Cursed Bones

chapter 36



Isabel woke, lying in the mud, shrouded in fog. She sat up sleepily at first before she realized where she was and then she scrambled to her feet, looking around in near panic. She was in the swamp, alone, without her weapons or pack. She focused on breathing, calming her racing heart while she thought about her situation, trying to find a scrap of hope she might leverage into survival.

Alexander appeared a few feet away.

“What happened?” Isabel asked.

“Hazel left you in the swamp without even a knife and took everyone else with her,” Alexander said. “It looks like they’re headed for the mountain.”

“What would she want there?” Isabel asked. “She made the place out to be a death trap.”

“Maybe there’s something there she doesn’t want anyone to know about,” Alexander said. “Her plan seems to hinge on your traveling companions.”

“I really thought Ayela was coming around,” Isabel said, getting to her feet and wiping the mud from her pants.

“Hazel cast some kind of spell over her involving a charm that Ayela is now wearing around her neck,” Alexander said. “She’s just as obedient as Hector and Horace.”

Isabel surveyed the swamp, still and quiet as a tomb. “I’m in trouble here,” she said.

“I know. Let’s start by getting your weapons and equipment back. Maybe we’ll find some answers along the way.”

“I don’t even know which way to go,” Isabel said, feeling helpless.

“I do,” Alexander said, transforming into a ball of light and bobbling away into the mist.

Isabel followed, more afraid of the swamp than ever before. He led her along a path that became familiar when she reached the tree with notches cut into the side like the rungs of a ladder. Once across the rope bridge and down again, she found the place in the stone wall that was a cave entrance when last she came this way.

“It’s right here,” Alexander said, transforming back into an image of himself and pointing. “The wall is about a foot thick. She controls it with a few words in a language I don’t understand, so you’ll have to burn your way through.”

Isabel nodded, reaching for her rage but finding only the numbing sensation of the malaise weed in its place.

“She’s been drugging my food. I’ll have to wait for the effects to wear off before I can cast a spell.”

“How long?”

“Could be hours, could be tomorrow.”

“I want to stay with you but I can’t hold an illusion for that long,” Alexander said.

“I know, just check on me now and then,” Isabel said. “I’ll need your help once I get into her valley.”

“Be strong, we’ll get through this,” he said, fading from sight.

Isabel waited, attempting every hour or so to build her anger into a rage sufficient to cast her light-lance spell. As night fell, her fear grew. It was so dark. She listened to the deathly quiet of the swamp, expecting some horrible monster to come for her in the darkness, but nothing did. She woke the next morning shivering and hungry … but more importantly, she was angry. Her rage bloomed into fury easily, almost too easily, but she fed it as she spoke the words of her spell.

The hole she burned clean through the stone wall revealed the passage beyond. It took her dozens of castings to cut an opening large enough for her to crawl through. By the time she was done, her rage was spent and she was exhausted from the effort.

Alexander appeared not long after, finding her facing the darkness of the cave with no way to make light. “I see your magic is back,” he said with a smile.

She nodded wearily.

“Fortunately, I think the wall on the inside of the valley is just an illusion,” he said, transforming into a ball of light to guide her way.

A few minutes later, she reached the wall on the other end of the tunnel only to discover that it felt solid. Emotionally spent, she sat down with her back against the side of the tunnel and closed her eyes.

“I don’t have the strength to burn my way through right now.”

“Try pushing against it,” Alexander said. “It doesn’t look entirely solid to me.”

More to humor him than anything else, she reached out and put a hand against the wall, leaning into it with halfhearted effort. To her amazement, her hand sank into the stone. There was still resistance, but the farther she passed through, the more it gave. Getting to her feet, she pushed through the wall to the other side, stepping into the little clearing on the edge of Hazel’s valley and a clear winter morning.

“I would never have guessed,” she said, feeling the wall on the other side. It felt solid until she made an effort to pass through. “Well, that’s a pretty effective secret door.”

After placing a few stones in front of the door to mark its location, she headed for the cottage under a bright sunny sky. “I don’t get this place. I couldn’t find it with Slyder, yet it’s obviously open to the sky.”

“I’m not so sure,” Alexander said. “I couldn’t find it either and I searched pretty extensively.”

“So … what, then? A variation on a Wizard’s Den?” Isabel asked.

“No, I think it’s really a cavern with an elaborate illusion that looks like a sky.”

Isabel stopped in her tracks, looking up. “Is that really possible?”

Alexander spread out his hands and shrugged. “I’m lying in a bed on Tyr.”

“Good point,” she said, continuing on toward the cottage.

Before searching for her things, she found some food and ate a quick breakfast. Once her gnawing hunger was sated, she started looking for her equipment. After more than an hour, she found a hidden panel in the back of Hazel’s armoire that opened to a staircase leading below the cottage into a small stone room that looked like it had been magically carved into the bedrock.

