by Mel Odom
For five days, Juhg and his companions rode along with the trade caravan bound for Torvassir. Even though he was worried about the Grandmagister, his Librarian training kept him busy talking to the merchants, sell-swords, and artisans that traveled with the caravan. People on the move tended to gather news and gossip quickly. All of them carried information. Part of the reason for his conversations, Juhg knew, was in preparation for the trip into the Smoking Marshes.
“I’ve heard the fog that covers that place is filled with ghosts,” one young human told Juhg. “My da said there was a battle in that place a long time ago, and that the ghosts of the people that died there got stuck and couldn’t go anywhere else because they lost the battle.”
There were several other stories, most of them including ghosts and a few of them that held suggestions of treasure to be found somewhere in the marshes.
“It’s good that they’re not talking about treasure there overmuch,” Cobner said later that night around their campfire. “Means we shouldn’t be running into anybody in those woods. And if we do, it’s likely they aren’t supposed to be there.”
The travelers usually stayed by themselves in camp so they could talk. The extra horses they brought along carried small tents to keep them dry at night during the frequent showers the area had. Of course, that meant that a lot of times in the morning they had to pack wet tents, which got them soaked. That didn’t matter, though; if it was still raining the following morning they were going to get wet anyway. Most of the trip was spent in some sort of misery under the dank, oppressive sky.
At night, Juhg added to his journal. If he lived long enough to return to the Vault of All Known Knowledge, he knew he’d have material to write up concerning the trip. Small things, like two of the ghost stories one of the human children had told him that had bearing in actual history of the place, wouldn’t become a book, but they would make nice addenda to some of the histories.
If those histories still survive at the Vault of All Known Knowledge, Juhg thought sadly.
But he didn’t feel guilty taking the time to do those things, although Craugh made it apparent that he thought Juhg’s investigations were mainly a waste of time. Juhg knew that the Grandmagister would expect him to work even though he was on a mission to rescue him.
On the morning of the fifth day, the caravan was attacked by goblinkin bandits. They came out of the forest just as the rising sun started sweeping the last of the night’s thin shadows away.
Howling furiously, obviously hoping to catch the camp before it was truly awake, the goblinkin descended. Unfortunately, they started yelling while still yet too far away.
Juhg hunkered down behind a wagon while Jassamyn and the other archers among the caravan pulled together and loosed a volley that broke the ranks of the goblinkin.
“Hold!” the caravan master yelled. “Archers together!”
Jassamyn bent her bow again. She held the arrow to her cheek, the fletchings lying along her chin.
“Release!” the caravan master yelled.
Jassamyn released along with the other archers. The arrows struck the goblinkin bandits squarely. Several of them dropped dead in their tracks. The survivors quickly turned tail and ran. Unfortunately, they chose to hide in the forest along the trail and prevented the caravan from traveling safely.
For two hours, they fought a holding battle. Occasionally, a goblinkin would stick out an important piece of himself for too long and an archer would put a shaft through it. Jassamyn killed four of them with arrows through the head or heart. It got to the point that Raisho and Cobner were taking bets on which the elven maid would put an arrow through next, and how many goblinkin she would bag before the bandits finally gave up.
Juhg sketched several scenes of the battle, just skeletons that he intended to flesh out later.
After a while, Cobner complained of being bored. Raisho agreed. Together, they approached the caravan master with a daring plan.
“Let us take a few of the sellswords you’ve got protectin’ the caravan,” Cobner said. “We’ll go around behind them goblinkin an’ take ‘em unawares. Should be able to kill a lot of ’em before they notice. They ain’t ever been good at countin’ noses or watching over one another.”
“We haven’t lost a man yet,” the caravan master said. “The archers can hold them off well enough.”
“Maybe,” Cobner agreed. “But in the meantime, the horses are drinkin’ water an’ eatin’ feed that you’re payin’ for. An’ how long do you think it’ll be before one of them beasties gets the idea to start killin’ the horses?”
