The Swampling King (The Windwalker Legacy Book 1)

by Ben S. Dobson

  “Why don’t you play with that while we speak, Eroh?” Auren waved a hand toward the beds in the corner. Obediently, Eroh hopped down from his chair and seated himself on the edge of a straw mattress, sweeping the eagle back and forth through the air.

  Lenoden leaned across the table, lowering his voice so Eroh couldn’t hear. “There is much you need to tell me. Why did the swamplings take your eyes? Why were you and your grandson alone in the Swamp? And how do you know our tongue so well?” It was unnerving the way the old man’s empty sockets fixed on him—it reminded him of the Deeplings, the way they saw without eyes—but he didn’t allow himself to flinch.

  “They took my eyes because they needed someone to blame.” Auren’s lips drew tight, and there was a sudden heat in his voice—very different from the composure he’d shown until now. If he’d had eyes, Lenoden imagined there would have been anger in them. “It was many years ago, before Eroh was born. Deeplings attacked, and many of my people were killed. I was accused of summoning them, and my family was cast out. Only Eroh and I are left now.”

  “Did you summon them? I have seen swampling witchcraft before. It is no myth.”

  “You highlanders and your witches. You hardly know what it is you fear.” Auren smirked, a ghastly expression beneath his shadowed eye sockets. “I did not summon Deeplings to harm my own people. But there are men and women we call Makers who have a certain power, this is true. Not the power you think they have, but power all the same.”

  “Don’t evade the question. Do you have this power or not?”

  Auren lowered his head in apparent deference. “I am just a blind old man, Your Grace.”

  Not really an answer. And I think you see more than you let on, even if I don’t understand how. Lenoden hadn’t forgotten how easily Auren had moved in the Swamp. But this wasn’t the time to force answers. Not while Eroh was watching. Keep your secrets if you must. You’ll serve my purpose either way. He had cut down more swampling witches than he could count; one old man would not be a problem, if it came to that. “And no one else has seen the boy? No one knows he exists?”

  “No one but you. He was born after I was exiled.”

  “Good.” Lenoden glanced at Eroh and spoke more quietly still. “Is he simple or just sheltered? I mean no offense, but… he doesn’t seem to understand how important he is, what those eyes mean. All this interest in him, and he hardly seems to care.”

  The question didn’t seem to bother the old man. “I would not call him simple. Different, certainly. He… chooses different things to concern himself with than you or I might.”

  Lenoden nodded, stroking his knuckles against his beard as he watched Eroh play. He wasn’t yet sure if the boy’s strange disposition would be a boon or a hindrance, but it was something to consider. If nothing else, it lent him a certain air of otherness, which could be useful.

  “Fine,” he said, looking back at Auren. “What about the speech?”

  “These words do not belong solely to the highlanders,” said Auren. “You think us mute savages, but our ancestors were the same: the people of the Great Plains, before the mist and the Swamp and what you call the Rising. Your holy men say as much, do they not?”

  Lenoden nodded, hiding his surprise at the old man’s knowledge. “The Convocation preaches that we were one people, before Dalleon and his followers betrayed the Windwalkers. But I hadn’t heard a swampling speak until the day we met.”

  “It makes sense that we share the tongue of our ancestors, though, does it not? It isn’t spoken well or often in the Swamp, and never when your kind are near, but it is spoken. And I spent many years eavesdropping on knights and trade caravans to master the words, so that I could teach my grandson.”

  “Then this was not a sudden whim,” said Lenoden. “You didn’t stumble upon me by chance.”

  “It was time. Eroh has lived too long below the mist already. I had to wait until he was old enough; too young and he would have been taken from me. Why bring the old man when the child will not remember his face in a year?”

  “He might have been taken from you either way. The Knights of the Storm are not known for their restraint toward swamplings. Most would have killed you. Very possibly the boy as well.”

  Auren tilted his head, scrutinizing Lenoden with empty eye sockets. “But not Lenoden Castar. A man of your reputation would know the value of what he had found—and that my grandson would not react well to my death.” He smiled, as self-assured as a king on his throne. “I imagine that you are already calculating the time it will take to win Eroh’s trust, so that you can dispose of me. I have seen what you are willing to do to those who inconvenience you. But I can be of use to you alive; you will understand that soon enough.”

