Fire Arrow (14 page)

Following Hanna's advice, Brie tied a blue scarf, the brightest bit of clothing she owned, to a cinnamon fern marking the place where she was entering the bog. As Brie stepped onto it, the mat tilted crazily, and when she walked between them the dwarf trees also tilted.

The bog stretched before her, a mosaic of trees, hillocks and hollows, ferns, sedges, mosses, and occasional pools of tea-colored water. She could dimly make out the shapes of the stones of memory in the distance, pushing their way up into the gray sky.

It was humid in the bog, and though the sun was not very hot, Brie quickly began to sweat. After her foot broke through the mat a few times, drenching her leg with bitter-cold water, she learned to recognize the signs of thin patches—standing pools of water and a lack of shrubs or trees.

When she had first entered Maglu, Brie had seen a few birds, a white-throated sparrow and a marsh hawk, but the deeper she journeyed, the less she saw of any kind of wildlife. The only sound she heard was the perpetual hum of midges and other insects.

***

The sorcerer Yldir was standing by the larger of the two stones of memory, his palm flat on the surface. She walked toward him, nervous. He was not as she had expected, wizened and elderly, but rather was erect and muscular, with broad powerful shoulders. He had long, burning copper hair tied back with a leather thong. As she drew closer, she saw his age on his face, not in lines or clefts, but in his eyes. They were brilliant and depthless and clear. Meeting his gaze was painful.

"Breo-Saight," he said, and his voice, too, surged with vitality. He somehow did not seem real to Brie. "Come. We will break bread. Then you will show me saeth-tan, the fire arrow."

Brie followed him meekly to a primitive one-room wooden hut. Indicating with a gesture that Brie should wait outside, Yldir stooped and entered the hut. He reappeared soon after with a thin loaf of bread.

"Missenbread," he explained. "Foul to the taste, but it strengthens." He sat cross-legged on the quaking mat, and Brie followed suit, facing him. Fara settled at Brie's side, alert. Yldir broke off a piece of the thin dry bread.

"The others are here. The time will come for meeting them."

Warily, Brie looked around her. It was late in the afternoon and a mist had come up, sending the dwarf trees into shadow against the murky sky.

"When I came here from the coast I sought quiet. The sea can be a noisy place. It teems with life. But there is life, too, in the bog. You have to look for it. Birth, decay, death—it is all here."

Brie sat before the Sea Dyak sorcerer, her legs crossed, eating bread that tasted of mold. Somewhere in the mist around them were perhaps six men, two of them her father's murderers, and yet she felt completely at ease, as though there were no other place she could be.

As she sat, chewing, all her senses became keener, and she was suddenly aware of the life of the bog. The bog turtle emerging from one hiding place and slowly making its way to another. The copper butterflies fluttering brown wings burnished with a purple gloss. There were damselflies and green frogs, spiders and bees and insect-eating plants that grew in abundance—butterwort and sundews—each carrying out the endless cycle of life, death, and decomposition.

Abruptly the Sea Dyak sorcerer spoke, seeking her eyes with his. "Your father was brave, but he made mistakes. They were not your mistakes. You were only one in Ramhar Forest, and it was
necessary,
" he said, laying a powerful, broad hand on her arm, "that you live."

Brie blinked back sudden tears.

Then he said, "May I see the arrow?" -

Brie began to reach for her quiver, but the sorcerer held up his hand with a small shake of his head.

Brie looked past Yldir and saw a Scathian materialize out of the fog. He was tall and had a yellowish cast to his eyes: Brie recognized the Scathian who was part morg. Once more she heard the clang of swords, smelled the stench of blood as it soaked into the roots of the trees in Ramhar Forest. A dull pounding thudded in her ears.

"So," Yldir said, rising. "They are here."

Five others slowly appeared, with Bricriu in the lead. They formed a ring around the sorcerer and the girl. Bricriu grinned at Brie with broken teeth; his hollow eyes held a look of something like victory. And Brie understood now that he had led her here purposefully, slowing and waiting while her leg healed at the havotty, making his trail obvious so she could not fail to find him.

The thick-armed killer, who had tortured her father with a black spear, walked just behind Bricriu. Brie could see the black spear in his hand. He also carried a box strapped to his back. It was a worn, crudely made wooden box, as long and as wide as his back. The three remaining men were Scathians Brie had never seen before; all were large and brutal.

