Lessek's Key

THE SALT MARSH

Brexan’s foot came down in thick black mud that stank of salt and decay and she cursed as she pulled her boot out. It was cold this morning, made worse by the wind off the water. She was glad she had changed from her skirt, for the weather felt as though it had finally shifted from autumn into winter. The salt marsh stretched east and north, swallowing the Falkan coastline in a plain of wetlands. Rushes, most of them naked stalks this late in the season, dominated the coarse cordgrass and bog sedges which carpeted the ground in thick tufts of green, resiliently holding the vestiges of their summer colour despite the encroaching winter.

To her left, muddy flats sloped for several hundred paces to the lapping waters of the Ravenian Sea. The uniform expanse of low-tide mud was a monochromatic painting of the ocean floor and Brexan wondered if all the vast seas of the world were as boring beneath the surface. Far to the north she could just make out a stream meandering its way across the flats and into the sea.

As she scraped a clinging lump of mud from her boots, hundreds of tiny seeds exploded from the reeds and caught on her clothes and in her hair; Brexan imagined she looked frightful, splattered knee-deep in mud and decorated head and shoulders in marsh spores. She pressed on regardless, shouldering her way through the rushes using the patches of cordgrass as stepping stones to navigate a relatively dry path through the estuary.

It had been eight days since Sallax and Jacrys, locked in grim battle, had fallen into invisibility at the end of the alley behind the alehouse. She had spent every day since searching for Sallax, while checking in what she hoped were unpredictable intervals over her shoulder for the spy. Her daily explorations had been carefully planned; moving in concentric circles out from the alehouse, Brexan had searched, backtracked and searched again.

She had first seen Sallax in the woods south of the city, but when she found no sign of him there, she decided to search the salt marsh north of the city. The Ronan freedom fighter could find numerous places in which to hide in this beautiful – if inhospitable – territory. Brexan had seen no one out here all morning; it didn’t look like the Orindale inhabitants made a habit of visiting the estuary during the winter.

‘Or during the summer, for that matter,’ she said. ‘The rutting bugs and snakes would be thick on the ground – I suppose this is the best time to be slopping around in this muck.’ She kicked at the discarded bones of a dead seabird, once a hearty meal for a marsh fox or perhaps a wildcat.

As a child, Brexan had been enthralled and terrified in equal part by the horror stories her father told her on cold winter evenings. There was nowhere in the Eastlands where the weather was quite as bitter as it was in Malakasia, and to pass the time, especially those interminable dark spells that blanketed most of her homeland in mid-winter, her father would make up stories of lunatic madmen on killing rampages, and demonic, one-eyed beasts hunting the Northern Forest for wayward children. From the adjacent room, her mother would invariably bark unheeded warnings to her father: ‘She’s not old enough for such tales,’ and ‘you can be the one to sit up with her all night, you great buffoon.’ But Brexan hadn’t cared; sleepless nights were never her concern. She would squeal with delight every time an unsuspecting villager wandered too far into the forest or when one of their wagons broke down, losing a wheel or ripping a leather bridle when they were too far into uncharted lands ever to make it home alive. And at the moment when the one-eyed ogre reached a muscular paw out from behind a stand of evergreens or a pack of rabid rodents gnawed through the leather slats holding the barn door closed to overwhelm the hero in a flurry of tiny teeth and poisoned claws, Brexan would dive beneath the blanket her father had been using to keep the chill off his legs and shiver and cry, frightened to within a hair’s breadth of collapse – but still begging for just one more.

Later, when she had grown and enlisted in the Malakasian Army, Brexan had periodically run up against one of her father’s old stories. Sleeping alone in a foreign inn, walking back from guard duty in the overnight avens or visiting the facilities after twilight, she would sometimes catch a chill scent or detect an imagined whisper caressing the nape of her neck. She would turn quickly on her heel, shouting, ‘Who’s there?’ to the empty space. No one was ever behind her, no rabid rodents hunting her down; no ogres reaching out hungrily. Brexan couldn’t escape those stories; scores of Twinmoons later, her father could scare her witless, even from the other side of Eldarn.

