Phen woke to an insistent tugging at his leg. He sat up quickly, looked down at it and was overcome with terror. A fair-size snapper, probably twelve feet from nose to tail, was gnawing on his marbled foot. He flung himself back, and with his other boot stomped the creature right in its snout. It let out a breathy gasp of surprise and darted away with a splash.
Phen crab-walked backward until he was no longer half in, half out of the water. Instinctively, he checked to see if Hyden Hawk’s medallion was still around his neck. It was.
He was surrounded by high grass. Rising to his feet he saw he was in a sea of the stuff. Some of the grass was swaying oddly, as if it were rooted in water. The green carpet went on and on in all directions as far as he could see. The grass was high enough that finding Oarly might be a problem. He began calling out for the dwarf as he started working his way around the mostly invisible water line.
When he paused to catch his breath, Phen looked at the scratches the snapper’s powerful jaws had gouged down his legs. They didn’t hurt. His nerve endings were deadened. He couldn’t really define the way he felt. He was weary, heavy, and he was mostly hungry, but he wasn’t complaining now. Had he still been of flesh and bone his leg would be a ruin.
Phen remembered he and Oarly clinging to the dinghy, riding a huge wave right into the marshes. He hoped Oarly was on this same rise of land because he didn’t want to go wading through the treacherous swamp looking for his friend. To punctuate that thought, Phen stepped forward and sank to his knee in soft, sucking mud. He wasn’t light enough to be traipsing around this sort of terrain. He did well to keep from panicking as he slowly worried his leg free. As he did, a new idea came to him.
He worked his way back to where he’d awakened. He began pulling up clumps of the long marsh grass. After stomping down a broad area, he made a pile in the middle. He used his fire finger spell to light the bundle. It took a while for the green grass to catch, but when it did, it sent up a roiling cloud of smoke. After gathering enough grass to keep the beacon rising into the air for a while, he sat down and made himself comfortable. Occasionally he called out for the dwarf, but he didn’t get excited and wear his voice out. Oarly was as well trained as any ranger, and if anyone could survive out here, it was him. The dwarf probably couldn’t see three feet around him in that tall marsh grass though, Phen thought with a laugh. He heaped some more grass onto the fire so that the smoke pillar rising into the still air became unmistakable. Confident now that his friend had something he could see to guide him, Phen lay back and closed his eyes.
Oarly woke to total darkness and a terrible throbbing in his hip. He wiggled the rock that was digging into him into a more comfortable position, then he closed his eyes again. No sense stumbling around in the dark, he grumbled to himself. Besides, his head was pounding from all the cheap brandy he’d stolen from the Royal Seawander.
The next time he woke he was sweltering hot. It was still dark outside, but he felt like he was suffocating. He raised himself up and something banged into his head. He dropped back down to the ground in a crouch. He was wide awake now. His heart was hammering through his chest like a forge hammer. Glancing around in the darkness, he saw a sliver of light a few feet away. It was the strangest thing he’d ever seen, a bright greenish-brown line barely a hair’s breadth wide. He studied it for a long time before realization came to him. He was glad he was alone. Hyden Hawk and Phen would never let him live this episode down.
With a huff he stood up and pushed the upside-down dinghy off of him. The air wasn’t much cooler out from under the boat, but it was fresh, and the sun was shining brightly. He dropped the dinghy back on the ground and rubbed his head where he’d knotted it against the floorboards.
The smell of something burning was strong in the air, but he wasn’t tall enough to see over the grass that surrounded him. Without hesitation, he climbed up onto the bottom of the little rowboat and peered around. He glanced at the sun to get a sense of direction and two things came to his attention right away. The pillar of smoke rising out of the trampled-down clearing was about a quarter-mile away to the south. He was sure it was Phen, but a bit to the west of that, and not so far away from the fire, was another trampled-down area. He wasn’t sure what it was about that spot that drew his attention, but it did. He studied its position in relation to the smoke and started off.
It took about ten feet of struggling through the thick grass for him to pull his axe off of his back and begin swinging it ahead of him. It was tiresome labor, but he was sure it would make it easier to find the boat later. Besides that, he told himself, he needed to sweat the drink from his blood. He had no brandy to put back in him, and until he worked the poison from his body, he knew he would be miserable.
About halfway between the dinghy and the source of the smoke, something huge and brown shot across his path. It was moving toward the other trampled place he’d seen. He figured it might be a snapper’s nest. Or maybe it was a swamp dactyl’s nest and the snapper was just going for the eggs. He remembered that marsh and swamp creatures liked to laze in the heat of the day. He’d never actually been in the marshes, save for that trip up the Leif Greyn on a pirate ship with Lord Gregory and Lady Trella. The idea that the flattened grass he was seeing was actually a big creature creeping up on Phen came to him and he quickened his pace.
