13. The Swamp
For days longer, Malo thrashed his way through the jungle. As he passed out of that territory, the canopy lowered and the humidity rose. Here it was quieter, and the cries of the birds and beasts that lived in this new terrain were hollower, lower, wetter.
Malo wandered through the stagnating water, wading and swimming; clambering through the arching mangrove roots. Startled fowl with gelatinous feathers burst out of the green-brown bog-waters and took flight. Malo’s skin became wrinkled and waterlogged and the clothing began to rot off his back.
He began to weaken almost immediately. The water he drank was impure and there were no dry places to sleep. He tried to kill some of the slithering things that swam amongst the bog-waters—neither fish nor rodent nor reptile—but they were too guileful for him.
Malo shivered and sweated. His mother’s voice whispered in one ear; a police megaphone bellowed in the other. Neither voice spoke any language he recognized. Colours burst and splattered across his eyes; the silhouetted figure of the father he had never known shambled away from him, muttering and cursing. On the horizon he saw another figure, darker still than his father, and stranger. Truly, a stranger.
Strands of black bled from the stranger’s silhouette, thickening and merging until they occluded his vision completely. His others senses were swift to follow.
When Malo awoke he was lying on something flat and hard and dry. He felt weak, but he knew that his fever had broken. Voices that he did not understand spoke to him. Hands helped him to sit up.
He was on a wooden platform. There were two beings sitting with him—nurses or guards; he could not tell. They had amphibious hides that were thick and knobby, and mottled with pale fungi. Hard, transparent membranes protected their yellow eyes, and they were equipped with gills as well as with noses.
Many more of the swamp folk gathered around the platform. Some of them were squatting upon the soft mud islands; others were standing in the brackish waters, immersed up to their snouts. They did not speak.
One of the nurses gave Malo clear, clean water to drink and a meal of stewed and spiced fish, served on some kind of grain. It was the finest meal he had ever eaten. While Malo devoured it, three new figures joined him on the bobbing wooden platform. The first of them bore a short, hooked sword. The second carried a wooden staff, which was inlaid with gemstones and precious metals. The third wore a chain of office around its neck.
“What are you doing here in the swamps, child?” said the official.
“I am lost,” Malo replied, looking up with black-ringed eyes.
“Aye,” said the official. “And what were you seeking, ere you wandered into our Realms?”
“My father.”
“We know your father by reputation,” said the official, “But he has never passed through our territory.”
“Where is my father?”
“I do not know. But if you seek the Realms that are most benighted, you will surely find the places he has been.”
“Benighted.”
The official took up a pole and used it to push the platform away from the mangroves. The shaman stood to Malo’s left and the man-at-arms stood to his right. The raft cut swiftly through the thick, opaque waters, and soon they arrived at a small wooden dock on the border where the swamp gave way to mudflats.
When Malo stepped off the raft, the warrior handed his blackglass sickle back to him. The official moved to the other end of the raft and poled the vessel away.
14. The Tree Queen’s Judgment
Still weak, Malo staggered across the mudflats, which soon gave way to grassy plains. He could see a river in the distance, and beyond it lay forests and foothills. Malo walked beside the river, stopping often to rest.
It was a full day of such travel before he reached the forest, which promised shelter as well as some opportunity to hunt or forage…but as soon as he had broached the tree-line, the foliage disgorged a dozen soldiers and he found himself surrounded.
Some of the tree soldiers were made of skin and blood and muscle and hair, like any ordinary human. Some were of bark and wood and sap and foliage, like any ordinary tree. Some were both, in varying proportions. They were armed with swords and spears forged from black steel, and wore armour made of living wood.
The sergeant among them came forward and said: “You are trespassing in the Tree Queen’s Realm. Lay down your weapon.”
Malo dropped the sickle and stepped away from it, sullenly.
The tree soldiers led him through the forest at spear-point, until they came to a wide, circular clearing where the sky was visible through the open canopy. The sun above was mottled and fierce.
The Tree Queen came out of the trees on the arm of her King. She was tall and beautiful, with skin as pale as snow and hair as green as the leaves of an oak. The King was dark and dour, with a rough, mahogany hide and a beard that was scaly with lichen.
“Do you speak?” asked the Tree Queen.
Malo grunted his assent.
“Then speak,” said the Tree Queen.
He could not. His command of language had deteriorated to the point where he could only answer a direct question or repeat a phrase that had been spoken by another.
“What manner of being are you, that claims it can speak, yet will not do so?”
“I am a man,” he said. “A human.”
“You are not of these Realms,” said the Tree Queen.
Malo said nothing. It was not a question.
“Leave him be,” said the Tree King. “He is not the magus who beset us with his demon agent, unprovoked.”
“Magus?” said Malo, perking up. Malo knew that ‘magus’ was another word that denoted his father, although he did not know what it meant.
“It knows the magus,” said the Tree Queen. “Could this not be another of his demons?”
“No,” said the Tree King, “It can barely speak; it is but a beast.”
