The Monster War: A Tale of the Kings' Blades (11 page)

Vincent’s face had turned very red. “
I am not your father
!”

Wart shouted right back at him. “Then stop behaving as if you are! Think,
brother
! When you were my age and a senior at Ironhall, if you had been offered this chance to serve your king, wouldn’t you have grabbed it with both hands, danger or no danger? This is what Blades are for! You made me what I am. Don’t destroy me now!”

“Destroy you?
They
will destroy you!—these two scoundrels. Boy, I’m as old as both of them put together and I say they’ve dazzled you with all their clever planning—contingency this and supposition that. It’s too complicated. They’ve forgotten that chance is elemental, and sooner or later chance always outsmarts us, all of us. Something totally unforeseen will trip you up and ruin it all.”

That should have been the end of it. Wart thought it was the end, and it was with no great hope that he added, “Well, we’ll do the best we can without you, sir. If I die, I’ll be in good company. Twenty-four brothers in the last half year! That’s one a week.”

Vincent glared at him, then at Snake. “You’re really determined to go through with this whether I help or not?”

“I have no choice, brother.”

“Of course we’ll do it,” Wart said, “
brother
.”

“Flames and death!” The old man shook his head. “Then we’d better talk about it a little more…. Let me get my steward.” He stalked over to a bell rope.

Under his breath, Snake hissed, “You sing a sweet song, minstrel.”

“Don’t I!” Wart whispered happily.

He had won Sir Vincent over, but the song he sang had turned out to be his own funeral dirge.

T
HE 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.

T
HE FIRST SIGN OF THE VILLAGE WAS A LOW DOCK of rotting wooden pilings lining the left-hand shore. Behind that stood a wooden palisade, so mossy and ramshackle that it seemed like part of the forest. When Herrick and Thatcher brought the punt in against the wharf and held it there with their poles, Skuldigger removed the golden whistle from his neck and dropped the chain over the head of the taller of the two, whichever one he was. “Go back and wait for the Marshal. Obey his orders. If he does not come, do not wait long enough to miss the tide.”

“Master.” The man’s reply was little more than a grunt.

With the tide in, it was possible to step from the side of the punt straight onto the dock, and thus Emerald followed Swan and the Doctor ashore. The bank was treacherous, a mixture of mud and decayed timber, and in some places the pilings had collapsed to let the soil slide away, leaving gaps like giant bite marks. Nevertheless Swan took off at a run for the gate, going in search of her daughter. Skuldigger strode along behind her, making no effort to call her back.

Emerald followed more cautiously. She was unimpressed by the palisade leaning over her, which had obviously been built many years ago out of the spindly trunks of local trees. It was a mossy, half-rotten fence, not much more than head height, sagging like the flesh on a dowager’s neck. She could not imagine how such a wreck could keep out monsters capable of killing and eating full-grown seals. Anyone could knock a hole through that if she had to.

Just before the Doctor reached the gate, two middle-aged men and a young woman came hurrying out. They greeted him warmly—very warmly in the woman’s case. Flames! It had never occurred to Emerald that there could be a Mistress Skuldigger. Would she be as crazy as her husband? This question should soon be answered, because the men vanished inside, chatting busily, while the lady waited for Emerald.

First impressions were not favorable. Her rose-and-gold gown was crafted of the finest silk and decorated with innumerable sequins and seed pearls—far better suited for court than a backwater in the swamps. As a concession to reality, the toes of black leather boots showed under the hem of its widely spread skirt, but nothing of the lady herself was visible, being hidden by long sleeves, white gloves, and a red straw hat inside a veil of muslin that completely enveloped her head like a bag. Granted that the overall effect was bizarre, the outfit was practical enough to protect her from both insects and the mire underfoot. She did catch the eye in a little place like this.

“I am Sister Carmine!” she announced in the imperious tones of a herald proclaiming the entry of the Gevilian ambassador. Her face remained a blur behind the muslin.

“Sister Emerald, Sister.” Emerald had realized at some point in this interminable day that if her expulsion from Oakendown had been a fraud, as Wart admitted, then she was entitled to ignore it and claim the rank she had earned.

“Welcome to Quagmarsh, Sister.”

“My visit here is not by choice.”

“Come, I will show you around.” Sister Carmine turned and led the way to the gate, being careful not to let her skirt brush against any of the debris. “Choice or not, here you will be privileged to assist in a magnificent extension of the frontiers of human knowledge, combined with a struggle for personal freedom against tyrannical oppression.” That answered the question. She was at least as crazy as her husband—birds of a feather flip together.

Inside the gateway, hidden from outside view, lay another punt and two small boats. There was no street as such, merely narrow passages between squalid huts of wattle and thatch. The air stank of sewage.

Waving away the swarming insects, Emerald said, “Pray explain to me the magic in the amulets Marshal Thrusk and his men wear. I am much relieved to be free of it at last.”

“Amulets?” Mistress Skuldigger laughed gaily. “They wear no amulets, child! They have themselves been bespelled with loyalty to Doctor Skuldigger. It is one of his greatest magics, based on the enthrallment sorcery that the Baels use to tame their slaves. The Baels are satisfied to turn their victims into human sheep, incapable of doing anything except obey orders. Doctor Skuldigger has succeeded in imposing absolute obedience without damaging the subjects’ intelligence—not to any great extent that is. Yet the tyrant Ambrose seeks to crush all such progress! His oppression is intolerable. It has taken Doctor Skuldigger many years and hundreds of attempts to perfect this sorcery, and the value of it to society could be inestimable.”

