Finding the Way and Other Tales of Valdemar (3 page)

Finally she spotted a path, marked by the presence of mat-grass, which needed actual soil, not mud, to grow. “Follow me. See this grass?” She pulled up a tuft. “Step only where this grows.”

“For one thing, I am a lizard, and we make notoriously poor eating.” She chuckled. “For another, I have—well, I suppose it is a Gift of sorts. It’s certainly more than just knowing the swamp very, very well. I can find paths to and through anything. I really don’t know how, I just think about it, and I can see it.”

This was the most talking she had done in a very long time, and she actually surprised herself with the amount she had said.

“Besides that, as you said, I know the swamp, and I know the danger signs in it. I suppose I have another Gift; I get a sense of when danger is near, even without signs of it.” She shrugged, and leaped to the next grassy tussock.

:I do not know if my Chosen is in the Mire or on the other side,:
Vesily said, as she picked her way daintily from tussock to tussock.
:I only know that it is time and he needs me. Until I actually Choose him, I cannot Mindspeak him, and I am not bound to him as I will be when he is truly Chosen.:

“Depending on where he is, it might take us as long as three days before we can reach him.” Sherra tested a dubious tussock with her staff, but it held firm. She envied the Companion’s long legs.

She felt the Companion’s dismay.
:Three days! But—:

“You can’t tell how far he is, and that’s how long it takes to cross Gripping Mire. Unless you can summon a gryphon to go look for him—” That would certainly be preferable. Not for the first time, Sherra wished she lived on the Vale side of the Mire. It would be much easier to get one of the gryphons to scout. Or ask one of the Hawkbrothers to send out his bond bird; that would be almost as good.

The Companion’s sigh was all that it took to tell Sherra that Vesily was no more likely to call a gryphon than she herself was.
:But doesn’t that mean we will spend at least two nights in the Mire?:
she replied, clearly not happy with that prospect either.

“There are islands in there, and I know how to safeguard us,” Sherra replied. “And I’ll find things that are safe for you to eat. It won’t be pleasurable, but it won’t be a misery either, unless it rains.
Until
it rains.”

She looked back to see Vesily shuddering at the thought. Well, Sherra couldn’t really blame her. The Mire in the rain? Ugly proposition. Not as miserable for them as it would be for humans, poor naked things, but quite bad enough.

Already the insects had discovered them—the small ones, at least, not the huge, hunting ones deeper in the Mire—and midges and mosquitoes rose from the surrounding area in clouds. But Sherra’s tough hide sent them away, discouraged, and something about Vesily made them suddenly zoom off when they had gotten within a few inches of her white coat. Probably something to do with magic, and that was one thing more off Sherra’s “worry” list. Without protection, it was quite possible for animals to be so drained of blood overnight by insects that they became too weak to move.

At which point, of course, they became something’s dinner.

Since she had not had time for breakfast, she gulped the fish stew from her gourd while it was still warm, regretting the half pot she’d had to throw away. This had been a very good batch.

:What on earth are you drinking?:
Vesily demanded after a while, her irritation plain.

“My breakfast, Lady, which you were too impatient to permit me to eat,” Sherra replied, with equal irritation. “If you had not noticed by now, in order to set a pace that satisfies you, I must make three strides to your one, thus I am working three times harder. I am in great need of this breakfast.”

Silence. Chagrined silence, at least.

Good. Sherra put her mind back on the path. The plants around them now were well over Vesily’s head, never mind Sherra’s—and more than once, Vesily had to balance awkwardly on two or three tussocks of safe ground, while Sherra searched for another to jump to.

Finally, there
was
nothing to jump to. “Well, Lady,” she said, turning back to the Companion, “We have run out of dry. It is now time to get wet.”

Sherra nodded her snout with sympathy. “The good news is that this part of the mire is relatively free of sucking mudholes. I’ll only have to make sure we don’t run into plain, ordinary
holes
that would break one of your ankles.” She eased herself down into the dank, green water carefully. No matter what you did, swamp water was pretty nasty stuff, rank with rotting vegetation, and stagnant. Not even a lizard liked the smell of it.

