by Dave Duncan
"I hope the wisp can hear your music over the noise of my teeth chattering, sir," Hamish said bravely. Meg was saying nothing at all, hovering close to Toby.
Rory hung his lute around his neck. "We'll find out."
"How can you tell which way to go?" With the others all strung to him, Toby felt like a spiderweb.
"That's up to the wisp!" Rory strummed strings to check the pitch. "Should do." He began to play a cheerful, jigging tune.
For long, shivery minutes, nothing seemed to happen. Then Toby realized that the mist had become patchy. Behind him, it remained solid, but over the marsh it was breaking up into pillars and sheets, opening gaps. Soon a faint glow flickered in the distance, a tiny candle burning on the water.
"There we are!" Rory said cheerfully and strode forward. "Our guiding beacon!" The others followed him, stepping down from the rock onto moss—soft, cold, and squelchy.
The moon must be shining somewhere overhead, but its light was diffused by the fog. The way led between pools and channels so dark that they seemed like empty space, between tufts of sedge and clumps of tall, spiky bulrushes, and through the slowly shifting coils and wraiths of mist. The twinkle of light ahead shifted; Rory changed direction. Soon it shifted again.
Somebody's teeth were chattering, providing a counterpoint to the jangle of the lute.
The muck underfoot grew softer, treacherous to walk on. Water came up over Toby's ankles, agonizingly cold. Hamish was the first to slip, going down on his seat with a splash and a cry. His rope jerked on Toby's chest. He scrambled to his feet again and they continued to trudge forward, heading for that illusive beacon glow. It receded before them, leading them on. Leading them where? Following a bogy into a bog was not a traditional mark of sanity.
The mist had begun to take on nightmare shapes: women writhing in slow and silent dances, giant faces, vague hints of ghoulies or bogeymen. They gleamed with an eldritch light of their own. Toby wondered how much was his own imagination and how much the wisp's reported sense of humor. Tangles caught at ankles, bulrushes brushed with wet fingers on shivering legs. The world had shrunk to the size of Granny Nan's cottage, enclosed in silvery fog monsters. Mud sucked harder around his feet, and slowly the cruel cold climbed higher on his shins. The footing was sludge or moss or tangled grasses, and never sure. Every step involved hauling a foot straight up before it could be moved forward. The light kept changing position until he lost all sense of direction.
Could the wisp detect his demon? Would it resent the diabolic intruder? He was sure that the hob had been gone from its grotto when he went to look for Granny Nan. If the wisp reacted that way, then Rory might march them in circles until they all froze to death. On the other hand, the demon had proved it would protect Toby Strangerson, so it was not likely to let him freeze or drown. Which was stronger—Lady Valda's demon or the bogy of Glen Orchy?
Meg cried out and disappeared completely. Toby hauled on the rope until he could grasp her arm and drag her upright, spluttering.
"All right?" Stupid, stupid question! His feet were sinking deeper as he stood there. Rory had turned to see, still strumming vigorously.
Meg shuddered. "Yes! Keep g-g-going!" Her sodden dress had fallen out of its tuck and was clinging to her slender legs.
The journey resumed, curving to the left. Water lapped around Toby's thighs and mud sucked at his feet. He was a beetle wading through cold porridge. Everyone's teeth were chattering now.
Rory's suggestion that Lady Valda had expected Toby to escape was an unwelcome complication that he should have thought of for himself. It was certainly plausible, for surely a hexer as powerful as everyone said she was ought not to have botched a conjuration so badly.
She had not explained her real motives. He had no idea why she had gone to all the trouble of demonizing him. To believe that she wanted him as an incubus would be stupid vanity, and he did not doubt Rory's statement that she could bewitch any man she wanted. Surely love charms did not require daggers and self-mutilation and bowls of blood—those must be gramarye of deeper, darker purpose. Why go to so much trouble over the big Highland lad? She must have been playing for higher stakes than just a prizefighter or a very questionable gigolo.
Tendrils of mist floated over the water like glowing fingers. Here and there they seemed brighter than they should be, and not matched to their reflections in the dark mirrored surface below. He could see three or four lights now, and he wondered how Rory knew which one to follow.