Well now, there was a debatable statement! The value of such a spell to the sorcerers who owned it would certainly be beyond measure, but Emerald shuddered at the thought of the evil being made available to anyone who could afford it. Landowners would enslave their workers, householders their servants; generals would make troops fearless…. This was exactly the sort of magical barbarity the King was trying to stamp out.

“I cannot imagine why a man like Marshal Thrusk would submit to such treatment.”

Inside her veils, Mistress Skuldigger laughed. “He did not know he was submitting. A year or so ago he came to the Priory to have a wound healed, a nasty puncture made by a pitchfork tine. Of course Doctor Skuldigger recognized his value right away and enlisted him.”

“Thrusk did not mind being tricked like that?”

“He cannot complain. He recruited all his men as well—the Baron’s men, really. And the Baron, too, is now a supporter.”

Her name, her choice of colors, her burning enthusiasm—they all proved beyond doubt that fire was Carmine’s dominant manifest element. Wart had said that there must be at least one Sister cooperating willingly with the traitors. A little thought showed the logic of that, because the captors would need to know when the captives were lying to them. Carmine was that traitor, the Sister who had married the corrupt sorcerer. Emerald wondered if her dominant virtual element was love, which could make its children do anything. No, in that case she should not be so indifferent to the suffering her husband’s work created. Chance, more likely. Fire-chance people were so unpredictable and uncontrollable that the Companionship rarely admitted them.

Carmine followed a complex winding path through the shacks. Some of them were collapsed ruins; others had recently been repaired, and sounds of hammering and sawing not far off suggested that the work continued. The few people in sight were obviously servants and laborers, the telltale discordant whistle of enchantment indicating that they had all been bespelled. But there had to be other inhabitants in this den of horrors. The men who had greeted Skuldigger at the gate must have been colleagues, for eight people were needed to conjure the eight elements. The slaves’ loyalty spells would disrupt the balance of elements too much for them ever to work magic. Masters and slaves alike seemed to be prisoners of the monsters roaming the swamps.

“What does a chimera look like?”

“Depends on the ingredients Doctor Skuldigger used to make it. He has warned you about them, I hope?”

“In a general sense. They attack on sight?”

“Oh yes. Most of them are flesh eaters and they all seem to be permanently ravenous. To venture far from the stockade by day is very dangerous. By night it is suicide. You will be eaten alive, and not just by mosquitoes!” Sister Carmine found her own humor irresistibly funny. Love was certainly not a major element in her makeup.

“Why do creatures so powerful not break into the village?”

“Because they were ordered not to do so when they were assembled, of course. Doctor Skuldigger has also made a device that drives them away. Without that we should all be trapped in here forever.”

“Only one ‘device’? Isn’t that rather risky?” If a prisoner could steal that magical whistle….

“We have several copies. You will note,” Sister Carmine said, changing the subject abruptly, “that I am not taking you by the shortest route. If you are as sensitive as I am, you will have detected the conjuration presently underway in the elementary. I wish to avoid it.”

Emerald had certainly noted it—magic like a stench of rotting fish—and now she could hear chanting. A few moments later her guide led her into a small open area, an irregular patch of weeds and mud that seemed to serve as a village square. A woman was turning a windlass on a well, making horrible squeaking noises, and a gang of four men was repairing thatch on one of the huts.

“Do come and see this!” Carmine said excitedly. “One of our trappers brought in an
otter
this morning! Very rare! Usually they just catch water rats or squirrels. In fact, the trap lines are often quite empty now. The chimeras have scared everything away.”

Or eaten everything, Emerald thought. What would happen when there was nothing left for them to eat in the woods?

Carmine stopped at a small open-fronted shed containing a collection of metal cages. She peered into them until she found the one she wanted and then banged on it. The lump of fur in one corner did not move. “There it is. Poor thing! They say its paw is injured and of course they never eat in captivity. I expect Doctor Skuldigger will want to use it tonight, before it starves itself to death.”

Emerald did not ask
Use how
? She did not want to know. She was more interested in two solid posts outside and the rusty chains dangling from them.

“And this?”

Although Sister Carmine’s face was concealed by her veil, her smile could be heard in her voice. “Well, those serve several purposes. New recruits usually have to be restrained until Doctor Skuldigger and his assistants have time to attend to them. On occasion they also serve as a whipping post. You have met Marshal Thrusk?”

Emerald did not answer.

“This way.” Sister Carmine set off through the weeds in her fine gown. “You will find that the cost of defiance rises swiftly. Doctor Skuldigger will question you later, and I expect he will introduce you to your duties. They are very simple and quite harmless if performed correctly.”

Past two or three more huts, they came to a woman sitting on a bench outside a doorway, cuddling a child of about two. It was Sister Swan, and both she and her daughter were so intent on each other that they did not notice the arrivals until Carmine spoke.

“There you are!” she said cheerfully.

Swan jumped. The child screamed. And screamed. She tried to burrow into her mother’s neck, screaming all the time. Swan picked her up and ran into the hut, just as another woman came out to see what was happening. It was quite understandable that a two-year-old girl might be frightened by a woman with a bag over her head, but somehow Emerald thought that Belle knew exactly who was under the veil, and that was why she had screamed. And was still screaming inside the hut, despite all her mother could do to calm her.

But the other woman—large, plump, grand-motherly…

“Cloud!”

“Emerald!”

They fell into each other’s arms.

“Oh, how nice!” Carmine declaimed. “I am so glad you know each other. This will help you to settle down in your new home, Emerald.”