«Down there by that tree,» I said to Hezekiah. «Blast the berk.»
Hezekiah cranked the grinder and let loose a stream of dust with all the pressure of the main jet in the Great Fountain of Sigil. The whiteness of the dust showered down over the fiend's head, clearly outlining the creature's form – we could see that it was bent over some sort of black-glinting orb and chanting an invocation. The spray of dust didn't interrupt the creature's attempt at casting a spell… but the subsequent fire did. The umbral's body flared with the fierce white brightness of a sun, sending its fellow fiends shrieking to cover their eyes. In a split second, the umbral dissipated into ash; and the orb it had been holding fell to the muddy ground with a dull thud.
«Now can we talk?» I called down to them.
«Talk, yesssssssss,» one of the other umbrals replied in a whisper. It rubbed its eyes furiously, trying to recover from the blinding burst of their comrade's incineration. «We like talking. Very friendly umbrals, yessssssss.»
Yasmin gave a snort of disgust. «The first step in diplomacy,» she muttered, «is always getting their attention.»
* * *
As far as I could tell, only one of the creatures was capable of speech; the rest simply stared at us with huge hollow eyes, their hands constantly flexing as if they longed to imbed their claws into our flesh. I noticed Kiripao's hands were doing much the same thing, eager to break a few umbral heads… but he restrained himself while I spoke with the fiend leader.
«We don't want any trouble,» I told the chief shadow, «we just want to get back home.»
«Where isssssss home?»
«Sigil. Are there any portals nearby?»
«Portalsss. Portalssssssss.» The umbral tucked a claw under its chin and made a show of pondering the question with great seriousness. «No portalsssssss here.»
Kiripao growled. «He's lying – every umbral village has a portal in the center.»
«No, no,» the speaker said. «Our people very poor. No portalssssss.»
«There must be other villages nearby,» Miriam suggested.
«Not friendly villagesss. Wicked, greedy sssshadowsss. Sssteal your sssoulsssss.»
«Like you tried to do,» Yasmin muttered.
«Sssss'sssop very young,» the umbral shrugged. «Impulsssive. Not friendly like ussss.» It smiled an unconvincing smile and took a step up the hill. Hezekiah gestured with the grinder, and the speaker backed up quickly.
«If you don't know where to find a portal,» I said, «we have nothing else to say to you. Push off.»
«Oh, oh, oh,» the chief fiend replied. «Jussst remembered. A portal, yessss. A portal to Ssssigil.»
«What a remarkable coincidence,» Yasmin murmured.
«Yessssss, lovely portal,» the umbral continued. «Not far away.»
«A portal to Sigil?» Hezekiah repeatedly eagerly.
«Lovely clean portal, jussst your sssizzze. Lead you to it.»
«It's a trap,» Kiripao whispered.
«I never would have guessed,» Yasmin replied.
«Even if it is a trap,» Wheezle said softly, «perhaps we should accept their offer.»
«Are you barmy?» Miriam snapped.
«I know something of umbrals,» Wheezle replied. «They are greedy creatures… greedy to trap our souls in those orbs they carry. If we try to force them away, they will almost certainly attack.»
«And we would fight back,» Kiripao answered.
«They outnumber us. If they won the battle, all of our souls would be trapped in gems forever, cut off from rightful death.» Wheezle shuddered for a moment, then continued. «Even if we managed to kill them all, we would surely have our own casualties… and I do not think any of us wishes to die on a Lower Plane. Souls seldom escape from these planes, even in death – we would be reborn as mindless things of evil.»
Kiripao gazed at Wheezle with narrowed eyes. «You want to go along with these creatures because you are afraid to fight.»
«Honored brother,» Wheezle replied, «why not go along with them until we see a clear chance for escape? We are too exposed here. We have nowhere to run.»
