The Eve of the Maelstrom

3 A Dark Domain

“Decent people used to live here.” Rig sat heavily on a rotting willow log and swatted at the mosquitos swarming around his face. His dark skin glistened with sweat.

“How would you know?” Jasper asked.

“Years ago Shaon and I stopped here for a few days.” He smiled wistfully at the memory and swept his hand to indicate the small clearing they’d selected for a campsite. “This was once a town, here on the banks of the River Toranth. S’funny. I don’t remember the name of the place, but the people were friendly enough, real hard-working folk. Supplies were cheap. The food was warm— and good.” He took in a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Shaon and I spent an evening on the docks, which would have been somewhere over by that cypress. There was this old man; I think he passed for their barge master. Talked all night with him and watched the sun come up. He shared his flagon of Stone Rose Ale. Never tasted anything quite like it. Maybe never will again.”

The mariner scowled as he gazed over what was left of the place. Bits and pieces of wood were scattered here and there, poking out from under round, leafy buttonbushes and gaps in the thick sawgrass. A painted sign, so badly faded that “boiled oyst” were the only legible words, was wedged into a pale strangler fig.

Onysablet’s swamp had swallowed the town, as it had swallowed everything else as far as the eye could see. Parts of what had once been New Sea were choked marshes, stretching to the north. The water was so thick with vegetation it looked like an olive plain. In many places it was difficult to tell where the land ended and the water began.

Several days ago Silvara and Sunrise had deposited the travelers on the shore of the New Swamp, after flying across the navigable part of New Sea. Though the ride was unsettling, the mariner wished the dragons could have taken them farther. But the Silver and Gold had no desire to encroach on Sable’s realm. So Silvara and Sunrise left to take Gilthanas and Ulin to the Tower of Wayreth. Rig hoped the two sorcerers could pool their wits with Palin to discover Dhamon’s whereabouts.

“I’m hungry.” Jasper sat next to the mariner and gently deposited a leather sack between his legs. It contained the Fist of E’li, of which Jasper had volunteered to be the caretaker. The dwarf was still favoring his side, his breath was raspy, and he was also hungry. He patted his stomach, offered Rig a weak smile, then batted away a thumb-sized black bug that was inching too close for comfort. The dwarf pointed a stubby finger toward what he could see of the sun between breaks in the tree trunks. “It’s getting on toward dinner time.”

“Your belly’ll be filled soon enough,” Rig said. “Feril shouldn’t be gone too much longer. And I hope she brings back something other than a fat lizard this time. I hate lizard meat.”

The dwarf chuckled, patting his stomach again. “Groller and Fury went with her. Maybe the wolf will spook out a boar. Groller likes roast pig. So do I.”

“You shouldn’t be so particular, Rig Mer-Krel and Master Fireforge,” Fiona called over. “You should be appreciative of any fresh meat.” The Knight of Solamnia was busy picking through the more intact remnants of the town. She brushed back the leaves of a massive bladderwort, lifted up a decaying chair back and shook her head. Retrieving a moldy doll, she held it up, looked into its absent eyes, then carefully replaced it on the ground.

Fiona’s face and arms were gleaming with sweat, her red curls plastered against her high forehead, the rest of it piled in ringlets atop her head and held in place with an ivory comb borrowed from Usha. She’d taken off her metal arm and leg plates yesterday as well as her helmet, and was toting them around in a canvas sack. Though they were cumbersome and heavy, she refused to leave them behind. Neither would she completely surrender to the heat and take off her silver breastplate with its Knight of the Crown etching. “Even lizard is more nourishing than the usual rations,” she observed. “We have to preserve our strength.”

“The rations are a little more tasty as far as I’m concerned,” Rig muttered half under his breath. “Though not by much. Lizard. Yuck.” He kept his eyes on the Solamnic as she continued rummaging, moving farther away from them. “By the way, it’s just Rig, remember?”

“And Jasper,” added the dwarf. “Nobody calls me Master Fireforge. I don’t think anybody even called my Uncle Flint that.”

Fiona glanced over her shoulder, smiled, and resumed her search.

