image [https://mildegard.ru/otimg/png/whitegloomoak.png]

CHAPTER 3. WHITE GLOOM

The wounds didn’t let Kan and Vlada walk far, so they camped as soon as they left the Burnt Region behind them. Making a fire so close to the bandit territory was a bad idea but they needed hot water to wash the wounds, so Vlada decided to risk it.

They made their camp at the foot of a bare hill near a chatty cold rivulet snaking between the stones. Vlada left Kan with the chargas and went to fetch water. While she was away the good-natured beasts licked the boy’s wounds as well as their own. He didn’t protest. He was unable to, being barely conscious with fever. Hyena bites are nasty.

The travellers were lucky that burngrass, a field medic’s best friend, grew in abundance around that hill. It makes an excellent antiseptic when boiled in water. The chargas sniffed suspiciously at the cauldron with the burngrass potion. Obviously, treating them with it was out of question.

Kangassk’s leg, the one bitten by the hyena, swelled so badly it barely fitted into the boot now. Vlada, too, hadn’t come out of the battle unscathed this time. She got a stray bullet to the shoulder. Her kevlar cloak did help a lot, but the nasty piece of lead went through it anyway which resulted in a shallow but painful wound surrounded with a darkish bruise.

Their wounds treated, the travellers ate a cold supper and tried to sleep. It wasn’t easy. Kangassk could only guess what his companion might have been thinking about; as for him, he couldn’t close his eyes without seeing the battle again, the old man crying over the dead boy, or a dark shadow of Sasler the punisher walking through the mist, the bulging eye on his rifle glinting with every step.

“Why did he do that to the boy? Revenge or not, that was over the top.” Kangassk muttered, his gaze wandering among the early stars in the sky.

“Snipers are like that. They’re cruel,” answered Vlada in a strangely knowing way.

“Who?” Kan asked again. The word was unfamiliar to him.

“Snipers. That man invented a scope to aim and shoot from afar. He is a sniper, the only one in the world for now.”

“How the heck do you know all these things?”

“Experience.”

image [https://mildegard.ru/otimg/png/burngrass.png]

Kangassk decided not to pursue the matter further. He felt weird. Something was definitely wrong here but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Vlada seemed as young as he was yet knew a good deal more. Was she older than she looked? It’s not that you can safely ask a girl such a question… Was she a mage? That would explain a lot. No, she didn’t look like one. A warrior’s daughter then? Possibly the only child, papa’s girl that had been given a sword as soon as she could walk.

“Experience!” Hah! Kan would have known a thing or two about the outside world as well had he travelled instead of breathing ash and dust in his master’s workshop.

So, nothing was wrong with Vlada after all? The weird feeling was just the fever getting into his head? There was no way to make sure.

They stayed in the camp that day to let the hyena bites heal enough to allow the injured to walk again. While Kangassk got just one bite, chargas got at least a dozen. For the moment both were as helpless as kittens. Vlada shared the dry wayfarer meal with the brave beasts and brought them a cauldron of water from the stream. Chargas lapped up the water like cats and looked grateful.

With three of four being in such a sorry state, it took the little group two days to reach the nearest town, Tammar.

The locals took them for Crogan’s bandits at first. Kevlar cloaks and guns kind of suggested that. The fright quickly turned to cheer when they heard the news, though. One Crogan dead, the other retired! Unbelievable! Praises, songs, and a shower of rose petals followed. Neither Vlada nor Kan was happy about it, though.

They gave their guns and kevlar cloaks to the town’s mayor for safekeeping. The grateful local ruler offered them food, meds, and shelter. That night Vlada and Kan slept under a roof again. Their rooms were small and simple but after all the nights they spent outdoors with mosquitoes anything with a roof seemed good enough.

“Reading again, Kangassk?” asked Vlada. She had walked into his room so quietly he never heard a step.

“Yeah, about that Region we’re in now,” he replied with a yawn. He was reading with all possible comfort: in his bed.

“Anything interesting?” she smiled and sat down on the side of the bed.

“Well, it’s the Calid Region. Known for its warm climate. Also, local magical anomalies are beneficial for soothsayers,” recited Kangassk. "Hmm… soothsayers. I saw their tents when we entered the town. Maybe it'd be interesting to pay them a visit, what do you think? Aren't you curious about the future?"

"I'd rather not know it." Vlada shook her head.

"But why?"

"Not knowing what lies ahead makes life less boring, Kan."

