I had my big two-handed axe, my leather and iron armor, and a cloak of brown bearskin. At Cara’s urging, I’d also brought my pair of one-handed axes and my belt of small throwing axes. I’d considered bringing a bow and a quiver of arrows, but decided against it, since that was one of Cara’s particular specialisations. She looked good as we got ready to go. Her straightsword was at her hip, and she carried two long curved knives there as well. Slung around her hips above the swords she had her potion belt; this had a bewildering array of different holders for tubes, vials, pouches, bottles, and the many small tools of her trade. Her cloak was of fine sable, black as night, and her boots were knee high, made of supple leather and also dyed black. Slung across her back she carried a neatly-sized recurve bow and a quiver of arrows.
She met my eyes and grinned.
“Ready?” I asked.
She nodded once. “Let’s go.”
The path down the cliffside to the marshes was steep and rocky, with steps and handholds cut here and there to aid descent. We scrambled down onto the flats and stood for a moment, catching our breath and looking out over the Westmarsh.
“The Festering begins over there,” I said, pointing.
Cara shaded her eyes, peering through the haze. “I can’t see much. The sense of it is strong here, though.”
“It is. I feel it strongly, too. We’re likely to meet enemies soon after we enter. The Festering changes and mutates creatures as well as the landscapes they inhabit. Let’s be on our guard.”
We set off into the marshlands. The ground was thick green moss, with tufts of dry grasses here and there. Our feet sank into the spongy moss up to the ankles. After we’d walked a short way from the cliff edge, we glanced back. On the clifftop, we could see through the haze the figures of our warriors, watching our progress as we made our way into the mist.
We came to the edge of the Festering suddenly, after about half an hour’s careful walking. There was no sign of the cliff behind us now, and the mists wreathed around us so thickly that we couldn’t see more than twenty yards in any direction.
Cara, who was ranging a little ahead of me, came upon the edge first. She stopped and let out a hissing breath between her teeth. She was pale and her eyes were wide as she stared at the pallid gray expanse of grass and slimy water.
To me, it seemed like waves of gray-brown energy flowed through the air from the edge of the gray, outward; the spreading influence of the Festering. I felt it, but it did not have any effect on me. Cara was not so lucky.
She leaned over with her hands on her knees, panting like an exhausted runner. I began to approach her, but she waved me away.
“Ugh,” she croaked, “I’ll be fine, just give me a minute.”
She straightened up and rummaged at her belt, before coming up with a glass bottle full of some dark blue liquid. With deft, practiced movements she unstoppered the bottle. I saw that the bottle top had a fine glass dropper attached to it. She squeezed the flexible bottle top and drew some liquid into the dropper, then carefully put two drops of the liquid under her tongue.
Immediately, her body was suffused with a soft blue light, which pulsed three times like a heartbeat, then faded. Cara smiled, rolled her shoulders, and breathed out a long sigh of relief. The color was back in her cheeks as she carefully screwed the top of the bottle back on and replaced it in her belt.
“That’s impressive!” I said.
“You haven’t seen anything yet,” she grinned. “It’s a powerful guard against evil influences, designed to ward off malign magic. Do you need some? It’s very concentrated, so one bottle will do many doses.”
“I don’t need any. The Festering doesn’t influence me the way it does other people.”
“No? Why’s that?”
“I’ll tell you on the way. Come on.”
Together, we stepped into the Festering.
The marshland which lay under the influence of the Festering was not dead. Instead, its way of being alive had changed. The grass and moss was slimy and gray, and the water which came up to fill our footprints was thick and black. Looking closely at the grass, I could see that every stem was covered in what looked like a fine gray dust. When I ran my finger along a blade of grass, the dust transferred to my finger, but the grass stem was not cleaned. Instead, the gray substance reappeared like a fungus growing before my eyes. When I looked at the stuff on my finger, it wriggled as if it were full of tiny worms. I flicked it from my finger in disgust, and it hit the moss with a thick plop.
Cara gazed around her. “Well, this is horrible.” I had to agree.
“I can see where the influence is coming from,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows at me questioningly.
I shrugged. Now was not the time for an explanation of my childhood battles.
“I just can. I’ll tell you about someday, but now is not the time.”
“Can you at least tell me how it works?”
“I can do that,” I replied. “The assault It’s like waves of energy against my senses, all flowing out from a specific point. The Keeper said that the Festering uses the power of the Relic to power itself. The influence must be coming from the corrupted Relic which we’re tasked with finding.”
“The Helm of Ironside,” Cara mused. “Which direction is the influence coming from?”
I pointed into the mist. “That way.”
We hadn’t gone more than a
