THE COACH HALTED ON VERY MARSHY GROUND near the edge of a wood. Descending the steps behind Doctor Skuldigger, Emerald found herself enveloped in dense clouds of insects. Horses lashed tails and angrily splashed their hooves in the mud. Certainly the sea was not far off, for its tangy scent was detectable even under the fetid stench of swamp. The view inland was blocked by a gentle rise in the land, but no buildings or landmarks explained why this place was significant. As soon as Swan came down, one of the grooms folded up the steps and closed the door.
Swan’s eyes were red with weeping. She stood hunched and downcast, making no effort to sidle out of the group, even ignoring the tormenting bugs. Emerald hoped the two of them might move off by themselves so she could ask a few private questions. She also wanted to escape the nerve-racking shriek of sorcery emanating from the men.
“Herrick and Thatcher, you will return with me,” Skuldigger decreed. Without a word the remaining guard clambered up beside the coachman on the box. Why were all these men so surly? It must have something to do with the magic they bore.
The four horses leaned into their collars and the big vehicle began to squelch forward. In moments it gathered speed and dwindled into the distance.
One of the grooms headed toward the woods on a very faint trail that had been trampled through the reeds and sedge. Swan followed him without being told. Emerald hesitated, wondering if she should make a break for freedom now, whether she could outrun the men and hide in the trees.
Then something roared in the wood—from the sound of it, something very large and very fierce. The groom leading the way screamed and came racing back, with Swan close behind, both of them looking over their shoulders. Whatever it was roared again and the undergrowth swayed. Emerald caught a whiff of sorcery like a foul animal stink.
“There’s one in the trees!” the other man yelled. “It’s coming!”
“No need for panic!” said Skuldigger testily.
From a pouch at his belt he produced a small golden object, which he put to his lips like a whistle. The result was not sound but a blast of magic, a bolt of pain straight through Emerald’s head, making her cry out. Something went crashing away through the wood. There was a splash in the distance, silence.
“What was that?” she demanded.
All the men ignored her. Swan said, “A chimera,” and turned her back, unwilling to explain what a chimera was.
“It’s gone now!” Skuldigger sighed. “Bring the prisoners.” He stalked off with his sword swinging at his side.
Swan followed him. The grooms, Herrick and Thatcher, closed in on Emerald as if intending to resort to violence without further ado. Slipping and splashing and cursing her ill-fitting shoes, she let herself be shepherded after the Doctor.
The wood itself turned out to be a mere fringe of shrubbery and sickly saplings along the bank of a river or tidal channel—dark, still, and unwholesome. The far bank was similarly wooded. On the black mud beach lay a flat-bottomed boat, which doomed any remaining hope that Snake and his men might be able to track the kidnappers back to their lair. Skuldigger climbed over the side and paused to look with distaste at the seating. It was wet.
Granted that the punt lay in shadow, the day was too hot for the thwarts to stay damp very long. Recalling the splash she had heard a few moments earlier, Emerald went to inspect the narrow mud flat beside the boat. She did not have to look hard to find the footprint. There was only one, for the crushed weeds nearby would not hold an impression. Here the chimera had come, fleeing from Skuldigger’s magical whistle, and here it had planted one foot as it dived into the river. The indentation was very deep, made by a heavy animal moving fast, but it was still clearly visible, for the water seeping in had not yet filled it. It was about the length of a human print, although much wider, and it had the same five toes grouped together at the front. She was no woodsman, but her father had often shown her animal tracks in snow and identified them for her, and this was like nothing she had ever seen. Each of those five clearly defined toes must bear a talon as big as her thumb. A bear? She was not familiar with bear spoor.
She took a few steps back along the way the thing had come, trying to imagine what sort of monster might have inspired such fright in Swan and the two grooms. Hearing a drone of flies like a pipe organ in the trees to one side of the trail, she turned that way.
“Emerald, where are you going?” Skuldigger called.
“To look at…this!”
This was a carcass, bloody and shredded, with bones and meat scattered around. Scraps of white fat and gray fur lay in a separate pile. The chimera had been interrupted while feeding on whatever that litter of flesh had been.
