CHAPTER 14

GRULLIONS

Perched atop a boulder at the edge of the swamp, Rachel watched for snakes. She had seen far too many as she and her companions had squelched across the marsh for the last two days. Big ones and small ones, fat ones and thin ones, light ones and dark ones, striped ones and solid ones and patterned ones. A poisonous snake had struck Dorsio’s boot twice, the fangs failing to penetrate. A nonpoisonous snake had bitten Nedwin on the wrist. Drake had killed at least three venomous snakes as they slithered into camp while the group slept.

At the moment, the only way for a snake to reach her would be to climb across a steep expanse of bare stone. She had a long stick ready, just in case.

Her current vantage point commanded a depressing view of the muddy shore where the sucking marshland gave way to the black water of the swamp. A miasmic haze had muted the recent sunrise. Tall trees grew up out of the water, widespread branches interlocking like great umbrellas. Bedraggled foliage hung in long streamers from trunks and limbs. In the distance a ponderous slug, longer than her arm, slurped across an island of mulch, eyestalks stretching grotesquely.

If Rachel had been allowed to pick one place in Lyrian never to revisit, without pause she would have selected the Sunken Lands. Only poisonous, diseased, disgusting threats lurked in the gloom ahead, including predatory slime, supersized insects, stealthy serpents, and elephantine frogs.

Two crafts awaited on the shore. The sleek skiff looked large enough to accommodate six. The wide canoe could carry no more than three. There was no way to proceed without boats, but fortunately the Amar Kabal routinely hid vessels along the shore of the swamp. Drake had found one, Nedwin the other. Assisted by Ferrin and Dorsio, both were currently off seeking a third craft.

Rachel wished she could have stayed with the horses. No soldiers would have caught her. In an emergency, she could have transferred to Mandibar. With her ability to issue Edomic instructions, she felt certain she could have led them safely around the swamp. After weeks of riding, she had formed a connection with her mare, and hated the possibility of never seeing her again.

Jason came traipsing toward her boulder, boots cumbersome with mud, one hand on the hilt of his sword. She had noticed that as he kept practicing, he seemed increasingly proud of the weapon. He looked up at her. “You might be safe from snakes, but you’re going to fall and break your neck.”

The boulder was steep on all sides. Climbing it had required some effort. “I was trying to get away from the smell.” After sucking gel from orchid buds, her body odor had been magnified, transforming her into human insect repellant. But that was nothing compared to how terrible the others stank.

“Not a bad reason,” Jason conceded. “Nedwin is heading this way with another canoe. We’re going to leave soon.”

Looking over, Rachel saw Galloran and the others gathering near the watercrafts. Nedwin and Dorsio glided into view, paddling a canoe and leaving a V-shaped wake across the murky water.

“Think Corinne is all right?” Rachel wondered.

Jason glanced toward Galloran. “I don’t know. Two of the syllable guardians are already dead. It looks bad. I can tell Galloran is worried.”

“The mushrooms should give her some protection. It’s got to be hard to kill somebody when you can’t remember why you’re there.”

“Let’s hope so.”

Rachel turned around and carefully lowered herself down the least sheer side of the boulder. Jason waited for her, and they walked over to the muddy bank.

“We’re here,” Jason said as Nedwin and Dorsio brought the canoe ashore. All of the others had already gathered.

Galloran raised both hands. “This is a hazardous time of year to enter the swamp. The fungi will be in full bloom, disease will be rampant, and the insects are multiplying. Within a few weeks, the swamp will be utterly impassable for more than a month, during the height of insect season.”

“Bind your noses and mouths with rags to filter the air,” Drake said, passing out lengths of fabric. “Never inhale without them. At this time of year, airborne spores will readily infect unprotected lungs.”

“They should add that to the travel brochure,” Jason murmured to Rachel while wrapping fabric over his nose and mouth. “Who doesn’t want some tasty lung fungus?”

“Fun for the whole family,” she muttered back.

