The Magehound (29 page)

Tzigone scrambled away from the terrible vision, crab-walking frantically until she bumped into the far wall. Matteo also retreated, but he circled the vision and studied the ghostly bird thoughtfully.

Suddenly a vast clawed hand flashed in from nowhere. It slashed toward the avian guardian, a force too fast to evade and too powerful to stop. The bird exploded into a flurry of feathers and gore.

And then the image was suddenly, mercifully gone.

“What foul sorcery was that?” Matteo said softly, looking at Tzigone with the same horror that she had felt upon beholding the dream. Apparently he could bear the magic far more easily than he could stomach the magician.

“It wasn’t mine,” she said desperately. “Not my magic, not even my memory.”

“It couldn’t have been your memory. That much is true. That species of griffon has been extinct for nearly three hundred years. You couldn’t remember what you have never seen.

“Or could you?” he said, his tone bleak but thoughtful. “A diviner can glimpse the future. I have never heard of a wizard who could look into the past, much less recall it in so vivid a fashion, but perhaps it could be done. But you are a wizard, Tzigone, no matter what tales you choose to tell.”

For once Tzigone had no rejoinder. Too shaken to care about such fine distinctions, she bolted for the window. Before Matteo could say a word, she disappeared out into the night.

Dawn was nothing but a fond hope when the small band of warriors waded into the Kilmaruu Swamp. Andris went first, wading through the knee-deep water and carefully testing a path for the men who moved silently behind him. There were forty of them, some jordaini, some commoners, some of foreign blood. According to the magehound, none of them knew Mystra’s touch.

Each man carried a pack on his back fashioned from sharkskin, and another, smaller bag hung on each side of his belt. These were filled with rations, for Andris did not trust any food or water they might find in Kilmaruu. The bags also carried an odd assortment of weapons. No magic could be used in the swamp, but Andris knew of natural substances that in certain combinations produced nearly magical effects. Each man carried several small bottles, each firmly stoppered with cork and sealed with a thin film of wax.

As he shifted his weight carefully to his next step, Andris tried not to think too much about the source of this relatively firm footing. Many years ago a terrible war had raged in this place. Hundreds had died fighting in a battle that lasted through the three days and nights of the full moon. It was said that entire villages had been emptied by the battles. Two villages had been all but swallowed by the swamp, and their ruins provided a haven for the undead creatures that haunted the land. Even Kilmaruu’s quiet dead were very much in evidence. The bones of long-dead warriors provided a frame that held the silt and sand and kept Andris and his fighters from sinking into the muck.

Mist rose from the water, swirling through the already thick fog. Andris watched closely for patterns. Many of their foes were creatures that could hide in the mist, blending in like dryads in a grove of trees. Ahead and to his left, a particularly thick land-bound cloud brooded over a sleeping heron. The jordain noticed that it didn’t touch either the bird or the water.

Andris nodded to one of the forward scouts-Quon Lee, a small, slight man with hair the color of polished ebony and almond-shaped black eyes so sharp that they could perceive shadows almost before they were cast. Quon Lee was a conscript, stolen from his homeland by pirates. Kiva had paid his slave price so that he could join this endeavor.

That was something else Andris tried not to ponder. True, the man stayed willingly enough, for he was eager to win his freedom. Kiva had promised that her magic could remove the ugly scar of the slave brand from Quon Lee’s forehead once the battle was over. Andris would have preferred to lead into battle men who chose to fight, not men who fought because they had no other choice.

He watched as the scout broke away from the group and slipped down into the water, half swimming and half crawling toward the cloud, keeping his movements slow and fluid and doing his best to stay submerged.

Andris nodded in silent approval. He wouldn’t have thought of this precaution, but he saw the wisdom of it at once. Quon Lee had been born and raised in haunted jungles far to the east. If a spirit guardian lurked within that cloud, it would be roused by the heat of a living body moving through the still morning air. But the water was as hot as blood, and it was full of darting creatures and unpredictable currents. The warm, restless water would mask the scout’s approach.

