by KM Merritt
Henri raised his eyes to the ceiling.
“Now that you mention it, I have noticed some strange lights. Magical obviously. Perhaps they are the same magic.” He gestured to the fallen assassin. Captain Wiselyn took that opportunity to step forward and bind the man’s hands and feet.
Sorrel perked up. “Where is this?”
“Out toward the center of the swamp, there is a tor. A big rocky hill sticking up above the bog with a ruin on top. Strange place. My people avoid it because they think their ancestors lived there. I avoid it because I don’t like getting my feet wet. But there have been colored lights shining from the summit for a little while now.” He frowned as Wiselyn slung the assassin over his shoulder. “That’s all I have. We shall interrogate this one and let you know if he reveals any further clues.”
Vola glanced at Sorrel, who rubbed her hands together, but the halfling didn’t say anything more. Lillie stared at the floor, and Talon’s eyes narrowed on the unconscious assassin.
Magical lights and a strange tor. The connection was nebulous at best but it wasn’t like they had much else to go on. At least now they had a direction, and Vola was good at charging straight forward.
Nine
The next morning, they stood at the top of the hill, and Vola wished they’d picked any other direction. The sun illuminated a thick blanket of fog hanging over the swamp which stretched wide and green and a little fuzzy.
“Bleh, I itch already,” Sorrel said.
“Well, at least we got a good night’s rest in a nice bed before we have to head into that,” Lillie said though her voice lifted at the end as if she wasn’t exactly sure she agreed with what she was saying.
“I’m glad you could sleep in that mausoleum.” Vola rubbed her neck. “I couldn’t get comfortable.”
“Yeah, it’s hard to sleep on a mattress after years of sleeping on a stone floor,” Sorrel said, and stretched her back, hands on her hips.
“Couldn’t you just sleep on the floor?” Lillie asked.
“Well, yeah. But the bed was sitting right there, and it seemed a shame to waste my first chance to try one.”
Vola gave Sorrel a doubtful look, but she had to agree that the beds had been weirdly soft. And the sumptuous surroundings had just made her too frightened to touch anything. She kept thinking she’d sit on a chair and break the damn thing.
Talon didn’t appear to feel the need to comment on their night. They stood slightly apart, staring out across the wetlands. The big black wolf coalesced out of the surrounding trees and padded up to the ranger. Talon didn’t even look to see him coming. They just held out their hand and suddenly the wolf was butting it with his head.
In the distance, standing up through the fog, Vola could make out a tall, narrow hill, almost a mountain in the middle of the flat swamps. The tor Lord Arthorel had mentioned.
It actually wasn’t that far. Maybe a day’s brisk hike. Vola’s spirits lifted. They could easily get there and back before Braydon’s party found the missing townsfolk. Unless, as a local, he already knew about the lights and was on his way there now.
Not that it was a competition. It was just that the council representative knew there was another group on the way. She really, really needed to get to them before Braydon.
Really, really.
“Let’s move out,” Vola said. “If we don’t dawdle, we can spend the night on the tor. It’s probably a lot less damp.”
Sorrel snorted as Vola set off, taking the lead. “Did you really just use the word dawdle?”
Vola cast a glare over her shoulder. “Yes, why?”
“It just doesn’t seem like a very Orcish word.”
“Half-orc,” Vola said quickly.
“Is there such a language as half-orcish?” Lillie said, falling in behind Sorrel and Vola.
“No, I just…Look, you’d rather I didn’t say it in Orcish. It involves lots of swearing. Besides, it makes my throat hurt.”
“But isn’t it your native language? Or at least, half-native language?” Sorrel gasped. “Oh! Is that why orcs are always in such a bad mood?”
“Because they’re always in a little bit of pain?” Vola said. “Yeah. Or well, that’s part of it.”
“Fascinating.” Lillie pulled a book from her pack and a charcoal pencil. “Poor things. But still fascinating. Do you mind if I take notes?”
“On me? Or my people?”
“Don’t you mean half of your people?” Sorrel said.
“Yes, half,” Vola snapped.