Yldir looked undisturbed. He had expected them. The Scathians would not meet his eyes, but one of the largest pulled a sword and advanced on the sorcerer. He got within a foot of Yldir, then the sorcerer held out his hand, palm up. On it were what looked to be three small black seeds. He tossed them at the feet of the Scathian. A fine gray dust burst from the seeds, wafting into the man's face. He coughed once, then toppled over, dead.

Bricriu let out a cry of fear and backed away, but the four remaining Scathians began to close in. Yldir squatted and struck his fist against the peat mat, bursting through the surface and thrusting his arm down until it was submerged to the shoulder. Quicker than thought, he withdrew his hand, which was caked in slimy black mud. Calmly he rolled the mud into a snakelike shape, his hands deft and almost invisible they moved so swiftly. The snake lengthened and became a rope of mud. With his powerful arms Yldir lifted it high and flicked it like a whip. It hit a Scathian at chest level with a wet, cracking sound and wound around his neck, growing tighter and tighter. The Scathian clawed at the slimy black thing, but he, too, was quickly dead.

The Scathian carrying the black spear and the box on his back had halted in his tracks, as had the Scathian-morg, but the other Scathian jumped on Yldir, a dagger in his fist. The sorcerer met the charge and, without seeming to strain a muscle, flipped the man around and broke his neck, dropping him gently to the ground.

Bricriu screamed and backed farther and farther away,

his eyes darting between Yldir and the two remaining Scathians. The killer with the box dropped it on the ground, and Brie felt the mat quake underfoot. Yldir gazed at the box with curiosity.

As the Scathian wrestled with the rusty latch, symbols appeared and writhed across the wooden surface. They were unintelligible to Brie, weird, runelike. She looked at Yldir's face and saw surprise there. It frightened her. It did not seem possible that anything could take those knowing eyes by surprise. But before she could move or speak, the killer had succeeded in unloosing the latch and threw open the lid of the box.

A mass of white moths flew up and bore themselves directly to Yldir. They swarmed around his head. Through the swirling whiteness Brie glimpsed the sorcerer's startled face, then watched his expression change to one of utter bafflement. Brie felt sick seeing the knowledge and power seep out of his magnificent eyes. He stumbled about heavily, his powerful arms swatting ineffectually at the spinning moths.

Yldir's faltering steps led him toward the standing stones, and soon he had bumped up against the taller of the two. Like a drowning man, he wrapped his arms around the stone and abruptly the moths left him, spiraling upward. They were soon lost to sight. Brie started toward the sorcerer, but heard a grunt behind her.

The killer with the black spear held it upraised, pointed directly at her. Brie stood still. He made no move to throw the spear and, looking over at the Scathian-morg, Brie saw that he, too, held a spear in his hands. He had just ignited it with a small torch.

Brie watched in horror as the Scathian-morg launched the spear at Yldir. It cleaved the air and pierced the sorcerer between his shoulder blades. Yldir's mouth opened, but no sound came out.

Flames traveled quickly along the spear shaft, dropping embers on the quaking peat mat. Yldir's tunic caught fire. Brie let out a cry and, despite the spear still aimed at her, ran to the sorcerer. Burning her fingers, she pulled the flaming spear from his back and began beating out the flames on his clothing with her arms.

Fire flared up from the dry sedges on the mat. Smoke was everywhere. The two Scathians moved slowly toward Brie and Yldir. There was no sign of Bricriu.

Brie took the sorcerer in her arms, pulling him around to the back side of the stone. For a moment, as she held him, his eyes were radiant with the last of his power. He spoke. "Golden head. Eye like sea foam. Looking over the sea. Great evil. The arrow. Queen Fionna..." Then his eyes emptied and he was dead.

Brie gently laid him down, feeling suddenly bereft. But she forced herself to stand and cautiously peered around the stone.

She could not see either of her father's murderers. Thick smoke obscured her vision. Brie remembered what Hanna had told her about the dry summer and she realized that even the bog was vulnerable; despite the water underneath, all that grew on top was overdry.

