Quag Keep

by Andre Norton

  “Hola!” Naile’s deep call, the upflung arm of the berserker, was in greeting. He led the party, Afreeta winging about his head. But close behind him trod a smaller figure, helmeted head high. It was toward her that Milo now pointed the ring.

  There was no change in the set. Still he could not be sure—not until perhaps he laid hand on her as he had on the singer out of the night. Wymarc drew close to her as if he sensed Milo’s suspicion.

  “There was the smell of magic,” the bard said. “What led you on, swordsman?”

  The dark figure of Naile interrupted. “I said it, songsmith. He followed someone he knew—even as did I. That damn wizardry made me see a brave comrade dead in the earth these three years or more. Is that not so, swordsman?”

  “I followed one—with the seeming of Yevele.” He took three steps forward with purpose, reached out to touch her. No blaze—this was Yevele. The battlemaid drew back.

  “Lay no hands on me, swordsman!” Her voice was harsh, dust-fretted, with none of the soft warmth that other had held. “What do you say of me?”

  “Not you, I have proved it.” Swiftly then he explained. The threat that an illusionist could evoke they all already knew. Perhaps Deav Dyne, Gulth (no one could be sure of any alien’s reaction to most magic that enmeshed the human kind) or Ingrge might have withstood that beguilment, but he was sure that the rest could not.

  “Illusionist.” The cleric faced the dark swamp. “Yet you were led here—to what we have sought.”

  “A swamp,” Naile commented. “If they sink us not in dust, perhaps they would souse us in mud and slime. Such land as that is a trap. You were well out of that, swordsman. It would seem those trinkets you picked up somewhere are near as good as cold steel upon occasion.”

  He was answered by one of those croaking cries from the swamp. But Gulth, who had trudged waveringly at the end of their party, gave now a hissing grunt that drowned out the end of that screech.

  Throwing aside his dust-stiffened cloak, the lizardman headed straight for the murky dark of what Naile had so rightfully named “trap.”

  16

  Into the Quagmíre

  DAWN CAME RELUCTANTLY, AS IF THE SKY MUST BE FORCED INTO illuminating this strangely divided land. Now they could see color in that mass of vegetation, rank, sickly greens, browns, yellows. Here and there stood a twisted and misshapen rise of shrub, some species of water-loving growth maimed in its growing by the poisoned earth and muck in which it was rooted. There were reeds, tangles of bulbous, splotched plants among them. Dividing each ragged clump of such from another lay pools, scum-covered or peat-dark brown, to the surface of which rose bubbles that broke, releasing nauseating breaths of gas from unseen rot.

  Some of these pools, in the farther distance, achieved the size of ponds, and one might even be considered a lake. In these larger expanses of water there spread pads of water-growth rootanchored below. There was a constant flickering of life, for things squatted on those pads or hid among the reeds and shrubs, darting forth to hunt. Above insects buzzed—some so large as to be considered monsters of their species.

  Yet the line of damarcation between dust and quag must form an invisible wall, for the life of the swamp never, even when being pursued or hunting, came across it. The line between dust and quag was no physical barrier, however, for Gulth had had no trouble in entering the water-logged land and had immersed his dust-plastered body in one of the dark pools, seemingly having neither fear nor distaste for the stinking mud his bathing stirred up, or what might use that murk to cover an attack.

  Sharing the lizardman’s fearlessness, Afreeta flew ahead to dip, flutter, pursue, and swallow insects whirring in the air. Yet, as the land grew clearer and clearer to their sight in the morning, the rest of the party drew closer together, as if they sought to position themselves in defense against lurking danger.

  Though the illusionist had flitted above the swamplands in the night as if provided with a firm road for her feet, Milo could not now understand how she had been able to do that. The clumps of vegetation were scattered, broken apart by flats of mud, which heaved and shot up small, brown-black bits, as if they were pots boiling. Their company had fashioned the dust shoes, which had given them a measure of mobility across the sea, but those would not serve them here. There was no steady footing.