Juhg knew that was true. Goblinkin were slow thinkers, but deliberate. The horses were more vulnerable than the caravan’s travelers.
“All right,” the caravan master said, after a brief delay. “But I don’t want to take unnecessary chances.”
“We’ll be discreet,” Cobner promised.
Nervous, Juhg watched his friends leave. For the next two hours, he sat beside Jassamyn and Craugh, thinking surely the dwarven warrior and the young human would be discovered with the sellswords they’d taken with them. Instead, the goblinkin started to notice that their numbers were getting whittled away.
“Where’s Vallap?” a goblinkin roared.
“Don’t know. Pizlat is missin’ too.”
“So is Vaggas.”
Goblinkin began calling out the names of the missing, who did not answer. Finally, unnerved, they fled through the forest. Cobner, Raisho, and the others pursued them for almost a mile. Juhg knew that later because the warriors had left a trail of goblinkin dead in their wake.
That night they camped with the caravan one last time, hunkered down and aware the goblinkin could return without warning. Cobner and Raisho spent time with the sellswords, roaring stories at each other till other members in the caravan yelled at them.
In the morning after they broke camp, they said their good-byes to the caravan and followed the small stream that fed the Smoking Marshes where the fog in the trees got steadily thick and stank of sulfur.
“I can see how this place gets its reputation,” Raisho said as he rode beside Juhg. “I ain’t seen nothin’ but this fog fer miles, seems like.”
“It’s been less than half a mile,” Juhg said.
“Seems longer,” Raisho commented.
Out in the wilderness now, Jassamyn took the lead, staying six or seven horse lengths ahead of the group. She kept her bow to hand. Cobner and Raisho took turns riding far enough back to see their back trail.
The trees around the marshes grew straight and tall, adding to the perpetual gloom that seemed to hang over the place. Bobcats, hares, turkeys, and quail moved in the brush, joined by smaller creatures. Twice Juhg saw deer and once he spotted a bear’s claw marks on a tree, letting him know that animals in the area still counted the marshland safe enough to come to get food and water. That was heartening. He knew Jassamyn had noted the same things.
The trail they followed was mostly grown over, an old trapper’s route that led to the heart of the marshlands where the dwarven city had stood years before The Book of Time had caused it and the mountain it had been in to sink into the ground.
The Grandmagister had never traveled the route because he’d discovered the location of the second piece of The Book of Time after he’d returned to Greydawn Moors and finally puzzled the location out, but he’d found mention of the trail in some of the books at the Library. Reading in a few other histories of the area confirmed the trail’s existence.
Juhg reviewed the Grandmagister’s notes. Juhg, by the time you read this, I don’t know if the trail will still be there. Nature already works hard to reclaim it. Elven warders, of course, would tell you that’s the expected progression of such things. Still, it doubles as a game trail as well and something should survive of it.
Before the Cataclysm, this trail was one of the most heavily traveled in the area. Bolts of silk and barrels of fine wines traveled this road, and merchants at both ends got
fat with profit. If Lord Kharrion hadn’t managed to bring the goblinkin together, the road would have remained open for many more years.
The Grandmagister had also used the stream as a marker, just as the old fur trappers had. In places where the trail had been obscured by underbrush and trees, they only had to stay with the stream and keep heading into the marshes. The only sounds in the forest were the heavy clop of the horses’ hooves and the gurgle of the stream. Occasional birdcalls and animal growls punctuated the steady noise.
“Where does the fog come from?” Raisho asked.
“There’s an active volcano under this area,” Juhg answered.
“I remember now,” Raisho said. “The Grandmagister writ that the Smokesmith dwarves lived here. The ones what tamed the volcano.”
“Exactly.” Juhg guided his horse around a fallen tree that crossed the trail. “They operated the Molten Rock Forge, which was also the name by which the mountains became known.”
“Armorers, they was.”
“Yes.”
“An’ this is the same place where Fort Yuar was. The place that the Grandmagister taught ye the poem about.”