“The magus is canny,” said the Tree Queen. “Perhaps this time he seeks to trick us.”
“Whatever you might accuse this one of, trickery is not among its capabilities,” said the Tree King. “To our knowledge it has committed no crimes; we have no cause to prosecute him.”
The Tree Queen turned once more to Malo. “You are dismissed. Take your weapon and go.”
The Tree King took her arm and they strode once more into the trees. The soldiers too receded into the flora, and Malo was alone in the clearing. The sickle of blackglass and bone lay on the ground behind him. He could not determine if the Tree Folk were still observing him when he took up his weapon and crept away.
15. Meat from a Carnivore
The forest darkened as night descended. Malo was hungry, but, try as he might, he could not entice any forest critters near enough to kill. He had no water and he did not know how to find his way back to the river. Malo lay down with only the earth for bedding, and promptly fell sound asleep. When he awoke, something bulky and carnivorous had pinned his legs beneath it and taken his left foot in its jaws.
Malo jerked upright and swung his sickle blindly. The impact that it made when it glanced off the carnivore’s braincase jarred the weapon from his hand. The carnivore made an indignant noise and let go of his foot.
Malo found his weapon, adjusted his grip, and swung again. The jagged glass blade found purchase somewhere softer; dug in, scraped over a rippled ridge of bone, then slid free.
“Oh, me,” said the carnivore. “I am grievously wounded.”
Malo struck out a third time, from a different angle, and something inside the carnivore broke. Blood splashed up Malo’s bare arm. He twisted the sickle and wrenched it back towards him. The carnivore's ribs shattered with a series of staccato snaps. It gurgled and choked and fell still.
Malo drew the weapon free and rolled the carnivore off him. Its blo
od was hot and smelled sweet, like molasses.
He pulled what was left of his shoe off his foot. The appendage was bruised and oozed blood from a dozen punctures, but the wounds were not severe. He had nothing to dress them with, in any case. He went back to sleep, wondering if the beast’s syrupy blood would sate his hunger or poison him.
When Malo awoke, there was daylight enough for him to inspect the remains of the carnivore. He had imagined it to be some kind of bear, but it was more like an outsized badger or a wombat. It had four stubby limbs, a long torso, and a narrow, wedge-shaped head. Its snout was filled with triangular teeth, but it had lips and ears and hands that might have belonged to an adult human. The carnivore was dressed in a cotton shirt and silk britches, and wore a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles.
Malo discarded his remaining shoe, which still had not dried after its immersion in the swamp water. He had stolen those shoes from a Salvation Army store somewhere in New Mexico, and they had been in poor condition even then.
Malo cut some steaks from the carnivore’s carcass and tried to eat them uncooked, but he could only manage to swallow down a few mouthfuls of the tough, fatty meat.
Barefoot, he walked through the forest until he found the river again. He searched it for fish, but he was unable to catch them with his bare hands and soon gave up the notion. Malo forded the river and then followed it downstream, through the meadowlands and up into the hills.
The way became more difficult as the hills rose into mountains. The grass abraded to sand, then to naked shale. The landscape seemed to bend and warp as he passed through it. He did not know whether gravity was truly miscalibrated, or whether he was hallucinating due to blood loss. He walked on, though the flesh of his feet had worn through to the bone.
When the mountains receded, Malo found himself in an orchard of sinewy trees, which bore fruits that looked like stillborn babies. The flying things that nested in the tree limbs were more like swine than birds or bats.
There was little meat upon them, but they were plentiful and trusting, and Malo was hungry.
16. The Sea City on the Plains
A river of some opaque, viscous liquid led him out of the Sinewed Forest and down onto a vast, grassy plain. A breeze stirred ripples and waves from the grass, making of it a vast green sea. Malo was on his knees when he came in sight of the city. He crawled towards its bulbous structures, which were more like creatures that lived beneath the ocean than dwellings built for human habitation.
The pastel-skinned folk who dwelled in the Sea City on the Plains wept when they saw Malo’s suffering. They took him in and dressed his wounds; bathed him and fed him. They gave him new clothes, made to resemble his old: heavy-stitched, denim-like pants; a kind of t-shirt made of a cottony fabric, a pair of leather boots laced with tough, fibrous leaves. When Malo was healed and rested and as close to presentable as he was likely to get, they took him before their Queen.
The Queen of the Sea City on the Plains reclined upon a throne that was as much an animal as a divan. It shifted to accommodate her every motion, stroking her flesh with rippling cilia and sighing with the pleasure of its service. Malo stared at it, bewildered.
The Queen of the Sea City waved to him to come forward, metal and jewels glittering on her hands. She watched him approach with both love and sorrow plain upon her face.
“Poor child,” she said, when it became clear that he did not know to make obeisance before her. “What brings you to our Realm, so weakened and ill? What manner of being has visited such terrible wounds upon you?”
“I seek my father.”
“Your father wrought this ill upon you?”
“My father,” said Malo.