  Gulth blew, shaved mud from his limbs with the edge of one hand. With the other he grasped a bloated, pale-greenish body from which he had already torn so much of the flesh that Milo could not be sure what form it had originally had. Chewing this as if it were the finest delicacy offered at some high banquet, the lizardman teetered from one foot to another, facing inward toward the hidden heart of this water-logged, unnatural country.

  The quag country was largely hidden. A mist drifted upward, steaming as might the fumes from the bubbling mud pots. They could no longer sight some of the ponds, or one end of what might be a lake. Fingers of fog reached outward towards the partition between dust and mud. If the swampland had seemed nigh impossible to penetrate before the clouding of the land in a shroud that grew thicker and thicker, blotting out one clump here, a stretch of uneasy mud or pool there, now they dared not consider a single forward step.

  That creeping mist reached Gulth, wreathed about his mud-streaked body. Before he was lost in it, he wheeled, strode backward to the line change, where he stood facing them but making no move to reenter the Sea of Dust. One of his scaled arms moved in a loose, sweeping gesture, his snouted head turned a little, so one of the unblinking eyes might still regard the quag.

  “We go—” His hissing voice pierced the continued buzz of the insects.

  Naile, both hands clasped on the shaft of his axe, shook his head.

  “I am no mud-sulker, scaled man. One step, two, and I would be meat for the bog. Show me how we can move across those mud traps—”

  “That states it for us all,” Wymarc said. “What do we do, comrades of necessity? Is there any among us who knows a spell to grow wings, perhaps? Or one that will at least temporarily dry us a path through the murk? What of your ring, swordsman—your map ring? What does it point as a way ahead?” He looked to Milo.

  The green stone had no life to illuminate those red veins. It remained as lifeless as the film of dust lying over it and all the swordsman’s skin. Milo studied the rolls of mist and knew that Naile was right, the nature of this land defeated them.

  “Make road.” Gulth’s head swung fully back in their direction once again.

  “With what?” Yevele asked. She had not spoken since Milo had told his tale of the illusionist. He had marked also that she deliberately kept as far from him as she could during their short rest before the coming of light, sitting herself at the other end of their company, with Naile, Wymarc, and the elf between them. Did she, Milo wondered, now with an awakening of irritation, think that he held her accountable for the trick of spell-weaving? Surely the girl could not be so much a fool as to believe that!

  Deav Dyne held up his hand for silence before he spoke directly to the lizardman.

  “You have some plan, some knowledge that is not ours then, Gulth?”

  There could be no change of expression on that so-alien face, nor did Gulth directly answer the questions of the cleric. Instead he croaked a word that carried the weight of a direct order.

  “Wait!”

  Without lingering for any reply or protest from the others, the lizardman strode back into the quag with a confidence that certainly the rest of the party lacked. Mists closed about him so he vanished nearly at once.

  In turn they drew forward to the line between sea and quagmire. This close, the unlikeliness of finding any path over or through was even more evident. Deav Dyne addressed Milo.

  “The illusionist vanished here?”

  “Over it—or at least the light of her moon disk did.”

  “Could be another of her illusions—to make you believe so,” Wymarc pointed out.

  The elf and the cleric nodded as if in agr
eement to that.

  “Then where did she go?” returned Milo.

  “If she ever was.” Yevele spoke, not to him, but as if voicing some inner thought aloud.

  “She was there. I laid hand on her!” Milo curbed anger arising from both her tone and words.

  “Yes.” Now Deav Dyne nodded once more. “Once the spell is broken she could not summon it again easily. But another spell . . .” He allowed his sentence to trail away.

  Naile went down on one knee, his attention plainly not for his companions but for something he had sighted on the ground before him. Now he reached over that dividing line and poked at a straggly, calf-high bush. From the mass of intertwined twigs he freed a strip of material, jerking it back.

  “Someone passed here, leaving a marker,” he said. “This was not so twisted by chance.”

  What he held was a scrap of material—yellow and dingy—about the length of two fingers.