The call of the heron, sudden and shrill, startled them all. Some of the men jumped, but all were too well trained to make any noise. The long-legged bird burst into awkward flight. It rose into the strange mist and immediately faltered, its wings locked into place as if frozen. Like a child’s wooden toy, the bird traced an awkward nose dive and crashed into the water. The impact seemed to revive it somewhat, and it began to flail about in a wild panic.

Almost at once, the waters around the heron started to churn. In a heartbeat, a pool of deep red surrounded the bird. Frantic flashes of silver leaped and glittered in the bloody water.

Andris abruptly motioned his men to a stop. The swamp teemed with schools of silvery, delicate fish, not much bigger than a man’s hand, that could strip the flesh from an ox more efficiently than a butcher. Andris didn’t have to remind the men to keep perfectly still until the frenzy abated and the fish swam off in search of other prey.

One of the men lifted a hand to his heart to trace a sign of warding, a silent petition to some foreign god. Although Andris had been raised to believe that none but Mystra or Azuth were true deities worthy of veneration, he didn’t begrudge the man his devotions. Jordain were taught to respect the gods of magic, but from a distance. Still, Andris suspected that all the men were calling upon every god whose name they knew. A trip into Kilmaruu, Andris noted wryly, might even make a devout man of Matteo.

He quickly thrust aside the thought of his friend and the pain that came from knowing he would likely never see Matteo again. In the eyes of his brothers, Andris was dead. Unless he kept his focus, that fiction might soon become truth. This was no time to think about what might come after Kilmaruu.

Quon Lee glided smoothly back toward the group. He rose from the water, caught Andris’s eye, and gave him a single grim nod. The man’s lips were blue, and under the brown of his face lay a sickly pallor. Even in the water, even without touching the cloud itself, he had been chilled by the ghostly presence.

Andris motioned the men away from the lurking mist. They moved cautiously through a narrow strip between two seas of reeds, into a lagoon shaded by leaning trees draped with moss and vines.

Andris studied the shore, looking for a likely route among the thick and seemingly impassable tangle of underbrush. As he watched, a shrike dived in, its flight awkward due to the heavy weight it bore in its talons. A long, limp brown form hung from the small raptor’s grasp-a weasel, most likely. The shrike tossed its prey into the brush. It fell onto a wicked thorn, neatly impaled on a spike that was longer than Andris’s thumb.

He studied the brush more closely and noted that the shrike had left several similar meals scattered among the bushes that lined the lagoon’s edge. The result looked grimly like a miniature butcher shop, and Andris quickly decided against attempting a land passage. Jungle shrikes chose only the most secure sites for their larders, places that could not easily be penetrated or despoiled. Better to risk the water than attempt passage through those rending thorns.

Even as the thought formed, one of the scouts suddenly disappeared beneath the water. Andris stooped and plunged both hands into the dark water, groping about until he seized a handful of hair. He dragged the man up, unharmed and wearing an expression of chagrin. The scout pantomimed a ledge with a sudden, quick drop. They moved as close to the shore as they dared and kept to it, testing for ledges with each step.

“Ledges,” Andris said softly, remembering what he had read of such formations. Ledges of submerged rock or roots offered ideal places for underwater storage. Some water monsters were known to drag their prey into the water, drown them, and leave them wedged under a rocky ledge until they had softened and aged. Ledges, he concluded grimly, were not a good omen.

The crocodiles appeared so suddenly that Andris had the uncanny feeling he’d conjured them with a thought. One moment the lagoon was limpid silver, as still as a mirror beneath the rising mist. The next, a semicircle of reptilian eyes regarded the men with a cold, incurious stare, and over a dozen snouts pointed toward the scent of living meat.

Andris nodded to Iago, his second-in-command. The thin man quickly pointed to six of the quickest fighters. Andris chose seven more. Each man took a coil of rope from his belt and tested the noose at the end. Then each man silently chose a partner. They moved in pairs, spreading out to face the approaching crocodiles.

The fighters readied their nooses while their partners cupped their hands, as if to give their comrades a leg up onto a horse. When the crocodiles were near, the men tossed the chosen fighters up and over the approaching creatures. The men twisted nimbly in the air and came down to straddle the crocodiles’ backs.

Instantly the water exploded into churning foam. Some of the crocodiles reared up, jaws snapping at the air, and then splashed down hard. The men riding them lunged forward at once, struggling to get the nooses around the fanged jaws.