"Oh well, whatever you say…"

image [https://mildegard.ru/otimg/png/tammar_tents_small.png]

Kan closed the book and tried to raise himself up on one elbow to get closer to the girl but the elbow sank in the soft pillows.

"So what's the plan?" he asked with a faint hope in his voice. "Are we still taking the shortest road? No detours?"

"No detours." Vlada nodded.

She wore a light nightgown now instead of her usual travelling clothes. She sat on his bed, so near. All that made Kangassk wonder, "Why did she come? Does she want to stay? It would be really nice if she stayed…" His thoughts ran in circles repeating the phrase "She called me handsome!" again and again as fervently as if it were a prayer.

"I came to check how you feel," explained Vlada.

Kan broke into a cold sweat. Did she just read his thoughts? Was he that obvious?

"Glad to see you're getting better," she continued. "Well, good night!"

"I wish you had stayed with me," whispered Kan after Vlada had left the room.

Vlada's "goodnight" didn't work. Hours had passed yet Kangassk was still wide awake, tossing and turning in his bed. He tried counting gryphons, then sheep. Gryphons were a Kuldaganian thing, he knew now that people outside the mountain ring preferred to count sheep instead, so he did. Nothing helped him calm down and fall asleep, though. He thought he had got used to being diurnal during his journey with Vlada. He was wrong. Or maybe the young warrior girl wishing him good night while wearing a thin nightgown was the reason for everything…

Kangassk got up and sat by the window. The view was nice. Hundreds of lights twinkled below. The town seemed wide awake with the echoes of the last day's celebrations. There were happily drunk people roaming the streets, signs shone, highlighted by little lamps, merchants cried out their prices… Going for a walk suddenly seemed like a good idea.

image [https://mildegard.ru/otimg/png/tammar.png]

Kangassk got dressed, took his sword with him, just in case, and left the inn. The noisy, almost Kuldaganian night swallowed him as soon as he stepped out of the door. Kan didn't have much money on him, so he just kept walking through the town, looking around, enjoying the noise, and smiling back to the celebrating folk, until he left the highly populated area and entered the dark, serene heart of the soothsayers' town.

He kept walking at a slow pace to avoid disturbing his healing wounds. Unknown to him, his gait looked quite heroic because of that, as if he were an old, tired warrior on a stroll, not a hyena-bitten runaway smith thinking of a certain young lady in the nightgown.

"Hey, hero!" someone called in a thin voice. "Come, I'll tell your fortune!"

Kangassk turned his head to the speaker and smiled when he saw a little girl no more than ten years old. She wore a long frayed dress, a proper soothsayer attire, but along with her skinny figure and messy boyish haircut, it made her look like a funny little sparrow. The girl sat on a squeaky folding chair by the wall and looked very serious. An unlit sign beside her written in childishly crooked letters clearly stated her business here.

image [https://mildegard.ru/otimg/png/zanna.png]

"So you are a soothsayer?" said Kan with a soft chuckle. He couldn't help feeling like a real, hardened warrior now, towering over the child.

"Of course! I'm an Illian. All women in my family have the gift." The girl sniffed at him meaningfully, her pride obviously hurt by the stranger's disbelief. "Let me tell your fortune and see for yourself!"

Kan approached the child.

“Why do you sit there alone at night?” he asked.

“No real soothsayer reads fortunes in daylight,” she explained, clearly being very proud of being the real one. “Day is for charlatans and the fools who believe them. The future can be properly seen only at night!”

“Sorry, I didn’t know.” Kan squatted down beside the kid. “So, how much?”

“Five coins,” said the little soothsayer in such a tone that clearly meant there could be no arguments about the price.

“Expensive…”

“You want your fortune told or not?”

Kangassk had never seen such a proud and confident child before. Beatings, starvation, cruelty? There was no doubt the girl had never known such treatment.

He dropped the argument and put the five coins on her little palm.

"Now you must say: I give Zanna permission to read my fortune."

Kan repeated the words.

Zanna closed her eyes and frowned, thinking. She was supposed to look mysterious, Kan thought, but instead she looked like a little schoolgirl solving a math problem. It was hard not to laugh.

"Your name is Kangassk, you are from Aren-Castell," the girl began to chant in a slow and quiet manner so unlike her usual speech. "You are twenty years old, a warrior. Now ask your question."

Laughter died on Kan's lips. The little girl was a real soothsayer after all. In a moment, he no longer felt curious about the future. What he really wanted was to get out of here immediately. Not that it would have been fair to the kid…

"Okay," he exhaled, then took a deep breath. "I'm travelling with a girl, Vlada. Will we… err… ever be together? Will she love me?"

