by Ian Irvine
“What a woman! She is unarmed, has no powers, just a bit of a talent, yet she’s got away. When all this is over I could enjoy—” Seeing the Whelm’s expressions he kept the rest to himself. They could never be generous to an enemy—he knew they wanted to torment and crush Karan, to utterly expunge this defeat. Something close to contempt for him showed on their faces. How much longer could he rely on them?
“Help me back up,” Yggur said. “Bring my boat.”
It was already dark outside. They searched the estuary from boats and the shoreline for half a league east and west of the place where the sewer came out. Not a trace did they find of Karan. Some went back underground, others down the shore to the fishing villages, or hunted down and searched the fishing boats and the smuggler’s vessels.
Now it was late and there was still Maigraith to question. Yggur signed for the boat to turn back. They rowed up into a creek that was close to the perimeter path.
“Stop! What’s that?” said Yggur, pointing up the creek to what looked like a gray log on the mud. “Hold the lantern higher.”
Two Whelm loped up. Yggur limped after them. The log turned out to be Idlis, clad only in a loincloth.
Yggur looked down at Idlis. The sight of the Whelm unclad disgusted him—the anorexic thick-jointed limbs, the protruding ribs, the spatulate fingers and toes, the fish-belly skin that burned even in the weakest morning sun. The black eyes that must also be shielded. At times he hated himself for keeping them, would not have but that they were so obedient, so dogged, so frightening.
Someone turned Idlis over. He groaned and heaved up mouthfuls of black mud and mucus. A grid pattern of bruises and lacerations covered his torso and one leg; his hatchet nose was bloody. He had hit the grating outside the sewer doors very hard.
A hatful of water was flung at his face. Idlis moaned and tried to get up.
“What happened to Karan?” asked Yggur coldly.
“Followed her, far as I could,” Idlis choked. “Already I told—” His eyes crossed, tongue clove to the roof of his mouth and he flopped back down.
“I haven’t—” Yggur began. His mind raced. “A compulsion! Search this place,” he cried. “Vartila, find out what happened here.”
A bony woman with gray hair to her shoulders knelt in the mud and put her hands on Idlis’s head.
“Master!” a shout from down the creek.
Yggur hobbled down.
“See, bootprints,” said the Whelm. “Someone dragged him up from the water. Spoke to him here, then went that way. Then Idlis crawled up there.”
Shortly Yggur knew how Idlis had been questioned and what he had said. An outside accomplice was his first thought, but an accomplice would not have asked those questions. This had the mark of Mendark.
Idlis was beginning to recover. “Fix his injuries,” barked Yggur. “Give him some robes and go after Karan. You three, after the spy. I’ll come with you a little way. Vartila, you begin with Maigraith.” Then in afterthought, wondering why as soon as he had spoken: “I would not have her harmed.”
Was it coincidence that the two parties had arrived here at the same time; and the guards were distracted just in time for the intruders to go over the wall? Possible but unlikely. Could Faelamor and Mendark be in league? Also improbable, but the Histories told of stranger alliances. And it would be a difficult one for him to combat.
This spy intrigued and bothered him too. It must be Tallia, the best of Mendark’s lieutenants and the only one who had heard the sound of his voice. What a blow it would be if he could take her. He sent one of his guards running back for the dogs.
Yggur followed the tracks for some time but learned little new. Finally he turned back to the estuary and sought out the Whelm who were searching for Karan. They found nothing until the early morning. Near the mouth of a tiny creek less than a thousand paces from the sewer they came upon a single small footprint in the mud, where in her weariness Karan had wandered out of the stream and the sluggish tide had not come in far enough to wash the mark away.
Yggur inspected the print. It was quite distinct, a small foot, of a small woman or a child. It need not have been Karan but he knew it was, for the people of the villages had wide feet with splayed toes. Even the children had broader feet than these and they did not go barefoot at this time of year.
“It is Karan,” he said, calmly now. “She has gone into the forest.”
He gave the rest of the hunt their instructions and turned back to Fiz Gorgo to interrogate Maigraith. Another mystery, another challenge.