Juhg nodded.
Looking around, Raisho said, “Then ye was kept in a goblinkin mine not far from this place.”
“Yes.” And my parents and siblings died somewhere around here, too.
“Sorry,” Raisho said. “Forgettin’ meself was what I was doin’.”
“It’s all right.”
They rode in silence for a while, and memories crowded in at Juhg to the point that their weight and all the old guilt felt heavier than the leaden skies that crowded them and seemed held back only by the canopy of trees. He looked in all directions, wondering if he would see a family of dwellers hidden back in the woods, or if he would recognize a place that he had come through with the Grandmagister.
But he didn’t. There were no dwellers secreted away in the inhospitable woods, and none of the places looked familiar or they all looked familiar.
“Ye are lucky in some respects, Juhg,” Raisho said softly.
Juhg looked at his friend.
“At least ye knew yer ma an’ yer da fer a while,” the young sailor said. “Me, I was stripped from me ma soon after she’d whelped me. Birthed right into slavery, I was.”
“I know,” Juhg said.
“Leastways, I got a friend in ye now. An’ a good ship in Windchaser if I ever get back that way. Ye got a home, too, Juhg. Shouldn’t be somethin’ you go forgettin’ about.”
“I won’t.” But there’s no guarantee any of us will live long enough to return to Greydawn Moors.
They rode on in silence for a while longer, and Juhg felt certain they were both entertaining the same dark thoughts.
Twilight deepened the shadows of the marshes, making the shadows longer and more sinister, sometimes fading them away entirely for a moment only to allow them to spring back out again. With the coming of the night, the nocturnal creatures had resumed mastery over the marsh. Crickets and bullfrogs sang around the marsh, falling silent now and again when an owl scream or a bobcat yowled to let the world know it was hunting.
Rocking wearily in the horse’s saddle, feeling the long days of riding aching throughout his body, Juhg longed for a warm dry place and his bedroll. On occasion, he’d used the blue gemstones to look in on Greydawn Moors and One-Eyed Peggie. He hadn’t been able to go there as he had with the Grandmagister, but he didn’t know if it was because the ties to the Grandmagister were stronger and more intense—as Craugh suggested—or that he was simply afraid to let go too much in case the wizard couldn’t restart his heart if it stopped again.
Jassamyn led the way back up from the slow-moving stream, searching for the trail they had once again lost due to the underbrush. She stopped abruptly, her horse shying a little as a heavy-winged owl glided by overhead, and gazed down at the ground.
The elven maid dismounted and kept her horse behind her as she carefully walked along.
“What is it?” Craugh asked. He was grumpy because he’d never sat a horse well and this was the longest time in years that Juhg had seen the wizard ride.
Kneeling, Jassamyn brushed her hand through the tall grass. Her fingers explored the ground. “Hoofprints,” she announced in a quiet voice as she stayed low and gazed around the forest and the marshes. “Riders have passed through here not long ago.”
“Bandits?” Cobner suggested.
“All of these horses were shod,” Jassamyn said. “Whoever these riders were, they were civilized.”
“Bandits steal horses from caravans,” Cobner said. “Mayhap these are stolen horses.”
“Caravan mounts are shod,” Jassamyn agreed, “but caravan masters don’t always keep them shod well. All of these tracks are cut fresh and deep. And they went in single file through the brush, trying to keep their tracks to a minimum so they wouldn’t be as noticeable.”
“So somebody else is skulkin’ through the woods.” Raisho loosened his cutlass in the sheath down his back.
“Or had been,” she agreed. “From the looks of these tracks, they were headed into the marshes.”
“Same as us,” the dwarven warrior said.
“We’ll cold camp tonight,” Craugh said.
Raisho groaned. He hated cold meals. Over the past few days, with all the rain, he’d gotten his fill of cold meals. That was one thing he’d gotten spoiled to while aboard Windchaser: Cook had always kept something hot in the galley, whether it was stew or chowder. And biscuits had been baked fresh.