Galloran assigned Tark and Chandra to one canoe, and Ferrin and Drake to the other, leaving everyone else to fill the skiff. Drake, Nedwin, Ferrin, and Tark helped push the vessels into the water. Each canoe had two paddles. In the skiff, Dorsio and Nedwin manned the oars. Aram placed a hand on the tiller. Jason and Rachel sat in the prow to scout for slime.

The skiff surged ahead, pushing ripples across the dark water. Before long, Rachel began to notice dull orange masses of fungus, clinging to the tree trunks like wasp hives, giving them an ailing appearance. Cylindrical piles of spongy fungi thrived on decaying islands of muck. Slick puddles of slime rippled across the surface of the water or oozed over obstacles. Jason and Rachel gave directions when necessary to help the skiff avoid the carnivorous slime.

From above and to one side, Rachel heard a startling gasp. The inhalation was followed by a sharp hiss, like air expelled from a blowhole, and a plume of maroon gas jetted from a bloated clump of yellowish fungus, high on a tree.

“Avoid the spores,” Galloran cautioned, as if he could see the powdery cloud spreading above them.

Fumbling momentarily, Nedwin and Dorsio turned the skiff and propelled it away from the drifting spray. The canoes also paddled away from the descending spores.

As they progressed deeper into the swamp, the trees grew taller, lifting the tangled canopy ever higher. The gasp-hiss of fungi excreting spores became frequent. Rachel began to glimpse snakes gliding through the water.

Rachel did her best to ignore the multitudes of spiders, slugs, snakes, and flying insects as she scanned for slime. Her efforts did not keep her from noticing slender dragonflies as long as her forearm, prowling snakes with heads the size of footballs, gooey slugs big enough to wear saddles, and hairy spiders large enough to prey on housecats.

Aram grew at sunset, limbs lengthening and thickening. Since she knew it embarrassed him, Rachel tried not to stare, but it was hard not to peek at something so unusual. After he finished growing, the skiff floated noticeably lower with his added weight. He took both of the oars, and the skiff whooshed forward faster than ever. When the canoes floundered behind, unable to equal the energetic pace, Aram slowed.

“Watch for a place to camp,” Galloran said.

“Why not go all night?” Aram suggested.

“The swamp slumbers during the day. Dangerous creatures patrol the waters after dark. We’ll increase our chances of survival if we spend the night in our boats, up on an island.”

As the swamp dimmed, they pulled the boats up on one of the largest islands they had seen all day, arranging the crafts close together. In the fading light, luminous thumb-size slugs became visible on the trees.

Jason commented on the slugs.

“This portion of the swamp glows all night,” Nedwin confirmed. “By tomorrow evening, we should reach the section of the swamp controlled by the frogs. Few slugs survive there.”

Nedwin handed out orchid buds. Rachel eagerly consumed the flavorless gel inside. Her horrible odor was much better than stings or bites from prehistoric insects.

The clamor of the swamp began as Rachel curled up in the bottom of the skiff, uncomfortable but exhausted. Crickets chirped so noisily, the skiff seemed full of them. From up in the trees came warbling hoots and staccato bursts of clacking. Occasionally she heard long, low moans in the distance. But without the barking croaks of the huge frogs, the night was not quite so uproarious as her previous experience in the swamp.

As always, Drake took watch, since he never truly slept. The slugs seemed ever brighter as the rest of the swamp faded to true darkness.

With predawn light filtering through the canopy, Nedwin jostled the others awake. They intended to set off early to take advantage of Aram at the oars.

Rachel helped shove the skiff into the water, slipping and planting one hand deep in the mud. She jumped aboard the skiff as it drifted away from the island, dipping her hand in the lukewarm water to wash off the worst of the clinging muck. While wiping the black mud from her fingers, Rachel discovered a leech attached to the back of her hand. She ground her teeth to suppress a shriek.

“I think I picked up a leech,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady as hysteria welled up inside.

“Translucent?” Galloran asked.