Clouds came up and rolled away again. The sun came out. The Whelm donned their eye shields of carved bone against the glare, adjusted the slits so they could see, pulled their hoods low over their faces and pressed on with the hunt.
9
* * *
LOST IN
THE SWAMP
Karan woke, warm for the first time in days. She stretched and thought of breakfast, but all she had in her little pack was wet bread and muddy, moldy cheese. The bread was horrible, a soggy pulp. She cut off a piece of cheese and, scraping off the mud with the edge of her knife, regarded it warily. The cheese had a strange flavor, the pungency of crushed ants mixed with the stench of sweaty boots. Even before Fiz Gorgo she had found it barely edible, but it was all they could get in Orist.
She chewed the mess, considering. Maigraith had carried most of the food. No way of getting more here, where no one lived. Wild food was scarce anywhere at the end of autumn, save nuts, but there were no nuts in the swamp forest. Doubtless there were edible plants, but the country and the flora were foreign to her, and after an experiment on the way in that had left her lips and tongue numb for half a day she was reluctant to try again. She had nothing to fish with either. What food she had was enough for two mean days, but Neid was at least three days away. There was food there, where they’d left their heavy packs, though it was scarcely better than what she had. But what if Yggur had learned of Neid? She shivered.
Black eyes glared through the slitted bone. The sun made dazzling reflections on the water, hurting Idlis’s eyes despite the shields. His battered body throbbed, though that was easier to endure than the shame of his failure. He dipped a leaf-shaped blade, thrust, and the prow of the canvas boat parted the reeds and glided into the adjacent channel with the barest rustle. Indeed she was cunning—but not cunning enough. There were signs. A handprint on the bank; a V-shape through the rushes. Soon he would redeem himself.
Karan repacked her pack. In spite of what was behind and what lay ahead she felt good-humored today. Yesterday had done a lot for her. So good it was to be alive, to have beaten such an enemy, that she felt positively cheerful in the sun; not discouraged by the hard hungry days ahead, not really daunted by the filth of the mire.
Then she looked down at herself and laughed wryly. Her trousers were caked with dried mud that flaked off with every movement. Her feet were gray with mud, there was mud under her nails, in her hair, up her nose. She stank, the sulphurous odor of swamp mud and the foulness of sewer water. She had not changed her clothes in a week. Disgusting!
Catching sight of her face in the Mirror, Karan quickly put it back in its inner pocket and buttoned the flap down. She was not ready to tackle that problem yet. Humming softly to herself, she settled the pack on her back and set off.
But she’d only taken a few steps before a shiver went up her spine; a chill, even though she was standing in bright sunlight. Karan stopped but her talent told her nothing. It might have been nothing. The talent could be unreliable, sometimes capricious, as it had often been in her mother’s family.
Brilliant or mad are the house of Fyrn. How often had she heard that in her childhood? Not least about her mother Vuula, a lyrist of genius who had abandoned her instrument for that disgraceful liaison with Karan’s father. After Galliad’s death Vuula had lost her mind completely. And of Basunez too, her grandsire of twenty-odd generations back. He had been brilliant and mad too, first making the fort
une of his house, then squandering it on a succession of conceits, not least the absurdity of Carcharon, that extraordinary, extravagant construction, half-fastness, half-folly, set on the highest pinnacle of a barren, frigid and windswept ridge in the mountains beyond Gothryme. All the necessities for existence had to be carried there on the backs of laborers. There he had lived and there he had died: mad; lonely; alone.
The sun came though the trees on her face, as she crossed through a patch of reeds and found firm mud beside the channel. What was that? The note died on her lips. She froze.
The long head turned slowly. Reeds rushed across his lensshaped field of vision and there she was, a smear against the white of a dead tree. A momentary surprise—surely this filthy wretch could not be the thief he had pursued for so long? She barely came up to his shoulder. She was trembling, mesmerized by him. Her curly red hair, bright as a flame, stood on end and stirred in the breeze, a sight he found unpleasant. Her knees were small, her ankles slender, her fingers long and tapering; her bones could not be seen through the skin. Hideous creature!