“Oarly!” Phen’s voice called out.
“I’m coming, lad,” Oarly called back with relief. “Stay put now.”
Phen stood and quickly spotted the line of Oarly’s travel through the grass. A moment later the wild-looking, breathless dwarf came stumbling into the clearing.
“Something big is in the grass, yon way, about a stone’s throw.” Oarly pointed. “Might be trouble.”
“Get your wind back and then we will go see about it,” Phen said. “There’s water right over there. I can’t drink any, so I didn’t check to see if it was fresh.” He pointed to where the low-lying land fell away into the shore. “I tried to look for you, but I sank in the mud.” He indicated his dark-caked legs.
“Bah,” Oarly exclaimed. “Water’s probably brackish. You did right to start a fire. Let’s check that place before I get too comfortable.”
“Aye,” Phen said, letting Oarly lead the way. “You didn’t by chance see the boat, did you?”
“I spent the night guarding it, lad.” Oarly thumped his chest. “The fargin boat is safe and sound.”
Phen saw the human body before Oarly did, and pushed his way past the dwarf to get at it. Just as he started into the clearing, a big mud-brown lizard came out of the grass hissing and grunting. Its teeth were bared to defend its meal. Phen was in no mood to tussle with the creature. He thought he’d seen the body twitch, the chest rise and fall. He didn’t even bother with a spell; he just raised his white, shiny arms up high, let out a roar, and started toward the thing. The lizard hesitated a moment, then tore off through the grass. Oarly chased after it, howling and cursing.
Phen went to the figure and was surprised to see that it was a young girl. She was muddy and haggard, but breathing. He shook her gently and her eyes fluttered into a squint.
“Are you all right, m’lady?” he asked.
Her eyes shot open in surprise and alarm swept across her face. Oarly was traipsing back up, and when she saw him both of them froze.
“That girl’s an elf,” he said incredulously. “She’s a fargin elf maiden.”
“Come, m’lady,” Phen said, trying to calm her with a smile. “Let’s get up now.”
The fact that he appeared to be carved from stone came to him, reflected in her wild yellow eyes. He was overcome with embarrassment. Had he been his normal flesh and bone self, he would’ve glowed cherry with it.
“Relax, girl,” Oarly said gruffly. “He’s not a threat, or a monster; he’s just Marble Boy.”
Phen shot a look at the dwarf that was both pleading and menacing at the same time.
“I dreamed of you,” she said softly. Her hand came up and brushed across Phen’s stony cheek. He regretted not feeling the touch.
“See there, Phen,” Oarly said. “It proves my point. Not only are you destined to be known as Marble Boy throughout the kingdom, but even elf maidens are dreaming of you.”
“I never believed them when they said that dwarves were rude and impolite,” the elf girl said with a scrunched nose. “But I see I should have listened to my teachers better.”
“How did you come to be here?” Phen asked, ignoring Oarly’s dumbfounded expression.
“Bah,” Oarly growled. “She would have been lizard food if it weren’t for me, and now she is calling me names. I say we leave her, Phen.”
“I’m sorry, sir dwarf, if I offended you,” the girl said. “But you were calling your companion names, and I thought you needed a dose of your own medicine.”
“Never mind him,”Phen said with a grin. “He’s just an unemployed jester.”
“I thank you both,” she shivered. “I don’t quite remember what happened to me, but I thank you both for coming to my aid.”
“Let’s get her to yon fire,” Oarly said a little more softly.
Phen helped the elven girl to her feet and Oarly chopped them a wide path with his axe.
“You’re a long way from home, lady,” Oarly said as they came to the clearing where Phen’s fire was still smoldering. “The Evermore Forest might as well be on the other side of the world from here.”
“Where is here?” she asked.
“See that tiny black fang shape jutting up to the north?” Oarly stood on tiptoe and pointed until she and Phen both sighted it. “That’s Dragon Tooth Spire. We’re somewhere near the sea edge of the Great Marsh.”
“I just don’t know.” She clenched her fists at her side and pouted like a little girl. “I remember a big black-skinned creature clawing me.” She shrugged her shoulder out of her blouse uninhibitedly to show them the scars. “I remember men dancing and chanting around a hole in the earth on some island far below me. Then I was in the sea in a storm. I–I…” She hugged herself again and sobbed. “I can’t even remember my own name.” Her sob turned into a wailing shudder and she crumpled to the ground and began to bawl.