The water was up to his crotch. He glanced back and saw both Meg and Hamish waist-deep and struggling. The cold was making his whole body tremble. The lute sang a wild lament.
Rory had hinted that there might be a hex on Toby, but had he guessed about a demon? Predictably, he was fleeing from the glen, heading for the rebels in the hills. In a sense, he was a loaded gun that could fire at any moment. Who was the intended target? King Fergan?
Without warning, his feet slid from under him and he plunged into icy, inky blackness. He struggled upright, coughing and cursing and spitting. His mouth tasted of swamp and the water hurt in his nose. Now he was wet all over—his hair, his pack. He rescued his bonnet and tucked it in his belt. Cold was driving deep into his body, and he was the largest of all of them. How much of this could little Meg stand?
Two eyes glowed at him. He shied away and almost fell again before he remembered Rory's warning. The wisp was playing tricks. The eyes drifted apart and became just two globes of fire. Then three. A dark shape threatened amid the bulrushes. Giant worms writhed, pallid faces grimaced.
"Go faster!" he shouted. "We're all freezing!"
"Daren't!" Rory shouted, still strumming. "If I fall, we're done for."
Splash, splish. . . The lute sang discordantly, hitting unexpected pitches, dissonant trills. A face with glowing red eyes and green teeth loomed out of the mist. Toby waved an arm through it, dissolving it into streamers.
Silence. Rory had stopped moving and stopped playing. The water was up to his waist. "This is bad! In case you haven't guessed, we're, in deep trouble."
"We're getting deeper just standing here!" Toby snapped. "Play on. Move!"
Their leader was barely visible in the darkness. "I was never this deep last night. The wisp is playing with us!"
Or the wisp was trying to kill them. It didn't like demons in its swamp? Monstrous white shapes moved in the darkness, glowing with more than moonlight. The very silence was menacing.
"We haven't much t-t-time, sir," Hamish wailed.
"Which light do you fancy? That one? Or that one? Let's try the green one, shall we?" Rory shrugged and began playing again, picking his way forward through the cruel, cold water.
The mud sucked harder. Their progress had slowed to a snail's crawl. Every step was a struggle to pull up a foot, balance in the sludge on the other leg, move the foot forward without tipping over, find bottom again . . . Toby could not feel his toes at all, which did not help.
Meg submerged with hardly a splash, but he felt the tug. He hauled in the line, dragging her to him. He scooped her up in his arms. She and her pack together weighed more than he expected, but she was a frozen, trembling waif. She coughed and gasped and clung to him. Now he could no longer keep a grip on the line to Rory. He sank deeper with every step. The muddy bottom sucked at his knees. Hamish's head went under and then reappeared, gasping that it was all right.
The music twanged painfully and stopped. Rory had gone. Toby almost overbalanced as the rope yanked him forward.
Then Rory came up right in front of him, his face plastered with mud and wet hair. "That's it!" he said hoarsely, between coughs. "I've lost the lute. The wisp won't cooperate without music. Sorry, children, but there's going to be four more ghoulies playing in the fog."
The glittering marsh monsters drifted closer. Every direction looked the same, the stars were hidden, and the cold was eating into bones. No sound except chattering teeth and thumping heart...
Demon! I'm dying!
"Well, we can go faster without that damnable lute!" he said. "Follow me. Swim, or float on your backs. I'll tow you." Demon? Which way? Taking the lines over his shoulders, he plunged forward without waiting for argument.
He turned to the sound of the beat, clawing through sedge and bulrushes. No occult lavender glow came to lighten his path. The wisp's mocking beacons twinkled in red and green and blue, but he could barely see anything for the vegetation splattering water in his eyes. He felt no surge of demonic strength—this was Toby Strangerson fighting this battle, fighting for his life. Every few minutes he would pause and listen, locating that elusive thump, but to stop moving was to freeze, to sink deeper. Weeds clutched at his legs; the combined burden of Meg and his broadsword was driving him down. Rory and Hamish struggled along behind him, half wading, half floating, offering little resistance except when he had to pull them through tangles of sedge.