Juhg had traveled in rough country so much with the Grandmagister that he was accustomed to eating journeycakes for days at a time.
Jassamyn remounted her horse and went on.
Glancing down every so often as they continued circling the heart of the Smoking Marshes, Juhg saw that the hoofprints kept on in the same direction they were. Since there was nothing else out the way they were going, which was one of the main reasons the Grandmagister had headed into the Smoking Marshes all those years ago, he had to believe that the tracks weren’t just coincidence.
Suddenly, the marshland forest seemed even more threatening.
They cold camped in the general vicinity of the cave mouth the Grandmagister had indicated on his map. Jassamyn, Cobner, and Juhg all worked to put the tents well back into the hillside under the brush so they couldn’t easily be seen. Finding dry ground on which to erect a tent was impossible, but Jassamyn did find an area that was protected by trees.
After a cold meal of journeycakes and jerked meat, they settled in for the night. They drew lots for guard duty and Cobner caught the first shift.
Juhg was assigned one of the dogwatches in the early hours of the morn, but he didn’t think he’d be able to sleep when he’d laid down on his bedroll and listened to the misty rain dripping from the pine trees over his tent.
Horrid thoughts kept intruding on the peaceful frame of mind Juhg longed for. Over the years he had seen too much violence. It was too easy to visualize the Grandmagister walking the plank at sword’s point into a sea roiling with sharks. Or broken upon a rack. Or dropped into the ocean with an anchor tied around his neck. And there was always the possibility that the Grandmagister would meet his end in a goblinkin stewpot.
Juhg’s mind refused to be still, filled with all the thoughts that kept bumping into each other. Most of all, he was worried about the Grandmagister, about whether he was being treated well. Or whether he was dead. Juhg didn’t know what he would do if the Grandmagister was killed or died of his injuries.
He thought of the goblinkin buildings bridges along the Shattered Coast to reach Imarish, and what that city and those islands would be like after the arrival of the goblinkin. So much would be lost because a city couldn’t simply be uprooted and taken somewhere else.
What he wanted more than anything was to work, to write and draw everything that was inside his head so his thoughts wouldn’t be so full. He hadn’t gotten to work much since they’d deba
rked in Ship’s Wheel Cove and took up with the trade caravan later that same day. He’d managed a little writing and sketching by taking a few minutes here and there in the woods with Raisho watching over him.
But he wanted—no, he needed—to lose himself in the writing.
Dark came earlier in the marshlands than Juhg was used to. On board Windchaser or at an inn or at Greydawn Moors, there had always been lanterns or candles or fireplaces to work by. Although the light was not always ideal, it suited his purpose for laying out thoughts and sketches he could turn a better hand to when he had the morning light again.
The pieces of The Book of Time lay heavy upon his chest in the leather pouch. A thousand questions hammered his mind about whether they would even find any more of the pieces. He had tried earlier to reach the Grandmagister through the gemstones, but he hadn’t been successful. He believed that Aldhran Khempus had erected a magical barrier of some kind around the Grandmagister that the gemstones couldn’t penetrate even with their power.
He’d even tried to contact the mantis again.
Looking in on Greydawn Moors and One-Eyed Peggie hadn’t revealed much. The island was still under siege, though the Blood-Soaked Sea pirates were delivering staggering losses to the goblinkin ships; and Hallekk had sent dwarves out to explore the Haze Mountains.
With his mind so busy, Juhg thought he would never sleep, so he was surprised when Jassamyn roused him hours later and told him it was time for his turn at guard duty.
“Are you sure you’re up to it?” the elven maid asked.
“Yes.”
She hesitated. “You were having nightmares when I woke you.”
Juhg had vivid memories of those. He’d been in the dungeon where the Grandmagister was being kept. Aldhran was torturing the Grandmagister, telling Juhg over and over that he hadn’t found any new means of torture yet but was revisiting some of his old favorites.
“I thought about letting you sleep,” Jassamyn said.