Suddenly the thick-armed Scathian with the black spear leaped toward her from out of the smoke. He tripped over a dwarf spruce, and Brie dodged around the stone and ran. The mat tilted crazily, making it hard to move fast. She almost collided with the wooden box, the runes still glowing, evil and eerie, in the smoke. Behind her the Scathian was back on his feet and gaining on her.

Brie veered toward Yldir's wooden hut. She ducked behind it, the Scathian close on her heels. Then the hut was suddenly ablaze, and they were showered with live motes of flame and burning wood. The Scathian's cloak ignited and he dropped to the ground, rolling back and forth to smother the fire.

Brie ran. The smoke choked her and made it nearly impossible to see. With a pang, she realized she had lost track of Fara. She ran blindly, occasionally stumbling over shrubs and small trees. Finally, overwhelmed by smoke, she sank to her knees, coughing violently.

She crawled forward, one hand tearing through the ground and sinking into water. A thin section of the mat. She abruptly backed up, still coughing, her heart racing.

Then the mat tilted slightly and a pair of legs appeared beside her. She looked up into the yellowish eyes of the Scathian-morg. He smiled and savagely kicked at her. His boot caught her on the forehead, hard, and she reeled back, ears ringing. But as she fell she flung out her hand, catching the Scathian around his ankle. She yanked with all her strength and he fell heavily onto his back, landing directly where the mat was its thinnest. He broke through with a splash. The Scathian surfaced for a moment and gasped, shocked by the cold of water that hadn't seen the sun in untold years. He struggled to pull himself out, but the mat crumbled away around him and he sank down again. Brie could hear him thrashing as he was engulfed by the slimy black mud of the bog's bottom.

Bubbles formed on the surface. For a moment Brie sat frozen where she was, blood dripping from her forehead. Then she inched forward, but the mat in front of her started to give way. She froze again and, as she watched, the bubbles grew fewer, then were gone.

Smoke billowed around her. Overcome by another fit of coughing, Brie stood and floundered away from the gaping hole in the peat. She had no idea of direction now. But she kept moving, trying to keep ahead of the fire. She could not think; she could only move, coughing and wiping away the blood from the wound on her forehead as it trickled into her eyes.

And then he was there, a tree-length away, the killer with the black spear. His back was to her, his cloak in charred tatters and his hair singed. Brie swung her bow around, snatched an arrow from her quiver, and pulled back the string. She thought of her father, and a sob rose in her throat.

She wanted to let the arrow fly, pierce the killer through the heart with no mercy, as he had shown her father no mercy.

She could not do it. Not with his back turned.

"Scathian," she called, her voice raw.

He pivoted, saw Brie, and for a moment froze, then his arm came up and she could see the black spear gripped in his right fist. Smoke filled her nose and throat.

"Father," she whispered. She could not breathe. The Scathian was drawing back his arm. Tears standing in her eyes, she started to release the arrow, faltered a moment, then let fly.

The arrow sliced a path through the smoke and pierced the Scathian in his right shoulder. He staggered, then surged forward, running headlong toward Brie. The mat under Brie's feet pitched with his footfalls. She reached back for another arrow but had lost the distance; he was too close. Dropping her bow, she seized her dagger.

With a roar, the Scathian thrust his black spear at Brie. She dodged the blow, but he was quick and lunged again. The sharp point grazed her cheek.

She kicked his arm away, and the black spear went whistling to the side, lodging point first in the mat. Then the Scathian tackled her, his thick body pinning her face-down on the mat's, surface. Brie had a horrible image of the two of them plunging through into Maglu's ancient waters, but the mat held.

His body holding her down, the Scathian stretched forward for his spear. As he pulled it from the peat, Brie shifted her weight and drove her elbow up into the arrow that protruded from his shoulder. The Scathian let out a harsh cry of pain. In that moment, Brie plunged her dagger into the Scathian's neck.

Blood gushed forth and Brie watched as the killer's eyes emptied of life.

She had sought this man's death, but the feeling of triumph she had expected did not come. Pushing his body off hers, she lay still beside the Scathian. His blood was everywhere—on her clothing, in her hair; she could even taste it in her mouth. She rolled onto her knees and vomited until her stomach held nothing.

She lay quiet for a time, then sat up, feeling a hundred years old. A thin windless rain began to fall.