Idlis got out of the boat, not taking his eyes off her, as though his will was enough to keep her there. He stepped carefully onto the shore; his limbs moved in jerky arcs. There was a long-handled battle axe in his belt—broad curving blades and a spike between.
“Who are you?” She spoke in a dismal voice.
“I am Whelm,” the man replied. “Idlis is my name.” His speech might have been filtered through a mouthful of tar. His face was like his axe: arching sharp nose, narrow chin, hard slit of a mouth, black eyes.
Karan trembled. Terror has taken away her courage, he thought. His long arms reached out, the bony fingers spread to grip the pathetic thing.
But she was no longer there. She moved more quickly than his blinkered eyes could follow, easily avoided the flailing arms, and catching at his gray cold shanks, wrenched his legs from under him. Idlis felt terror for the first time in his life—she could have held him down till he suffocated. But she did not While he cleared the mud from his eyes, supporting himself on the prow of the boat, she leapt into the channel and swam with violent strokes beyond his sight.
Idlis waded out into the channel, washed clean the eye shields and called to the other Whelm. His planar face showed nothing, but a student of the Whelm would have noted that his movements were more fluid, as though fury had lubricated his rough joints, and every aspect of his motion showed his rage, his humiliation and his malice.
That was just the beginning of her nightmare. Wading through mud and reeds, every touch reminded her of the texture of his skin. It had been rubbery, like something dead. And over and again her talent revisited the image that Yggur had threatened her with: the tongue of a dead dog sliding up her backbone. Her earlier optimism was revealed to be foolish pride, her previous successes just blind good fortune. Her fortune had turned now. The day dragged on and with every hour she felt more driven, more inadequate, more hopeless.
On she fled, through a swamp forest that was endless, ever the same. It consisted solely of sard trees, giants with bulbous bases sprouting multiple trunks. The pale layered bark, soft as a child’s skin, hung down in sheets long enough to form a writing scroll. There had been several bark scrolls in Yggur’s library, she recalled. Far above, the strap leaves filtered sunlight to silver.
If she could just get to Lake Neid, food, clean clothing and the guide awaited her. In her mind she made the rancid cheese and stale bread into a banquet; the depraved smuggler became a savior. Maybe, against hope, Maigraith would be there as well. Even Maigraith could be forgiven for so manipulating her, if only she were waiting.
Karan still couldn’t believe that Maigraith had allowed herself to be taken. She was normally so strong and singleminded. But as soon as she had looked at the Mirror she was captivated, as if what she saw there outweighed her duty to her mistress, or even her own safety. Even more staggering was how she had reacted to Yggur. Maigraith, who to Karan’s knowledge had never looked at any man, seemed to have felt empathy for him.
Three days to Neid. But that was from Fiz Gorgo. Since then the Whelm had driven her the other way, deeper into their environment. It must be further now. Water and mud had been her existence for more than a week. Her feet seemed to be rotting in her boots.
Sometimes the Whelm were closer, sometimes further back, but always there. She could not rid herself of them, no matter how she tried.
She took off her boots and trousers, the better to swim. She swam up tiny creeks and across bottomless lakes; across still ponds the color of tea, leaving no trace. They soon found her again.
She crawled through bogs, parting each rush with care, replacing it carefully once she had passed. In clinging mud she stood still as a shag, then moved a few lean spans before stopping still again. The mud was thick and sticky, clinging to her boots in layers that made it difficult to walk, though several times she stepped without warning into mire as soft and slippery as jelly and sank instantly to her hips. This muck sucked so powerfully that it could take ten minutes to get free; once she lost her boots in it and it took half an hour to dig mem out again. And all day she watched the snakes skimming across the surface of the marsh, admiring their economical grace and their venom.
Now she stirred. The ooze sucked at her feet. Every movement sent tickling bubbles up her legs, bubbles that popped on the surface, releasing a gas foul as rotting eggs.