The gnome had a point: if push came to shove, our muddy rise of land gave us the advantage of higher ground, but it was exposed and visible to all the surrounding territory. I'd learned enough from my father's stories to know that swamps in the Lower Planes are nasty places, filled with lurking vipers, stalkers made of ooze, and plants that suddenly lash their branches around your neck. Did we want to stay in plain sight with such threats slithering out there in the muck? On top of that, I wanted to get away posthaste from the portal at our backs – nothing more than a decrepit stone arch covered with clots of moss, but as soon as Rivi found a whistle to open the gate, she and an army of wights would come charging into this plane to retrieve the grinder. By the time that happened, we had to be long gone.
«All right,» I called to the umbrals. «Show us this portal of yours… but no tricks.»
«Tricksss? Tricksssssss? No play tricksss on friendsss… promisssssssse.»
For some reason, that didn't reassure me.
* * *
We kept our distance from the fiends, giving them a lead of about thirty paces. «Keep peery,» I told the others, as if they needed the advice. «We grab any chance of escape that presents itself, and we watch for any sign of a trap.»
«What kind of trap?» Hezekiah asked.
I patted his shoulder. «Let's watch for every kind of trap, shall we?»
But that was easier said than done. The swamp was filled with rustles and slithers, with bogs of quicksand and shrubs sporting poison-drenched thorns. For the umbrals, this was home: they knew where they could step and where they couldn't, which snakes were harmless and which would strike if you walked within range. The rest of us had no such knowledge; and with each step along the muddy trail, my nervous tension screwed up another notch.
Approaching a patch of blooms whose smell made my head spin… were they giving off dangerous gas, or just a cloying perfume? And that clacking sound to the right… tree branches knocking together in the breeze, or a monster sharpening its claws? Every ripple in every pool… every drop of mist falling from the leaves overhead… every insect suddenly buzzing past our ears… we jumped at everything. Kiripao snapped his nunchakus at unknown phantoms; Yasmin plunged her sword into the undergrowth once or twice a minute, never telling us what she had seen; and even Hezekiah was jumpy, yelping at every odd gurgle of water, every croak from a frog.
My nerves were just as strained as my friends', but I concentrated on the umbrals, not creeping menace from the swamp itself. The fiends seemed in high spirits, conversing with each other in a language that consisted of hisses and hand gestures. From time to time they actually laughed, with a throaty sound like a dog being strangled. Whatever «tricksss» they had up their sleeve, they were obviously congratulating themselves at the cleverness of their plan.
This umbral snickering continued as they led us past a dozen black-water pools. After an hour or so, the tree cover thinned as the ground grew damper; and about a league ahead there appeared an honest-to-goodness river, perhaps ten paces wide. Trying to get a good view of that river, I almost missed something important closer to home: the fiends had stopped laughing.
In fact, they had stopped talking altogether – no hissing and none of the intricate hand gestures that made up their form of speech. They clutched their wings tight to their bodies, and they walked with a cautious, silent delicacy, like cats picking their way through mud. Why? I waved the others to a halt, placed a finger to my lips, and squinted carefully ahead.
Although there were no trees nearby, the path was still bordered by scrubby bushes, most of them reminiscent of nettles and burdock. At this very moment, however, the umbrals were passing three bushes that stood out from the rest: taller and fuller than the others, with leaves that had a soft reddish tinge to their green. The front fiend kept his gaze glued tightly to the bushes as he drew near them, and his pace grew even
more cautious. Clearly, our «friendsss» intended to pass those bushes with the utmost silence… so just for the sake of interest, I pulled out a whistle from the Glass Spider and blew an ear-piercing blast.
With the force of an explosion, all three bushes expelled a barrage of white-wood flechettes, V-shaped thorns whizzing through the air. The fiends were mowed down like wheat, reaped by a thousand tiny scythes. Shreds of shadow were ripped from their bodies and scattered over the bulrushes behind them, black clots flung across the green.
The leaders of the party fell butchered without a single sound. The ones farther back, partly protected by their fellows, didn't die immediately, but uttered breathy little shrieks as the projectiles cut through their bodies. They shouldn't have made such noise – it stirred the bushes to shoot another fusillade, thorns imbedding themselves in shadow flesh, shadow wings, shadow eyes. The umbrals fell in tatters, their bodies perforated like moth-eaten clothes.