The crocodiles instinctively dived and went into furious spins, trying to dislodge the men or drown them. But the men had trained too well, and they knew their opponents. Once a crocodile clamped its jaws down, the strongest four men among them couldn’t wrench them open. But the muscles that opened these massive jaws were not strong at all. Holding the jaws shut and tying them required not massive strength but timing, dexterity, and nerves of tempered steel.

In moments the crocodiles were muzzled and floundering about, tossing their heads and pawing at the ropes. The men struggled back to the ledge. They fell back into formation and quickly left the lagoon, fearing that the struggles of the helpless crocodiles might draw even worse creatures.

They walked throughout the morning, sometimes splashing through water, sometimes walking on narrow strips of spongy land. The mist faded as the sun rose, but the air remained thick and damp. Insects, some of them larger than birds of prey, darted across the water or skimmed its surface. Once a giant wasplike creature dipped low over the water and flew off with a large eel, snapping and writhing in its grasp.

Andris hadn’t expected the Kilmaruu to be so noisy. Birds called and shrieked and laughed in the trees overhead. An occasional snarl of a hunting cat echoed through the trees. Grunts and whuffles spoke of the great wild pigs that roamed the jungles, swifter and deadlier than wolves. Insects chirped among the ferns or whined around his head. Giant frogs groaned and burped, bull crocodiles roared. Monsters whose voices Andris had never heard added to the cacophony.

Despite the noise that surrounded them, the men didn’t talk. They moved along in silence, marking the swamp’s every rustle and cry. Many of them kept their hands resting on their weapons. Their faces became increasingly drawn and tense, their muscles as tight and ready as a wound crossbow.

Even so, they failed to see the giant dragonfly until it dropped among them, fast as a striking hawk. Barbed, sticky talons drove deep into the shoulders of Salvidio, the smallest man among them. Two pairs of iridescent blue wings beat furiously as the creature changed direction. The reeds along shore bent under the sudden onslaught of air, and the small man was jerked from the water before he could reach for a weapon or form a startled oath. The dragonfly darted off with its struggling prey, heading for the dark, deep waters to the west.

For a moment the sheer size and speed of the creature stunned Andris into immobility. He quickly gathered himself and turned to Danthus, another jordain and the best archer among them. “Use a tethered arrow, and quickly!”

Danthus snatched his bow from his shoulder and fitted to it a stout arrow. He took aim at the dragonfly and let fly. The bolt rose, trailing a length of rope. Five men darted to the archer’s side, each taking a two-handed grip on the rope’s end and bracing his feet wide for the coming jolt.

The archer’s aim was true, and the arrow tore through the gossamer wings and sank deep into the insect’s body. The dragonfly screamed, an unexpected and chilling sound that broke off abruptly as the creature reached the end of its tether and jerked to a stop.

Down went the giant insect, but it didn’t relax its hold on Salvidio. They slammed into the water. The dragonfly’s wings continued to beat as furiously in the water as they had in the air.

All six men began to drag in the rope, working hand over hand as they pulled the struggling insect into the shallows. The creature’s movements began to slow, and the water went still as the dragonfly and its prey sank out of sight. Andris waded in as deep as he dared, then pulled his dagger and waited.

A round, furry head suddenly exploded from the water. Andris found himself staring into the insect’s eyes. Each was a bulging orb containing a thousand smaller eyes, all as green as moss and filled with malevolence. A pair of dripping antennae quirked into a posture of unmistakable menace. The creature’s mouth, a strange hooked beak, opened wide as the head reared back to attack.

Andris drew the dagger overhead and stabbed straight into the open maw. The dragonfly screamed again, a horrible, strangled sound. Hot blood gushed from the beak, and the wild light began to fade from the dragonfly’s multiple eyes.

The jordain wrenched his blade free, took a deep breath, and dived under the water. Though the creature was dead, it hadn’t let go its prey. Salvidio’s eyes were bulging, and rifts of bubbles spilled from his lips. Andris used his knife to pry the talons from Salvidio’s shoulders. He saw at once that he couldn’t finish the task in time and quickly rose to the surface.