Rachel inspected the membranous creature. “Yeah, almost transparent.” Jason stared at it over her shoulder.

“A jelly leech,” Galloran said. “What size?”

“No bigger than my pinkie.”

“Do not seek to detach it,” Galloran warned. “Such action will provoke the injection of a most irritating venom.”

“What do I do?” Rachel felt painful suction and stared as her blood began to flow into the translucent leech, a spreading red stain inside the rubbery body. “It’s sucking!” She bit her lower lip, trying not to scream.

“The creature will detach when sated. Be grateful it is so small.”

Jason rubbed her shoulders. “You’ll be okay,” he encouraged.

Rachel watched in disgust as the creature reddened, bulging with the inflow of blood. Just when she thought the leech looked ready to burst, it detached and fell to the bottom of the skiff.

“It finished,” Jason said.

“Throw it overboard,” Galloran said. “As far as you can. We must keep away from the scent of blood.”

Jason tweezed the leech between thumb and forefinger, stood, and tossed it away with a motion that rocked the skiff. The red leech landed on a little island strewn with messy webs. Rachel rubbed the back of her hand, where a purple bruise was forming.

With Aram at the oars, and the canoes keeping up, they made rapid progress. The trees became spaced farther apart, and the trunks seemed thicker. Off to one side of the boat was an open area with no trees.

“I see some open water,” Aram grunted softly.

“Keep away,” Galloran advised. “We do not want to trifle with the great beasts who inhabit the deep places of the swamp.”

“What are they?” Jason asked quietly.

“Winari,” Galloran said. “Some of the oldest and largest organisms in the world. Theirs are the groaning calls we heard in the night. We would all perish if one caught us. They’re typically dormant during the day, but we’ll avoid the risk.”

As they rowed onward, the swollen masses of fungus became more plentiful on the tree trunks, in dreary shades of yellow and orange. Towering fungal columns rose from muddy islands, stretching toward the leafy canopy above, swaying away from the boats when they came near.

They were rowing through a grove of colossal, widespread trees with no muddy islands in sight when Galloran whispered, “Too quiet.”

“What?” Aram asked.

Galloran lifted a cautionary hand. “Something is amiss.”

Rachel peered around. With dawn approaching, the still waterscape looked almost bright. The daytime noises of the swamp did not rival the nighttime cacophony. But there always seemed to be some hooting in the trees, or buzzing wings, or little clicks, or faint chittering, or distant splashes. With the paddles out of the water, Rachel heard nothing.

To one side, Rachel heard the gentle slosh of disturbed water. Twisting, she saw a translucent snake wriggling up and over the side of the skiff.

“Snake!” she cried.

“Leech!” Jason corrected, drawing his sword.

As Rachel scrunched away from it, Jason’s blade hacked through the membranous body. Part of the leech withdrew into the water, but about two feet of it was left squirming in the bottom of the skiff. Aram scooped an oar underneath it and catapulted the gelatinous segment overboard.

Splashing up from the water, another serpentine jelly leech hung poised in the air before whipping at Jason. Swinging his sword defensively, Jason saw the flat of the blade slap the leech aside before he toppled backward into Rachel, who steadied him. As the leech stretched toward Dorsio, knives flashed in his hands, slicing off the tip of the leech and then two more segments. What remained of the leech reared away, rising even higher out of the water. Only then did Rachel realize that the leech was actually a tentacle.

“Grullions!” Nedwin shouted.

A new tentacle seized the skiff at the stern, making the vessel buck and spin. The sudden motion jolted Rachel down to a seated position. Jason dropped to his knees. Diving, Nedwin slashed the tentacle with a long knife, severing several feet of it. The rest withdrew over the gunwale. Nedwin skewered the squirming section and flipped it into the water.

As the boat rotated slowly, Rachel drew her knife. It felt way too small. Aram, standing at the center of the skiff with his enormous sword in hand, hauled Jason to his feet.

“Foul luck,” Galloran spat, squatting beside Aram.