«Quickly,» Wheezle shouted, «we must get to them now! We must perform the proper death rites.»
«Don't be barmy,» Yasmin snapped. «We can't get close to those bushes.»
«We must!» Wheezle repeated. «Keep blowing the whistle, honored Cavendish. The plants cannot shoot thorns forever.»
And the little gnome was right: the bushes' supply of ammunition was limited. When I blew the whistle again, the responding volley of flechettes was smaller than the first two bursts. Three more whistles and the attacks had dribbled out; I gave another two toots just for safety's sake, but by then Wheezle was urging Yasmin to run full speed toward the slaughtered fiends. «The death rites are crucial!» he kept shouting.
«Dustmen,» Yasmin muttered and made a face. But she bounded into a sprint down the muddy path, goaded on by Wheezle shouting, «Faster, faster!»
The rest of us jogged along behind, wondering what could send Wheezle into such a tizzy. It didn't surprise me he knew the death rites for umbrals – Dustmen study the sentient races of the multiverse, just to know how to bury each one. On the other hand, I had witnessed dozens of deaths since I met Wheezle, from the Collectors incinerated by the exploding giant, to the Fox and all the others we'd killed inside the Glass Spider; our gnome had shown no urgent need to give them a proper send-off. He hadn't even offered a prayer for Oonah… so why did he care about monsters who'd tried to have us julienned by vegetables?
The moment Yasmin reached the closest fiend, Wheezle demanded to be set down. Quickly, he plunged his hand into the umbral's belt pouch and pulled out a dark sphere about the size of a walnut – twin to the gem-like orb we'd seen before, the one used by the umbral who tried to steal our souls at the portal. Raising the orb in his hand, Wheezle called out, «Come, beloved, to your —»
Yasmin clamped a hand over his mouth. «No magic, Wheezle! You're covered with dust – it's too dangerous.»
«This is not magic, honored Handmaid. I am simply calling a soul that may yet be lingering near this body.»
«Using that gem was magic before. Remember a certain umbral bursting into flames?»
«The umbral was attempting to steal a soul against our will; such theft does require magic. However, showing a soul that we have a receptacle available for habitation… that is not magic. The soul chooses for itself whether to enter the gem.»
Yasmin didn't look convinced, but she kept still as Wheezle called out again, «Come, beloved, to your home. A mansion has been prepared for you. Live in it and be glad.»
The dark orb flickered with a sudden thread of light. The gleaming strand shuddered once, twice, then blossomed into a deep purplish glow. It lit the gnome's face with a soft violet radiance and he smiled. «Good. Good.»
Suddenly, he tossed the orb to me with careless disdain. «Hold onto that, honored Cavendish. Umbrals sell souls to the highest bidder… so can we. It's justice.»
And then he urged Yasmin to carry him to the next body.
* * *
Nine orbs, glowing purple. Nine umbral souls, housed inside these strange gems. «A good haul,» Kiripao said approvingly.
«You know something about the soul trade?» I asked.
«Some,» he nodded. «It is a popular form of commerce here in Carceri.»
«You think we're in Carceri?»
Kiripao pointed to the thorn-shooting bushes. «Those plants are called Tooth-Storms. I have never seen one before, but I have heard tales of how they… make their own fertilizer. They are found only in Carceri, on the swampy layer known as Othrys.»
«Wonderful,» I growled.
«What's Carceri?» Hezekiah piped up.
«One of the Lower Planes,» Miriam told him. «A place of utter evil, with a dash of chaos to make things cozy.»
«So how do we get out?» the boy asked.
«First, we must find an umbral village.» That answer came from Wheezle, who lay on the chest of the last fiend and rolled one of the soul-gems between his palms. «As the honored Kiripao has observed, every such village is built around a portal of some kind. With luck, the gate can take us somewhere less hostile.»
«Walking into an umbral village will surely provide all the hostility we can handle,» I said. «This bunch wanted to steal our souls the moment they saw us… and their families won't be pleased we've scragged a load of their cousins.»