“The top or the bottom?”
“What?” Vola said.
“The top half or the bottom half of your people?” Sorrel said before breaking into chortles.
“That’s not how it works,” Vola said. She started down the hill, leaving the rest to scramble after her.
“I agree,” Lillie said. “Although I will be the first to admit I know very little about the biology of orcs. Or half-orcs.”
There was an aborted bark of laughter from behind them, and Vola cast a glare at Henri who brought up the rear of their party.
At the bottom of the hill, the land under their feet turned gooshy, making their feet squelch and splash. The trees closed in, dark and hanging with strands of soggy moss.
Vola led the way into the swamp, testing each step carefully. She didn’t want anyone to fall into a puddle and not come out again. Especially not someone wearing armor who would sink faster than a stone.
Sorrel followed her, using her staff to poke the surrounding ground, feeling for soft spots.
Next came Lillie, who walked with her nose stuck in a book. Vola sighed and resigned herself to pulling the beauty out if she managed to disappear into a puddle.
Henri brought up the rear, walking as nonchalantly as he would down a street in town but still managing to keep an attentive eye out behind them.
Talon and the wolf ranged behind them all, keeping an eye on their flanks. Vola only saw them half the time. The other half she assumed they were hidden to better protect the group.
It was a broad assumption.
Vola’s calves ached and sweat dripped down the length of her spine underneath the pack, and she squinted up at the sky. How long had they been walking?
The fog had burned off, finally, and when she ducked under a branch, she could glimpse a clear patch of sky.
Her heart plummeted. If her placement was correct, it was past noon. She spun in a circle. Yup. They’d been traipsing through this swamp for hours.
She’d tried to keep them on a fairly straight course but it was nearly impossible to see anything through the moss and the drooping tree branches, and they often had to detour around big puddles and swathes of swampy ground.
A splash and a yelp rang out behind her.
She turned to catch Sorrel dragging a dripping Lillie from a patch of seemingly solid muck. Vola was starting to regret not hiring a local guide. With her luck, Braydon was probably an expert in swamp navigation.
Lillie slipped and skidded back onto the path, holding a much soggier book, and shifted her feet sheepishly. She pulled a soaked handkerchief out of her pocket and used it to mop the worst of the algae from her arms. Then she grimaced and used it to wipe her running nose.
“Sorrel,” Vola barked. “Think you can shimmy up one of these trees and tell us how far we are from the tor?”
Sorrel straightened with a snap and gave Vola a mock salute. “Yes, ma’am. Hold this for me.” She handed Vola her staff and scrambled up the trunk of a nearby tree. Her sandals slipped against the bark once or twice, but she never lost her grip entirely and soon her rear end disappeared between the branches.
“Ugh,” they heard Sorrel say. “It’s sticky. Why is the tree sticky?”
“Probably just sap,” Vola said.
“It’s slimy, too. How can it be slimy and sticky at the same time? I always thought those were two separate things.”
“Just—can you see the tor from there?”
“Well…no.�
�
Vola’s heart thumped. “What do you mean ‘no?’”
“What do you think I mean? I mean, no, I can’t see it. Oh, wait, it’s back that way.”
“If you’re pointing, we can’t see it,” Lillie called.
“Hang on,” Sorrel said. “I’ve got it now. I’m coming back down.”
Vola groaned. “Shit, how long have we been going in the wrong direction?”
A little tongue of forked lightning struck the ground beside Vola.
Lillie jumped and spun around, nearly losing her balance again. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” Vola muttered.
The wizard frowned and leaned down to study the blackened moss at their feet.
Dammit, Vola had no idea what she was doing. She glanced back at Henri, who waited, eyes trained on the path and the surrounding trees. She opened her mouth to ask if there was anything she should know about pathfinding in a swamp, then thought better of it and snapped her jaw shut with a click. Of course there was. She knew nothing right now, which meant everything was left over. But she was supposed to be ready for this. Asking for help would only prove to him she didn't know what she was doing.
Lillie sneezed violently.
“What’s wrong with you?” Vola asked.