  “Cloak lining.” With it still gripped in one hand, Naile used his axe with the other, sliding that weapon forward to rest momentarily on the earth beside the bush. The weight of the double-headed blade sank it into the bare spot as soon as it rested there. Hurriedly he snatched it back again. “If it marked anything,” the berserker commented, “it must be not to enter here. But if this was set to ward off—then there is some place that is safe—”

  “And that may look enough like this spot,” Ingrge cut in, viewing what they could see in spite of the mist with a tracker’s eyes, “to mislead those who would travel here—”

  “Or else,” Wymarc added wryly, “to play a double game and make us believe just what you have now said. Wizards’ minds are devious, elf. Such a double-set trap might well be what we have here.”

  “Something moving!” Yevele cried out, pointing into the swirling mist.

  Milo noted that he was not the only one to draw steel at her warning. But the figure that came toward them at a running pace turned out to be Gulth, a Gulth laden with great rolls of brilliant, acid green under each arm.

  One of these he dropped so it flipped open of its own accord, lying directly above the spot Naile had tested with the weight of his axe. It was wider than that axe and its shaft, round in shape. A mighty leaf, rubbery tough, now rested on the treacherous surface as if it had no weight at all.

  “Come—” Gulth did not even look up to see if they obeyed his summons. He was too busy laying down the rest of his load, disappearing into the mist again as he put one leaf next to the other to form a path.

  Naile shook his head. “Does the scaled one think we shall trust such a device?” he demanded. “How he manages to keep from sinking is some magic of his own people. We have it not nor can a leaf give it to us.”

  Gulth did not return, though they watched for him. It was the elf who pushed past Naile and knelt to stretch out his bow, prodding at the surface of the leaf with the tip.

  “It does not sink,” he observed.

  “Ha, elfkind, what is your bow, even though you put muscle to your testing,” Naile enquired, “against the full weight of one of us? Even that of the battlemaid here would force it down—”

  “Will it?” Yevele gave a short spring that carried her over the dividing line to stand balanced on the leaf. It bobbed a little as she landed upon it, but there was no breaking of its surface, nor did it sink into the mud it covered. Before Milo could protest she moved onto the second leaf where the mist began to swirl. Her folly was reckless. Still she had proven that in part Gulth was right. What knowledge of strange life—or alien sorcery—the lizardman had, it would seem that in the quagmire it was of use.

  Ingrge went next. He was slight of body as were all his race, yet it was true that he must weigh more than the girl, in spite of her armor and weapons and the pack she had slung over her shoulder before she made that reckless gesture. As he, in turn, steadied himself on the leaf, he looked over his shoulder.

  “It is firm,” he reported, before he moved on, to be hidden in the mist as Yevele had vanished. Deav Dyne drew his robe closer about him, perhaps to guard against the tangled bush, stepping boldly out and away. He was gone as if walking on a strong-based bridge.

  Wymarc shrugged. “Well enough. I hope that that harvest of leaves will hold,” he remarked, readying to take the stride that would set him on Deav Dyne’s heels. Then Milo and Naile stood alone.

  Plainly the berserker mistrusted the green support. Of them all he carried the most weight, not only in bone and flesh, but also in his axe, pack and armor. He shifted from one foot to the other, scowling, his narrowed gaze on the leaf. Finally, as the bard had done, he shrugged.

  “What will be, will be. If it is the fate set on me to smother in stinking mud, then how can I escape it?” He could have been marching to some battle where the odds were hopelessly against him. Milo took off his cloak, rolling it into a very rough excuse for a rope.

  “Take this.” He flapped one end into Naile’s reach. “It may not serve, but at least it will give you a better chance.” Privately, he thought Naile was entirely right in mistrusting Gulth’s strange bridge. Whether he could pull Naile out of danger if the leaf gave way beneath the berserker, he also had his doubts, but this was the best aid he could offer.

  From the quirk of the berserker’s lips Milo believed that Naile agreed with every unvoiced doubt. Yet he accepted the end of the cloak as he went forward, bringing both feet firmly together on the surface of the leaf.

