'Through the Black Bog?' he asked as his countrymen laughed uneasily. 'No, I think not.'
Maram wiped the sweat from his bulging forehead. 'The Black Bog, is it called?
Excellent – now there is a name to inspire courage.'
'It will take more than courage,' Lord Nadhru put in, 'for you to cross it.'
'How so?' Maram asked.
'Because it is haunted,' Lord Nadhru said. 'There's something in there that devours men. No one who has ever gone into it has ever come out again.'
Now Master Juwain looked at me as I felt his belly suddenly tighten. But his steely will kept his fear from overcoming him; I smiled at him to honor his courage, and he smiled back. To Lord Issur I said, 'Nevertheless, we will go into it.' 'No, you mustn't,' he said.
'Your father,' I told him, 'has said that we must leave Ishka. But surely the choice of our route out of it is ours to make.'
'Go back,' he urged me. There was a tightness in his own voice which I suspected he didn't like. 'It is death to go into this bog.'
'It is deatth for me to go into any of the passes if you follow so closely behind me.'
'There are worse things than death,' he said. I stared down into the misty depression but said nothing. 'At least,' Lord Issur went on, nodding at Master Juwain and Maram, 'it will be your own death only. And you may die fighting with a sword in your hand.'
Just then, Altaru let out a whinny of impatience, and I patted his trem-bling neck to steady him. 'No, there's been enough fighting,' I said.
'Master Juwain?' Lord Issur called out. 'Prince Maram Marshayk -what will you do?'
In a voice as cool as the wind, Master Juwain affirmed that he would follow me into the bog. Maram looked at me for a long moment as our hearts beat together. And then, after taking a deep breath, he said that he would go with me, too. And then he muttered to the sky, 'Ah, the Black Bog indeed – why don't you just kill us here and save us the misery?'
For a moment it seemed that the Ishkans might do exactly that. The eighteen knights each gripped their lances more tightly as they looked at Lord Nadhru and Lord Issur and waited for their command.
'You must understand,' Lord Issur said to me, 'that it would be death as well for me to lead my men into the bog.'
'Perhaps,' I said.
'And that I will not do,' he told me.
I listened to the far-off howling of a wolf as I waited to see what he would do. Many miles before, I had foreseen that he might kill me on this very spot – and kill as well Master Juwain and Maram as witnesses to such a crime. But I had counted on him honoring Salmelu's promise that I wasn't to be harmed while on Ishkan soil. In the end, one is either a Valari or not.
'We won't follow where you're going,' he said. 'There's no need.'
At this, many of his knights sighed gratefully. But Lord Nadhru edged his horse closer to us and let his hand rest upon the hilt of his sword. To Lord Issur, he said, '
But what of the King's command that Sar Valashu and his friends leave Ishka?'
Again, Lord Issur pointed down into the bog. 'That is no longer part of Ishka. It belongs to no kingdom on earth.'
He turned to me and said, 'Farewell, Valashu Elahad. You're a brave man, but a foolish one. We'll tell your countrymen, as we will our own, that you died in this accursed place.'
There was nothing to do then but go down into the bog. I said farewell to Lord Issur, then urged Altaru down the hill. Master Juwain and Maram, with the pack horses tied behind their sorrels, followed behind me. And so, for a few hundred yards, did the Ishkans. They watched us through the wavering moonlight to make sure that we did as we had said we would.
The slope of the hill gradually gave way to more even ground as we rode down into the depression. And the heather beneath our horses' hooves gave, way to other vegetation: sedges and grasses and various kinds of moss. There was no clear line demarcating the bog from the land around it But there came a point where the air grew suddenly colder and smelled even more pungently of decay. There Ataru suddenly planted his hooves in the moist ground and let out a great whinny. He shook his head at the mist-covered terrain before us, and would not go any farther.
'Come on, boy,' I said as I patted his neck. 'We have to do this.'
Master Juwain and Maram came up to us, and their horses pawed the ground uneasily, too.
'Come on,' I said again. 'It won't be so bad.'
I tried to clear my feverish head as Master Juwain had taught me. Some part of the calm I achieved must have passed into Altaru, for he turned his head to look back at me with his great misting eyes. And then he began moving slowly forward, into the bog.
The other horses followed him, and their hooves made moist squishing sounds in the cold ground. It was strange, I thought, that although the ground over which we rode oozed with water, it seemed solid enough to look at. In few places were there actually patches of standing water. These almost black meres we avoided easily enough as we kept pressing forward. Our path through the bog, while not perfectly straight, was direct enough that I was sure we would soon be out of it.
I tried to keep us oriented toward the north so that we wouldn't lose direction in this trackless waste. After a while, I looked back to fix our position by the hill where we had left the Ishkans. Although it was hard to see very far, even in the bright moonlight, I thought I could make out their forms far off as they watched us from the top of the hill. And then a mist came up, covering us as it obliterated all sight of them. When it pulled back a few minutes later, the hill seemed barren of knights, or indeed, of any living thing. I couldn't even perceive the jagged rocks along the hill's crest. The hill itself seemed flatter and wider; it was as if the heavy air over the bog were like a spectacle maker's lens that distorted the world around us.
'Val,' Maram called out from behind me, 'I feel sick – it's like I'm falling.'
I, too, felt a strange, sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. It was something like the time Asaru and I had jumped off the cliffs above Lake Silash into the dark, freezing waters. It seemed mat the bog was pulling at us, pulling us down into the inconstant earth, even though at no point did its seeping water rise much above the horses' fetlocks.
'It will be all right,' I said as the mist slid along the ground and wrapped its gray-black tendrils around us. 'If we keep moving, it will be all right.'
And then, even as the mist opened slightly and I looked up at the sky, I knew that it would not be all right. For something about this accursed opening in the earth was distorting the sight of the very stars. The brightest of them – Solaru, Aras and Varshara – seemed strangely dulled and slightly out of place. I blinked my eyes and shook my head in disbelief. And the feeling of falling down into an endless dark hole grew only stronger.
'Maram,' I said. 'Master Juwain – there's something wrong here!'
I turned to tell them that we should stay close together. But when I peered through the swirling mist, I couldn't see either of them. And that was very strange because I had thought they were no more than ten yards behind me.
'Maram!' I called out. 'Master Juwain – where are you?'
I stopped Altaru and listened as carefully as I could. But the bog was quiet and deathly still. Not even a cricket chirped.
'Maram! Master Juwain!'
The shock of being suddenly alone was like a hammer striking me beneath my ribs.
For many moments, I had trouble breathing the dank, stifling air. Had both Maram and Master Juwain, I wondered, plunged into a quicksand that had instantly sucked them down without a sound? Had they simply vanished from the earth?
I felt the sweat beading along my skin beneath my layers of armor and clothing. My whole body felt icy cold even as I shivered uncontrollably. For a moment, I covered my forehead and rubbed my fevered eyes. Was I mad, I wondered? Was I ill to my death and forever lost in this choking mist?
'Altaru,' I whispered as I stroked the coarse, long hair of his mane, 'where are they?
Can you smell them?'