  Lenoden stroked his knuckles against his beard. He didn’t like this. Auren seemed to think that he had power here, some sort of leverage. That reminder of Prince Josen’s death had been no accident. Well, let him have his confidence. It makes no difference. He is at my mercy in every way that matters, and who would listen if he tried to betray me?

  “I have only acted to protect you and your grandson,” Lenoden said. “But if you wish to prove your use, fine. I expect you to do exactly as I ask to prepare Eroh for what comes next.”

  “Of course. I will do whatever I must.”

  Lenoden waved a hand at Auren’s pale face and tattered hides, though he didn’t know if the old man was aware of the gesture. “You are both too pale, and your clothing is wrong. Your skin must be colored, and your hair darkened. The boy’s hair, at least; you are old enough to have gone grey, I suppose. The man who brought you here will return with dyes and appropriate dress to make you look like you belong. Cooperate with him. When that is done, he will bring you to me at the Goldfort.” He looked at Eroh, still playing with his toy eagle in the corner. “My castle. That will be exciting, won’t it?”

  The boy nodded solemnly. “But can’t we just come with you now?”

  Lenoden shook his head. “I’m afraid not, Eroh. This is for your own safety. Think of it as a game, a costume to wear.”

  “We’ll be brown, like you?” Eroh peered at him, and again Lenoden had the sensation that those big gold eyes saw deeper than he wanted them to. But after a long moment, the boy just said, “I wonder what I’ll look like.”

  “It will be… interesting,” said Auren. “We will be ready when he comes.”

  “See that you are.” Lenoden stood from his chair. “I must go; there are arrangements to attend to, and a duke cannot disappear for very long without being noticed. But I will see you both soon.”

  He didn’t look back as he pulled the hatchway open once more; eagle’s eyes or absent ones, he’d seen enough of them for one day. He didn’t like how exposed they made him feel. I’ll have to accustom myself to it, eventually—I will be spending a great deal of time with that boy. But for now, he had other preparations to make.

  When Lenoden rapped a knuckle against the hatch at the far end of the passage, Tammen lifted it, and held it open while he climbed out.

  “I trust everything went well, Your Grace?”

  “Well enough. I’ll need you to bring clothing, and dyes for their skin and hair. They come from the Swamp, and they cannot look like it.” A risk, admitting that much. Tammen was not inclined to sentiment, but the swampling threat tended to rouse even the most pragmatic men. But if he’s the man I think he is, he knew before I told him, and if he can’t be trusted, this is over before it begins.

  To his credit, Tammen didn’t so much as blink at the revelation. “Easily done. I will gather what I need immediately.”

  Lenoden shook his head. “Not yet. There is something else, first.” He hesitated; there would be no turning back after this. It would be forward or nothing. And that is when I am at my best. I have the boy, I have my knights behind me, I have Rudol well in hand. This is no time for doubt. “Have a falcon sent to the high chastor in Skysreach. An urgent summons. I must speak with him before I return to the P
lateaus.” He allowed himself a small smile. “He and I have… much to discuss.”

  16. Fever Dreams

  Josen

  Josen dreamed of pain.

  He couldn’t lift his arms, could barely breathe. Something was wrong inside his chest, a throbbing pain deep in his left side. A strange smell wafted by his nose. Strange but familiar. Sickness and wildflowers. A pillow lay beneath his head, thick and soft and downy.

  He knew this place. The cushioned bed, the smell, the wilting flowers that filled dozens of vases around the room. This wasn’t the Swamp. He was in the Keep. His mother’s chambers. He felt someone take his hand; shifting his eyes took all the strength he had.

  His own face looked back at him.

  Except it wasn’t quite his face. The same messy black curls, but too young. Too sad. “Please, you can’t just let yourself die,” this other him begged. “You have to eat.” Josen remembered those words; he’d said them, once. He understood then—he was looking at himself through his mother’s eyes.