Dum . . . Dum . . . Why so faint? Why no demonic power? Was the bogy keeping the demon at bay? Were the two spirits locked in battle? Or was he imagining some foolish echo of his heart, struggling around in circles in the dark? Glowing faces bared fangs at him. His blood coursed and his lungs were bursting, but at least he must be warmer than the others. Would he arrive at the shore towing three corpses?
Ah! The ground was firmer and the water was down to his waist. The mist brightened overhead, taking on a sheen of moonlight.
"Almost there!" he yelled, and lost his footing as he trod on a painfully sharp stick. He went down in a bed of knives, it seemed, swallowed half the swamp, and struggled to his feet, helping Meg up. As he wiped the water from his eyes he saw the guards, a crowd of skeletal shapes looming out of the haze, arms spread to bar mortal intruders.
Rory was upright, teeth chattering wildly. "I know this part, it's a drowned forest. It's near the west shore, but we'll never get through it. Which way round? Left or right?"
Toby listened. Silence?
Rory cupped his hands and bellowed into the darkness: "Jeral? Cruachan!"
"Shut up!" Toby barked. "Be quiet."
More silence, just Hamish's chattering teeth—no, a faint dum ... Dum ...
"This way. Come on!" He scooped Meg up and set off again, letting the others wade behind or float as they could. The cold seemed to burn, it hurt so much. The water was below his waist now, yet he could move no faster, for the bottom was a tangle of branches and roots, hard and sharp. Deeper water would have helped to support his weight. Every muscle shuddered convulsively. Moonlight glowed brighter; pale wraiths floated between the dead white trees. The guardians seemed intent on barring the way to shore until the intruders froze to death, and surely that ending could not be many minutes off.
Almost without realizing, he had left the swamp and was scrabbling over a litter of driftwood, stumbling up a shingle bank, dragging the others behind him. Fire! He must have fire! If the water had penetrated his tinderbox, they were all going to die anyway.
Then his head came level with the land, and he saw light in the darkness—real flames, and none of the wisp's fox fire. A few hundred paces or so along the shore, someone was waving a lantern.
Rory shouted, "Cruachan!" again, and a faint cry responded, "Cruachan!"
5
The cottage was very small, just four dry-stone walls roofed with branches and sod. Meg was the only one who could stand erect in it. There was no chimney, no covering for the doorway, and one corner of the roof had collapsed, but a heap of peat glowed in the center, giving at least the illusion of warmth. At some time in the past it had been used for livestock, yet it was shelter from the night, and the travelers huddled gratefully around the fire to thaw.
The man named Jeral had disappeared. Rory had sent him off somewhere, and Toby found that troublesome. Someone had cleaned out this little hovel and covered the floor with rushes to make it habitable, but not recently. That was even more worrying.
Four faces gleamed faintly in the firelight. The shivering had mostly stopped. Wet wool steamed.
"Are we safe from the bogy here, sir?" Meg inquired.
"Probably." Rory eyed Toby thoughtfully. "I expect it's busy burying my lute. It's probably forgotten all about us, and it never worries overmuch about dry land things anyway. I would like to know why it took such a scunner to us."
Meg missed the implications of that dangerous question. "Where are we, then?"
"We're in Glen Orchy, still. A few miles down we'll get to Strath of Orchy and Dalmally, but we can worry about that in the morning."
Poor Master Rory had lost his fine shoes; his feet stuck out of the remains of his socks. Pity poor Master Rory!
Toby was thinking about trees. There were trees here. Trees implied an absence of people to turn them into lumber or firewood. No people meant no roads, no traffic. No one came through the haunted glen. But Rory did, and Rory now wore a black feather in his bonnet. The rebels had a shelter here that the English did not know about. The Jeral man had been sent off somewhere—possibly to fetch help.
Secrets were dangerous in time of war.
"I've been to Strath of Orchy!" Hamish announced. "That's where Kilchurn Castle is, and the laird's name is Hamish!"
Rory grunted. "Lord Hamish—Hamish Campbell, foster brother to the earl of Argyll."