“I think I am allergic to algae,” she answered, sounding stuffed up.
“Great.”
“Ouch,” came a call from above them.
“Sorrel?” Vola said.
“The tree just bit me.”
“Trees don’t bite,” Lillie said.
“Well, this one did. Ah!” There was a crack and a rustle, and suddenly, Sorrel was on the ground between them.
“Oof,” she said faintly.
Vola and Lillie sprang to help her up.
“Are you all right, Miss Sorrel?”
“Slipped my grip,” she mumbled.
Sorrel regained her feet and rubbed her palms across her pants, leaving streaks of brownish-green. A large gash glared at Vola from Sorrel’s elbow.
“You’re bleeding,” Vola said.
“I told you, the tree bit me.” Sorrel rubbed her elbow, examined the blood smeared on her hand, then added it to the stains on her pants.
Vola made a face over Sorrel’s head. She’d never heard of trees biting, but maybe that was one of the many, many things she didn’t know about the swamp. Maybe Sorrel was going to turn into a rampaging tree monster now.
“Here.” Vola took Sorrel’s arm and laid her palm across the bloody mark. She reached deep inside herself to the well of yellow light and the feeling of acceptance. “Lady bless,” she muttered under her breath.
A dull light flashed between their skin, so brief it was easy to miss, but when Vola took her hand away, the blood was gone, leaving nothing but an angry red welt on Sorrel’s elbow.
“Hey, that’s handy,” Sorrel said, twisting and crossing her eyes to see her elbow.
“Are you a healer, Miss Volagra?” Lillie said.
“More like a field medic. It’s…it’s a paladin thing.”
“So you ask your god for help and they just heal whoever you want?” Sorrel flexed her arm. “Mine doesn’t do that. Maxim only rewards big things like loyalty and justice.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that. There are rules and…and consequences to all power. She chose me and I made my oaths to her. But if I ever break those oaths, I’ll be cut off, my connection to her lost.”
“You don’t seem like an oathbreaker to me,” Lillie said with a little smile.
“And you get to heal wounds in exchange,” Sorrel said, rubbing her elbow.
“I haven’t learned everything yet. I’ve barely covered the basics. Right now, I can heal minor wounds, but it’s not as easy as it looks.”
She raised her own arm to show them her elbow which stung. The edge of her chain mail fell back to reveal a long gash, mirroring Sorrel’s wound. As they watched, the ragged flesh began to knit and close.
“Any wound I heal, I have to take for myself and my goddess heals it that way.”
Lillie’s eyes went wide, and she reached out to touch Vola’s arm. Vola jerked away.
“So, say someone was dead…” Sorrel said.
Vola rubbed her healing arm as Lillie pulled out her soggy notebook and jotted something down.
“Yeah, that’s one of the things I don’t know yet. Theoretically, I’d have to die, and I don’t know if C—if my goddess would fix that. There are some paladins who have managed it before, but they’re all connected to greater gods. Mine’s one of the Lesser Virtues.”
Lillie cocked her head, pencil poised over her page, and Vola cleared her throat before she could ask more questions. “Sorrel, did you see the way to go while you were up there?”
“Yeah, we were heading north. The tor is more east.”
“How far east?”
Sorrel bit her lip. “It actually doesn’t look any close than it was this morning.”
Vola groaned and put her head in her hands.
“And I’m not sure how to get there.” Sorrel gestured at the swamp to the east. “’Cause that looks very wet.”
The briefest rustle made Vola jump.
Henri spun, weapon unsheathed. But it was only Talon stepping onto the path.
“This way,” they said. “I have found a dry route.”
“That’s convenient,” Lillie said.
Talon turned to head back into the swamp, and Vola lurched to follow. “A dry route to the tor?”
Talon’s hood moved like they were glancing over their shoulder. “Yes, we were listening.”
“We didn’t even know you were there,” Sorrel said.
“Gruff and I can move unseen when we wish to. I can speak to the land and it listens.” They cocked their head. “Sometimes.”
Vola tried to decide if that irked her or not. She felt like a battering ram, clanking and smashing through the underbrush.