“Keep poking around all you want, but you’re not going to find anything worthwhile,” Rig called to her, “When the black dragon moved in, most of the sensible people picked up what they could— their children, valuables, mementos— and moved out.”

“I’m just browsing while we wait for dinner. Something to do. I just can’t sit around.”

“You like her, don’t you?” Jasper winked at Rig, keeping his voice low. “You’ve been watching her like a hawk since Schallsea.”

The mariner grunted in reply.

“Hmmm, there’s something here,” Fiona said. “Something solid under this mud.”

“She’s got spunk.” The dwarf nudged Rig. “She’s lovely for a human, polite, brave too, according to Ulin. He said she didn’t run when Frost attacked them in Southern Ergoth. Stood her ground and was ready to fight, even though it looked like certain death. She can handle that sword she totes, and...”

“And she’s a knight,” Rig said in a voice the dwarf had to strain to hear. “Dhamon was a knight, is a knight, of Takhisis. I’ve had my fill of knights. All their talk of honor. Just a shallow word.”

“I’m betting there’s nothing shallow about her.”

“Look at this!” Fiona’s arms were buried halfway to her elbows in muck. She tugged at a small wooden chest. The ground grudgingly released it with a loud slurp. She grinned and held it up for them to see. A cloud of mosquitos immediately formed around her.

Fiona batted the insects away and carried the chest toward Rig and Jasper. Banded in thin iron, a tiny lock dangling from its front, the chest was thickly rusted and covered with slime.

Jasper wriggled his nose, but Rig was instantly interested. Fiona placed it on the ground in front of them, knelt, and drew her sword. “I’m going to need a bath after this,” she said. Muck dripped from her arms and fingers onto the pommel of her sword. She thrust the tip at the small lock, which quickly gave way.

Rig reached for the chest, but she stayed his hand with a wry smile. “Ladies first. Besides, I went to all the trouble of digging it up. I’m hoping there’s a book or papers inside, something that might tell me more about the inhabitants of this place. Maybe some information about the dragon.” She eased the lid open and frowned. Brackish water had seeped in, filling it to the brim and ruining the velvet lining. She drained it out and let out a deep sigh, holding up a long strand of large pearls. She scowled and dropped the necklace back in the chest, where a matching bracelet and earrings rested.

“Careful! That’s valuable!” Rig said.

Fiona shrugged. “Riches never much interested me, Rig Mer-Krel. Any coins I earned, I gave to the Order.”

“Then I’ll hang onto those,” the mariner advised, as he snatched up the pearls. “We’re probably gonna need money—more than we’ve got—before this is all done. Clothes. We’re wearing all we have, and they won’t last forever either.”

“Food,” the dwarf offered.

“Renting a ship to get to Dimernesti—provided we can figure out where Dimernesti is,” Rig continued.

“And that’s provided we can make it through this swamp,” Jasper added as he looked up at the giant trees draped with moss and vines. “Provided the black dragon doesn’t find us and...”

“I wonder if there’s more treasure,” the mariner speculated aloud as he pushed himself off the log and tucked the pearls in his pants pocket. “No way to tell unless we look. I might as well do a little digging myself. Dinner’s not here yet.” He took off his shirt and arranged it on the lowest branch of a palm-leaved sweetbay tree. Leaning his sword against the trunk, he started scooping through the muck near where Fiona had discovered the chest. “Join us, Jasper?”

The dwarf shook his head. He stared into the sack, fixated by the Fist of E’li. “Wonder how much longer Feril will be?”

The Kagonesti breathed deep, inhaling the intoxicating scents of the swamp as she strolled farther away from where she’d left Rig, Jasper, and Fiona. She moved barefoot—agile as a cat—through the dense foliage, never tripping among the thick roots or making the branches rustle, pausing only to smell a large orchid or watch a lazy insect. Her short leather tunic, fashioned from a garment Ulin had surrendered to her, didn’t hinder her movements.

The half-ogre, who followed a few yards behind, picked up all the scents as well, though he did not appreciate them as much. Nor was he fond of the branches that tried to snag his long brown hair and claw at his broad face.

Deprived of his hearing, Groller knew his other senses were far more acute. Rotting vegetation, wet earth, the cloying fragrance of the dark red blooms of the water hickories, the sweet scent of the tiny white flowers that hung from the veils of lianas; he noticed them all. There was a dead animal nearby, the acrid odor of its decaying flesh unmistakable.

