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Every muscle in Dave’s body ached as he woke from a troubled sleep. Having slept in the fetal position in the black swamp oak, he had his backpack in his lap, and was holding his sword, Gram, in the crook of his arm. His bow was digging into his side and his quiver was lashed to the scabbard of his sword.
This had better work. If I spent the whole night in this blasted tree only to find myself back in Feiramar—I’ll scream. The stuff I do for Gleeson.
But in the next moment he felt a pang of guilt as he remembered Al’s anguished letter.
Dave realized that the smells of the swamp had perceptibly changed from the familiar scent of the wetland near his Barrier Mountain home. He parted the branches and peered out. The swamp looked unfamiliar.
Dave pushed his way through the branches. Standing up, he found himself in the middle of a bog about a hectare in size with cypress hummocks protruding from the water—green peas with toothpicks sticking out—floating in brackish broth. Sunlight dappled the placid surface of the water. Dave looked up. It was going to be a day of mixed sun and clouds.
He turned his attention to finding his way off the hummock that held the black swamp oak. There was no immediate evidence of a path. He didn’t expect one. Al would have disguised his approach to the strange tree, just as he and Arlana had for their black swamp oak, the twin to this one. He looked for evidence of the morning sun through the tree canopy and chose the approximate direction to Al’s house. Jumping from hummock to hummock and balancing on cypress roots, he finally saw evidence of a path. In five minutes, he was out of the trees and headed toward a modest bungalow, which he recognized from pictures as Al’s house. He smelled hay and cut grass. A sport utility vehicle was parked out in front. The porch creaked as he approached the front door.
Suddenly, the door swung open. “Son of a gun, if it isn’t Dave Schuster!” said a familiar voice. Floyd Linder wrapped Dave in a bear hug and lifted his two-hundred-forty pounds off the porch easily.
“Whoa, Linder, I’m breakable. It’s good to see you. How’s Al? Any news about Pam and Little Thomas?”
Linder put Dave down, and ran his hand over his shaven scalp. “Chartrand, Larsen, and I drove up as soon as we received his email, but he wasn’t here when we arrived this morning. There was just a note that he was checking out some black swamp oaks south of here. He gave us the coordinates. He also left us a bunch of other stuff. Al’s lawyer is a close friend, and he’s put all of his assets in trust with his lawyer. Makalo’s been designated to provide guidance to the lawyer on Al’s behalf. We were just talking about what to do next. Come on in. We helped ourselves to Al’s coffee. It’s fresh.”
Dave followed Linder in to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. Dwight Larsen and Tom Chartrand were already up and greeted Dave warmly. Dave pulled up a chair and joined the others at the table, taking a sip from the cup of coffee Chartrand had thrust into his hands.
Dave felt elated. He only realized, now that they were together, how much he had missed his friends.
“So Arlana let you go?” asked Chartrand.
“The swamp oak is barely big enough to carry one person. I insisted on going first, but Arlana will be here tomorrow morning with Hanomer.”
“Oh,” said Larsen. “Hanomer is coming? We’ll have to be careful to keep him hidden.”
Dave sensed Larsen was troubled. “I know. I was worried, too, about Hanomer coming. How do we keep him hidden when one view of him will raise all kinds of questions we can’t answer? Still, when Hanomer makes up his mind, he’s hard to dissuade, especially when Arlana backs him up, and when he’s had some kind of vision that he was supposed to come.
“What’s this hocus pocus about a vision?” asked Linder.
“I’ll let Hanomer tell you about it when he gets here. It gets worse. Hanomer is convinced he’s going to Abaddon to find Pam and Little Thomas. So, he argued he would only be here, in this world, for a brief time, so there would be little danger of his discovery.”
“What if we decide going to Abaddon is not the right course?” asked Linder. “Would he go by himself?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he did go by himself,” said Dave. “The Hansa have a very highly-developed sense of honor. If he believed it were his duty, he would go even if it meant going by himself to certain death.”
Linder shook his head. “Well back to the matters at hand. We were just trying to figure out what happened to Al, and what we should do next.”
“Well, if I were Al,” said Dave, “and I found the black swamp oaks that Bigelow had used, I would follow Pam straight away. Every moment counts. I would follow no matter the odds.”
“He’s right,” said Larsen. “Al would do a fool thing like that.”
Chartrand, biting his lip, added, “No matter what Al does, Bigelow has at least a twelve-hour head start on him. It means we now have two groups to search for. If Al had been smart, he would have waited. He’s just made our problem worse by rushing off.”
Linder rocked back on his chair. “That train has left the station. I say we head down to Bigelow’s bog and locate those swamp oaks. We have to find them if we want to help Al.”
There were nods around the table, except from Dave.
“I suppose,” said Linder, “you have to be here when Arlana arrives tomorrow morning.”
“Yeah,” said Dave, “It will be her first time in our world and she doesn’t know the first thing about this place.”
“You know Dave,” said Linder, “Arlana is not the only one we have to worry about. You’re an Ancient now. You’ve got that freaky ability to change your skin color in the matter of a few seconds. Remember how Bigelow’s men in Halcyon dubbed you and Arlana both squids when you were in captivity and they saw your skin color change? If that happens now, all kinds of alarm bells will ring. So, I’m asking: are you better at controlling your pigmentation?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Still, I think, Dave, you ought to let us take the lead while you stay in the background just so you don’t lose it and have a color change when you get excited.”
“Okay, I agree.”
“If we find enough swamp oaks,” continued Linder, “the three of us will travel right away to Abaddon in the hope of meeting Al before he wanders too far. You can drive the car back and pick up Arlana. You’ll be back here in plenty of time. In any case, we’ll wait for you by the trees in Abaddon.”
“You guys can do that? What about your jobs? What about family? Can you just disappear like that?”
“It’s all taken care of,” said Larsen. “Chartrand and I are still looking for work and Linder’s just finished a contract job. Our friend, Makalo, is going to look after our stuff. We’re following Al’s cue. We’ve given up our apartments and left notarized letters with our lawyers in case anyone questions Makalo about our disappearance.”
“Surely, you didn’t write down where we’re going?” said Dave.
“No, of course not. We only said we were going on a trip, and that we would be off the grid for some time. We also asked Makalo to pay the taxes on Al’s place if that should be necessary.”
“Alright,” said Dave, “Let’s get started.”