Treachery of Kings

FIFTY-SEVEN

I'll get you for this, Finn, by damn, I promise you that,” said the seer. “My head's about to split, and I expect there's extensive damage that's yet to unfold.”

“I expect you'd best save your strength,” Finn said. “We've a long way to go and it's coming on night.”

“A long way?” Bucerius gave a weary laugh. “There isn't no end to this swamp, not for more miles than you can count. And I doubt we'll last the night. Not with all the monstrous things that be roaming wild in this place.”

“What kind of things would that be?” “I just said. Monstrous things.” “I haven't seen any yet.”

“You won't, neither. Not till you're inside one of their gullets lookin’ out.”

T HE SWAMP, INDEED, WAS A STRANGE AND ALIEN place, with its enormous trees, stale black water, and great fleshy plants. Vines as thick as a man coiled around every tree in a vicious stranglehold. Yet, except for annoying swarms of bugs, no monsters had shown up in the night. And, as a new day appeared through the thicket overhead, everyone save the seer seemed no worse for wear.

“You should never have let that savage go,” Oberbyght complained, as he hunched before the small fire, eating a peculiar spotted fruit Letitia had found.

“You don't know their kind, or you'd have let me finish him off. What you have to do, boy, is get them before they get you.”

“I have no love for Maddigern,” Finn said, “but I don't think returning savagery with worse than savage acts makes us better than them.”

The seer made a noise in his throat and waved Finn's words away.

“It's a wonder you've stayed alive with fool thoughts like that. You don't know what that cunning fellow did to me. I made a good, honest living before Maddigern came along. My great-great-grandfather came up with the bit about the Deeply Entombed, and handed the business down. It's been smooth sailing ever since.

“By damn, there was a first-class seer. I'm good, mind you, but no one was ever as great as old Unterbyght himself. No one can conjure up something like that bell anymore. Not today, they can't. ‘Course he could figure when the fool thing'd go off. I confess, I never got the hang of that.”

“Blocks and Socks,” Finn said. “I'd be shamed to admit I had a hand in anything as cruel and vile!”

“What?” Oberbyght winced, as a fresh pain shot through his head. “My family performed a service, boy. Everyone has to believe in something, you know. And the royals love it. Always have.”

“But it's not something real,” Letitia said. “It's just something made up.”

“Well, yes, but they don't know that. There's the thing about your first-rate religion, young lady. If you know what it's about, it's no good at all.

“I would have been fine, if I hadn't brought Maddigern in. I didn't exactly bring him in, you understand. He stumbled on the thing and I had to go for thirty percent. Offerings aren't what they used to be, I'll tell you that. This King's a miser, is what he is.”

“And DeFloraine-Marie,” Finn said.

The seer's mouth curled in disgust. “It was always an uneasy thing between Maddigern and me. But it wasn't too bad until she came along. That's why I had to get out.

“I know Maddigern killed Dostagio, of course, not you. I expect the poor fellow caught the Badgie with the lady somewhere. Dostagio was a loyal servant. Would have gone straight to the King.”

Finn shook his head in disbelief. “And I thought Llowenkeef-Grymm was a fool for believing all that nonsense about eternal naps. I suppose he was, but they were all duped by you and your scheming kin.”

“Someone's got to do it,” Oberbyght said, looking hurt, looking pained, at Finn's remarks. “I don't see why it shouldn't be me…”

Late in the afternoon, wilted by the deadly heat eternally trapped within the great swamp, Finn stopped his party by a small patch of dry land, under the thick bole of an ancient tree. Insects whined about his head, and a very ugly fish turned lazily in the dark and fetid stream.

Across the water, deep within the shadow of a strangled grove of trees, a veil, a milky haze, rose above the dank and odorous ground.

Finn stood and watched a moment, for he was ever fascinated by the constant, smoky mist that hugged the earth in this primeval place. The world might have been this way in ancient times, or so some scholars said. There might well have been monsters here, as well, far more vicious than the ones in Bucerius’ head…

Then, as if a cloudy mask had slipped away, he saw this misty world for what it was, a host of wispy phantoms, the specters, grisly ghosts, huddled silently across the way. Coldies, the lifeless, the husks, the lonely dead. Hundreds of them, thousands, likely more than that, simply watching from the dark.

Here, then, was the host of sorrowful wraiths, the forgotten armies of the present and the past, who had roamed the Swamp of Bleak Demise for seven hundred years.

Did they remember, he wondered, did they recall the horrors that had brought them here? Sadly, he was certain that they did, for he had learned from others of their kind that death seemed to bring small comfort from the worrisome sphere of life…