"Understood. Now wait. I will look for the answer." Zanna nodded and closed her eyes again.

It seemed like a very long wait to Kangassk though it could not have been longer than a minute before Zanna had opened her eyes again. The young soothsayer's face went from quiet serenity to surprise mixed with anger and fear.

"Go away, old man!" she demanded, her thin voice trembling with fury. "Are you deaf? Take your money and get out of here!"

Since Kangassk didn't move fast enough Zanna threw his coins back at him and shrieked, "Get out!!!"

That did the trick; for Kan had no desire to explain the situation to the local guards. He hobbled away as quick as his bad leg allowed him and headed straight to the inn. He wanted no more "adventures" that day.

Back in his room, Kan put the unlucky five coins back into his purse. He felt strange. He couldn't even decide whether he wanted to know what the girl had seen in his future. So many questions…

That night and half the day Kangassk slept as only a true Kuldaganian can. He would have slept even longer if it wasn't for a random whiff of wind that moved the edge of the curtain aside and let a ray of the bright sunlight in. With the light shining in his eyes, Kangassk had to wake up.

He noticed that his leg had got much better, the boot was no longer tight around it. The wound healed so well that if it weren’t for the ugly dark spots the burngrass treatment left on the skin no one would have noticed the bite marks. The burns still hurt even though the wound no longer did. What a vicious herb that burngrass is!

Still yawning and blinking at the merciless light, Kangassk walked up to the window. It was long past noon. The city, fully awake, buzzed like a busy beehive below. The merchants advertised their goods and haggled about the prices. Several diurnal soothsayers sat in the shade and offered people to read their fortunes by their palms. Kan recalled little Zanna Iliann’s opinion of them and grinned knowingly. His joy was brief, though, for he quickly recalled her scared face and shrill voice as well. What could have scared her so?

Local inns were nothing like dlars Kangassk knew. Instead of a cosy common hall with a fireplace and a dancing floor there was a boring dining room downstairs with rows and rows of ancient tables, each sporting a wide collection of cuts and stains. Where were people supposed to dance? Did they even dance there at all? Sad…

Kangassk didn’t find Vlada in the dining room. Her own room turned out to be empty as well. It looked so tidy that one might wonder whether she did spend the night there at all. The bed seemed untouched, the closet was locked, and the bed table was way too clean. Its identical twin in Kan’s room had all sorts of things on top of it: dry bread crumbs, withered apple cores, a greasy encyclopedia…

Kan sat on the bed and took a closer look at the table. There were two sad looking candles on it: one melted down to a waxy puddle, the other reduced to a little stump. Someone had obviously been reading all night. Was Vlada an avid reader? Kangassk had never seen her with a book before but he did see her poring over maps for hours. Indeed, there was a scroll on the little shelf under her bed table, a map, as Kan had found out when he unrolled it. And what a map! He had never seen anything like it before.

What do you usually see on a world map? Countries and cities, rivers and mountains, roads and forests. This map made all of the above seem unimportant. The names and places of Omnis, the world, were still here, printed in pale ink, but they served as a mere background for something else.

image [https://mildegard.ru/otimg/png/map_new_1000.jpg]

No Man’s Land, on the other hand, was a bright mosaic of colours, each Region outlined with a perfect red circle, each circle intersecting with several others. Mysterious numbers and symbols, notes and marks were everywhere. Kan had no idea what they meant. Also, he now wished to know why his homeland, Kuldagan, was marked as one of the No Man’s Land Regions. It had never been considered that. You could even use magic in most of its cities! Still a Region it was, a red pentagon inside the mountain ring, a weird bulge on the side of the neat border of No Man’s Land formed by two intersecting circles, golden and silver, so large that their centres were close to the map’s edges. The golden circle had its center in Yga, the southern capital by the sea. The silver circle was drawn around a little northern fortress named Grey Tower.

Omnis, the real world, so mundane and usual, had suddenly shown its true colours to the naive provincial guy Kangassk was. He frowned peering at the odd patchwork of Regions in the middle of the map, at the strange symbols, at the two intersecting circles, golden and silver...

“The stabilizers!” He slapped himself on the forehead as the realization hit him. “How could I forget! The golden one must be Hora Solaris, then the silver one is Hora Lunaris! I read about them recently. Yes! That’s it!”