He had been with her this morning; on more than one occasion she had checked the cordgrass with a stick, half expecting to find a marsh adder coiled up and waiting for a taste of human blood or a pack of wild dogs crouching in the rushes, eager to hamstring her and rip mouthfuls of flesh from her defenceless body. As she tromped through the mud Brexan had tried to shut out her father’s tales: it was a long walk back to the safety and anonymity of Orindale and she couldn’t conduct a thorough search for Sallax with her father’s ghosts leaping out from behind every clump of grass.

Periodically she stopped to stare out over the flats: if Sallax were on the marsh somewhere, she might catch a glimpse of him moving through the rushes or across the mud. Brexan figured he was still wearing the black cloak, but he should be easy to spot – even with the curious stooped position he’d adopted as part of his disguise as a beggar, he was still tall enough to stand out.

Sunlight gleamed off the stream; Brexan, certain she had spotted something out there, squinted into the blinding glare. There it was: a tiny indistinct hillock marring the perfection of the glass-flat stretch of mud. Brexan moved quickly, ignoring the marsh adders and rabid dogs, until she came to the edge of the cordgrass and started elbowing her way through the rushes once again. She groaned as she stepped back into the mud and began making her way towards the lump – it’s probably nothing, just a hunk of driftwood.

The hump was a little over a hundred paces out and she was almost on top of it before she realised it was a body. She stopped dead in her tracks, sinking until the wet mud was almost at the top of her boots, as the odour of rotting flesh hit her. Trying not to breathe it in, she turned slowly in a full circle, feeling alone and vulnerable. Fear gripped her, and she thought again of home. Curse you, father, did you have to visit me today?

Breathing through her mouth, Brexan kicked the body over, almost retching as waves of putrefaction washed over her. In a clatter of armoured joints, a dozen or so crabs sidled a safe distance away; others stayed put, reaching up at her with their claws as if daring her to try and steal their prize. One small crab the size of a silver coin scurried over what had been the face – Brexan still couldn’t tell if it had been a man or a woman – and into the open socket that had once held an eye. A translucent flap of seaweed covered the gaping mouth and with the sun directly overhead, Brexan could see straight through the empty skull. The face had been stripped of nearly all the exposed flesh, though a couple of lengths of striated muscle remained. That made things worse. Brexan looked away, unable to stand looking at it for another moment… this would be for ever waiting for her in the cordgrass, beside her father’s marsh adders and rabid dogs.

She couldn’t guess how long the body had been in the water; though the crabs and fish and who knew what other creatures had feasted on it, the torso and legs were pretty much intact, still wrapped in a tunic and homespun leggings. For the second time that morning, Brexan was glad winter was coming, because she couldn’t imagine how disgusting this discovery would have been at the height of summer. She guessed this must have been someone killed during the last Twinmoon and dumped in the river or off the waterfront – there was a strong undertow round here and anything dropped in the water in Orindale would have been dragged along the bottom and deposited out here once the Eldarni moons broke off their relationship for another sixty days.

Confident the corpse had no link to Jacrys or Sallax, she turned to begin the long, sloppy trudge back to the relative comfort of the salt marsh. The sun had shifted just enough to ease the glare, but as she turned, something gleamed for a moment, just one flash – it blinded her for an instant and then was gone. She bent back over the body and this time spotted something shiny, a piece of jewellery, maybe, tucked just far enough up a sleeve for her to have overlooked it during her first cursory investigation.

‘What do you have up there?’ she asked, gripping the damp edge of the tunic sleeve with two fingers. Breathing quickly through her mouth, Brexan added a running commentary, hoping that would keep something dreadful from actually happening. ‘And this is right about when my father would leap out of the chair and scream something horrible in a shrieking voice – you know, the voice of the young girl being pursued through the forest by the man-wolf or the lion-dog-’ She tugged at the sleeve, but it was heavier than she’d expected and it slipped from her fingers. ‘Or this is when the very dead body wakes up and uses its unfathomable strength to grip the unsuspecting soldier by the wrist and pull her down into the mud where she chokes to death while listening to its terrifying song… right, Father? Isn’t that what happens about now, with the heroine exposed out here where no one can hear her scream-’ The sleeve finally yielded up its secret: a curious piece of jewellery the like of which Brexan had never seen before.

