Chapter 47: The Fall

The following morning, they did not return to the road, but as Nydra promised, led their horses in the direction of the Deep Scar Mountains, from which the black streak seemed to make its slow descent. Despite the horses having more trouble in this terrain, they made good progress and in an about an hour discovered that the line they were following was itself a branch sprouting off a vein about half a foot wide. Miro knew they all noticed, but none of them wanted to draw attention to it – that as the vein of dark material grew in size, so did the area of barren ground around it. And it was claiming more than mosses and lichen – leaving in its wake dried shrubs, their branches empty and grey, and even trees, with their cracked peeling bark and branches and trunks twisted and gnarled into grotesque smaller caricatures of themselves.

As they passed a stand of such desiccated trees, their necks craning, Nydra said in a tone far too cheerful, “So I had a dream last night.” Miro could admit it had the desired effect – he forgot about the trees almost immediately. “It was about the northern usurper,” Nydra continued. “He’d left his hideout in the Northlands and was parading through the countryside with the royal scepter for all to see. Of course this was causing all sorts of panic among the people, wondering if anything happened to their beloved King. So we rode hard trying to chase him down, and finally catch up to him back in that mountain pass town. This is where it gets, alright, this is where it gets strange. We find the man, and he’s in the fountain in the main square, stark naked, drunkenly waving around that scepter like it’s a child’s play sword, and none of the town people are taking him seriously. No one even wants to look in his direction. This is where I say, ‘Hey, he’s right there, we should grab him,’ and at in that moment this scrawny little farm boy comes running into the square, bellowing like a thundergoose that he lives two towns over and his beloved cow is choking on an apple core.” Hima, who was at the reins in front of Miro, briefly glanced back and rolled her eyes. Nydra seemed to have caught this and laughed. “Don’t laugh, you kids drove me to this so now you have to listen to the whole thing. So this little farm boy, crying his eyes out over his choking cow, which, honestly, I don’t know what he had to run two towns over to get help for, because it should have been dead by then, but that obviously wasn’t going to stop you. So the usurper is right there, unarmed and unarmored, and we’re hauling for miles and miles across the Lowlands after this accursed cow.”

Nydra rode silently for a while, smiling as she looked ahead.

“And then what happened?” Miro finally bit and asked.

“And then I woke up. Except then I realized that there was very little difference between dreaming and being awake.”

Peteri gave the swordswoman a look and then shook his head.

“I’m kidding,” Nydra said laughing. “Not about the dream. That unfortunately felt all too real. But I’m complaining in jest,” she said, her voice growing quieter. “I didn’t realize how much I missed this. And it’s nice to see someone still dreaming of doing good directly, instead of big decisions made from far away. Though you’ve never heard it from me.”

They continued to follow this black branch even after they had broken for lunch, through a pass between the rocks where they found it flowing into something that now looked like a narrow river of blackness nearly four feet wide.

“There,” Nydra pointed slightly to the right of where the dark river had flowed from, to a handful of houses, several of which with smoke rising out from their chimneys. “They live close enough that they might know more.”

They turned in the direction of the village, careful to keep their horses from stepping on the foul stuff, which branched more earnestly here, spreading into nearly every direction.

Miro had by now seen his fair share of gloomy villages – the one with the freshly burned mill coming most sharply to mind, but when it came to this place, a different kind of dread and sorrow hung over it. Several of its houses looked completely abandoned, and the ones that were in better shape were far from being in good shape, each built with weathered grey wood that was either rotted-through in places or else splintering.

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But it was the sight of the fields and the gardens that was most disturbing – dark crumbling soil as far as the eye could see, except for some hardy plants that huddled in bunches against the onslaught, probably the only reason anyone still lived here.

They tied their horses up to the most lived-in looking house and Nydra went to knock on the door. After a long while, and much shuffling that could be heard from inside, the door was opened by a couple, both of whom were of an advanced age that Miro did not encounter too often in the villages. When the old man and woman saw them, their eyes widened, tugging at their wrinkles.