«Umbrals have hard hearts,» Wheezle replied. «They feel no fondness for others of their kind, and will not grieve over those who have died. The one thing they do feel is greed: greed for…» He held up the glowing soul-gem.
«So the second we walk into a village,» Miriam growled, «they'll put us in the dead-book so they can bob our gems.»
«Not true, honored ruffian. Umbrals respect few rules, but the trade in souls occupies the center of their lives. If we present ourselves as merchants with goods for sale,» he held up the soul-gem again, «they will treat us as respected guests. We will embark upon a formalized process of negotiation, and during the time it takes to strike a bargain, they will provide us with free lodging, food, and clean water.»
The moment he said the word food, I could feel my stomach rumble. It had not been so long since my last meal – astonishing though it was, we had only left Sigil three hours earlier – but I was definitely growing peckish for a feed. Was there anything edible out here in the swamps of Othrys? Probably, but it would be sheer luck if we found it. None of us had any wilderness experience. Kiripao showed some small familiarity with this plane, but he hadn't recognized the Tooth-Storm bushes till they started shooting their thorns. That didn't bode well for stumbling around the swamp, trying to find food without getting eaten ourselves.
«Are you sure the umbrals won't kill us?» I asked Wheezle.
«They will rip out our throats the moment we conclude negotiations,» he answered, «but until then, they will show meticulous hospitality. It is their way. Umbrals have no honor as we recognize it, but while there is business to be conducted, they make every show of friendship.»
«Like half the merchants in the Great Bazaar,» Miriam muttered.
I was beginning to like her.
* * *
We continued along the muddy trail in the direction we had been traveling. There was no guarantee it would lead to an umbral village, but we could see it was a well-used path. It was also heading for the river far ahead of us, and that was another good sign; even in the Lower Planes, it's practical to build your village close to a waterway, for the convenience of transportation and drinking.
An hour later, however, when we finally reached the river, it became apparent that drinking this particular water would be risky. It was not just black; the water had an oily obsidian gloss to it, as if it could immediately squash the color out of anything that touched its surface. The smell of sulphur tainted the air, possibly from the water, or possibly from the curling clumps of mist that hung above the river at random points along its length.
As we watched, a dark skiff emerged from one of the banks of cloud. It moved slowly, giving us plenty of time to examine the ornate
illustrations painted on the prow – row upon row of faces, some humanoid, some not, and all consumed with a quiet, ineffable sadness.
In time, the skiff emerged far enough from the mist for us to see the boatman: skeletally thin, clad in a hooded robe that didn't quite hide the fleshless face. A human woman sat passenger on the wooden seat behind, her eyes sewn shut with coarse black thread. Her hands lay folded in her lap, and no matter how the boat rocked on the river's current, the woman remained immobile… as if she weren't really sitting in the skiff at all, but gliding forward on the strength of some unknown destiny.
The woman was Oonah DeVail. Her soul. Her dead spirit.
She took no notice of us as the skiff silently floated by; but the boatman turned to look at us briefly, pale eyes in a face of bone. Then the skiff entered another pillar of mist and disappeared without leaving a ripple.
«This is the River Styx,» Kiripao said.
None of us spoke for some time.
12. THREE BLOSSOMING RAPPORTS
Our muddy trail led along the Styx for the better part of a mile. Then as we rounded a bend in the river, we saw a gathering of black huts ahead, tucked beneath a grove of moss-laden trees. The huts seemed to be sculpted from solid darkness, as if they had congealed from the gloom of shadows that permeated the grove.
«Each of us will carry a gem,» Wheezle said softly, handing around the glowing purple orbs. «We must all present ourselves as soul-merchants.»
Hezekiah wore a pained expression. «I don't think Uncle Toby would approve of me —»
«Do not worry, honored Clueless,» Wheezle interrupted. «The umbrals voluntarily chose to enter these gems. It is how they always expected to end their lives: as objects of trade. And we must remember the treasure you carry.» He pointed to the grinder, still trickling out white dust. «We have a responsibility to keep that out of the wrong hands.»
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