“Harbor seal,” Skuldigger announced, joining her. He sounded almost pleased, less mournful than usual. “I wonder if it wandered into the river or if my pets are venturing out to sea now?”
“Chimeras?”
“I call them that, yes.” He was wearing the golden whistle on a gold chain around his neck.
“I do not see,” Emerald said as calmly as she could manage, “any signs that the carcass was dragged there.” It had been carried in, then. There had been only one splash, one chimera. “How much would a harbor seal weigh, Doctor?”
“This appears to have been an adult male. Substantially more than Marshal Thrusk.”
“Chimeras are large animals?”
He uttered a peculiar choking noise that was probably a laugh. “Large, yes. Animals…not entirely.”
The Doctor sat on one of the punt’s two thwarts. The women took the other, at his back, while Herrick and Thatcher stripped off their road-stained and uncomfortable livery. Wearing only knee breeches, they waded into the mud and then pushed, heaved, and grunted in efforts to launch the ungainly craft.
“We are a little early for the tide,” Skuldigger announced without turning around. “It may be necessary for you two to disembark and—Ah, here we go!”
The boat moved, and once it had started the two men easily slid it the rest of the way into the water. They scrambled aboard, mud caked from the knees down, and grabbed up poles in time to stop the awkward craft from running aground on the far bank. Then they turned her and began poling her along the channel. Although there was no visible current, Emerald decided that they were heading downstream. She was judging by the height of the sun at her back, a feeling that the day was aging into late afternoon, and knowledge that the sea lay to the east. After a few moments the channel curved around so that she had the sun in her face. Another channel came in on the right. At that point she gave up trying to memorize the way through the maze. Thatcher and Herrick heaved on their poles, working their hearts out. She at least could fan the flies away from her face. Their sweating torsos were peppered with bugs like black freckles.
Skuldigger glanced around briefly. “I advise you to sit nearer the center,” he moaned.
Emerald realized that he and the two boatmen were keeping careful watch on the black, oily water and the sinister woods. She hastily moved away from the side. Swan had needed no warning. The punt suddenly seemed very narrow. “Can a chimera snatch people out of boats?”
Swan just nodded.
Emerald tried again. “Doctor, what exactly is a chimera?”
Without turning his head, he replied in a loud lament, as if he were addressing a large funeral. “Quagmarsh used to be a fishing village. I cannot call it a ‘humble’ fishing village, because in fact it was extremely arrogant, denying allegiance to any lord and claiming an ancient history. There was a token stockade around it, but the foolish inhabitants relied for their safety on the assumption that only they had the specialized geographic knowledge and boats of sufficiently shallow draft to navigate these marshes. Possibly they also assumed that they owned nothing worth stealing. Aw! They learned the magnitude of their folly about ten years ago, when a party of Baelish raiders came in on a spring tide. Baels are slavers and their longships draw very little water. They stripped Quagmarsh of everyone except old people. You can still see where they tried to burn it down, but there must have been rain that day. The survivors fled inland and Quagmarsh stood empty until my colleagues and I moved in a few months ago.”
He paused to stare suspiciously at an unexplained ripple until the punt was safely past it. “If the Baels would just try to repeat their success now, the results would be very interesting, a foretaste of what will happen when I launch my attack on Baelmark itself. The most important thing you must learn in Quagmarsh, Emerald—other than total loyalty to myself and instant obedience to my wishes—is to stay inside the stockade at all times. This is true even in daylight, but at night it is essential. Several people have ignored that rule and paid dearly for their imprudence, including two of your predecessors. We rarely find more than fragments of bloodstained fabric or some well-gnawed bones.”
After a moment he added, “The same fate befalls any outsider who wanders close to the village. This may seem unkind, but it is the fault of King Ambrose. While he persecutes us, we are forced to defend ourselves as best we can with our limited resources. Chimeras are always hungry. This must have something to do with their extraordinary growth, which I cannot as yet explain.”
This time the silence remained unbroken. The punt moved on. Apparently the lecture was over, but he had not said exactly what a chimera was or looked like. Swan would know, but she was clearly too cowed to speak at all.