Under a Veil of Gods

every day. And it was easier to walk. But in the clearing, the first steps into the thick black water were deep. For the first few hundred yards, the army could step across the branches of toppled trees that littered the mud, reaching out from the water’s depth, but when the trees became more scattered, they had no choice but to wade into the shallow, muddy water. Carcasses of dead birds, fish, deer, and pigs, stripped to the bone, floated on the algae-covered surface. There were more dead things than living.

“Mimicking trees,” said Simon.

There were a band of swamp trees surrounding them that looked like sculptures of once living creatures. Ghord’s swamp trees had the most trunks, branches, leaves, flowers, and fruits out of any other tree in the world of Naan. And they celebrated death in the most beautiful way. The swamp trees here would root into the body of a corpse and grow into a botanical replica of that man or animal. Indrid recognized the image of a troupe he’d seen perform at the Graleon castle when he was a boy—The Great Calhoon’s Traveling Circus. Twisted vines and leaves portrayed every detail of each character down to the laces of their shoes and the buttons on their trousers. Flowers formed to depict the vivid colors of a mime’s painted face along with the outfits they’d worn. One tree posed like an acrobat swinging from a rope. Another tree stood tall, like a man on stilts. The flames of a fire breather were displayed by brilliant red and yellow leaves.

By dusk the light fog had thickened. The army had been treading through the mud for a few miles, their boots becoming heavier with each step. Indrid swore he could feel the roots of the trees moving under his feet. Simon was right. The mud land’s floor was alive.

“Does anyone else feel that?” an Ikarus soldier asked.

“It’s the mud. It knows we’re here,” Simon said.

Indrid looked back and noticed that the same trees as when they first got into the water were still there, the same distance away. “We have been walking west for hours and those trees behind us are just as close as we began. Either we aren’t moving, or they are.”

An Ikarus soldier cried, “Something is grabbing my feet!” He stabbed into the water turning it black by disturbing the mud beneath.

“Stop!” said Sir Simon.

When the blade hit the bottom, the roots all around the soldier began to swell, trapping his feet in place.

“Keep calm. You will only anger it,” Simon said.

Two Graleon knights were suddenly caught by their feet and swallowed into the mud. More and more men were suddenly being taken from below.

The plants that were closing in on them were goliaths. They had huge pumpkin bodies, slug-like feet to transport them around, and long necks sprouting out from the stems with flower-bud mouths at the ends.

They must be the infamous man-eating ghords that named the mud lands, Indrid thought. They looked bigger than Gretchen had described in her stories. They were no ordinary plants. The beautiful giant flowers surrounding them clearly had a plan. They could see and move and communicate with each other.

As they closed in on the men of Grale and Ikarus, the ghords opened their drooling mouths lined with jagged teeth and hissed. With their prickly vines, they reached out, grabbed men, and strangled them to death. Some crushed their bones before eating them. The larger ghords swallowed men whole.

Indrid chopped at the ghords’ stems that held their heads. But the larger ones had long and thick trunks holding up their heavy buds. At the other end of the stem was its body with a slimy slug-like sack underneath. The biggest one was the size of a wagon, and its head was as long and wide as an oval dinner table. It snapped at Indrid, catching him in its mouth.

In salivated darkness, the crushing pain from the compression of the ghord’s jaws was intense. Indrid heard and felt his men chopping at the rough stem, but he knew that their blows weren’t penetrating it. Although his armor kept his skin from the sharp edges of its long teeth, Indrid was certain that the ghord’s bite would crush him. This is the last moment of my life, he thought.

Through blurred vision Indrid watched the front teeth of the giant ghord begin crashing down into his head. Before the sharp edges dug into Indrid’s face, he felt a sudden thud. He slid down the ghord’s throat before he blacked out.

When Indrid woke, he found Sir Simon Atikan standing above him. They were no longer in the mud lands. They’d made it to the river, and under a golden sky the ruins of Illyrium were visible in the distance.

“What happened?” Indrid asked.

“We chopped you out, my lord, before the ghord could digest you,” said Simon with a smile.

“How many men did we lose?” Indrid asked.

“Eleven. Three of you were lucky to be swallowed whole by the big ones,” Sir Simon said. “The others were bitten and crushed first.”

After the mud had dried and the dirt was wiped clean from their armor, the Ikarus and Graleon hybrid army continued their trek to the ruins of the first capital of Men without looking back.

Anna Lott refused to become Demitri’s wife.

She, along with Ikarus council members, ambassadors, and castle maids and servants, were held in the nave of the temple as prisoners of war. Benches were flipped over in the aisles leading to the altar. The vaulted window above it was shattered. Pages of torn prayer books were scattered across the granite floor. There was no candlelight, and it was getting colder by the hour.

Everyone sat on the floor in the corner of the room and huddled together to keep warm. A broad-shouldered woman, an ambassador of Grale, hummed a soft, soothing melody.

Anna regarded the exits, windows, custodial closets, and stairwells, trying to think