagan symbolism, likely they make trophies of those who stray here. They may even adopt some form of cannibalism, given the limited food stocks. They will see this not only as an intrusion to their sacred lands, but a hunt for survival.”
He echoed again the last line of the poem.
“Spirits of the past call from the remoteness,
As the marsh isle rises,
Ghost-like tendrils drag journeymen to their doom.”
They made camp a little later that evening still not having come into contact with the outlanders. They lit a fire and ate in relative silence, each with an eye on the darkness, looking for an indication of movement. “They are still there. Just out of sight range,” said Daylon. “Just waiting for the right moment.”
Prince Aron nodded. “There may not be too many of them; often inbreeding of these remote communities limits the number of able-bodied adults. If they significantly outnumber us, they would have attacked when their superiority could be set against us individually. I guess they are counting on surprise to tip the balance in their favour. But if we keep our wits about us, we should be more than a match for these bottom dwellers. I suggest we post two lookouts at a time. Ailin, Aland you take first watch; Daylon and I will relieve you in a couple of hours.”
Leo was half sleeping, covered by a blanket, but still lying on the bare ground. He slipped in and out of wakefulness in a hazy dream. His mind hauling himself awake, his tired body dragging him back to darkness. His eyelids felt heavy and he fought to open them but gradually they closed again from the effort. His eyes not connecting with the immediate outside world around him, his senses numbed and overwhelmed by the desire to sleep. On waking, his unconscious began to filter small specks of information, illuminating his awareness.
He lay on his side looking into the pre-dawn mists. A shadow began to form, a grey silhouette, morphing as the mist thickened and subsided around it. An apparition, perhaps human, but also mutated, a contorted freak.
Leo’s body stiffened, his arms and legs would not move, and his mouth was unable to utter a warning.
It came closer, became clearer, hunched, tattered clothes hanging off its body, its eyes yellow and haunting, its teeth rotted and decaying. Closer, closer. It shuffled to a stop and raised a club bound from human bones and let out a feral shriek.
*
Two days later, Garrett returned to the Queen’s encampment. He had ridden hard and fast, his face marked by dust and sun lines where he’d worn a neckerchief. His hands were bleeding from the rubbing of his horse’s reins.
He circled round to the back of the camp and unobtrusively joined the caravan where the horses were resting. One of the other guards had been waiting for him and took the reins. Garrett skirted round to the Queen’s tent, which had itself been erected to the back of the caravan for the past couple of days. He nodded to one of the two guards on the entrance who gestured that he go inside.
He found Queen Laila pacing up and down, and she stopped as he entered. Rolden was also seated in the tent. When the Queen saw Garrett she got up and went to a water pail. She scooped water in a wooden cup and handed it to the rider. He held up a hand to protest, anxious to give the Queen his news, but she pushed it into his hands.
“Dear knight,” she said, “unless I’m in immediate danger, please drink and sit. We can wait a few moments to hear what you have to say.”
Garrett nodded and they waited patiently for him to drink. “I have no written message from Lady Amice; given the current circumstances we felt it prudent. She would be exposed and vulnerable if it fell into the wrong hands. In its stead she gave me this bracelet as proof of her allegiance, before I tell you what she conveyed to me.”
The Queen studied the ornament. “This is the bracelet of Beza. I gave it to her on her twenty-first birthday. She would not part with this unless the circumstances were indeed dire.”
Garrett nodded. “Indeed, Your Majesty, the news is alarming. Please also know that Lady Amice had no knowledge of your journeying to Lumines. In fact, it appears whoever Ambassador Kelton is communicating with it’s certainly not the High Council.
“An Emissary of the Fire Realm has been in residence for some time at Lumines. He portrayed Gorath’s intentions in a much different light. Lady Amice was in fact astonished that Ampheus is under siege. She speculated that High Commissioner Yip might ha
ve been swayed by the Emissary, either through threats or more likely promises of personal gain.
“The Emissary surprised the Aquamurans by coming with a military entourage, but they have set up outside the city. They would be no match for Aquamura’s forces, though it is a clear statement of intent no less and may have influenced the chancellor to sign a treaty with Gamura.
“Lady Amice believes that if the true facts were known, then there are those among the High Council that would never allow the treaty to be signed. They would expel the Emissary and mobilise the army to Ampheus’s support. She also believes that in revealing the truth, Your Majesty would be putting yourself and your entourage in extreme personal danger.
“She considers it possible that Ambassador Kelton, the Emissary and High Commissioner Yip are conspiring against Ampheus. They could have no intention of letting you reach Aquamura.
“In which case they will look to intercept us in the next few days. They may intend to take you into custody. We should also seriously consider that they desire to, at a loss for a better term, slaughter us all. For if they wish to silence the Queen then they will certainly ensure no one from Ampheus should live to tell of this barbarous act.”
Garrett paused; the burden of bearing this information had been grave. The release of finally sharing it with the royal party had left him exhausted. Silence filled the room.
Rolden was the first to speak. “We must get Your Majesty to safety before Gorath’s forces intercept us. If we fall for an ambush all is lost. We are only three days from Lumines. It must come soon, perhaps even tomorrow, so we need to act swiftly.
“We can’t just ride out of here. Ambassador Kelton’s men may put up some resistance. While I am sure we can overcome them, I don’t want to put any of the men at risk. I want to keep the Queen’s Guard as intact as possible.
“If word gets to the Emissary, they will no doubt come after us, and I’m not sure where we would go. Not to Ampheus, not to Lumines. Celestina is perhaps two months’ ride to the east, fraught with many dangers and with a persistent force on our tail we may not make it.”
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