‘Now what in all the Eastlands is that?’ she asked, picking at the buckle to untangle the mud-covered object from the rotting cloth. She turned it over in her hands several times, but it was too filthy to make out the detail, so she took it over to the stream, where she scrubbed the piece thoroughly. It was a bracelet, a round piece as bright as polished silver, held in place by a tiny leather belt. On the back of the roundel was an engraving: an odd, two-limbed tree surrounded by a series of runes.

‘Hmm,’ said Brexan out loud, ‘I may have to take you to a jeweller. Maybe we can find out who you belonged to. I bet your family might want to know where to find the rest of… well, you know.’

The midday aven had passed, and Brexan didn’t want to be alone on the estuary in the dark, so she turned and clumped her way back.

The four friends crossed the barren expanse of the Pragan foothills, moving towards the edge of the ravine splitting the Great Range north to south. The chasm was so wide and deep that Hoyt thought it might have been where the gods had gripped the land to pull Eldarn together, but finding there wasn’t enough, they left the final seam gaping open. For as far as they could see the hills that rolled north into the granite slopes of the Great Range had been stripped bare; all the trees had been cut down or forcibly uprooted. Snow capped the highest peaks, and Hoyt shivered in anticipation of an overnight snowstorm.

Hannah, Churn and Alen had slept until midday, and once they’d cleaned up and eaten, the group set off for the western edge of the ravine, long stony bluffs that lined the chasm.

Despite his nearly incessant screaming the previous day, Churn had not made a sound since he woke; now he signed to Hoyt as they walked.

‘I don’t know who could have done this, Churn,’ Hoyt answered. ‘A farmer, perhaps?’

Churn’s face scrunched into scepticism. He signed, ‘It’s the forest of ghosts. The farm hands wouldn’t be able to go five paces before losing their senses.’

‘True,’ Hoyt admitted, ‘but I’m not complaining. Hauling you through that forest yesterday was a rough business. I don’t mind that someone shortened the trip.’

Alen interrupted, ‘So it stopped when we emerged from the trees?’

‘Right,’ Hoyt said, ‘as soon as you stepped out from beneath that big maple, the three of you collapsed. It was unnerving: there you all were, yammering away, not even pausing for breath, and then as soon as you broke through the tree line, that was it.’

Alen looked around at the rolling hills of barren earth. ‘So, it’s the trees.’

Hannah stopped beside him. ‘And someone realised that, and came here to cut down the whole forest.’

‘Right,’ Alen said. ‘But there’s something missing.’

‘What’s that?’ Hoyt asked.

‘The trees. Where are they?’

Churn signed, ‘Maybe they hauled them away.’

Alen nodded. ‘I think you’re right, Churn, but why?’ He led them towards the edge of the ravine.

‘To open a route south into Praga?’ Hannah said.

‘If they’re Malakasian, there’s no need to risk death just to cut a path into Praga. The Malakasians control every pass south. No. This is something else.’

As they stood on the edge of the chasm, Hoyt kicked a stone in front of him. They watched as it seemed to hang in the air for a moment before dropping from view.

As they peered over the edge, Hannah drew in a sharp breath. ‘What on earth did that?’ she whispered.

Below, lying in a huge tangled heap, were the skeletal remains of hundreds of thousands of trees, each stripped of leaves and bark. They spread across the valley floor and piled nearly halfway up the chasm.

Alen shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Hannah. I can’t imagine who – or what – would have taken the time to do something like this.’

Hannah shuddered: it looked almost like a charnel house: millions of twisting branches woven into a gargantuan thicket. Here and there some of the majestic enchanted trees clung to the sides of the ravine, looking as if they were trying to claw their way back from the grave.

‘Someone wanted the forest of ghosts cleared,’ Hoyt said, ‘but why shave them like that?’