  He felt his lips move. They felt cold. The answer came out in his mother’s voice, weak and trembling. “All is as the Wind wills it, my sweet boy. We will see each other again, in the Above.”

  Always the same. At the end, she’d refused food and drink, refused to even leave her bed no matter how much he begged. And she had always given him the same answer, until she couldn’t give any answer at all.

  His hand—his mother’s hand, really, thin and fragile, brown skin lined with delicate veins—fell from his younger self’s grip. Josen watched it drop limply to the sheets, heard the boy he’d been start to sob.

  And then the boy’s hand began to change. Little spots of black appeared under the fingernails, merged and flowed up the veins toward the wrist. The darkness spread, black chitin sprouting out of veins and over skin, merging fingers into one long dark blade.

  The blade plunged into Josen’s chest.

  The throbbing in his side exploded into agony. He clutched at the blade, and saw that his hands were no longer brown, but pale as snow. Swampling hands, a woman’s, with the calluses of a warrior.

  His eyes moved up the arm that held him pinned, followed the black as it spread past the elbow, the shoulder, the neck. Met his own gaze staring back, wide-eyed, uncomprehending. He watched himself try to scream, and then the chitin flowed over the too-young face like tar, into his mouth and over his nose until only his eyes were left, huge with terror.

  And then even they were gone.

  All that remained was glossy blackness, smooth but for the shallow recesses where there had once been eyes, the low bump that suggested a nose, the round hole of a mouth with razored mandibles on either side. And in the chitin’s sheen, he saw a distorted reflection of the face he was wearing now: pale and mud-smeared, with large black eyes. The face of the woman he’d killed.

  The beetleback that had been him lunged, mandibles snapping.

  The world went dark.

  His eyes tried to adjust, devouring what little light there was. Faint and green—witchmoss, or something like it. A shiver passed through him, and another; he was freezing, but his body was drenched in sweat. He couldn’t tell where he was.

  “Take this.” A woman’s voice. Not his mother’s, but one he had heard before. A hand roughly parted his lips. He reached up to fight her, his muscles crying out their resistance as pain. But when he saw his hands, he stopped. Something was wrong.

  The skin beneath his fingernails was black.

  The woman poured something onto his tongue—bitter, but only for a moment, and then it just burned, searing all taste away. He trembled, opened his mouth to spit it out. A palm clapped across his lips and held them closed.

  “Swallow. It isn’t time for you to die yet.”

  If I have the black fever, I’m already dead. But he had no strength to resist. He swallowed, and fire flowed down his throat. The hand stayed firmly over his mouth; once again, his eyes traced up an arm to a shoulder, a neck. A pale face draped in shadows.

  Black eyes…

  He lay on his back in the Swamp, icy mud soaking through cloth and mail. Two black eyes looked down on him, bottomless pits set into a bone-white face that he didn’t know. A swampling man, with hands like claws.

  The pain in his chest was cold, a shard of ice stabbed right through the core of him. Sharp fingers pressed into his flesh, prodding, searching. Everywhere they touched, blossoms of agony bloomed beneath his skin. He tried to scream, but no sound came. He couldn’t move, couldn’t fight. The claws pierced the surface, sank into his body until they were buried up to the wrist.

  The swampling kneaded his body like clay. Bones shattered; cartilege tore with quick wet popping sounds. Rough hands shredded and pulped his muscles, moulded them into unfamiliar shapes. Organs shifted beneath his skin. The swampling cocked his head slightly, and somewhere inside Josen, a fist clenched shut, and twisted.

  The cold pain in his chest flared hot, and his body went rigid. He gasped for breath, and damp air filled his lungs. And then the scream came out, so loud that it dissolved the world around him. The Swamp swirled away like mist. Nothing was left, nothing but the face of the swampling man, watching him with those dark eyes.

