Uki and the Swamp Spirit

by Kieran Larwood

  The good thing about stories, Rue – or rather, one of the good things – is that, if you’re feeling sad, or worried, or lonely … or if, like us, you’re trapped in a ruined tower by a bunch of murderous villains … they can take your mind off things. Stories can lift you out of the unpleasant real world and off into another. Even if it’s just for a few moments. And when you come back to your own personal story … well, things don’t usually seem as bad.

  That’s another reason why us bards are so important. We help people sidestep life for a bit. And you never know … hearing about some brave, determined, heroic little rabbits might help you find that part of yourself.

  Because it’s there, in all of us.

  (‘Even me?’ Rue whispers.

  ‘Especially you,’ Jori whispers back.)

  Talking of heroes: I recall we left Uki running from the smouldering battleground of Syn and Nys, the twin cities of Northern Hulstland. Singed and bedraggled, he had managed to escape in one piece – with Jori and Kree, but there was no time to celebrate their victory. Their quest was only half done.

  It had just been a few months earlier that Uki had been cast out of his tribe because his eyes and fur were coloured differently on either side. The Ice Waste rabbits had thought him a demon. A bad omen. Weak and starving, his mother dead, he had been brought back from the brink of death by bonding with an ancient spirit named Iffrit. Iffrit had once been the guardian of four other spirits, who had escaped from him. He now gave Uki all his power and tasked him with recapturing them, using shards of the crystal prison they had once been sealed in. Two spirits had now been caught, trapped in glowing gems on Uki’s spear harness. The special powers they gave him pulsed through his blood, making Uki the strongest little rabbit in all the Five Realms. But these powers would only become permanent if Uki managed to locate all four. If he didn’t succeed, the spirits would run riot again, gaining power and taking over the whole rabbit world, while Iffrit’s magic would fade away, along with Uki himself.

  To complicate things, the witch Necripha and her servant Balto were on their tail. Leaders of the Endwatch, they wanted the powers of the spirits for themselves. Their sinister network of agents was everywhere, watching and plotting from the shadows. And to make matters worse, there was a good chance that Jori’s evil cousin, Venic, might be following them too. He wanted to hand Jori back to her family, to be punished for refusing to become an assassin. He was also probably quite miffed at Uki for throwing him into a wall.

  All this weighed heavy on the young rabbits’ minds. The challenge ahead of them was terrifying. Still, they allowed themselves a brief stop to lick their wounds and wash the smoke from their clothes before pressing on. Uki could tell where the other spirits were. Their presence was like fish hooks in his brain – a constant, gentle tugging – as if a sleepy angler snoozed on a distant riverbank, with the line tied to his toe.

  The closest was due south, and the other further off to the west. Both would have travelled inside the bodies of poor Nurg and his brother. Both would probably have shed their simple hosts and wormed their way into rabbits of power and strength, just as Valkus had. But they would have had more time to make themselves at home. And both would do anything they could to avoid being captured inside Uki’s crystals.

  Keeping the waves of the Endless Sea to their left, the rabbits headed along the coast, crossing the bridge over the Bleak River, and taking the road that skirted the cluster of pine and spruce trees known as the Coldwood.

  Here, Jori got especially nervous, as her clan warren was based nearby. Even though it was over a day’s walk away, at the north-western edge of the wood, her clanmates often roamed the trees, foraging for dusk angel mushrooms, which they brewed into the highly poisonous dusk potion that gave their warriors such incredible speed. They would know that Jori had run away from the clan. They would be ready to capture her, or worse. The last thing she wanted was to bump into one.

  ‘Relax,’ Kree said to her. ‘Even if they do spot us, Uki can throw them all the way back to Melt. He has the strength of a god, you know.’

  Of a god. Uki looked down at his skinny little arms. It was bizarre to think that they flowed with the power of Iffrit, Gaunch and now Valkus. But he could feel it tingling there. If he wanted to, he could pull up a tree by the roots and bash any rabbit of Clan Septys they found over the head. He could …

  ‘It doesn’t matter how strong he is,’ Jori said, interrupting his thoughts. ‘A dusk wraith like me could fill him full of poison darts before he even took a breath. He wouldn’t be able to throw a pebble if his bones were all melted and his muscles turned to jelly.’