‘For a spell,’ Alen answered. ‘The bark and leaves of these trees must have some-’

He was cut off by a high-pitched creak, tired wood rubbing against tired wood, from behind them.

‘What was that?’ Hannah whispered.

‘It came from over there.’ Hoyt pointed north to where the swath of naked earth outlined a winding path towards Malakasia.

‘Quiet,’ Alen ordered, listening. The creaking came again, louder this time.

Churn signed to Hoyt, his hands a blur, ‘A wagon or a cart.’

Alen whispered urgently, ‘Take cover, quickly!’

‘Where?’ Hannah looked around in desperation; she could see no place to hide, and she wasn’t about to run across the exposed crown of the hill to take cover in the forest of ghosts. She would face just about anything Eldarn could throw at her rather than set foot under those trees again. The memory of her father and mother warring incessantly was too alive in her mind, and cut too close to the bone. She felt hungover, exhausted, both physically and mentally, and she’d not even had the pleasure of drinking.

‘There’s no time,’ Alen said. ‘Just get down.’

Hannah did as he said, covering herself as well as she could with the folds of her cloak. She tried not to move as she heard the now-unmistakable sound of a wooden axle turning in a roughly hewn circular socket: a large cart of some kind. She shifted a few inches, holding her breath, and peeked out from beneath her hood, trying to see who had come over the hill.

She just could make out the large wagon as it rolled into view; it was full of people, but she couldn’t see how many, or if they were men or women, young or old, soldiers or civilians. As it passed by, she realised it wasn’t alone; a second loaded cart followed, then two more, side by side, with a fifth, empty, and a flatbed cart loaded with axes, saws, picks and metal implements for digging, stripping bark and hauling away lumber bringing up the rear.

The wagons rolled to a stop and Hannah watched two figures jump down. It was hard to be sure, but it looked like one was placing blocks around the wheels of the wagon; the other released the horses, which immediately started cropping what little grass remained on the nearly naked hillside. This one stood for a moment, watching as the horses moved off towards the ravine, as if to be certain none of his team were about to wander downhill into the forest.

Once certain the horses were safe, the driver walked behind the wagon to join his companion and, working together, the duo hammered loose several planks to form a ramp.

Slowly, the passengers came down, in pairs: there were at least sixty people inside. They moved to a wide clearing south and west of where the Pragans lay hiding and were soon joined by those from the other carts – more than two hundred men and women – while the other drivers braced their conveyances and pastured their horses.

There was something curious about this group forming in the shadow of the haunted forest. Even from this distance, Hannah thought they didn’t act like people who had been cramped together for ages: there was no general milling about, no stretching of muscles, bending of knees or rubbing of shoulders. Instead, they just stood and stared into the forest. There was no conversation that Hannah could detect either, and no one looked around, not even at the imposing peaks, forbidding cliffs and stark white glaciers of the Pragan Great Range.

Hannah wondered if they were slaves, and somehow protected against the forest’s influence – they didn’t appear afraid.

Then Hannah heard Alen murmuring something over and over again. She hoped it was a spell to make them invisible – there was no place to run, and little chance of getting over the cliff and down into the ravine unobtrusively. All their company could do was wait for darkness and try to slip north into the mountains. She squirmed quietly, trying to get more comfortable as Alen’s voice continued the soft incantation. Keep at it, she thought. A couple more hours and we’ll be able to get out of here.

She wondered about the passage north. It couldn’t be that challenging, not if six horses could pull those wagons all the way from Malakasia. There might be guards, but those rickety carts would never have made it over rough terrain, certainly not loaded down with people – zombies, whatever the hell they are…

‘Of course,’ she muttered under her breath, ‘the zombie things could have been ordered to get out and push the wagons over the highest passes.’ If they steered clear of Malakasian soldiers, travellers on horseback should manage it with ease The horses!