Looking over at the canoe containing Ferrin and Drake, Rachel saw the displacer standing back-to-back with the seedman, swords sweeping relentlessly to repel a writhing onslaught of tentacles. On the other side of the skiff, one of the grullions lurched onto the canoe with Tark and Chandra, heaving up a fountain of dull water. Its bulbous body was roughly the size and shape of a sea lion, with a pair of flippers, two pairs of tentacles, and a spoon-shape tail.

Tark plunged his saw-toothed knife into the body of the beast as the canoe tilted precariously. Crouching low, Chandra used a dagger to deftly fend off thrashing tentacles while keeping her free hand splayed over the center of the canoe. Her lips moved in a chant, and Rachel realized she was using Edomic to prevent the canoe from overturning. Tark slid his knife along the length of the semitransparent body, opening a deep seam. Tentacles wound around the wide canoe, the tail whipped up and down, Chandra lost her balance, and the craft capsized.

Rachel screamed. Chandra surfaced briefly, only to disappear below the water as if tugged downward. Tark didn’t surface at all.

Tentacles seethed from the water at either side of the skiff. Rachel swung her knife wildly, striking nothing. Something slammed the skiff from below, and Aram and Jason fell, their bodies thumping heavily. Nedwin slashed a length of tentacle out of the air. Dorsio intercepted a tentacle reaching for Galloran, slitting it open lengthwise with one knife before severing it crossways with the other.

As Aram arose, a tentacle lashed at him, twining around his muscular sword arm. The heavy blade fell to the bottom of the skiff. Bracing himself, Aram resisted the pull of the elastic tentacle, veins standing out as his bulky muscles clenched and strained. The skiff slid speedily across the water. Blood began to course away from Aram’s arm through the transparent tentacle, red mist that soon thickened into a more liquid flow. He bellowed, peeling at the tentacle with his free hand.

“Sorry,” Nedwin yelled, his long knife tearing through the sanguineous tentacle, releasing a gruesome spray.

Parted from the grullion, the portion of the tentacle fastened about Aram’s arm tensed and vibrated, and the half giant let loose an involuntary roar. He collapsed, his back arched in anguish, his free hand clawing at the crimson parasite.

A pair of tentacles flopped over the side of the skiff near Rachel, and the craft tipped alarmingly. She found herself staring into the face of a grullion, which consisted of a circular mouth wreathed by fluttering flagella. Almost tackling her, Jason brought his sword down in an overhand stroke, cleaving through the head, down to the gaping maw. Sticky juice squirted in their faces. The grullion jerked away and disappeared, and the skiff leveled out.

Rachel heard Galloran chanting. On his knees, head bowed, he was calling heat to the water, specifying one particular area at a time. Borrowing his words, Rachel began summoning heat to the water as well, visualizing roughly a cubic meter of liquid and pouring her will and desperation into the effort. She felt the heat answer her call, then started commanding heat into a different section of water.

Behind her, Aram growled. Recovering his sword, the juicy red tentacle still attached to his arm, the half giant rose to his knees to slice through a squirming forest of rubbery tentacles. He spun and slashed, his long blade lopping off multiple tentacles with each swipe. Nedwin and Jason crouched below him, using their weapons to hastily pitch the severed tentacles out of the skiff. Dorsio stayed close to Galloran, fending off any tentacles that escaped Aram’s blade.

Ferrin and Drake were no longer under attack. Drake was calling heat to the water as well, and Ferrin paddled the canoe closer to the skiff.

The skiff shuddered as a grullion tried to climb aboard, injured tentacles of varying length flailing. From the corner of her eye, Rachel saw Aram split the creature with a violent horizontal slash. Galloran gruffly continued his Edomic chant.

Gasping, Tark emerged from the water, one hand gripping the gunwale of the skiff. As he pulled himself up, something jolted the underside of the craft, and the side of the vessel bashed Tark in the mouth. Jason and Nedwin helped haul the musician over the side. He was still clutching his knife.

There was no sign of Chandra.