He could not smell the snakes that were wrapped like ribbons around the low branches of practically every tree, nor could he smell the small broad-tailed lizards and shrews that scampered about the soddened ground. Their scents were overpowered by the loam. But he could smell Fury, his loyal wolf companion. The red-haired wolf was trailing behind him, ears standing straight up and head twisting from side to side, panting from the heat. The wolf was listening, as Feril was listening, as the half-ogre could not.

Groller wondered what this place sounded like. He tried to imagine the sounds of the birds and insects. He remembered them from years ago, but the memory was elusive. Perhaps later he would ask Feril to describe the forest sounds.

Feril was so caught up in this place, Groller thought. And she was “talking” to many of the snakes and lizards she passed—all of them too small for dinner. The half-ogre suspected she was immersing herself in the swamp as a way to forget what had happened to Goldmoon at the hands of Dhamon Grimwulf. She was sad, Groller knew, confused and out of her element except in places like this—the wilderness. She was more relaxed here, seemingly content. How much longer would she stay one of the companions? he wondered. How long would it be before she decided to leave their fractious company in favor of an appealing forest?

When he had hunted with her two days ago, they had not roamed so far from the others or dallied as long, and she had not chatted with nearly so many animals. Then they had gone straight to the business of getting meat—snaring the fat lizard that didn’t put up much of a fight. Yesterday, they had walked deeper into the swamp, and the elf had paused often before deciding on a large lizard the size of a cayman and stalking it for dinner.

Today was the worst yet. Feril was lingering longer here and there, walking farther away from the others, becoming ever more distracted, talking to birds and frogs. She was happier in one respect, the half-ogre knew. But her behavior worried him.

Time to focus on food, he decided. If Feril was too preoccupied, he would let the task fall entirely on his broad shoulders and let her escape into daydreams for a while. The half-ogre had been collecting handfuls of the fist-sized purple fruit that grew in profusion on the giant silk bay trees. The fruits were sweet and juicy, richly fragrant, and he intended to gather enough for tonight and for breakfast tomorrow. They were safe to eat—he had watched the tiny monkeys pick at the fruit. Groller popped a piece into his mouth and let the juice dribble down his throat and over his lips. The fruit would have to do if he could not find meat. He dropped his gaze to the ground, looking for tracks, hoofed ones preferably. They’d spotted a deer earlier, but it was too far away and had moved away too swiftly. Deer would be delicious—if he could kill one before the Kagonesti decided to befriend it. She wouldn’t kill anything she first conversed with.

Ahead, Feril stopped. Groller glanced up and saw that she was studying a massive boa constrictor. She stood on her tiptoes, nose to nose with the snake, the exact length of which was hidden by the branches of the water hickory in which it was curled. The snake was dark green, the color of the leaves, and its back was spotted with brown diamonds.

“Furl? Furl be careful. Znake’s very big.” The wolf moved to Groller’s side, brushing against his leg, and growled up at the snake. The half-ogre reached for the belaying pin at his waist, his fruit-sticky fingers tugging it free from his belt. “Znake be dinner.” He moved a few steps forward and raised the weapon, saw Feril’s lips moving, the snake flicking its tongue at her. He relaxed a little, pursed his lips. “You’re dalking do the znake,” he said. “Thad means znake iz nod dinner. Good. I dod like znake meat.”

She nodded and motioned him away with her hand.

The snake was talking back, he guessed. He watched for several moments, saw Feril smile, close her eyes, the snake’s tongue flicking out to touch her nose, then he replaced the weapon. “Furl wod led us kill the znake fur dinner,” he told Fury. “Furl made ’nother friend. ’Kay. I really wand deer.” He moved away, continuing to look for hoofprints.

“Great snake,” Feril hissed softly, “you must be old to be so large. Ancient, most wise.”

“Not so old,” it replied in hisses that the Kagonesti mentally translated into words. “No older than the swamp. But much wiser than the swamp.”

Feril reached a hand up and ran her fingertips over the snake’s head. Its scales were smooth, and her fingers tarried, enjoying the luxurious sensation. The snake flicked its tongue and stared into her sparkling eyes.