  The face began to shift. Now it was Rudol, looking down on him with pity before he turned away; now Shona in her wedding gown, pain in her eyes. King Gerod on the Throne of Air, his lip curled with scorn. The white-haired boy with eagle’s eyes. The swampling he’d killed, blood flowing over her lips, and then she was the woman he’d saved in the Plateaus, black eyes staring at him in silent accusation. Time ceased to matter; there was only pain, and the people he’d disappointed. His punishment, for as long as it took. Forever.

  He screamed again.

  “Be quiet.” The vision of the swampling woman’s face leaned closer, a pale oval in the dark. She spoke in a clipped accent, with short, hurried syllables; it gave the impression that, if she had to speak, she meant to get the words out as quickly as possible. It was far more noticeable here than it had been in the Plateaus—she wasn’t trying to blend in, now. “If you don’t stop shouting, I will hurt you, do you understand?” A hand closed over his mouth once more, and a cold stone knife pressed against his cheek.

  There was something different about her touch against his skin. It felt… firm. Real.

  He blinked his eyes, and his surroundings started to clarify. Dark, still, but solid. A clump of witchmoss lay on the ground nearby, and the dim green light clung to folds and wrinkles in the walls around him. Some sort of tent, maybe. He was wrapped in what felt like hide, warm enough but rough against his skin. The earth was hard beneath him, and little stones poked uncomfortably into his back. The pain in his chest seemed lessened—not gone, and worse every time he breathed in, but almost bearable. This is real. I was dreaming but this is real. He was awake. Awake, and lying in the dark beside a woman who had dominated his dreams since the Dal’s Rest festival. And it was her, the swampling from the tavern. This time, he was certain.

  “Do you understand?” the woman asked again.

  Josen tilted his head, barely a nod—anything more and her blade would have split his cheek. After a moment the woman removed her hand and settled onto her knees beside him, keeping the knife in plain sight in her lap. The message was clear: if he did something she didn’t like, he would regret it.

  “Where am I?” Speaking made his chest ache, and his voice was barely more than a raspy whisper. It sounded like it belonged to someone else. “What happened?” His mind was clouded; everything after leaving Greenwall was a hazy outline, just out of reach, as if glimpsed through fog.

  A memory from his dream came to him, and he lifted his hands in a sudden panic. His fingernails weren’t black, but they weren’t right, either. Some were still dark in places, blotched with blood; others had fallen off entirely. The nail of his right thumb hung from the skin like a snake’s scale, half-shed. He cringed at the sight, though he couldn’t really feel the pain in his fing
ers past the throbbing in his chest.

  “The black fever,” he said. “I thought I dreamed it, but… you gave me something? Was that real?” His thoughts were still muddled, but he knew that the fever could kill even the strongest of men, and he was hardly that.

  “It was real.”

  “But there is no cure. Even Orim’s Tower hasn’t—”

  “Highlanders do not know everything there is to know.”

  Highlanders. Is that what they call us? It was strange to think of the swamplings having their own words for things; he hadn’t even known they could speak a few short turns ago.

  “How… how long has it been?”

  “Fourteen days.”

  Nearly two turns. That makes it nearly Aryll’s Rest. Impossible. And yet he was alive. He’d been lost in the black fever for fourteen days, and he’d survived. That was unheard of in the Peaks—he’d always been told that if the body didn’t fight off the fever in the first few days, it never would. I suppose I’m immune now. That’s… something, at least, if I’m stuck down here.

  “I… I should thank you,” Josen stammered. “For helping me.”

  “I have no use for your thanks.” Her big black eyes were hard to read, but there was no warmth in her voice. Josen couldn’t blame her; she’d watched one of her people die on his sword. That, he remembered. Her sister, he was almost certain now. Their faces were too similar to be anything but sisters.

  He didn’t know what else to say. He stared at her in the dark for a long time, and she stared back silently. The only sound was the shallow pant of his breath—anything deeper felt like a dagger in his chest.

  Finally, he blurted, “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt her.” Spirit of All, does that make it any better? He didn’t even know if it was true. If Castar hadn’t stepped in front of him, he would probably have defended himself, or tried to. But he stammered on anyway. “She stumbled… it was Castar, he unbalanced her somehow, and my sword was…” He closed his eyes against the memory. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t—”