  As one, they pulled their hoods low and hurried along in silence, praying they reached the other side undetected.

  They now sat on a high, gorse-spotted hill, munching a simple lunch and looking down at the landscape before them. Uki marvelled at how the world had completely changed again. The wide, red-tinged Blood Plains had seemed so strange to him, having lived all his life in the bleak Ice Wastes. Now he saw miles of low swampland, stretching off to the horizon … a network of winding lakes and rivers, like a maze, and in between were seas of reeds, clusters of trees and the odd little hummock sticking up like an anthill. There were shades of green, yellow and brown everywhere, and the patches of water sparked sunbeams like diamonds.

  Off to the west, along the same stretch of hillside they stood on, was a cluster of earth mounds, ringed by a high stone wall. Thin trails of smoke trickled up into the air from hidden chimneys. There was a similar walled enclosure in the valley below, and one far ahead in the distance, at the very edge of the reeds and marshes.

  ‘The Fenlands,’ said Jori, sweeping her arm across the view. ‘A den of backward savages, bandits and smugglers. Nothing has changed here for a hundred years and probably won’t for another hundred.’

  ‘Are those warrens?’ Uki asked, pointing at the walled group of mounds.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jori. ‘Rabbits on the edge of the marshes don’t live in buildings like up north, and don’t quite live underground like the southerners. They cover their stone houses with turf and then wall them in for safety. That’s Frogdeep Hall on the hillside. The warren at the bottom of the hill is Mudstock, and the one on the edge of the fen is Reedwic.’

  ‘What about that wet, gloopy place with all the rivers?’ Kree asked. ‘Do rabbits live there?’

  ‘They do,’ said Jori. ‘And those are the most backward ones of all. They don’t like outsiders. In fact, I’ve never seen one. I’ve heard stories, though. About savages dressed in frogskin who worship toads and eels. Please don’t tell me that’s where we have to go.’

  ‘Do your thing, Uki,’ said Kree. ‘Find the spirit for us, with your thoughts.’

  Uki’s connection to the escaped spirits meant he could sense things about them – where they were, what they were feeling. It sometimes came to him in visions, or when he focused his mind on them. But it was a horrible, draining thing to do. And seeing through the eyes of such ancient, terrible evil … he had been trying to put it off since they left Syn.

  Now there was no excuse for delay. He gave a deep sigh and then closed his eyes, reaching out for that invisible thread joining him to the spirit, pulling himself along it to the source.

  The first thing he felt was life.

  Masses of it. The fen was seething and pulsing with creeping, slithering, buzzing, flapping, stalking creatures. Not like the Ice Wastes, or even the plains, where animals struggled to scrape by in the unforgiving cold. Here it was warm and fertile and teeming. If he scooped up a pawful of water, he knew it would be thronged with hordes of living beasties, some even smaller than he could see.

  It took his breath away for a moment and he wondered how he could be sensing it all. Then he realised it was because of the spirit itself. There, right in the heart of the fen, was his target. It oozed and throbbed and Uki had the sensation of a sickly green light, spreading out through the networks of water. Of tendrils con
necting all the creatures of the marsh in a web. Seeking them, joining them … changing them. He could feel the life, because the spirit was linking itself to it. Linking itself so it could poison it all and destroy it.

  Uki was filled with a sudden rush of sickness. He could taste bile at the back of his throat, feel his joints begin to swell and ache, his blood thicken and turn bad.

  Charice. The name came to him from the fragments of memory that Iffrit had left in his head. Charice was one of the four spirits that Iffrit had watched over in the crystal prison buried deep beneath the earth for thousands and thousands of years. Like the others, she had been created by the Ancients, who had made many spirits or creatures to help them. But these ones had turned against them, twisting their purposes to evil, becoming a danger that had to be locked away.

  Uki remembered finding the shattered pink, diamond-like crystal that had held them, as he staggered through the Icebark Forest almost mad with grief for his mother who had just died. If it hadn’t been for Iffrit driving him on, he might never have started on this quest. The fiery little being had been desperate, afraid. But determined that Uki would take on the task.