“This wasn’t always a swamp,” the elf hissed. “My friends said this was an immense plain. People lived in villages around here.”

“I was born with the swamp.” The snake dropped its head lower. “I belong to the swamp. I know of no place else. I know of no people, save you.”

The Kagonesti held her hands open in front of her face, beckoning with her fingers, and the snake moved down to rest its head on her palms. Its head was heavy and wide, and she ran her thumbs along its jawline. “I belong to a land that’s covered with ice,” Feril told the massive snake. “So cold. A land changed by the white dragon. The land is beautiful in its own way, but not so beautiful as this place.”

“A dragon rules this swamp,” the snake hissed. “The swamp serves her. The swamp is... beautiful.”

“And you? Do you serve her?”

“She made the swamp. She made me. I am hers, as the swamp is hers.”

The Kagonesti closed her eyes again, focused on the feel of the snake in her hands, centered her thoughts until the supple scales filled her senses. “I want to see how she made this swamp,” she said, finally opening her eyes and returning the snake’s gaze. “Would you show me, great one? Show me what you can?”

The constrictor flicked its tongue and dropped more of its body, a thick ribbon of scaly flesh, down to the lowest limb. More than twenty feet long, the elf guessed. She began humming an old elvish tune, the notes soft and quick like the babbling of a brook. As the melody became more intricate, Feril let her senses flow down her arms into her fingers, let her senses edge into the snake’s form and flow over its body like the multitude of supple scales that covered it. In an instant she was looking at herself through the eyes of the snake, staring at the tattoos on her tanned face—the curling oak leaf that symbolized fall, the red lightning bolt across her forehead that represented the speed of the wolves with which she had once run. Then the snake’s gaze shifted, and she was looking beyond her form, staring at the thick broad leaves of a massive gum tree.

The green filled her vision. The color was overwhelming, hypnotizing. It held all her attention and then melted like butter to reveal a sheet of blackness. The blackness came into focus, breathed, became scaly like the snake.

“The dragon,” she heard herself whisper.

“Onysablet,” the snake answered. “The dragon calls herself Onysablet, the Darkness.”

“The Darkness,” Feril repeated.

The blackness shrank, but only barely, so she could just make out the dragon’s features rimmed by the gentle green of what was once the plains. The scents were not so strong and rich, the area not so pleasantly humid. It reminded her of the land in which she had been raised. “Home,” she whispered.

“This swamp could be your home,” the snake said.

The dream image of the black dragon closed its eyes, and the pale green of the plains around the overlord darkened. Feril sensed the dragon becoming one with the land, mastering it, coaxing it, nurturing it like a parent seeing to the development of a child. Trees grew about Sable’s form, raced like running water to cover settlements and farmland. The changes chased away the humans who foolishly thought they could hold onto their homes. The plains’ beasts began to claim the land. They no longer feared the people who had once hunted them, people who were now hunted by the dragon and her minions.

The willows that had once dotted the plains survived. Now they took on gigantic proportions, their roots spreading and their size swallowing up the birches and elms that formerly grew in small copses, the tops forming a dense canopy that became the feeding ground of black birds and passerines. The tips of the willows’ umbrellalike branches kissed the water that pooled on the ground. Feril’s gaze followed the water, which led her to sloughs, basins, and limestone outcroppings.

Saplings sprouted everywhere and became tall trees in the span of a few years. Giants, stretching more than a hundred feet to the sky, should have been ancient trees, but they were only a decade old. And the ground, even the high spots once covered by thick prairie grass, was quickly covered in ferns, greenbriars, and palmettos.

In the Kagonesti’s vision the earth continued to dampen. Thick pools of water became foul fens, the river slowed and became clogged with vines and weeds. Alligators lined its banks. The bay of New Sea, once crystal blue and inviting, took on a gray-green sheen. Then the sheen darkened and grew thick with moss. Plants rose from the bottom of the bay and poked through the surface carpet.

There was no longer any sign of much of the eastern half of the New Sea. There was only this expansive marsh, this extraordinary swamp—warm, primordial, and inviting to the Kagonesti. She allowed her senses to slip further from her body, to become drunk on this place and the vision of its existence. Just for a little while, she told herself.