“Walk where I walk,” Talon said. “Do not stray from my footprints.”
Vola nodded, then she half-turned to check that the rest of her party was following. Sorrel trotted to keep up, idly scratching the back of her hand.
Lillie had finally put her book away and was concentrating on her feet. Henri moved like a deer, sword drawn, eyes vigilant, feet sure and steady.
Vola turned to follow Talon’s back, doing her best to move as smoothly as Henri.
Even with Talon leading the way around the biggest pools, they crawled through the swamp, slower than the snails that crawled along the branches above them. Every few feet they had to stop as Talon searched out the firm ground. They had to fish Lillie out of dank algae-filled pools three more times and Sorrel once. Every time Vola strayed a little too far right or left, the wolf, Gruff, appeared out of the gloom to herd her back to the path.
Vola checked her companions frequently, wincing when she found Lillie mopping her streaming nose or Sorrel scratching at her sides and shoulders.
The light filtering through the trees hadn’t changed at all—everything still looked murky—but Vola’s muscles burned like she’d just finished a training run in full armor.
Lillie sneezed, tripped, and splashed into the water along the edge of the path.
Vola closed her eyes, trying to ignore the nagging feeling that this was not how things were supposed to be going.
“Talon, we need a minute, I think,” she said.
The ranger stopped and looked back at Sorrel, who was trying to lift Lillie out of the water with one hand and scratching herself violently with the other.
“Looks like it,” Talon said.
Vola still couldn’t see the figure’s eyes, but she got the distinct impression that they had just exchanged an empathetic glance.
Lillie bent over in a sneezing fit, barely able to breathe in between, and Vola nudged her over a step or two so she wouldn’t fall in the water. Then she reached for Sorrel.
“Stop scratching,” she said. “You’re making
it worse.”
“I can’t help it,” Sorrel said with a low growl. “I itch. Does that goddess of yours do anything about itching?”
“Not that I know of,” Vola said, holding Sorrel’s arm gingerly between her hands. Sorrel used her other hand to scratch at her side.
Vola turned the arm over to glance at the elbow, but the “tree bite” had subsided to a small red mark barely visible against Sorrel’s tanned skin.The mirrored wound on Vola’s elbow still ached but it would be gone soon.
“I think you’ve got a rash,” Vola said.
“You think?” Sorrel said, trying to yank her arm back.
Vola didn’t let go. “Henri,” she said. As much as she didn’t want to ask her mentor for help, Henri knew a lot more about everything than she did. And he had taught her to use all her resources. Right now, he was a resource.
Henri sheathed his weapon and stepped up from the back of the group. He turned Sorrel’s arm over, examining it clinically. “Contact poison,” he said. “Probably a defense mechanism for the tree. Anywhere the sap touched you, you’re going to itch.”
“Wonderful,” Vola said, glancing sidelong at Sorrel’s stained clothes. “Do you have anything for itching?” Vola asked, knowing Henri traveled prepared for everything.
He was already sifting through the satchel at his waist, lines forming at the corners of his mouth as he smiled. “I can whip something up.”
Shadows flickered across their faces and Vola glanced up at the light filtering through the foliage. The sun was falling rapidly, leaving big orange streaks she could see even through the tree branches. Lillie blew her nose loudly.
Vola sighed and let go of the idea that they would be spending the night on the tor. “Talon,” she said. “I think we’re going to need a place to camp.”
Ten
By the time the orange streaks across the sky had turned purple, Talon had led them to a firm patch of ground. Sagging trees surrounded clumps and tufts of brownish grass. Vola always thought brown meant dead, but this was thick and thriving. Big, brown flower buds almost as tall as Vola’s waist were spaced in an oddly even pattern between the trees.
Through a big gap in the trunks, Vola could see the tor, standing tall, stained with the deep red and gold of sunset. Her shoulders slumped. The hill stood almost as far away as it had that morning. She did some quick calculations to determine how far they’d come and then gave up when she realized the answer would only depress her. At this rate, it would take them a week just to get to the tor. And a week to get back.