A short while later, Alator and I went and did a little shopping in the Craftship above, bought some food, a filled Waterskin, and some sewing stuff and spare linen to repair my Linothorax, should it get damaged in future (when it gets damaged). I also bought another Wooden Shield with a particularly well-ornamented bronze boss that depicted the tiered Hanging City.
Item :
Armour Repair Kit (Linen)
Rarity :
Common
Description :
Leather pouch holding bone needles, thread, shears, pliers, beeswax, linen patches, bronze grommets, leather
Item :
Wooden Shield
Rarity :
Common
Description :
Light wooden shield bound with hammered bronze
Defence :
Middling
Durability :
Poor
We found Lenya at the Woven Vine and bade farewell to Keza.
“We’ll keep your rooms free for your return,” Keza smiled, her bright blue-white eyes set exhausted but determined.
“We’re not sure when we’ll get back,” I said.
“If we’ll be back,” Alator corrected.
“All the same,” Keza shrugged. “Not many travellers the past few days, anyway.” She poured us a jungle-folk-sized cup of mibege each from the copper spigot with her tail and long arms in that impressive, practised way, and added, “For the road, or . . . something to remember us by.”
Afterwards, with the pleasant, sweet sting of the banana liquor on our tongues, we all headed back to the Warden Barracks and waited in the foyer until Akishen and Paresh finished their conversation.
“You’re all okay!” A small, relieved voice danced out of the room at one point and Drya’s little head popped from the door.
“All safe and sound. Thanks for the escort,” I said.
“Paresh has been in there for some time with her,” she jabbed a thumb over her shoulder. “Tough nut to crack.”
Recalling his rageful outburst, I feared the worst.
“He’s not —”
“Oh, no, they’re just talking — bad choice of words. Paresh wants this to end well as much as anyone; he’s always admired Skelth.” Then her eyes faded a little and she looked aside. “I have to say, though, there’s something strange about her, more of the jungle, if I have to put it into words.”
“I think this is her first time in Ith-Korr,” I explained. Drya clapped her hands together. I continued, “She’s Skelth’s daughter.”
Wide-eyed, she clapped again, then put her hand to her mouth.
“Skelth the Ruthless had a child? . . . That’s it! He was always the same way, had an edge to him, but didn’t really show any more symptoms of the Secret than anyone else.”
Following a few pleasantries, and our explaining the situation a little, she disappeared again, lost in thought. Back to work, I thought.
After another quarter hour sitting and watching the coming and going of the wardens and concerned citizens, and taking in just how much work Teera the bookkeeper took care of, the Shadow Prowler lieutenant emerged from the mess room.
“All ready?” I asked.
Her face was dark but not entirely displeased. She ran a hair through her orange and brown hair and clapped her cheeks with both hands, flushing pink the white skin between the blue lines that ran from her eyes to lips.
“I am.”
Feeling she had no intention of sharing the result of the conversation, I shouldered my spear and took the Bronze Spear of Blinding in my hand and followed her from the room and back down the lift, gears churning loudly, out into the wilds.
“We’ve a handful hours of daylight,” Akishen said, glancing up and eagerly breathing in the smells and sounds of the jungle. “The Trade Road is never perfectly safe, but at least it’s easy going.”
The Road began as a broad, even track, flanked by the towering green of the jungle; thick trunks glistening with sap. At parts, the light was swallowed up as an almost cathedral-like canopy hung over from either side, draping us with vines and hanging moss, all shimmering wet in the dwindling daylight.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
It was worn by countless feet and cartwheels at its centre, but the sides were eaten into some yards by vines and creeping roots, cracking inwards through the packed earth like probing fingers.
Akishen kept her same brisk pace, the mandrill-like red nose twitching as she sniffed the air. At each point, Alator would mimic her, but never did he find any cutting response to her observations; she had a knack for glancing to shadows and catching movements the rest of us — barring Alator, usually — missed.
“Flicker of scales, retreating up the trink,” she’d say, or “Shimmer of a spiny carapace, there, amongst the leaves.”
A few hours in, with the sky set over red like with a thick paintbrush, she stopped and inhaled sharply, then spat.
“Smell that?” she asked without turning.
I inhaled and winced. The air was thick with an acrid tang, metallic and bitter, and heavy like death.
“Bloodvine,” she explained. “Flowers everywhere this time of year. Can draw in more than pollinators if we linger too long. We’ll find another place to camp.”
As the suns continued to set far to the east, they sank beneath the treetops, casting stark and deep shadows over the trail. The feeling of the jungle quickly changed, as if pointedly warning us of sudden contrast: bioluminescent fungi clung to tree roots, a pale green or blue faint but steady light suffusing the wet air. Massive night flowers, taller than me, slowly unfurled petals of turquoise or aquamarine. Some had intricate patterns laced into them and shone like iridescent insect wings. Strange mammalian birds chittered with calls almost like barks in clicking staccatos, featherless bodies darting through the underbrush.
Occasionally, a mournful howl or deep, guttural groan echoed through the trees, from creatures unseen but comfortably close. Each time this happened, Akishen would mutter, to noone in particular:
“No good here, either. Keep up,” she commanded. “The road gets worse the longer we dawdle.”
As dusk fell proper, the road narrowed further as the jungle pressed in tighter. In places, massive roots arched over the path like archways, and some had pressed into each other and grown thick to form tunnels we were sent through.
