The Illearth War

the raft. And the stench of the Course slowly faded into a smell of accumulated wet decay and stagnation.

Thus the mission entered Lifeswallower, the Great Swamp.

As they moved, Korik kept the raft in the northern passages. In this way, he was able to begin travelling northeastward-toward Seareach-and to avoid the heart of Lifeswallower.

When night came, they were fortunate that the sky was clear; in that tortuous channel, starless darkness would have halted the mission altogether.

Yet they were still in one of the less difficult regions of Lifeswallower; water still flowed over the deep mud and silt. Eastward, in the heart of the Great Swamp, the water slowly sank into the ground, creating one continuous quagmire for scores of leagues in all directions, where the mud flowed and seethed almost imperceptibly.

But in other things they were not so fortunate. The fever now raged in Lord Hyrim. Though Sill had fed him with aliantha, and on water boiled clean, he was failing. Already he looked thinner, and he shook as if there were a palsy in his bones.

And without him-without the power of his staff the mission could not escape Lifeswallower. The steersmen were forced to keep the raft where the water was deepest because the mud of the Swamp sucked at their poles. If the logs touched that clinging mud, the Bloodguard would be unable to pull the raft free.

Even in the centre of the channel, their progress was threatened by the peculiar trees of Lifeswallower. These trees the Giants called marshwaders. Despite their height, and the wide stretch of their limbs, their roots were not anchored in solid ground. Rather they held themselves,erect in the mud, and they seemed to move with the submerged, subtle currents of the Swamp. Passages that looked open from a distance were closed when the raft reached them; channels appeared which had been invisible earlier. More than once trees moved toward each other as the raft passed between them, as if they sought to capture it.

All these things grew worse as the days passed. The level of the water in the channel was declining. As the mission moved north and east, more and more of the river was swallowed into the mire, and the raft sank toward the mud.

The Bloodguard could find no escape. Lifeswallower allowed them no opportunity to work their way northward to solid ground. Although they were always within half a league of the simple marsh which bordered the Swamp, they could not reach it. They thrust the raft along, laboured tirelessly day and night, paused only to collect aliantha and firewood. But they could not escape. They needed Lord Hyrim's power-and he was lost in delirium. His eyes were crusted as if with dried foam, and only the treasure-berries and boiled water which Sill forced into him kept him alive.

During the afternoon of the eighteenth day of the mission, the logs of the raft touched mud. Though thin water still gleamed among the trees, the raft no longer floated. The bog held it despite the best efforts of the steersmen, and drew it eastward deeper into the Swamp, moving with the slow current of the mire.

Korik could not see any hope. But Sill disagreed. He insisted that within Lord Hyrim's ill flesh an unquenched spirit survived. He felt it with his hand on the Lord's brow; something in Hyrim still resisted the fever. Through the long watch of the day, he nourished that spirit with treasure-berries and boiled, brackish water. And in the evening the Lord rallied. Some of the dry flush left his face; he began to sweat. As his chills faded, his breathing became easier. By nightfall he was sleeping quietly.

But it appeared that he had begun to recover too late. Deep in the dark night, the grip of the mud bore the raft into an open flat devoid of trees. There the current eddied, turned back on itself, formed a slow whirlpool just broad enough to catch all four sides of the raft and start sucking it down.

And the Bloodguard could do nothing. Here all strength and fidelity lost their worth; here no Vow had meaning. The mission was in Lord Hyrim's hands, and he was weak.

But when Korik wakened him, the Lord's eyes were lucid. He listened as Korik told him of the mission's plight. Then after a time he said, “How far must we go to escape?”

“A league, Lord.” Korik indicated the direction with a nod.

“So far? Friend Korik, someday you must tell me how we came to these straits.” Sighing, he pulled himself close to the fire and began eating the mission's store of aliantha. He made no attempt to rise until he had eaten it all.

Then, with Sill's help, he climbed to his feet on the slowly revolving raft, and moved into position. Bracing himself against the Bloodguard, he thrust his staff between the logs into the mud.