The Queen squinted at him. “Yes,” she said. “I see it now. Your father is the great magus from the mortal realm, who, in his time, visited grievous harm upon this Land.”
“Magus,” he said, nodding.
“The magus is no longer abroad in the Land as he once was,” said the Queen of the Sea City on the Plains. “He has raised a tower and sealed himself within it, and he has remained there ever since.”
“Where?” The imperative to know was stronger than Malo’s inability to express himself.
“The tower has no fixed location, for the Realms have spurned it. Your father’s domain arises in one place and it remains there until it is driven to another place, where it then rises anew.”
Malo quit the Sea City of the Plains, and he went forth in search of the dark tower.
Now that knew what to look for, he found that the Tower drew him. It had always been there with him, but now he could identify it, he could properly distinguish its darkness from his own. The signal returned: a shadow upon his mind; a dark, cold place that he could always find, now that he knew its symbol.
As he drew nearer to the tower the signal grew stronger, and so did Malo, the Bad Little Dog.
17. Sympathy
The Art Magic did not come easily to the Warrior Queen.
The spells she designed were clever and efficient and syntactically sound, and she possessed ample power with which to quicken them, but they simply would not work. She could not create sympathy between the spell and the reality it modelled. Other students surpassed her quickly and went on to other lessons, while she stayed back with group after group of seekers.
Eventually, the Warrior Queen stopped attending classes. She took to prowling through the boundless libraries, pulling random tomes and flipping through them, then setting them back without reading more than a paragraph. She was unable to ambush any new insights this way, and soon she became too restless to study at all. It was not until she drew her sword that success came to the Warrior Queen.
The library drew a sharp breath as her blade hissed from its scabbard, as if the tomes themselves sensed the violence she intended them. Pages rustled. Leather bindings creaked. Wooden shelving groaned.
“Damn you, books, with all your empty words,” said the Warrior Queen. “I wish you all would burn.” The angry symbols she spoke glowed as they issued from her lips, and burst into flame when her utterance was complete.
Black-robed librarians rushed up to the Warrior Queen, dowsing her spell, quieting the books and shushing her out of the library. She allowed the indignity, though she could have struck them down without effort or consequence. It didn’t matter. She understood it now.
Every problem was a foe to be overcome, and the key to any foe’s defeat is to understand them. Sympathy was the key to victory on the battlefield, just as it was the key to successful spellcraft.
Upon this realization, the Warrior Queen’s power quickly grew to be as vast as any might have expected, and then it grew vaster still. Soon, she decided that she no longer needed the aid of the Council of the Magi in her quest. And so the Warrior Queen went forth into the wilderness, seeking the next part of her story.
She flew for many leagues as a bird, and then for leagues more in her own form. Sometimes she rode, on horseback or on more exotic beasts and beings. Sometimes she simply willed herself to her subsequent destination. Sometimes she ran, and other times she walked. It was on foot that she came to the stand of trees by the banks of the river, where the magus had finally fallen.
There was no sign that a great magician had perished there. No grave had been dug, no stone had been set. Not even the gossiping winds had anything to say about his passing.
The Warrior Queen squatted down beside the clear-running water and drew a symbol upon it. The rune held its form even though the river continued to flow. On that flickering surface she observed the events that had led to the death of the magus. The Warrior Queen watched him skid down the opposite slope of the riverbank. He walked across the river, treading upon its surface, to confront another mortal. The second mortal had stood where she did now.
The magus threatened the mortal with a weapon she did not recognize, and th
e weaker mortal begged for mercy. The magus refused, but before he could exact his judgment, the dog-man cut him down from behind.
The Warrior Queen killed the spell.
For all his power, the magus had not been much of a warrior. None of the Warrior Queen’s troops would have allowed a foe to sneak up behind them while they spoke at length with someone they intended to kill.
The Warrior Queen pursed her lips and began to build a new spell. Before it was finished, she scratched it out and began anew. The Warrior Queen examined her second attempt from several angles. She erased a symbol and replaced it, tweaked another, changed the connections on a third. Finally satisfied, she grunted and fired it with her will.
The Warrior Queen had hoped the spell would reveal the spirits of any mortals that remained in the vicinity, but it revealed nothing at all. She could not tell if this was due to some error on her part, or a true absence of dead spirits. The Council of the Magi had admitted themselves to be poor necromancers, but of the Warrior Queen was better acquainted with death than they were.
Most likely the magus’ spirit had returned to its own plane. The Warrior Queen would follow it there.
18. The Ruined City on the Plains
The mortal was growing frustrated with the game. There was no hook; no quest; not even the scent of an objective…
But she was not ready to leave. Although nothing was happening, it felt as though she was the centre of attention—the protagonist, or one of them—and she knew that would not be the case when she returned to the office. Here, in the Realms of the Land, she felt powerful and important.
The mortal lengthened the distance her avatar covered with each stride and hastened on her way; following the river through hills and between the mountains, and then down once more onto endless grassy flatlands.
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