Tears in her eyes, Rachel kept calling heat to the water. She scanned the surface in all directions, hoping to see her friend.

The last tentacles receded. Everything became still. A sinister silence enfolded them. Galloran and Rachel continued chanting, and the water around the skiff began to simmer, radiating heat and shedding steam. Drake and Ferrin maneuvered over to reclaim the capsized canoe.

Galloran ceased chanting and started to cough raggedly, perspiration shining on his brow. Drake and Ferrin righted the empty canoe.

“Enough heat?” Rachel asked.

Galloran nodded, still coughing persistently.

“What about Chandra?” Rachel asked, eyes sweeping the surrounding water.

“She’s gone,” Tark said. “She saved me.”

“Gone?”

“They dragged us deep,” Tark said, red wetness dripping from his lips. “One had my leg, but I cut free with my knife. It never latched onto my skin. My trousers protected me. They were all around us. Scores of them. Chandra started pushing the water with Edomic. How she spoke underwater, I have no idea. But she created strong currents and used them to shove the creatures away and to help me avoid them. Even as they wrapped her up and started draining her, she sent water to push me upward. The water was hot near the surface. The leech monsters kept away from the heat.”

Rachel nodded numbly, her insides twisting as she heard the account. How could Chandra be gone? Just like that? No warning, no good-bye. Rachel resisted acceptance as the simmering water around the skiff quieted.

Hands trembling, Aram snatched up the oars. “We have to go.”

In the aftermath of the battle, the entire swamp seemed to be holding its breath. But the silence was shattered when a mighty voice bellowed a deafening blast comparable to a foghorn. Recoiling, they all clapped their hands over their ears.

A powerful jet of water streamed through the trees from off to one side, grazing the skiff and setting it spinning. A direct hit would have flipped them. A second explosive roar followed, after which a second high-pressure stream churned the water nearby, as if sprayed by a giant fire hose. From the direction the water came, through the huge trees, Rachel saw what looked like a hill made of brown, folded blubber. The top of it, presumably the head, was screened by leafy limbs and vines.

“It’s vast,” Aram murmured.

“A winaro,” Nedwin whispered.

“The other canoe is ready,” Ferrin announced. He and Drake had towed it alongside the skiff.

“Tark, Nedwin, get in,” Galloran croaked.

When the deafening bellow repeated, Rachel noticed that she could feel the skiff vibrating. Tark and Nedwin transferred to the righted canoe, accepting the paddles retrieved by Drake and Ferrin. With water spouting behind them, they paddled away from the mountainous brown creature.

While Aram rowed vigorously, the blood-glutted segment of tentacle finally dropped from his beefy arm, hitting the bottom of the craft with a wet slap. A thick spiral of black bruises mottled his skin from wrist to shoulder. Dorsio used his knives to heave the gruesome tentacle overboard.

The trees stopped looking quite so enormous and widely spaced. Some of the natural chatter of the swamp resumed overhead in the canopy. Rachel noticed a fist-size spider scaling a trunk.

Aram grunted, shivering and sweating, and his body shriveled, deflating into a miniature version of himself. The corkscrew bruise shrank as his arm thinned. Sunrise had finally come, muted by the foliage overhead.

Dorsio took one oar, Jason the other. Rachel moved to the tiller. Aram crawled to the bow. He was still shivering, his face ruddy and damp.

“We were near one of the deep places,” Galloran whispered. “The resident winaro did not take kindly to us heating the water. Grullions tend to dwell near winari, living as parasites. A foul turn of events. Chandra was faithful and capable. A survivor. It’s a grievous loss.”

“I can’t believe she’s …” Rachel couldn’t finish the thought. They were moving on, and Chandra was not with them. Rachel was left to face the irreparable reality that her friend was gone.

“The Sunken Lands are lethal,” Galloran rasped. “Too many exotic predators. We were fortunate. We could have all perished.”