A snatch of song broke through his teeth; the staff began to pulse in his hands.

For a time, his exertions had no effect. Power mounted in his staff, grew higher at the command of his uncertain strength, but the raft still sank deeper into the Swamp. The stench of decay and death thickened. Lord Hyrim groaned at the strain, and summoned more of his strength. He began to sing aloud.

Blue sparks burst from the wood of his staff, ran down into the muck. With a loud sucking noise, the raft pulled free of the eddy, lumbered away. Swinging around the whirlpool, it started northward.

For a long time, Lord Hyrim kept the raft moving. Then he reached the marshwaders on the north side of the eddy. There the Bloodguard threw out clingor lines to the trees ahead, used the ropes to pull the raft along. At once, Hyrim dropped his power and slumped forward. Sill bore him back to the centre of the raft. As soon as he lay down by the embers of the fire, he was asleep.

But now the Bloodguard no longer needed his help.

They cast out the clingor ropes and heaved on them, hauled the raft between the trees. Their progress was slow, but they did not falter. And when the mud became so thick that their ropes broke under the strain, they strung lines between the trees and left the raft. Sill carried Lord Hyrim lashed to his back, and moved through the mire by pulling himself along the lines while the other Bloodguard strung new ropes ahead and released the ones behind. Then, at last, in the light of dawn, the mud changed to soft wet clay, the trees gave way to stands of cane and marshgrass, and the Bloodguard began to feel solid ground with their bare toes.

Thus they came out into the wide belt of marsh that bordered Lifeswallower.

In the distance ahead, they could see the steep hills which formed the southern edge of Seareach.

The mission had lost three days.

Yet the Bloodguard did not begrudge Lord Hyrim the time to cook a hot meal from the last supplies. The Lord was worn and wasted; his once-round face had become as lean as a wolf’s. He needed food and rest. And the mission would make good speed across Seareach toward Coercri. If necessary, the Bloodguard could carry Lord Hyrim.

When he had eaten, the Lord groaned to his feet, and started toward the hills. He set a slow pace; he was forced to rest long and often. The Bloodguard soon saw that at this rate they would need all day to cross the five leagues to the hills. But the Lord refused their offer of aid. “Haste?” he said. “I have no heart for haste.” And his voice had a bitterness which surprised them until Korik reminded them of what they had heard from Warhaft Hoerkin, and of what the Lord's response had been. Hyrim apparently believed Hoerkin's prophecy concerning the downfall of the Giants.

Yet the Lord laboured throughout the day to reach the hills, and the next day he strove to climb the hills as if he had changed during the night, recovered his sense of urgency. Rolling his eyes at the arduous slope, he pushed himself, laboured upward at the limit of his returning strength.

When at last-he crested the hill, he and all the Bloodguard paused to look at Seareach.

The land which the Old Lords had given to the Giants for a home was wide and fair. Enclosed by hills on the south, mountains on the west, and the Sunbirth Sea on the east, it was a green haven for the shipwrecked voyagers. But although they used the Land-cultivated the rolling countryside with crops of all kinds, planted immense vineyards, grew whole forests of the special redwood and teak trees from which they crafted their huge ships-they did not people it. They were lovers of the sea, and. preferred to make their dwelling places in the cliffs of the rocky coast, forty leagues east from where the mission now stood.

During the age of Damelon Giantfriend, when the Unhomed were more numerous, they had spread out along the coast, building homes and villages across the whole eastern side of Seareach. But their numbers had slowly declined, until now they were only a third of what they had once been. Yet they were a long-lived, story-loving, gay people and the lack of children hurt them cruelly. Out of slow loneliness, they had left their scattered homes in the north and south of Seareach, and had formed one community-a sea-cliff city where they could share their few children and their songs and their long tales. Despite their ancient custom of long names-names which told the tale of the thing named-they called their city simply Coercri, The Grieve. There they had lived since High Lord Kevin's youth.