It was the only lucky guess he had that day, though. The numbers, symbols, and notes still remained a mystery to Kangassk. What was Vlada’s secret? Why would a simple Wanderer need such a map? What he, Kan, got himself into? There were so many questions but not a single answer.

Finally, Kangassk gave up, carefully rolled up the map and put it back on the shelf. He needed to think.

He couldn’t think on an empty stomach, so he ate a breakfast in the dull dining room below. Alas, no fresh ideas visited him while he ate. He felt like a real life person suddenly thrown into a fairy-tale. It wasn’t like Kangassk didn’t enjoy fairy-tales. He did! He read all the fantasy stories from Aren-Castell library and even ordered some books from the passing traders. He did dream of being a hero, too, as a kid. Who didn’t? What was the problem now? The problem was him being an ordinary guy, not a great warrior, not a mage, not a Chosen One. What happens to ordinary guys in fairy-tales? They usually die to show the readers how the monsters work or just for drama’s sake.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“I am an ordinary guy,” Kan told himself back in Vlada’s room again and gently touched the parchment of the wonderful map. Was it even parchment at all?

The heat became so fierce that it made even the loudest merchants hush up. They still kept advertising their wares but in much weaker voices. The river of their customers got reduced to a trickle anyway. Most people preferred to hide from the heat in their homes and have some iced tea instead of shopping. The young lady selling ice seemed the only person who was happy with the weather.

The merciless heat, unusual for that Region, reminded Kangassk of Kuldagan in an unexpectedly nostalgic way. His home town, the place he hated with passion, looked quite nice from afar. Well wasn’t it magic! Kan made a firm decision to let it stay this way. Somehow being an ordinary guy in a fairy-tale still seemed better than returning to that backwards sand hole and being treated as a freak again.

Speaking of freaks… Since no one here saw him as one, there was no need to hide himself in daylight, so Kan decided to try something he had always wanted to. He left his jacket and shirt at the inn and went for a walk topless just like half the citizens on that hot day. He totally mingled with the crowd of the tanned, half-naked locals. No one cared. It felt amazing!

As Kangassk kept wandering around the town, his feet seemed to follow his thoughts. How else could he find himself in the same alley where he met Zanna the night before?

The girl was still there, seated on the same chair, but she had put her sign away and changed her soothsayer outfit to patched boyish shorts, an oversized shirt with its sleeves cut off, and a pair of leather sandals too big for her little bare feet. She held a frosted glass bottle of icy water in her hands, just like most of the citizens that day.

Since Zanna had already seen Kangassk, running away was no longer an option. So he made his best smile, waved to the girl, and kept walking. He didn’t have to walk very far to see the full picture, though. Two steps were enough… Zanna was not the only one enjoying the shade of that house. Vlada was there too. The young Wanderer occupied a little folding chair similar to Zanna’s and sat there with her back to the cool stones of the wall. Kan remembered the question he asked the little soothsayer about Vlada and felt blood flushing to his face. What a fool he was! And now he was going to pay for this, he felt it in his gut.

Zanna sprang on her feet, put her skinny hands on her hips, and announced in the loudest voice she could, “That’s him!!!”

For a moment, Kan thought that running away as soon as he saw the girl hadn’t been a bad idea at all.

“I’m… well… just walking by,” he mumbled and lowered his eyes.

“He’s not a hero! Not a great warrior either!” Zanna kept going, her voice getting more and more miserable, her black eyes glistening with tears.

The girl turned her face to Vlada, looking for support. She was openly crying now, with real, bitter tears, not the plain salty water that spoiled kids produce on a whim to get treats.

image [https://mildegard.ru/otimg/png/co.png]

“I don’t want it, Vlada! Do something! Please!” Zanna sobbed.

“Come here, my dear,” said Vlada in a soft, quiet voice and embraced the little soothsayer. “Everyone has a destiny: you, me, Grey Inquisitor from the Grey Tower, our friend Kangassk here, everyone. The world is a written book where past, present, and future exist all at once. It is true that we can not change the future. But it is also true that we can not completely foresee it, understand it from where we are. Many years will pass, Zanna, before what you saw, that glimpse of your destiny, comes true. A lot of things will change by then. You will change as well. When you’ll look at the situation in its real light, with your own eyes, it won’t be the same thing that upsets you now. Trust me.”

Zanna calmed down after a while. She returned to her squeaky little chair where she sat in silence, rocking back and forth, cradling the cold water bottle in her arms, thinking. After several minutes of being like this she stood up and approached Kangassk who was still standing there, afraid to move, holding his breath and feeling like a total idiot.