Clouds of insects gathered and danced across dark, malodorous bogs. From the waters’ edges crawled snakes, small at first. But as they slithered farther from the bog, they grew. Egrets, limpkin, and herons skimmed the surface, larger and more beautiful than Feril had expected. Cricket frogs and mud turtles assembled at the edge, feeding on the insects and growing. The magic of the dragon, which was the magic of the land, enhanced them, nourished them, embraced them. Embraced Feril. The swamp enfolded her as a mother’s arms would comfort a small child.

“The swamp could be my home,” she heard herself whisper. “The beautiful swamp... the swamp.” The words were harder to form. “For just a little while.” Breathing was harder. Her chest was tight, her senses reeling. She didn’t mind; she was merging with this place.

“Furl!” The word intruded into her perfect world. “Furl!”

Groller clawed frantically at the snake, which had slid down the tree and wrapped itself around the Kagonesti. The half-ogre cursed himself for being deaf and unable to hear what was going on, for not being more alert, for not paying closer attention, for thinking the elf was all right. He had strayed, following deer tracks. Fury, snapping at his heels, drew him back to Feril’s predicament.

The elf was not fighting the snake. Instead she lay on the ground, limp in the serpent’s tightening grasp. Its tail was wrapped around her throat, and Groller’s large hands pulled at a coil, so thick he could barely get his fingers all the way around it. But the snake was one giant muscle, stronger than the frantic half-ogre and determined to crush the elf.

Fury growled and barked, repeatedly sinking its teeth into the snake’s flesh. But the serpent was so large that the wolf could not seriously wound it.

Groller tugged the belaying pin free and began thrashing at the snake, moving along the length of it toward Feril, closer to the head of the creature, where Fury continued the attack. The snake’s head rose and bared a row of bony teeth. Groller raised the pin and brought it down hard between the serpent’s eyes. Again and again the half-ogre struck, oblivious to the snake’s hissing, the wolf’s growling, unable to hear the constrictor’s skull crack.

The half-ogre’s arm rose and fell, bashing at the creature long after it was dead. Exhausted, Groller dropped the belaying pin and fell to his knees. He began to unwrap Feril, as he prayed.

“Furl be all ride. Please.” His words were nasal and slurred.

“Furl be’live.”

Her eyes fluttered open. Groller effortlessly picked her up and bore her away from the dead snake. “Furl be all ride,” Groller kept repeating. “Furl be all ride.”

She focused on Groller’s face, upon his knitted brow. Shaking her head to clear her senses, she returned her mind to a world from which Goldmoon and Shaon were absent, a world that had corrupted Dhamon Grimwulf. She dropped her chin to her chest and pointed toward the ground.

“I’m all right, Groller,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t hear her.

He released her, holding her arms until he was certain she could stand. The wolf brushed against her leg with his wet nose, and somehow gave her strength. Feril looked up again and met Groller’s worried gaze, then brought her thumb into her chest, her fingers splayed wide. She waggled them and smiled. It was the gesture for fine. But she didn’t feel fine. Her chest burned, her ribs were sore, and the contentment that she had found in this place was gone.

Groller pointed to the bulging sack resting near the dead snake. “Got dinner,” he said. “Meat. Fruit. Znake. No mer hunting today. No mer talking to znakes.”

She nodded and let him lead her back to Rig and the others.

Jasper was disappointed in the food at first, but he found the fruit to his liking and the massive constrictor more palatable than lizard. He devoured enough to fill his stomach, then settled back against a trunk and looked toward the setting sun. He listened to Feril talk about the swamp, of how she had watched it come into being.

The air was filled with Rig’s questions, Groller’s hand signals pantomiming his fight with the snake, and Feril’s replies about her experiences. Fiona worked on preserving the snake-skin. It could be made into excellent belts.

Reaching inside the leather sack, the dwarf let all the competing sounds recede into the background. His fingers brushed aside the big ivory belt buckle Rig had found in the muck and closed instead on the scepter’s handle. He pulled it out into the fading light and admired the jewels dotting the macelike ball. It made his fingers tingle.