The boy pulled a face. "How will you get by Kilchurn Castle, then, sir? It guards Pass of Brander, where the road's squeezed between the cliffs and the water—"
"We begin by hoping there are no Sassenachs there. Then we worry about Campbell traitors."
"But... you can see Ben Cruachan from Dalmally."
That innocent-seeming remark caused MacDonald of Glencoe to turn and stare at the boy. "What of it?"
Hamish flinched. "Nothing, sir! ... Ma says I talk too much."
"Sensible woman."
Hamish subsided, shooting one of his owlish looks at Toby—meaning he thought he knew something that Toby was too stupid to work out for himself.
Rory turned his attention back to Toby. "You haven't explained how you managed to lead us out of the bog."
"I have a good sense of direction."
"A superhuman sense of direction? You escape from dungeons, from hexers, from bogies? You have more lives than a cat!"
"I hope so."
The rebel wanted to know what had vexed the wisp, how a mortal man had found his way out in the dark. Was the young fugitive merely a spy, or was he one of Lady Valda's demonic creatures? Let him wonder! Toby did not know the answers himself.
Hamish yawned. Meg caught the infection.
"May as well sleep," Rory announced, but he did not move. "Miss Campbell is bound for Oban. You, lad?"
"Pa told me to go and stay with Cousin Murray in Glen Shira. The keeper of the shrine of Glen Shira."
Rory snorted. "Old Murray Campbell? You know him?"
"No, sir."
"You have an interesting experience in store, then. And you, Man Mountain? Wither goest thou, Big Man?" He raised sandy eyebrows, waiting for Toby's reaction. He was not actually sneering; he just seemed to, because of his eagle-beak nose.
"I promised to see Meg safely to Oban, and then—"
"That was very rash of you, Longdirk. You're not really up to being a reliable protector with your history of blundering into trouble." Rory was still dropping hints about demons, but he wasn't sure. "Suppose I come along to hold your hand and we get her there between us, what then?"
Yesterday morning, Vik Tanner had tried to make Toby lose his temper. Baiting had not worked then. It would not work now.
"Then I'm going to travel and see the world."
Be a prizefighter and win large amounts of money.
"Mm? Travel where? To the Lowlands? To England? There must be a price on your head by now, you k
now. An insultingly small one, I expect, but every penny counts, as they say. You're not the sort to disappear into a crowd— not unless you walk on your knees, that is. How do you plan to feed that oversized carcass of yours?"
"Honest work."
"Digging ditches?" The sneer was undeniable now. "You're an ignorant country lout who won't last a week in the real world."
Meg looked shocked, Hamish owlishly worried.
"That isn't your problem," Toby said steadily. Demons would be, though.
"Lady Valda is. Besides, you intrigue me, Shoulders. The Sassenachs are hunting you; you killed one of them. You seem to have courage, unless it's all stupidity. Why aren't you planning to join Fergan, your rightful king?"
Toby eyed the fingers of red fire caressing the peat. "The brave Black Feathers? Tell me what you're fighting for."
Rory MacDonald considered Toby for a long moment before he answered. "For freedom. To clear our land of the oppressors. For our own ways, for our families, for justice."
Toby adopted what he hoped was an expression of amused cynicism. "Freedom, you say? One lord is much like another. I have no land, I have no family, and I'll believe in justice when I see it. Your fight is not mine, Rory MacDonald of Glencoe." He could add much more— that King Fergan was a rebel only because he had broken the oath of allegiance to King Nevil; that the wars were always started by the Scots and won by the English; that the English paid their troops, which the rebels did not. . . but he had said more than enough already.
The rebel was scowling. "You support the English?"
"No. Just a neutral."
"There are no neutrals in this war."
"My father was an Englishman."
"From what I was told, you can never know who your father was."
Evidently Meg had been yattering.
Toby turned himself so he had space to lie down— there would not be much room for four. He unfastened his pin and rearranged his damp plaid into a bedroll. Hamish copied him. Meg began fussing with her cloak with the same end in view. Only Rory continued to sit upright, apparently waiting for an answer.