At least it was only knee-deep here. Small blessing.

This was where her staff truly came into play, probing every bit of bottom before they ventured onto it. As long as it stayed this shallow, nothing really large and dangerous could hide under the water, and things like water vipers generally tended to slither away rather than attack. So all they had to worry about were underwater obstacles, and the occasional poisonous serpent that
wouldn’t
slither away when disturbed.

Oh, and anything they might attract with the sound of splashing.

At midmorning, they came upon one of the islands that Sherra had told the Companion about, and at that point they were both ready for a rest. Slogging through water trying to make the best possible speed was not an easy task. They were both slimed, Sherra up to her waist, the Companion well above her knees. It showed more on Vesily; she had green legs now.

Sherra hauled herself up onto the firmer land with a sigh; Vesily groaned as she lurched up out of the water. Sherra had expected to have to fight for a rest, but it was Vesily who asked first
:Can we take a candlemark or so to recover?:

Well!
Sherra tried to keep from sounding gleeful. “Absolutely. Just let me dig a seep.”

As Vesily folded up her slimed legs and dropped down onto the thatch of dried grasses that must have been accumulating here for a decade, Sherra cleared a patch of them away and dug a hole in the mat of roots until she was pretty sure she was below the waterline. This hole would quickly fill with water filtered through the roots of the plants and the earth itself, and once boiled, it would give them a clean source of water for a good drink before they moved on.

Then she flopped down on the grass next to Vesily.

Now that they were not moving, Sherra let her tired muscles relax, and let the warm sun soak into her. It felt wonderful. She had never pressed this far, this fast, into the swamp before. Vesily’s urgency had infected her, but they were both paying the price of that urgency.

Her eyes started to close, and she let them. If Vesily was still feeling that driven, then Vesily could wake her up.

On the other hand . . . if Vesily was as tired as Sherra, they might not wake up until the sun set and evening’s chill descended.

Bad idea.

So she left a little mental command to herself:
I will wake up when the sun is a little past noon.
That part of her that tended to such things noted the position of the sun on her closed lids, knew where it would be around about noon, and agreed. With that mental “watchdog” in charge, Sherra quickly reviewed their position.

It was good. They were in the middle of this island, there had been no indication that anything used it as a home other than marsh birds, they were below the level of the tops of the grass and, so, invisible. They were as secure as they could be without erecting walls.

All good,
said the “watchdog.” Sherra let herself drowse. The watchful part of her kept an ear on the marsh sounds, the insects whining and buzzing, the frogs, the little marsh birds. There was some splashing that briefly disturbed her, but the sounds were small and irregular, so they were probably a fish or a frog jumping or striking at a bug.

Finally it was a little after noon, and she woke fully, feeling much better. The Companion was still dead asleep; interestingly, all the slime had flaked off her legs, leaving her lying in a shower of little green flakes, and her legs were pristine again. Well, that wouldn’t last long.

Sherra set her tiny camp-stove to blaze, blowing on its vents until the fuel became an ember. She balanced a full cup of the seep-water on the stove’s tines and revisited it after it had bubbled a few minutes. Sherra swapped that hot cup for a wide shallow copper bowl of seep water in its place, and left her bread in it to soak while a pinch of tea warmed up in the cup. She then got out one of the leatherbound vials from her pack and dripped four drops into the seep, swirled it with her tailtip, then had herself a drink of the tepid water there; it tasted green, but not bad, and now it was nice and clear. The drops made contaminants simply drop away to the bottom and clump there, leaving pure water behind. It took weeks to make a batch of the stuff, but even if it took years, it would still be worth it. Sherra slipped off long enough to gather some grasses and roots she knew the Companion could eat safely; for herself, she kept a few of the roots, augmented with the journey bread sticks she kept in her rucksack. The roots were unusual fare for her when guiding; normally she made do with the bread, while those she guided tended to their own needs. But normally she didn’t have to set off in a tearing hurry with a client that hadn’t made any preparations—and who, in any event, would have to eat so much that carrying provender was impractical.