Suddenly she felt weak: dizzy and sick. Something was wrong; the water moved strangely about her legs; her feet were numb. She slipped and fell; brown water washed over her face. It took an effort of will just to come to her feet again, and her heart was pounding. She dragged herself out of the water onto an island of mud, looked down and almost vomited with disgust.
Her legs were thickly clustered with leeches. Dozens of mem dangled from the soft skin at the back of her knees, as many again on her feet and ankles; they clung to her thighs, her calves, even between her toes. Already they were purple and swollen, many as big as her thumb. Threads of blood ran down her legs from a myriad of little punctures. She gripped the largest, revolted by the pulpy feel, and tried to pull it off. It would not come—it was surprisingly tough, but eventually broke in an explosion of blood and hung down behind her knee like a burst balloon.
Salt or fire would make them let go. But she had no salt and could not risk fire. So many bites, they were sure to get infected. Her sensitive side explored that possibility, dragging herself on gangrenous legs, black and bloated…
There was a shout across the channel, an answering shout behind. Karan slid off the bank into the water. The marsh whirled; even in the cold water her skin burned. The leeches wavered back and forth as she moved, tugging gently at her skin, then she was inside a pocket of reeds. Looking back she saw her marks on the shore, and blood as well.
That day was the worst that she could imagine. The Whelm quartered the area, calling to one another all around. Too dizzy to stand, Karan clung to the reeds for support while the leeches bled her life away. The blood in the water brought more of them—one time she ran her hand down her thigh and felt hundreds, and then she was sick, retching silently and miserably into the water.
The air was thick with mud flies, tiny green flies that bit like a hot wire and left welts on the skin that throbbed for days. They crept into her ears, her nose, beneath tightly buttoned cuffs and even into her thick and mud-caked hair. In desperation she smeared her face and neck with stinking mud, but still they burrowed through her hair and clothing until no part of her remained unbitten.
Then they were near again. She could see the Whelm across the channel, searching the mud islands one by one. As she watched them she felt, with indescribable horror, something big slide across her foot. Its skin had a slippery texture; it undulated around her ankle, over the toes of her other foot. Thick as her calf it seemed, as long as her leg.
Idlis was only a few paces away. She dared not move. Was it an eel, or a snake? It touched her toes, a ge
ntle tugging of the skin. It was between her ankles, tugging again, the slippery skin caressing her calves, her knees, tweaking, nibbling; then with a flick of its tail, prickling the back of her knee, it was gone.
The sun went down. The mud flies disappeared and the Whelm, by some miracle, were moving away. Or were they just waiting for her to move? How did they track her anyway? She recalled Maigraith’s warning: being sensitive, you must be specially careful of the Whelm. There had not been time to find out what she had meant. Could they find her because of her talent? She might shut it off, if she knew how, but that would be cutting off the only thing that kept her ahead of them. Karan resolved to wring all emotion out of her life, to feel nothing, to care about nothing but getting to Neid. Let them try and track her then!
Maybe it was not her they tracked but the Mirror. The temptation to drop it into the mire was very strong. No, surely it could not be enchanted, else they would not have lost her again. Anyway, she would not take the easy way out.
The twilight lingered. Mosquitoes came out. They were not as bad as the mud flies, but it added to the torment. She stood in the water and tried to practice stoicism. Something stung her on the eyelid, a pain like a needle prick. Don’t react! she told herself as her eyelid swelled. Endure the pain!
When it was nearly dark Karan came cautiously out of the swamp and inspected herself. All the leeches were gone and most of their bites had stopped bleeding. She took the eel as an omen; not everything was against her. Don’t feel that too deeply either!
Two days had gone by, since fleeing Yggur’s library. She was further away from Lake Neid than she had been this morning. There was no possibility of making the rendezvous with Maigraith, even if she had escaped.
With a twinge of guilt Karan realized that she had given no thought to Maigraith’s plight. From this distance she could not remake the link to find out if she had escaped, but Karan knew in her heart that Maigraith had not.