The child was so small that even Kangassk who was way shorter than an average man towered about her like a giant. Zanna came so close she had to crane her head to look him in the eye. Kan met her stern gaze steadily and didn’t flinch.

“Here, have some water,” said Zanna, frowning, and handed him her water bottle. “You’ll need this. It’s crazy hot today. And this is something to keep you safe in your journeys…”

She took off the little bauble she wore around her neck - a black, glassy pebble with a hole for the string in it - and offered it to Kangassk. He bowed his head to the child and received the simple gift with all possible seriousness as if it were a medal of honour.

The last half an hour had been so silly, weird, and bewildering at the same time that Kangassk had come to his senses only on his way back to the inn. Vladislava walked beside him, whistling a happy tune that seemed vaguely familiar to Kangassk.

“What were you and the girl talking about when I came?” asked Kan, trying to sound as casual as he could.

“Women’s stuff.” Vlada smiled and moved from whistling the tune to singing:

So don’t expect me on the beach

‘Cos I ain’t gonna stay.

I wish an angry shark would come

And bite your leg away!

image [https://mildegard.ru/otimg/png/shark.png]

So that’s why the tune sounded so familiar. It was one of the Mirumir teasing verses. Even Kangassk knew some despite being a desert dweller and living so far away from the sea. The traders brought them, the locals caught the exotic melodies up… It had always been nice to collect another one, especially if there was a shark in it. Too bad he was in no mood for silly songs. Kangassk sighed and touched the black pebble Zanna gave him. The pebble was warm.

They left Tammar the next morning, at dawn, true to the old wayfarer tradition.

Just a couple of days ago the city meant nothing to Kangassk. Now, he felt sad leaving Tammar behind. He kept looking back, waiting for something, feeling the unnamed lingering hope in his heart slowly die by the minute...

"Why was Zanna so mad at me?" he had asked Vlada yesterday.

"No soothsayer ever reads her own fortune. It's not the same as foretelling things for someone else. Another soothsayer would be gentle with her, softening the negatives, emphasizing the positives, offering advice. Reading your own fortune means facing the unfiltered truth, alone, without help. Your destiny was connected to Zanna's, so while reading your fortune, she had accidentally glimpsed her own. The vision wasn't pleasant."

Kangassk had barely managed to keep silent while listening to Vlada’s words back then. He was so angry with her! He had never thought he could feel about her this way. All those mysteries and puzzles of hers… her keeping him in the dark about the goal of their journey… her silly songs and tunes during the most serious moments… He felt his blood boil. The silent rage, coming from his chest upward, almost made him choke on his own words.

“Our destinies cross, you say?” he spat out. “How?”

Vlada didn’t answer. In a while, Kan’s anger burnt out in that silence like a fire deprived of oxygen. That was for the best. By the end of the day, he felt empty and tired, he lost all his interest in fortune-telling and adventures but at least he managed to stay on good terms with Vlada.

Kangassk decided to call it a win and get an extra dose of science to lull himself to sleep that night. Encyclopedia of No Man’s Land was helpful as always. The ability of dry scientific texts to drive anxiety away was undeniable. The bookish world without mysteries, magic, and wonders seemed so safe, so predictable, so quiet. The horrors were no longer scary when given names. The journey didn’t seem that dangerous with all the tips and directions. Page by page, sentence by sentence, the old textbook did its job: it quenched fears, silenced doubts, and made its reader sleepy along the way.

“White Region (W.R.) anomaly is a result of a failed magic stabilization experiment that used dozens of little stabilizing Horas placed close to Hora Tenebris. The first experimental stabilizer was placed in what is now the centre of the W.R. Its sudden explosion created the anomaly - “white gloom” - that exists in the W.R. to this day. Possible explanations for the experiment’s failure: insufficient size of the Hora, lack of the antipode, placement in close proximity to the magic source.

An hour after the catastrophe the W.R. had been covered by a substance of undefined nature that could be registered neither by magical nor by physical instruments. To human eye that substance looked like a dense fog covering the land. The explorers who entered the fog reported a peculiar vision disturbance: the gradual disappearance of colours and contours of objects. The disturbance intensified as they moved toward the centre of the Region. The effect of one colour - white - swallowing everything resembled a reverted darkness, hence the name of the phenomena. Upon leaving the white gloom area the explorers’ vision returned to normal.

“White gloom” effect makes the detailed exploration of the W.R.’s central area impossible. Only the periphery of the Region is mapped.

