nightmare whipped his tail and shot sparks into the air. The fire burned off the dust and the wet, sending steam clouds toward the sky. The beast paced forward and screamed again as if in challenge.
Vedoran and the others gathered close to the nightmare’s flanks. Lightning continued to play across the open plain before them, but the beast strained against the reins, eager to run into the storm.
“Let it go,” Vedoran instructed Ashok. “We march,” he told the others. “Stay close to the beast.”
Ashok eased his grip on the reins, and the nightmare obligingly sprang forward, his long strides forcing the other shadar-kai to run to keep pace. They moved toward the shadow mass.
“Come! Come and give us a kiss, witch!” Skagi cried out and raised his falchion to the sky.
“Tempus!” Chanoch yelled, his arms thrown wide.
Ashok could hear the others shrieking in wild abandon as they ran alongside the flames. Vedoran held his hand out to graze the fire and tilted his head back to let the burning rain kiss his cheeks. Laughter rumbled from his chest, and the skin stretched taut across his face like a mask.
They passed a cluster of boulders and the remnants of a streambed. A lightning bolt struck the rocks, exploding stone. Ashok felt the stings as the tiny shards embedded in his flesh. He felt the nightmare’s body quiver, but the beast didn’t break stride.
Ashok’s eyes burned from the heat and the pain. He kept his legs tight around the nightmare’s flanks, half- expecting to be blown off by the lightning. He tried to see ahead of them in the rain, but instead of growing closer, the shadows appeared to be moving away.
Ashok wrapped the iron-shod reins around his knuckles and pulled. The nightmare screeched a protest and bucked his hindquarters in the air. Thrown forward, Ashok found his hands suddenly in the middle of a fire.
Cursing, he pulled back and almost lost his balance. Cree reached up to steady him. Ashok nodded his thanks and yanked on the reins.
The nightmare reared again, but he slowed, and the rest of the shadar-kai realized something was amiss.
“What is it?” Vedoran demanded.
“It’s a trick,” Ashok said. “She wants us to think the shadows are her bog. Likely she’ll lead us off a cliff before she’ll show us the way into her domain. In this storm, we wouldn’t know any better until it was too late.”
Vedoran squinted into the darkness at the roiling shadows and the lightning all around. His jaw tightened. “You’re right,” he said. “Turn around.”
Ashok wheeled the nightmare and dug in with his thighs. The beast broke into a halting run, and the shadar-kai hurried to follow.
A deafening roar of thunder rolled across the plain. The nightmare screamed in answer, and so the shadar-kai screamed too and brandished their weapons as they charged away from the black storm. The rain pelted them, burned their skin, and slowed their steps in the mud.
The witch doesn’t realize what she’s done, Ashok thought as he listened to his pounding heart. She should never have stopped the dust storm. After their long journey, his soul was awake at last. The stone shards in his leg and the blisters on his hands were proof that he was still alive. They would come through the storm.
“Fly!” Ashok cried, and reached out to grasp the flames. “Fly and let us all burn!”
They emerged from the storm breathless and bleeding, on the verge of a vast swamp. The rain had stopped, and the air had a dense, saturated feeling. The bog itself seemed a quiet haven in the middle of the open plain, a paradise after the violent storms. There were only the faint sounds of bird and animal life penetrating the thick canopy of leaves, moss, and undergrowth.
Ashok slid off the nightmare’s back and took a breath to steady himself on his feet. The others were taking stock of their surroundings. Skagi rubbed the bark of one of the trees. It came off wet in his hand, and the smell of decay filled the air. “Looks pretty on top, but underneath everything’s dying,” he said. “We’ll find nothing to eat in there.”
“Assume everything is an illusion,” Vedoran said. He crouched to examine Ashok’s leg. “This needs to be seen to,” he said.
Ashok looked down at his leg and for the first time was able to see all the cuts, the half-melted shards embedded in his flesh. He bled from dozens of these small wounds, and where he didn’t the skin was blackened from burns. His hands were raw and throbbing from where the nightmare had thrown him into the fire.
The beast stood quietly beside him, his attention fixed on the bog like an enemy he wanted nothing more than to devour. The nightmare’s foul breath steamed the air, and he pawed the wet ground.
“Take this,” Vedoran said, pressing a small vial into Ashok’s hand. “We get two of these draughts apiece, no more.”
Vedoran handed the rest of the vials out to those that needed them. Chanoch bled from a gash above his eye, and Skagi’s green tattoos bore patches of black, but none of them were seriously wounded. Indeed all of them looked alive through the eyes in a way they hadn’t during the dust storm. The tension that had built up over their long journey had vanished.
Skagi and Vedoran compared burns and jested at their size. Vedoran laughed easily and accepted Skagi’s slap on the back when the shadar-kai accused him of running like a slug.
“Why did the storm stop?” Chanoch asked abruptly, stealing the good humor. “If she’d kept it up, she might have hacked us to pieces.”
“No, she wouldn’t have,” Ashok said.
“Once we saw through her ploy, she knew we’d get here,” Vedoran agreed. “She’s prepared her next offensive. She’s waiting for us now.”
“Where does she get all this power?” Cree asked. He stood on a raised hillock a few feet away. “I can’t see where the bog ends. It runs straight to the horizon.”
“It’s an illusion,” Ashok said. “Just like the shadows we were chasing. The bog exists in her mind.”
“Storms felt real enough,” Skagi complained. “I’ve got dust all down my throat and my godsdamn ears are ringing from that thunder.”
“Those storms were real,” Vedoran said. “I think … the witch just heightened our perceptions of them, made us think they were more dangerous and lasted longer than they actually did.” He looked at Ashok, who nodded agreement.
“So we have no idea how much true time has passed since we started our journey,” Cree said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Vedoran said. “We’ve reached the bog, and our mission lies ahead of us. But we can’t let the witch worm inside our minds again.”
“I can lead with the nightmare,” Ashok offered. “The creature clearly isn’t afraid of the hag’s magic.”
Vedoran nodded. “Do it, but make sure you keep the beast from bolting,” he said. If we get separated, the hag will be that much stronger taking us on one at a time. The rest of you, weapons out and on the march.”
Cree jumped down from the hill, and the rest readied their blades. Ashok mounted the nightmare, whose mane once again shone a dull, heatless blue. He let the reins hang slack in his lap and unhooked his chain from his belt. Using his legs, he guided the nightmare into the bog.
The ground immediately turned spongy and slick. Mosquitoes and biting flies circled fetid pools of stagnant water. The air was so heavy that after a time Ashok’s hair was plastered to his skull.
The nightmare’s steps became sluggish and uneven, hampered by the sinking ground and the cloying heat. The beast flicked his tail often to combat the flies, and each time he did Ashok got slapped in the back with the stinging horsehair.
“Keep an eye out for predators,” Vedoran said. “Don’t fill your waterskins from any of the pools.”
“Not if I was dying of thirst,” Chanoch said, wrinkling his nose at the stench rising from the water. “Smells like corpse brine.”
As the day wore on, they found drier ground, but apart from the occasional bird cry or rustle in the undergrowth, they encountered no other living things save the insects. Grass, which before had been sparse and water-logged, grew in abundance in that part of the bog, and soon the nightmare waded in it. The green and brown tendrils came up to Ashok’s knees and the other warriors’ chests.
Vedoran halted them. “Skagi, take point,” he said, “and Chanoch with him. Cut us a path. I want to be able to see my feet. I’ll watch our backs. Cree, stay close to Ashok.”