  Gaunch, the first spirit he had captured, had tried to starve and famish the world around him. Valkus, the second one, had wanted to spread war and battle everywhere. But Charice … she had been more subtle, more terrible.

  Her mission was disease. She sought to fill every living thing with it. To corrupt and change everything around her until she and her servants ruled it all. And she had begun already.

  Uki could feel it. A plague spreading out like a flowing blot of ink, seeping from the heart of the marshes – poisoning, twisting, infecting …

  He broke his mind free before he could see any more and fell to his knees, gasping for breath. He half expected to see the grass dying around him, the bees and butterflies that flitted around the yellow gorse flowers dropping to the ground, writhing and dying.

  ‘What is it, Uki?’ Kree jumped down from Mooka, her long-eared, kangaroo-legged jerboa, and rushed to his side. ‘Did you see it? Is it bad?’

  ‘It’s … horrible,’ Uki whispered. ‘She’s called Charice and she brings plague and disease. She wants to infect every living thing in the world.’

  ‘And she’s in those marshes?’ Kree asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Uki. ‘Right in the heart of the fen. And she’s already started. We don’t have much time to stop her.’

  Jori kicked at a clump of heather. ‘The heart of the fen. That’s just typical. There’s a whole load of nice, dry, civilised warrens on the other side. What’s wrong with trying to take over the world from one of those?’

  ‘We could try stopping off at one of the warrens ahead?’ Kree suggested. ‘They must have inns to stay in. We could have a good night’s sleep or two before we have to wade through all that swamp.’

  Jori nodded at that, the thought of a feather bed and a decent meal cheering her up a little.

  Uki still stared out at the marshes that, just a few moments ago, had seemed full of life and promise. Now he couldn’t help imagining them poisoned and ruined, the source of a plague that was hungry to eat the whole world.

  Leaving the hilltop, they began to wind their way down the spidery track that led to Mudstock warren in the valley below. It was close enough to reach by dusk and hopefully had a decent inn.

  Honeybees buzzed about them as they walked and red kites circled lazily overhead. It was a pleasant summer evening and, despite the shadow of the horrors Uki had sensed in his vision, he was beginning to relax and enjoy himself. Until Jori spoke, that is.

  ‘There’s something else,’ she said, as they clambered over a wooden stile set into a tumbledown drystone wall. ‘Something I should warn you about.’

  ‘Mik jibbadan lashki,’ said Kree. ‘You mean besides the plague spirit in the fen, the Endwatch who are chasing us and your evil cousin?’

  ‘Go on,’ said Uki, as Jori rolled her eyes. He could see that she was tense again. Her ears were flat against her head, and her brow was knitted together in one of her stern frowns. She looked almost as edgy as she had when they passed the Coldwood.

  ‘There’s a clan that lives on the far side of the marshes. A shadow clan – assassins, like Clan Septys … except a lot worse. We’re likely to come across them, if not in Mudstock, then in the warrens beyond.’

  ‘Worse than your family of poisoning murderers?’ Kree had helped Mooka hop over the stile and was now hoisting herself into his saddle again. ‘How could anyone be scarier than that?’

  ‘Easily,’ said Jori. ‘They can be from Clan Shrike.’

  ‘What’s so bad about them?’ Uki asked.

  ‘They’re meaner than a pack of starved weasels,’ said Jori. ‘They hire themselves out as killers, like my clan, but they like to do things close up. They use the blades they have on the forearms of their crimson armour. And there are rumours that they take their victims’ bodies back to their warren and put them on spikes. Some say they even do it before they’re actually dead. Their place is called Bloodthorn. I’ve never seen it, but I’ve heard terrible stories.’

  ‘Why will they be at this Mud-plop warren?’ Kree had begun to look around, her paw resting on the half spear she’d found during their battle in the twin cities. It now jutted from her bedroll, ready to be used on any enemy that got in her way.

  ‘Mudstock,’ Jori said. ‘Because, as well as sticking pointy things in rabbits, they work for the Emperor. They’re in charge of collecting taxes and getting rid of smugglers.’

  ‘What are “smugglers”?’ Uki asked. ‘Some kind of creature?’