Hannah nearly sat bolt upright, but caught herself just in time. Where had they left the horses and the packs? They had to be right there in plain view, beside the big maple where they had spent the night. They’ll see our stuff. They’ll see the horses. There’s nothing we can do about it. They’ll know we’re here. She craned her neck, inching her way along the ground until she spotted the tree, at the edge of the forest – and there was no one between them and their possessions. The drivers and the zombie workers had moved some two hundred paces away, but not far enough: there was no way they could get to the horses, mount up and escape without someone seeing them. And once the zombies started chopping down the forest of ghosts, they might deploy all along this tree line – this very maple might be felled, stripped of its bark and thrown into the ravine.

Hannah looked into the shadows below the tree – the horses and packs were gone. Now she did move, lifting her head and staring. It’s the wrong one, stupid, she thought. Find the right maple. But she kept coming back to the same tree, a positive flame-red poster tree for New England. There weren’t any others that came close to it in size and colour. She couldn’t be mistaking it.

Hannah searched the tree line for any sign of their belongings: something was strange. Her gaze locked on the base of the maple, right where she had left her pack that morning. Trying not to blink, she watched carefully as something flickered for a moment. A blurry patch caught her eye for a fraction of a second, then disappeared. It was there again, then it wavered and faded away.

Alen’s muttering interrupted Hannah’s thoughts again and finally she realised what was happening. It was magic. The former Larion Senator, the man who had claimed to have lost his confidence over the past one hundred and thirty-five years was casting a web of enchantment that was hiding four horses, several packs and a burning campfire.

Hannah watched transfixed, as rapt as when Alen’s home had come into view properly for the first time. If he could do this, then perhaps he could get her back to Colorado – or at least get her back to Steven.

She grimaced. How the hell had she, a confident, self-sufficient woman, clear about who she was and what she wanted, managed to end up entirely at the mercy of a fallen-from-grace sorcerer with a hangover? Still, at least she had a little hope now, and silently she urged the old man to greatness: You can do it, Alen. Make the whole place disappear. You can do it!

Thunk!

A distant crash resonated from somewhere in the forest. Hannah didn’t need to raise her head to know it was the first of what would doubtless be thousands as the zombies’ axes chopped at the forest of ghosts. The intermittent sounds of isolated trees falling merged periodically into one drawn-out cry of shattering branches.

Finally, darkness fell and Hoyt slithered between Hannah and Alen. ‘Churn and I will go for the horses. Hannah, can you ride?’ He whispered, though Hannah didn’t believe anyone could have heard him even if he had been shouting.

‘I’m cramped, but I think I can.’ She longed to stretch her legs, to twist her lower back until the bones cracked, and to straighten her knees.

‘And you?’ Hoyt asked Alen. ‘You’ve been keeping that spell going all day.’

‘I’m fine,’ Alen said without hesitation. ‘I’m drained, but it’s a good feeling, tired out doing something useful.’

‘Good,’ Hoyt said, ‘get ready. We’ll walk the horses along the bluffs, mount up behind the hill here, and then make our way around to the north without being spotted.’

He had to thump the ground hard twice before Churn turned to look at him. He signed the plan, and with a nod and a quick gesture, Churn agreed. He gave Hannah a crooked smile and sidled carefully out from beneath his cloak. Staying low to the ground, he soon disappeared into the darkness. Hoyt rolled his shoulders back, shrugged off his own cloak and vanished after Churn. Hannah marvelled at how at home he was in the dark.

She stared out at nothing as the forest of ghosts fell beneath the Malakasian axes. She endeavoured to separate the sounds of axes falling, saws gnawing, and horses straining. There was little conversation; the din was only periodically interrupted by the call of one or other of the drivers as horses wrenched stumps from the ground or hauled heavy-limbed trees across the hillside. Once, she thought she had heard one of the workers shout in pain, an unnerving cry, gone almost as quickly as it had arisen. She didn’t think these people – these zombies – would have much compassion for their injured colleagues. She didn’t like to think what might have happened to the one who had been hurt.

She slipped closer to Alen. ‘Who are those people?’

‘I wouldn’t want to say for certain, but from what I could see I would guess they are Seron.’

‘Seron?’