  The green surface did tilt a fraction, bulging downward immediately under Naile’s feet. Yet it held, with no further sinking, as the heavy man readied his balance to take a second stride. Then he was gone, still on his feet, and the cloak pulled in Milo’s hold. Gritting his teeth and trying not to think of what might happen if the leaf, which must have been badly tried by the passing of the others, gave out under him, the swordsman stepped cautiously onto its surface.

  It did shift under his boots, moving as might a soft surface. Still, he did not sink, and he braved the queasy uneasiness that shifting aroused in him. Now the cloak tie with Naile was broken, the other end loose so he drew it to him. Apparently the berserker had been so encouraged he felt no need of such doubtful support.

  On Milo moved, standing now on the second leaf, the mist hiding from him all but a fraction of the one ahead. He waited a second or two longer, making as sure as he could that Naile had progressed beyond. These leaves, by some miracle, might take the weight of one alone, but Milo had no mind to try their toughness with both him and Naile striving to balance together.

  He moved slowly and carefully, though not straight, for the leaves had been laid down to skirt most of the open pools. Thus sometimes, in the mist that so distorted and hid the rest of the quagmire, the swordsman felt as if he had doubled back in a time-consuming fashion.

  “Wait!” The warning out of the mist stopped him as he gathered himself for a small leap to carry him over a pool to a leaf lying beyond.

  It was harder to force himself to stand there, listening, then to keep on the move from one leaf to another. Now the insects, which he had tried to ignore in his concentration upon his footing, were a torment as they bit and stung his sweating, swollen flesh. Out of the murk of the pool something raised a clawed, scaled paw, caught the edge of the leaf. A second paw joined it. Between them appeared a froglike head. But no frog of Milo’s knowledge showed fangs, pointed and threatening. The thing was the size of a small dog or cat. And it was not alone. Another paw reached for support some distance away.

  Milo’s sword slid delicately out of its sheath. He continued to mistrust the result of any sudden movement. The first of the frog things was on the edge of the leaf, fully clear of the water, its head held at an angle so that the glitter of its eyes reached his own face. Milo struck as he might spear a fish.

  The sword point went into the thing’s bloated body. It gave a sound more scream than croak as he flung away from him with a sharp twist of his blade, not waiting to see it sink back into the water before he slashed down at
the other. More clawed paws were showing along the leaf side.

  The leaf quivered under him. He killed the second of the creatures. Now no more climbed from the pool. Instead those paws—and there were more of them than he could stop to count—fastened on the leaf, forcing its side downwards. So the things had intelligence of a sort. They were united in an attempt to upset him. Once in that pool, small as they were, he would be at their mercy. Moving as swiftly as he could, Milo slashed and slashed again. Paws were cut from spindly legs, yet others arose as the mutilated enemy sank out of sight. He was forced to his knees by the continuous shaking of the leaf. And it was slowly but inevitably sinking at the side where the frog things congregated.

  Milo could not move from where he already crouched, lest his own weight add to the efforts of the frog things. But he defended his shaky perch with all the skill he knew.

  “On!”

  The call out of the fog reached him dimly. He was far more aware of his own struggle. He allowed one glance toward the next leaf. There were none of the frog things waiting there. But to reach it meant a leap and that from the unsteady leaf. Now they were no longer striving to upset him. Instead, with those taloned paws, and perhaps with their teeth, they ripped away at the leaf itself; tearing it into strings of pale green pulp. And they no longer climbed high enough for him to get at them. He must move, and now!

  Milo gathered himself together and, not daring to pause any longer, (one tear in the leaf had already nearly reached him) he made the crossing. His haste perhaps added to the impact of his landing, for he lost his footing as the leaf moved under him. The toe of one boot projected back over the pond.

  As he fought to regain his balance, drawing in his leg, he saw one of the frog creatures had its teeth embedded in the metal-reinforced leather of the boot. With a small surge of something close to panic, the swordsman struck out with his mailed fist, for he had sheathed his sword, and hit the thing full on.