Phen looked at Oarly and the dwarf just shrugged and started down the trail he had come from in the first place.
“I’m going after the boat,” he called back over his shoulder.
Phen reflected on what the girl had said. A memory of priests dancing around a hole in the earth in a Westland castle garden while demons and worse things crawled forth into the world came to him. “Were these men around the hole wearing red robes?”
“How did you know?” she asked with enough surprise in her voice to stifle her crying.
“One of those red-robed priests turned me into this.” He gestured at his marble-colored body.
“Oh.” She looked more closely at him. He tried not to be embarrassed as she took him in. When he was transformed he’d been wearing a hooded mage’s robe. Now it was stone like the rest of him. It was impossible to see where his garments ended and he began. He hoped she didn’t ask him how he went to the bathroom, because he didn’t. He was relieved when she smiled politely at him.
“Are you sure it was an island?” Phen asked with growing concern.
“Yes.” She heaved out a sigh. “Though seen from high above. I was in the sky.” She looked as if she expected him not to believe her, but he just nodded.
“Borina, most likely,” Phen reasoned. “The priests of Kraw helped the Dragon Queen summon forth Gerard-uh… the Dark Lord or whatever you want to call it. Can you remember anything else?”
“I remember trees that weren’t aflame, but were on fire.”
Phen grunted and scratched at his hardened chin. He’d recently heard a similar description of trees from someone, but he couldn’t remember who.
“If we can get out of here, we will escort you to the High King. He will know what to do.”
Phen stood and looked toward the southwest, where many, many miles away the island of Borina sat with a few other little atolls. “If those red-robed fools have opened up another gateway there’s no telling what has crawled up into the world.”
He stood there for a long moment, contemplating, then he turned back to the elven girl. “I can tell that your shoulder was magically healed. Do you remember any-” His voice trailed away. She was curled up into herself, lying like a babe and sleeping.
Phen sat down, closed his eyes, and sought out his familiar, Spike. The lyna cat responded to his magical probing quickly. Through their link Phen had the lyna seek out Captain Biggs at the helm of the Royal Seawander. They had established a few signals with the captain before leaving the ship. There was nothing that would explain to the captain that they were hundreds of miles southwest of the Serpent’s Eye at the edge of the Leif Greyn River Delta, but he could let them know they were alive.
After having Spike pester him long enough, the captain realized what was happening. “Where are they?” Biggs asked the lyna excitedly. He looked haggard. No doubt they had been searching since the storm passed. Phen knew the captain of Queen Willa’s royal vessel wouldn’t want to return to tell the High King that he’d lost two of the realm’s greatest heroes on a lark.
Phen felt for the man. He and Oarly had more or less bribed him into this. Now that he had Captain Biggs’s attention, he thought about how he could say what he wanted to say through his familiar. He got the captain to follow the lyna down into the Royal Compartment where Phen and Oarly were quartered. There was a map of the southern coast spread out on the booth table. Spike hopped up onto it and began trying to unroll it further westward. The captain watched stupidly for a moment, but after Spike pushed a paperweight off the table Biggs suddenly got it and helped the strange animal unfurl the rest of the parchment.
Phen had to struggle to see through Spike’s eyes in the dimly lit cabin, but he managed to make out the coastline on the map. He had Spike indicate the marshland west of O’Dakahn, the area labeled Leif Greyn Delta.
“You drifted past O’Dakahn, then?” Biggs asked.
Spike paused and nodded his quill-covered feline head.
Phen tried to be more creative and had Spike trace the shape of the letters S M O K E, but that only served to confuse the exhausted-looking captain. Finally, Spike, on his own, darted up to the unlit lantern and began thumping on it with his tail. A few minutes later Biggs finally said he understood that they would light a fire for him to use to locate them. He said he felt stupid talking out loud to the little feline, but he did it anyway.
Biggs told the lyna that it would be midmorning before he could get the ship that far west. Phen wished he could talk back to the captain through Spike, but that just wasn’t possible.
Sometime later the grunting, huffing sound of Oarly’s return came to Phen’s ears. He stood to see what all the commotion was about. Oarly had dragged the dinghy the entire quarter mile across the grass by himself.
“What did you do that for?” Phen asked him.
“So we’ll have a way to leave this blasted lizard den, boy!”
“You should have said that’s what you intended to do, Oarly,” Phen said matter-of-factly. “Captain Biggs is on his way. I imagine they will row the cargo skiff right up to our fire.”
“Bah,” Oarly plopped down and scowled.