Ogdon shook his head. “No, no, it’s not that. I truly wanted to show you where I was, what I was doing.” He picked up the gig he’d left in the boat and leaned it against his shoulder, posing almost the way Gregander held himself: broad, spacious, imposing. “I met the heir to Duskhall last night, out here on the water. He taught me about hunting the brackdragons. They say they’re big enough to swallow a man whole. I wanted to show you one before we left. I thought we could hunt one together.”
Jael slumped despondent in the broad, flat boat—placed her face into her hands, began rubbing her temples. “Please, stop this. You’re exhausted. You’re not in your right mind. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“No, truly! I mean it! You’ll see. If it isn’t brackdragons, perhaps it’ll be bounty hunters or maybe renegade Watchers or pagans or even witches. You can hear them at night, cackling and howling. Maybe you know the stories too. How they lure maids and girls and skin them for their youth.”
“Those are just milk-tales, Ogdon. I swear, the swamp has made you mad. How are we ever going to get back? And what if we drift too far south? Duskhall sits on the lake’s edge.” She gazed up into the steel gray sky.
Sylvertre’s demeanor fell suddenly dark. “Why do you want to go back to him so badly?” His thoughts were of Jael and Trey alone in their tent, of what might have happened between them. “Is he so much better? Or is it that you just hate me? Why? What have I done to deserve being spit on? Haven’t I stood up for you? What has he done aside from throw you to the wolves?” His voice carried over open water, flat, echoless.
For a long time after, there was silence. Then finally she said, staring into the muck and the bubbles, and the algae, “You’re right. You have been kind to me, during the Struggle and with Paladin Corvin. I should have appreciated that more. I shouldn’t have said those things to you on the road. It wasn’t your fault, you didn’t know about the plan.” She paused, looked up and locked eyes with him. “Thank you, Ogdon. If we had more time, I’d gladly go hunting with you, but we need to get back. You need to rest and to clear your head, and I’m certain the others are worried sick. Do you know which way is the shore?”
Ogdon nodded slowly, unsure if he felt overjoyed or disappointed. He pointed over the stern of the boat. “I think it’s this way. The water might be shallow enough yet that we could push with the gig.” He stuck the hunting spear shaft first into the lake. Pieces of green broke apart on the surface. He hit something soft. It disappeared, and bubbles frothed on the face of the water. Then there was a knock against the bottom of the boat. “Did you feel that?” he asked. She nodded and drew her sword. Another knock. The screech of an owl like a demon in the distance. Bubbles. Silence…
The jaws of Hell burst forth from the water, a sheen black snout replete with bone daggers rendering to splinters the side of their boat. At once, it sunk it into the noxious abyss, and with it went the squires. The cold hit Ogdon like the kiss of death as he plunged beneath the algae. The breath went out of him, as did his memory—everything Blackheart said of killing these brackish demons dissolved in darkness. Into the gray, then into the light. He burst to the surface, blind for the sulfuric burning in his eyes, but he heard Jael scream a warrior’s cry, and he felt teeth sink through leather and wool, deep into his ankle. Down again the devil dragged him—torturous—just enough so that he couldn’t breathe but so that he could feel the air above and his leg below being crushed. In the cold, the pain came slowly, growing like the fire in his lungs desperately consuming what little air was left to them.
Then an angel’s voice boomed, loud as a trumpet blast, smothered under the water, though it was clear to Ogdon that she was calling his name. So he opened his eyes to the caustic bog and saw the steel flash of frost-white lightning—the wrath of God falling upon the demon between sickly-green eyes, slashed and ignorant of mercy. There was a shimmer in the water, a shiver, a shaking of the beast as its jaws released and Sylvertre found himself floating helpless on the surface, his head resting on the bank, Jael standing over him, her body drenched in acid algae, her sword soaked with dragon blood.
Seventeenth Verse
They were a week’s march into the Tsaazaar, two seasons gone since the start of their journey. So much had changed: the golden steppes of Babylon exchanged for ocean and mountain range and now the red death of the heathen wastes. Adam considered himself as well—Ba’al, Magdalynn, and Adnihilo—their hair long, their faces hollow, their bodies work-hardened like the edge of a bronze blade. Eyes forward and toward the east. With blistered feet, they sought the end of the world where they might find the key to unlocking the Bridge of Babylon.
“There’s a city out there, isolated from the Mephistine trade posts. Old Iisah,” Ba’al had explained the day they’d departed Qi Shi Monastery. “They were the one of the Impii tribes before the building of Babylon—before the Bridge. The Scribes’ records in Pareo say they fled across the sea and the desert and settled on the River Vereringeks. So that’s where we’re headed. The priestess there might know what we need.”
To bring down the walls that hold back the promise of revelation.