When she had eaten—eating before Vesily did, because she was pretty certain Vesily would not give her much time once she bolted her own meal—she woke the Companion.

Vesily lurched to her feet in alarm, confused for a moment at finding herself in the swamp. Sherra just stepped calmly back for a moment while Vesily sorted herself out.

“I’ve gathered safe food for you, Lady, and the seep is full and clean,” she said, gesturing to the pile of grasses and roots. “While you are eating I will scout ahead, and when you are finished, we can be off.”

:How late is it?:
Vesily asked, her eyes wide. :How long did I sleep? I didn’t mean to sleep!:

“Lady, it does not matter, “ Sherra replied with what she hoped was patience. “If you were tired enough to sleep, you were too tired to go on. Would you rather have stumbled into a sinkhole or a sucking mud-mire because you were too tired to stay to the path? Would you rather have attracted some predator? You slept; now we will make better time than if you had not.”

Honestly, how experienced is this creature?
she thought rather crossly, as she left Vesily to eat—or not—and struck out in the direction Vesily had given her.
How is it she doesn’t know that exhausting yourself at the beginning of a journey only makes it longer?

She didn’t know all that much about Companions, really. All she could think was that they must be greatly pampered creatures . . . or else this one truly did not know her own limits. It was true, come to think of it, that she didn’t particularly “feel” old in her Mindspeech.

Well, she would discover her limits quickly enough in here.

What Sherra was most concerned with, besides whatever roaming monster happened to prowl this part of Gripping Mire, was the presence of the sort of mudholes that Vesily could stumble into. Sherra knew how to free herself and a human from them, but a Companion? Four legs instead of two, no ability to grasp a rope or a branch, no way to get on top of the mud and slide on her belly——The only ending Sherra could see for that was death. A rather horrible death at that. This place was called Gripping Mire for a reason; the Hawkbrothers reckoned that it was at least half mudhole, and what the mud gripped, it seldom let loose.

So far they’d had decent luck—or rather, their luck hadn’t been
bad,
and they had not encountered any of the mudholes so close to the path Sherra was picking that an unwary footstep or a slip would put either of them into the grip of the mud. Of course, that could change at any moment; one reason why she wanted to scout ahead.

She returned about the same time that Vesily was hastily choking down the last mouthful of food. :We should go,: the Companion said, imperiously. :Now.:

“Drink first, if you haven’t, Lady,” Sherra replied, just as imperiously. “The swamp water isn’t safe to drink—and though I may not sweat, you do, and will. You’ll need the water, and I can’t carry enough to satisfy your big body.”

Vesily made one of those little moves that telegraphed her astonishment—but she bent her head to the seep and drained it.

:It tastes like mud,:
she said crossly.

“But it is safe mud.” Sherra repressed a laugh. “Follow, then, and you’ll see how much better time we make now that you are rested.”

And now that you are not so inclined to waste your energy pushing against water.
The only good way to get through the waist-deep water was to move with deliberation. Trying to rush only tired you out, and made you likely to step on something and fall, or slip and fall. Sherra’s clawed feet were
made
for this sort of place, and even she had to move with care.

But she was right; they did make good progress, although Vesily looked increasingly frustrated as the sun began to sink toward the horizon and there was still no end to the swamp. Sherra ignored her frustration; she was too busy looking for a place to spend the night.

Just when she thought they might have to settle for balancing precariously on adjoining tussocks of grass, she spotted the sort of trees ahead that could only grow on what, in here, was nearly dry land. “Over there,” she said, pointing. “There’s another island. We can overnight on it.”

By this point, the candlemarks of pushing through the swamp had worn Vesily down—or else, even she could see that it would be stupid to try to wade through this place in the dark. She only nodded, and obediently followed Sherra. Both of them clambered up onto the dry land, and the Companion uttered a sigh that sounded relieved.