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…
FIFTY-EIGHT
I must say, Master Finn, I have greatly enjoyed the tale of your ventures, though some of it, I feel, you might well have left out. The parts, I mean, where people simply talk to one another, or have some passing thought.
“Still, all in all, I commend you for your efforts. You have carried out my command, at some little risk to yourself, if your story is partially correct, and I must assume it is, for it's most unseemly to lie to your Prince.”
“I would not dream of doing so, Your Grace,” Finn said, bowing extra low so Aghen Aghenfleck could not discern the expression on his face.
Partially correct indeed! It's hardly even that, for I'm not fool enough to reveal all to you!
“Whatever, then,” said the Prince, rolling his eyes at the court assembled before him, “you will certainly receive a substantial reward, as promised. We shall see to that in time.
“I hope you will recall, of course, that it was a troop of the King's Dragoons who found your party floundering on the edge of that dreaded swamp. Their efforts have to be considered, too.
“At any rate,” the Prince continued, leaning closer to Finn, without leaving the comfort of his throne, “this ring you have brought me from the Princess of Heldessia, this is most helpful to me. Most helpful, indeed.”
Aghen Aghenfleck paused, and a cunning smile crossed his rather unappealing features.
“There was more to your mission than was revealed to you at the time, Master Finn. I am not a simpleton, you know. I did not send you to that ghastly lair of Llowenkeef-Grymm's merely to deliver a clock. There was more at stake than that.
“I share this with you because I wish the court to hear this tale as well. I must tell you now-all of you assembled here-that there is a traitor among you. A person who is in this very chamber now.”
The crowd gasped as one, and each man and woman turned to the person nearby, then backed a step away.
Finn felt suddenly numb. What was all this, now, what was this cunning fellow about? He wanted nothing more than to absent himself from this foul business as fast as he could.
“This ring tells me the traitor's name, for there are a number of rings I might have received. Each would name a man, and the ring that was sent to me would tell his name.
“I have an agent in Heldessia, you see. I will not give you that name, but it was he who gave this ring to the princess, and told her to get it to me.”
The princess, DeFloraine-Marie? Finn could scarcely believe his ears.
“There is a plot, you see, a scheme that has long been in place, which I now unmask for you. The purpose of this scheme is to stop the war between Fyxedia and Heldessia, and plunge us into a disastrous peace that would ruin the economy of both our nations, undo all we've fought for, and spread chaos throughout our lands.
“People would then want to mix with those they do not know, see places different from what they've seen. Want things they do not have and don't need. Peace would be a disaster such as we've never seen before.
“Our enemies, those who plot against me, would use that peace to gain our throne, and do away with us all.”