The only animal species living there is sylpha (Silphys vulgaris), the sole representative of the True elves (Elvenidae) family. Sylphas are small creatures about the size of a sparrow. They belong to the class of air spirits (Airae), feed on the fruit of southern juicer (Pirum mali) and the seeds of witch's pseudofruit (Pseudospermum veneficae), the northern relict. Sylphas are capable of stabilizing wild magic and using it for hunting and self-defence (see "Omnis Fauna", book 2 "Fauna of No Man's Land", page 334, published by North-South company)."

image [https://mildegard.ru/otimg/png/sylph.png]

The last line of the resume did the trick. The heavy book fell out of Kan's hand as he went to sleep as fast and sweet as a baby.

...Kangassk looked at the sleeping city, golden in the morning sunlight. The unnamed hope faded under his heart and let the more mundane feelings take over. Whatever he had hoped for, it did not happen. Soon, Tammar disappeared from view as they entered the forest. The road, wide and well-trodden, snaked at the feet of the ancient pine trees.

"This town's name is Tammar. It's the biggest town in the Calid Region," Kan told himself, hammering the info into his memory. "I shall not miss it on my way back."

He didn't even wonder whether he would return. He knew he would.

They didn't have to enjoy the road for too long because no roads led to where Vlada wanted to go. Soon, they had to make a turn, leave the well-trodden path and enter the woods.

Separated from the pines with a bushy undergrowth, there lay an old oak forest as beautiful and spacious as a fairy-tale temple. The oaks grew freely, each a thick column with a gorgeous crown of boughs making sunlight fall down in slanted rays. The forest floor was soft with young grass and bright yellow flowers. Beyond doubt, chargas enjoyed their every step. The thick grassy carpet must have been a great change after all the dusty road littered with sharp little stones.

They didn’t hurry. Vlada had accounted for everything. They had to make their last camp by the very border of the White Region because camping beyond that point was not possible.

As the day drew on, Kangassk started to notice the first signs of the vision disturbance: a white leaf here, a white patch of grass there. The further Vlada and he went into the forest, the more uncanny white spots they saw and the bigger these spots became.

“It reminds me of snow,” said Vlada with a careless smile. She even stopped her charga to take a better look at the ancient oak crowned with white gloom. “An oak silvered by snow! Very poetic.” She turned her face to Kan. “Alas, things are going to get real ugly, real soon… Let’s camp here. And since we have some extra time on our hands, how about a little swordplay? I promised to teach you, remember?”

image [https://mildegard.ru/otimg/png/whitegloomleaf.png]

The lesson was long… It reminded Kangassk of his training with an old Wanderer who had stopped in Aren-Castell once and spared some time for a certain boy-freak too persistent to ignore, too useless to take as an apprentice...

Vlada was way more gentle with Kangassk than that Wanderer, old Osaro, had been. She still smacked him with her wooden sword whenever he failed to dodge or parry but did her best not to hurt him too much. Kan wasn’t even sore by the end of the lesson yet that experience was enough to prove once again that him surviving back then, in the fight with the caravan raiders, was pure luck. Every gentle nudge, every careful smack of Vlada’s wooden sword would have been fatal if they fought for real and he missed dozens of them.

Later, when they were washing the dust and sweat off their faces by the icy cold stream, Kangassk tried to crack a joke.

“I feel like a little green tomato now,” he said. “Someone tuck me into a felt boot and put me out of sight until I cease being a greenie!”

To his surprise, Vlada laughed, giving him that wonderful silver laughter again, the one he had always enjoyed so much.

“Do tomatoes grow in Kuldagan?” she asked.

“Suuuure,” Kan drawled, nostalgic. “With so much sun, everything can grow there if you just shelter it properly and give it enough water. Once I didn’t and the sun fried my tomatoes. Then I became so protective of my little indoor garden that my tomatoes often turned out green. Evergreen. That’s where an old felt boot came handy...”

They kept sharing silly memories and making jokes all the way back to the camp, all bitterness between them erased, everything made well once again. The chargas who had been guarding the camp in their absence went hunting as soon as they had returned, leaving the humans alone with the cold cauldron and unlit bonfire. Kangassk waved his dragonlighter above the dry firewood and kindled a fire without accidents this time. Having been warmed up by swordplay, chilled by the icy cold water, then warmed up again by the fire felt amazing.