  Jori laughed. ‘No. Smugglers are rabbits. They take things that are brought into Hulstland from other realms, and they sell them.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound so bad,’ said Kree. ‘Why do these Spike-rabbits want to stop them?’

  ‘Shrike,’ said Jori. ‘Although “spike” might be better. The problem is the Emperor says that everything that comes from other countries: food, cloth, wine … has to arrive in one of his ports, and the rabbits buying it have to give him some of the money they will make from it. It’s called “tax” or “duty”. It’s one of the things that makes him so rich.

  ‘Anyway, some rabbits don’t want to pay tax, so they arrange for the stuff to be dropped off by boat at secret beaches and coves near the edge of the fen. Then they sneak it through the swamps and sell it to the warrens on the far side. They make good money, other rabbits get the goods cheaper, but the Emperor loses out on his share.’

  ‘Ah.’ Kree nodded her head. ‘So it’s a kind of stealing? And the Emperor has laws against it? Like if you steal a jerboa and the chieftain has you staked out on the plain for the buzzards.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jori. ‘Except Clan Shrike will be the ones catching you, and it will be much more painful than getting eaten alive by a buzzard. They hate my clan too. Septys and Shrike have been at war with each other for centuries.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you take off your brooch, then?’ Uki said, pointing at the coiled silver serpent on Jori’s shoulder.

  ‘Kether above!’ Jori snatched it off in a blink and shoved it in her pack. ‘Good thinking, Uki.’

  ‘And just in time,’ said Kree. ‘Here is Mud-plop warren. I hope they have a lovely inn with a good stable for Mooka.’

  ‘It’s Mudst—’ Jori began, but Kree was already trotting ahead, into the settlement. Keeping an eye out for rabbits in scary armour, Jori and Uki followed.

  *

  ‘What do you mean, there’s no inn?’ Jori, usually calm and confident when speaking to people, raised her voice loud enough to make Uki cringe. Her dreams of a soft bed and a belly full of supper had just vanished, leaving behind the beginnings of a temper tantrum.

  ‘Just what I says.’ They were talking to an old she-rabbit, who was wearing a patched, hooded cloak and carrying a basket of lettuces. ‘We don’t have no inns here. The priest doesn’t like it. Strangers can find a bed at the church,
though. A stable too, for your … hoppy rat-thing.’

  The old rabbit shuffled off, leaving Jori shaking her head and Kree fuming. Uki took a moment to look around the warren.

  They had just come through some wide wooden gates, and they could see another pair in the distance, opposite. Surrounding them was a stone wall, as high as two rabbits, with a walkway at the top on which a few guards stood watch.

  Inside the wall were lots of grass-covered mounds, each with two or three chimneys poking out. They all had a wood or stone front, with a door and a window. As Jori had said, they looked like a mixture of house and burrow, and seemed to be very cosy.

  Most were homes for the Mudstock rabbits, but one or two had carved wooden signs outside. Uki spotted a grocery, a pie shop and a blacksmith’s. At the centre of the warren was a strange-looking building. Made of stone, with a turf roof, it had a squat tower at one end, the top of which was covered in numbers made out of polished bronze. As the sun began to set, the bronze sparkled and glinted as if it was burning with golden light.

  ‘I guess that’s the church,’ he said. ‘We should probably see if they have a place for us to stay before dark.’

  Jori nodded, still sulking about the lack of inns, and they wandered over with Kree cursing behind them.

  ‘Hoppy rat-thing … hasn’t she ever seen a jerboa? Pok ha boc!’

  Before they knocked on the door, Jori stopped them.

  ‘I’m guessing you don’t know too much about churches of Kether, Uki?’

  Uki shook his head. There was only one god in the Ice Wastes – Zeryth, the brutal lord of snow. His mother had taught him about the twin goddesses, Estra and Nixha, but he hadn’t yet learned much about Kether, Hulstland’s god of order and number.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Jori patted him on the shoulder. ‘You don’t need to know much. Just don’t mention any other religions in front of the priest. And avoid saying the numbers four and fourteen. Or any two numbers that add up to them.’

  ‘And don’t do anything fourteen times,’ added Kree. ‘Especially not flicking your ears. Or touching your nose. They hate that.’