‘Seron warriors.’ Alen’s voice rose slightly. ‘One of Nerak’s little toys: he used to employ them for his most disagreeable tasks. They’re tough, soulless killers he breeds in a sickening ceremony you don’t even want to imagine. He hasn’t used Seron in Twinmoons – rutters, I’d say maybe five or six hundred Twinmoons – but I’m pretty sure that’s what they are.’ He pulled back the hood of his cloak and searched the darkness for Hoyt and Churn.

‘Warriors?’ Hannah said. ‘Why would warriors be here cutting down trees?’

‘I don’t think intimidating people would work for this – no matter how much under Nerak’s control they might be, the ghosts would get them,’ Alen explained. ‘I’m not sure what, but my guess is that he’s collecting the bark and leaves from these trees for something – doubtless something evil.’

‘A potion?’ Hannah couldn’t believe she was discussing magical potions while lying face-down in the dirt hoping some zombie warrior wouldn’t discover her while he was busy slaughtering innocent – okay, maybe not innocent, exactly – trees.

‘Something like that, yes,’ Alen said, ‘but we don’t call them potions.’

‘They didn’t seem to notice us – or anything. Are these Seron dangerous? They seemed like-’ she stopped, not sure if the word meant anything here, then continued, ‘well, they seemed like zombies to me.’

‘Zombies,’ Alen said. ‘Interesting word.’

‘It means- well, I guess it means the living dead, or the walking dead.’

Well then, Seron are not zombies,’ Alen said, ‘they are very much alive; Nerak has never given them the chance to die – although I believe most of them would welcome death.’

‘But are these Seron dangerous? They don’t seem to be.’

Alen looked at her and Hannah could see fear mixed with amusement in his face. ‘If they were to capture us tonight, Hannah, they would tear our bodies apart, most likely celebrate with a macabre ritual – using pieces of us – and then eat what was left over. Yes. They are extremely dangerous, and we will be exceedingly careful to avoid them.’

Hannah listened to the Seron working among the trees. ‘Why doesn’t the forest take over their minds like it did ours?’

‘I am afraid that just being a Seron warrior is more terrifying than anything the forest of ghosts could show them: those men and women are constantly tortured by glimpses of who they once were, long ago. It must be tragic.’

‘But you said Nerak breeds them.’ Hannah was curious. ‘What have they got to remember if they come from parents who have already lost their souls?’

‘Seron produce human children, Hannah, because despite their appearance, they remain human. It is just that once a child is born to a Seron woman, it is-’ He paused, searching for the right words.

‘They are immediately expendable?’

‘And once they have grown enough to perform basic survival needs, Nerak strips them of their sense of themselves, leaving a shell to fill with whatever values or ideas he likes. He has been known to experiment, filling Seron children with animal urges – dog and grettan senses… hideous.’ Alen shuddered.

‘How do you know so much about them when you said there haven’t been any in over five hundred Twinmoons?’ Hannah sounded sceptical.

The lines in Alen’s face seemed to deepen. ‘Because, Hannah, I was with him when he learned the process.’ He stopped talking as Hoyt and Churn materialised out of the darkness. The horses’ hooves were wrapped in torn cloth to deaden the sound.

Still moving close to the ground, Hoyt beckoned to the others and whispered, ‘Let’s go.’

Rising as silently as she could, Hannah felt the stiffness in her legs and promised herself a steaming hot bath, an icy-cold gin and tonic, and at least an hour with the Denver Post at the first decent hotel they passed. She struggled to get astride the saddle and felt Churn reach over and haul her onto it; he patted her on the back, slipped across to his own mount and waited for Hoyt to motion them forward.

Hannah reined in the horse to a slow but steady walk and tried not to think about the Seron children. It was the most appalling thing she had ever imagined, building an army over a generation of abuse, and focused cruelty. As the sounds of the Seron, chopping, sawing and stripping enchanted trees from the forest of ghosts, filled the night, Hannah swallowed hard: she had no idea that anything so terrible could exist – in any world.

As she followed Hoyt north along the path the wagons had taken earlier that day, she tried not to think what might be waiting for them as they moved closer to the Malakasian border and Welstar Palace.