Rachel stared at Galloran, his broad shoulders hunched, his expression unreadable behind his ragged blindfold and the fabric masking his nose and mouth. How many of his friends had been killed over the years? How many close relatives? Agonizing loss was a major presence in his life. Did it even surprise him anymore? “You never mentioned you spoke Edomic.”

“I have a few hidden talents,” he replied. “You already possess a wider variety of practical skills than I do. I could never grasp how to push objects like Chandra. Your help heating the water was invaluable, Rachel. It saved lives.”

“Aram doesn’t look well,” Jason pointed out.

“I’m fine.” Sweating and trembling, the shrunken half giant was clenching his jaw and rubbing the wide bruise coiled around his arm.

“He was heavily poisoned,” Galloran said. “When the tentacle was severed, it injected him with venom. A lesser man would not be conscious.” Galloran raised his hoarse voice. “Nedwin, Aram needs quimbi bark, and anything else that might relieve his fever and help neutralize the venom.”

Nedwin and Tark paddled their canoe over to the skiff. Nedwin hopped aboard, already rummaging through his pouches as he crouched beside Aram.

“Let Dorsio administer the remedies,” Nedwin said. “I want to look around. I’m afraid we’ve been veering off course.”

“Very well,” Galloran agreed.

Nedwin issued some instructions to Dorsio, left him with ingredients, and climbed back into the canoe. He and Tark stroked over to the trunk of an enormous tree. Leaping from the canoe, Nedwin shinnied up the bare trunk like a monkey, avoiding clumps of fungus where possible, tearing them off when they got in his way, indifferent to the vibrant puffs of spores.

Rachel watched from below, astonished at how swiftly and confidently he found handholds where none seemed to exist. Before long, Nedwin reached the height where the first long limbs extended out from the trunk, and he vanished into the leafy canopy. Faintly, Rachel heard foliage rustle.

As Dorsio tended to Aram, the others stared upward. All was silent for a time, then there came a sudden snapping of limbs, and Nedwin fell into view through the leaves and vines, a gauzy sheet of web flapping behind him like a cape. Adjusting his body as he plummeted, he hit the water, straight as a spear, a few yards from the skiff.

Tark paddled toward him. Nedwin’s head emerged from the murky water, and he boosted himself into the canoe, making the vessel rock. He had lost the fabric masking his face. He shook his head briskly, wiping scum from his wet hair. “Spiders,” he spat.

“Spiders?” Tark echoed.

“Up in the branches. Big ones. Hordes of them. Good trap. I was surrounded. I had to jump.”

Grabbing a waterskin, Nedwin dumped fresh water in his mouth, swished it around, and spat over the side. “That swamp water tastes worse than we smell.”

“Impossible,” Jason mumbled.

“I saw the tree,” Nedwin said. “The monarch where Corinne lives. We’re bearing too far to the north. We need to head that way.” He confidently indicated a line diagonal to their current heading. “We were veering toward the Drowned City.”

“Another eventual destination,” Galloran mused.

“We should separate,” Nedwin said. “Let me and Drake take a canoe to Corinne. We’ll get there faster. Then we can reunite at the Drowned City. It will require some time for you to take care of business there.”

Galloran rubbed his blindfold, his lips pressed tight. “Show Dorsio the heading to the Drowned City.”

Nedwin pointed slightly to the left of where the boats currently faced. “That way.”

“Can you get us there?” Galloran asked.

Dorsio snapped.

“If that’s the proper heading, I can help keep us on course,” Ferrin added.

Galloran ground a fist against his palm. “I would prefer to fetch my daughter personally. But the quicker we reach her, the better. We should spend no more time in this swamp than we must. Every minute brings new threats. Find her, Nedwin. Keep her safe. Bring her to me.”

“We’ll get her,” Nedwin vowed.

Tark joined Ferrin in his canoe, and Drake joined Nedwin.

“Bring back lots of those gassy mushrooms,” Rachel recommended. “The ones that block your memories. They’ll help keep the swamp animals away.”

“Will do,” Drake replied. “Safe journey.”