The darkness of the young evening thickened around the little camp with a fiery heart where wayfarer soup quietly bubbled in the cauldron and two tired but happy people enjoyed their rest. Kangassk stretched on his woollen cloak beside the fire and asked Vlada to “entertain the tired warrior with a story”. He made his voice sound so overly hoarse and solemn to imitate a classic fairy tale hero that it earned him another moment of Vlada's laughter.

"Oh which story does your noble heart desire, my lord?" she played along.

"Tell me the tale of the White Region, my lady," he replied with all proper dignity.

"There is no tale, only dull scientific reports." Vlada shrugged. Her voice was her own, casual again. Obviously, their make-believe game was over. "You read the summary of them yourself, as I recall. Do you have questions?"

"Yes. You said no one goes there? Really? No one at all?"

"Nowadays, no one at all. Many explorers lost their lives there. The Region was marked as impassable and then almost forgotten. There is nothing valuable in the white gloom. Why risk your life for nothing?"

"Why didn't the explorers return? What killed them?"

"Most likely, falling from a great height did. White Region is as full of holes as ripe cheese. Nobody knows where the holes end or whether they end at all. The further you go the thicker the white gloom becomes. It's dead easy to fall into one of those holes when you can't see anything. Mapping the holes is impossible because they shift from time to time as the anomaly in the centre pulses."

"Well, I hope you have a really good plan on your mind because otherwise going there looks like a suicide."

"Of course."

"Maybe you'll even tell me about it, huh?" Kangassk felt very, very uneasy again.

Vlada took the little cauldron off the fire, placed it on the ground between her and Kangassk and handed him a spoon.

"We have the chargas with us, Kan," she explained, "that's why we'll be perfectly safe in the white gloom. I'll tell you a bit about them so you'd understand. Chargas are sentient creatures with a culture of their own. We didn't buy them for our journey, we hired them. They promised to keep us safe but as soon as we reach our destination they will go back to Border, to their human foster father. As to the white gloom, chargas don't see it the same way we do. They can still feel the effect of the anomaly but it doesn't blind them. So this is the plan: the chargas will carry us through the white gloom. They may even scare most of the sylphs away."

"Ugh, sylphs…" Kangassk shivered, bonfire and hot soup notwithstanding. “I read a lot of things about sylphs, none of them good. At least they’re herbivores… right?”

“Yes, adult sylphs are,” Vlada nodded, “but they still need a host to lay their eggs into so their carnivorous larvae would have food and shelter. Stay in the white gloom for too long and... you get the idea. That’s why you should never camp close to their territory. You wouldn’t die, of course, but being a sylph host,” she raised her hand in a meaningful gesture, “would be quite unpleasant.”

“So that’s true…” Kangassk shook his head.

Suddenly, as if by magic, the camp didn’t seem so nice and cosy anymore, imagination filled the darkness beyond the oaks with all kinds of horrors. With chargas still being away hunting the scenery looked even more threatening. No wonder Kan had such trouble to fall asleep that night. It was windless and therefore so quiet that he could hear every acorn the oaks dropped as it bumped noisily into the leaves on its way to the ground. Some animal howled in the distance? Here you go: falling asleep is cancelled again.

Eventually, Kangassk got several moments of peace that were enough for the sleep to claim him. When a late acorn fell right onto his head giving him a loud flick Kan didn’t even feel it. By this time his sleep was as deep as a Kuldaganian well.

It was so terribly early! It would be so not just for a traveller but even for a mad sunrise-drawing artist. No way waking up that early was normal! The pale pink line of light at the horizon was so thin the stars above didn’t care, they shone, bright and clear. The night, dark and cold, still reigned in the sky.

The chargas were the ones who woke Kangassk up with their soft paws and rough tongues. Vladislava was already wide awake and by then and was busy packing. She offered Kan her flask to help him brush the last remnants of dreams off. The fiery drink made him instantly imagine what being a fire breathing dragon might feel like. The stuff was that strong. Eating something with such a fire burning in his throat and stomach was out of question. Kan started the journey as he was: dishevelled, hungry, and only half awake. The world around him was a blur of colours. Blue made way to green and yellow as the sun rose but white gradually engulfed everything as they went deeper and deeper into the sylph territory. Finally, Kangassk fell asleep in his saddle, his head leaned against his charga’s furry neck.

The strange potion Kangassk had so trustingly drunk from Vlada’s flask got in his head in the most unexpected manner. He woke up with a start, feeling so brisk and full of energy it seemed he would never need to sleep again. The discoloured forest around him resembled a living pencil sketch slowly drowning in skimmed milk. The sky turned grey, the horizon burned white. Kan quickly glanced back, hoping to catch a glimpse of the colourful world they left behind. There was none. The anomaly affected his ability to see, he remembered, it didn't change the world.