Dense fog then began to rise from the earth, swirling in ghostly eddies around our feet, then knees, then rising to shadow everything further than a few yards from us. The stars and the three moons glinted above, and even when the fog entirely took them from us, they still lit our way. We took to moving cautiously, pressed very closely together, and matched Akishen’s light jog through the night. The chill took fully in, and the wind buffeted our clothes. I pulled the cloak close about my shoulders and glanced at my companions. Alator was forever pretty much naked, but seemed not to feel the chill.
At a point, the chirping of insects gave way to deeper, wetter sounds — slithering of unseen bodies, croaking of toads or something similar, the occasional plop of something heavy dropping into stagnant water.
At last, as my head bobbed and threatened to walksleep, she relented.
“Here. We’ll stop.”
She moved to the side and gestured to a patch of ground like off the road, where a massive tree’s branches and calcified roots formed a natural alcove a little like a cave.
With everyone sat against the hard wood, my back sprawled against the entrance to the cave and looking out, Alator at my side, I steadied my breathing. My limbs were heavy and my clothes were soaked.
Feeling a breeze send a chill rushing over, I looked around for some wood to burn.
“Bad idea,” came Akishen’s voice, her tone stern. “Any light or warmth will bring the entire Marshes to us.”
“Marsh?”
“We went for a little longer than I’d have liked — we’re passing out of the jungle into the Marshes of Nyl-Vasha.”
// SYS : Ohhh, hold fast your courage, traveller, for you step now into the drowned world of Nyl-Vasha, the Treacherous Marshes! Gaze upon this festering mire, where the air hangs heavy with the stench of decay and the croak of unseen things echoes through the oppressive fog! See how the ground beneath your feet quivers — lies! — the false promise of stability! For every step may plunge you into the grasping black ooze below! Look how the waters shimmer with an oily sheen — and oh, but beware! Travellers here would be insurmountably fortuitous to only drown! Beneath the surface lurk the glinting eyes of the venomous marsh-serpents and the writhing limbs of the Sesarma colonies, whose claws snap bone like dry twigs!
// Look to the crooked trees that rise skeletal from the muck, the gnarled roots in impossible knots twisted, festooned with webs of glistening moss and sickly flowers that bleed ichor. And listen — oh, listen! — do you hear it? The mournful song of the fell Marshlights, flickering pale yellow in the mists? They’ll lead you astray, to the very heart of the bog, from wherein none return — NONE. The very air conspires against you, traveller! The Marshes of Nyl-Vasha do not give up their prey lightly! //
By Jove, that’s just ridiculous. You sound like a camp counsellor telling a horror story.
// SYS : Thank you for your kind words. I had a lot of time to work on that one. //
But I did indeed hear the song of the Marshlights; from far away a ghostly tune, a rising and falling choir, reached my ears like a cavernous echo.
“Don’t follow the song,” I said, as Lenya came to the edge of the cave and watched out.
“That does not need to be said,” the elf princess said. But despite it, her wide grey eyes reflected the faint yellow through the fog, and her body swayed, leaning towards it.
“You’d think so, but you wouldn’t be the first,” Akishen said. She had laid out a broad, soft-looking but firm animal skin in a runnel between two large roots, and pushed and prodded her pack into comfort as a pillow.
Looking through my own pack, and glancing at the cold, hard wood at my feet, I was a little annoyed at my hesitancy of skinning the beasts I’d killed early in my adventure.
Lenya completely heartlessly reached into her own pack and withdrew a thick woollen bedroll and a feather pillow, and wrapped herself up nice and warm.
“How many nights until we reach Uruk?” I asked Akishen.
“Just one more,” she said after a beat. “It’s a four day journey for merchants, but with a bit of hustle and a shortcut here and there, we’ll be there by dusk the day after tomorrow. And then I’ll be shot of you all.”
“After you’ve introduced us to the Crimson Crown,” I said. She hissed through her teeth and settled to sleep.
I scrunched my face up around my nose and felt around it. The pain was still pretty sharp, but it was mostly numbed. Having never broken my nose on Earth, I couldn’t be sure I was healing faster, but that was the sense I got. I pulled the Stonebear Cloak around me that I got from Kikiara the Seeker the first day I got here.
Wonder how she’s doing . . . I remembered with a hot flush how much of a fool I’d made of myself. Doubt the World-Eater sent scouts to Ur-Kadesh. Probably she’s still going about her hunter way, oblivious to it all.
Sleep came slowly, and it was fitful. Wherever I turned, a knot or some pesky root jabbed into some part of me, and any rest I had was interspersed with being rudely thrown back to reality, and the screeching of some awful horror.
Blearing eyed, somewhere between sleep and waking, however many hours later, I felt something was wrong. Leaning forward, wincing at my stiff neck, I could see Alator’s broad back through the gloamy fog, standing sentinel. Akishen was still fast asleep beside me.
I reached out a hand to Lenya’s bundle — empty, but still warm.
I shot awake and to my feet and called out to Alator. His yellow-gleaming eyes were darting about over the floor and the tree line, willing his preternatural vision through the fog.
“Can’t have left more than five minutes ago, but even in this wet marsh, I don’t see her tracks.”
My heart fell. I’d noticed her movement through the jungle, or the dusty city, or even over sand. It all seemed so quaint in the stories. . . .
“Elves don’t leave tracks.”