“Oh, Olbav, finally, someone has come from the King,” the man said.

“Praise be, we have waited for so long,” Olbav said. “You do come from King Ganryh, right?”

“In a manner of …” Nydra started, taken aback by the greeting, “Yes, we come on behalf of King Ganryh the Second.”

“The Second?” Olbav asked in her trembling kindly voice. “Oh dear, that’s right, it must have been years now, hasn’t it? I’m afraid we don’t get much news around here.”

“But you’re here now and that’s the important part,” her husband said. “Please, come inside.”

“That’s alright,” Nydra said. “We don’t want to intrude.”

“Good idea. We should show it to you. Come, come. Come,” Olbav said, shuffling out of the house. Her husband followed and the four of them walked behind the couple dutifully.

“I’m sorry,” the husband turned to them as their group was led behind the house into one of the fields, “Where are my manners? My name is Daimir and this is Olbav. We’ve lived here all our lives, though it feels longer.” The man let out a wheezing laugh. “Right, right this way then.”

“Is this about that black substance?” Nydra asked, not knowing quite what to do with the slow pace she was forced to follow in.

“Yes,” Olbav drew out, “The dark fingers of the Mountains.” Her and Daimir both looked off to the east, where the presence of the Deep Scar Mountains was now inescapable. “They first wormed their way here a few years back, started killing our crops. No one around here knew what they were and what to do with them. So we asked for help …” Olbav’s voice went low, as if she wasn’t sure if she wanted to share this, “Many many times.”

“You’ve written to the King?” Nydra asked with surprise in her voice

“Yes, well,” Olbav said. “Not us exactly.”

“We’re not so good at letters,” Daimir explained. “It was Basilut from Cosimo’s Creek that did it for us, but he’s moved away since.

“Most people have moved away by now,” Olbav said. “All because of this.”

The old couple had brought them to one of the widest branches they’d seen so far, a path of blackness that left the entire field that it flowed through bare, except for one brave stand of scrawny-looking green stalks at the far end.

“It’s not like it’s easy growing here at the best of times,” Daimir said. “With this thing though …”

“And not just here,” Olbav said. “They’re moving west, and there’s others like it further south, at least what the travelers from those parts tell us, and there’s been less and less of them, too.”

“And what about those.” Nydra pointed to the far end of the field. “How are they able to grow?”

“Well they are very hardy,” Olbav said.

“But they taste something awful,” Daimir added. “They’re one of the few things anyone’s able to grow around here. No one would pay a bent iron for them, but they’ll get you through the winter in a pinch.”

“So is there anything else that’s been able to survive?” Nydra asked.

Miro would tell himself over the next couple of days that he should have seen it coming; that he should have known that something was wrong by the way this blackness made him feel, by the way Hima had talked about how she felt when she looked into it, how the day before when she had mentioned pursuing it, it was the first time she sounded unsure of herself. He would be angry at himself for paying attention only to the conversation between Nydra and the old couple, for not noticing how Hima took a couple of slow steps away from them, unable to keep her eyes from it. What was the point of being a Magus if he failed to be aware that his teacher, and now his friend, was bending down to touch the substance with her bare hand. He dwelled on all that he could have done, but it had been too late.

“Ah,” Hima made a startled hurt noise, and they all turned in her direction. She was getting up, holding her right hand before her, the black residue covering her fingers, but before she got a chance to fully straighten out she murmured, “I’m so … cold,” and her knees buckled.

Nydra didn’t let her fall to the ground, rushing to the icewinder and catching her with one arm.

“Woah, easy there,” Nydra said with a tremor in her voice, and then she pulled off one of her gauntlets with her teeth and pressed the back of her hand against Hima’s forehead, her normally brown skin so pale she was almost the colour of Peteri.

“She’s freezing cold,” Nydra said.

“Oh no, oh no,” Daimir said, “Why did she touch it?”

“Everyone around here knows not to touch it,” his wife explained. “Ever since Joyko Kashtan fell into the stuff and … oh no I’m so sorry … Joyko is dead.”