Vlada rode beside him, looking like a living sketch herself, or like a celestial, mystical being. Both chargas lost their spots and stripes. Kangassk himself no longer was chocolaty brown. The white gloom thickened by the minute, eating the very contours of things away. But that wasn't the worst. The worst thing was them no longer being alone: the sylphs had arrived.

Colourless and silent, they looked like jellyfish with their headless bodies and restless tentacles. They kept their distance for now. A direct look made them flinch and hide in the trees. The sylphs were clearly afraid of the creatures that could see them. But as the white gloom approached the travellers, so did they. Kangassk remembered his bow carried away by Fervida. It had probably already reached Gileda by now and maybe even found a new master. A pity. It might have been useful here.

Two hours had passed, judging by the alien-looking white sun slowly crawling up. Kangassk was already almost blind, most of the world replaced in his mind by the white gloom. There were no more oak leaves, branches, and acorns, just an amorphous rustling mass above. There were no more grass blades, just a shapeless shaggy carpet on the ground. There were no more pretty “jellyfish” at the fringe of vision, just a squirming, wriggling mass resembling a huge hungry monster. And it moved even closer to the travellers.

Soon after Kan had lost Vlada to the white gloom his field of vision shrank so much it ended at the arm’s length, just where his charga’s head with angrily folded ears was. Several more steps toward the heart of the White Region - and the world went white, swallowed whole by the reversed darkness. That’s when Kangassk felt the presence of the sylphs. They swarmed him, not biting yet but actively seeking something: a pulsing vein maybe or a softer place on the skin, who knows… The sylphs chirped and screeched, their little bodies were all over Kan. One heartbeat, two, three… he clenched his teeth… two more - and he cracked up.

image [https://mildegard.ru/otimg/png/sylphattack.png]

“Take them away from me!!!” he bellowed swinging his invisible hands in the air. “Help!!!”

“Stop it, silly!” Vlada’s voice came somewhere from the left. “Get yourself together! You don’t want to fall from the saddle here, believe me.”

Well, that was sobering. Kan stopped yelling and started thinking. He couldn’t do much to keep the sylphs away but he could do at least something, so he wrapped his cloak around him tightly, hid his face and hands and leaned against the charga’s neck, face down. That was a very good idea. Chargas could see in the white gloom just fine. From time to time Kangassk heard a loud crunch when one of them crushed a sylph or two with her jaws. After a while, most of the sylphs learned to stay away from the chargas’ heads, but only the heads. They still crawled everywhere else. And there were so many of them! Finally, even the chargas lost their nerves and ran.

Kangassk whimpered miserably with every step, his face buried in his charga’s fur. The world before his closed eyes was dark, with dancing colourful spots, which was way nicer than the unnatural, spotless whiteness of the real world he didn’t dare to look at again.

“You can get up now, Kan,” Vlada addressed him after a while.

He straightened in his saddle and beamed: the world was grey! Lovely, lovely grey! There were shadows in it and contours, still patchy, but quite readable. Kangassk could tell there were trees and ruins around.

The sylphs began their slow, reluctant retreat into the white gloom. Kan resolutely shook the most stubborn ones off his clothes and put to the sword several bloodthirsty specimens which kept pestering him and his charga no matter what. Vlada did the same with her own bunch of pursuers. The rest of the sylphs learned the lesson and kept their distance.

Kangassk made a deep breath and exhaled. It was over, they had gone through the gloom!

“I thought I’d go crackers there!” he sighed. “Damn sylphs…”

“Yeah, nasty critters. They give me creeps,” Vlada nodded.

The chargas agreed by setting their ears back and growling. The clever beasts looked very tired but kept running at the same pace. They had no desire to meet the sylphs again.

Kangassk looked around.

“What are these ruins?” he asked. With the danger behind them, he was back to his curious self again. “Who lived there?”

“Scientists mostly,” answered Vlada with a sad smile. “The worldholders had a big lab here. It poisoned two Regions in one go when it blew up. One of them we’ve just passed. The other is ahead of us.”

“The Dead Region…” Kan shivered and asked no more questions.

The grey sky above the Dead Region slowly turned blue, a dark, evening blue where the first stars already twinkled.

image [https://mildegard.ru/otimg/png/RoyalRoad.jpg]