Isabel’s pack and weapons sat atop a trunk at the bottom of the stairs. The room appeared to be Hazel’s workspace. Dozens of jars of green glowing lichen hung from the ceiling, casting an eerie glow over the room. There were many shelves of books and a table covered with glassware. A large cauldron sat over a cold fire pit in one corner and several shelves contained a plethora of ingredients, some Isabel recognized, but most were unfamiliar. One shelf held a number of powder-filled jars with labels that read: sleep, henbane, poison, smoke, and concealment. Below that were several vials filled with liquids of various colors and consistencies. They were labeled as well: healing draught, blackwort and invisibility.

“Do you think these are potions?” Isabel asked.

“I’m sure of it,” Alexander said. “The healing draught has the same colors as the ones Lucky gave us. The others all contain magic, except the blackwort and it’s the only one with dangerous-looking colors.”

“Should I take them?” Isabel asked.

“Absolutely,” Alexander said. “Hazel drugged you and left you for dead in the swamp without any of your equipment, then abducted Hector, Horace, and Ayela. Take everything of use that you can carry, then light this place on fire. We’re at war with that old witch.”

“When you put it that way,” Isabel said, going to a bookshelf and looking at the titles on the spines. “Most of these are in languages I don’t understand, but these two I can read.” She carefully opened the first book. It was small and bound in leather and written in the common tongue. The next was similar in size and binding except it contained many more pages.

“These might be useful,” Isabel said. “This one is a charm spell and this one is a shapeshift spell.”

“Take them both,” Alexander said. “Do you see any others you can read?”

Isabel shook her head, scanning the remaining titles on the shelf before turning her attention to the book resting on the desk and flipping it open to a random page toward the end. It was blank. She flipped forward until she found writing.

“I think this is her journal,” Isabel said, scanning the latest entry. “It seems we rushed her plans.” She flipped forward to the next page. “Doesn’t say why, but she’s pretty excited to have Hector and Horace. Wait. Oh Dear Maker … she plans to sacrifice them! We have to catch up to her before she reaches the mountain!”

“What’s she going to sacrifice them to?” Alexander asked.

“She calls it a ghidora,” Isabel said, flipping forward several pages. “Listen to this. ‘With the transference complete, I will have both my youth and my rightful place in the House of Karth once again.’ What do you think that means?”

“I don’t know, but I doubt it’s good,” Alexander said. “Take that, too … it might offer some useful insight.”

Isabel went to work packing the books and potions before carefully storing the jars of powder in her pouch. Except for the poison, since she didn’t understand how it was administered and didn’t want to accidentally poison herself.

“Anything else look useful?” she asked, scanning the room.

“One of those glowing jars of lichen,” Alexander said.

Once back in the cottage, she took what food she could carry and a length of sturdy rope, then filled her waterskin. Finally, she built a fire in the hearth and prepared a hot meal which she ate while cooking blackwort onto the blade of her dagger and boot knife. Finally, she tossed several burning logs into the corners of the cottage, then waited until the place was fully ablaze before heading for the exit to the hidden valley. The more she thought about it, the more she knew that Alexander was right. Hazel’s actions were those of an enemy … so war it was. She resolved to kill the old witch on sight lest she gain the upper hand yet again.

Isabel wasn’t anxious to be back in the swamp, especially alone, but she was in a hurry. It didn’t take long to pick up Hazel’s trail, in spite of the multitude of tracks left by the soldiers. The mud made for easy tracking and since the soldiers had left days ago, her friends’ tracks were fresh by comparison, which allowed her to make good time while still being alert to potential dangers and avoiding the water.

Alexander appeared at random intervals, sometimes just to keep her company, other times to warn her of some potential danger ahead. Even when he wasn’t visible, Isabel knew he was watching over her, a fact that was no small comfort in the dreariness and desolation of the swamp.

By the time she’d left the hidden valley, Hazel and her friends had several hours lead on her, but Isabel was fit and strong, driven by purpose and anger, while Hazel was old and frail. Isabel could make out the witch’s footprints amongst her friends, her stride was short and her gait was uneven, she could only be slowing them down.

“You’re gaining on them,” Alexander said, appearing next to her. “Unfortunately, they’re headed for a boathouse on the edge of deeper water. I doubt you can reach them before they get there.”

“And, of course, there’s only one boat,” Isabel said.

“I’m afraid so, but the boathouse is made of evenly cut timbers you can use to build a raft.”

“How far across the water?” Isabel asked.

“Couple of days,” Alexander said. “The foothills of the mountain are on the other side.”

“That’s going to put me at least a day behind them, and that’s without any unforeseen delays. I just hope I can catch up before Hazel gets where she’s going.”

“Me too,” Alexander said, fading from sight with a helpless shrug.

Isabel pressed on. The water became deeper, claiming more area, but she was able to stay on solid ground by following the trail Hazel and her friends had made. The old witch seemed to know exactly where she was going, a fact that made Isabel wonder even more about the mountain that once housed Siavrax Karth’s most secret laboratory. Clearly, Hazel knew much more about the place than she’d let on. Isabel only hoped her assertions about the Goiri were either wrong or just lies. The more she thought about it, the more she reasoned that Hazel would have felt threatened by the bones. After all, she was an old woman. Without her magic, she was helpless. If the stories were true, the Goiri’s bones were nothing but a threat to her.

This part of the swamp was nearly as dead as the parts covered by deeper water, except for the birds living in the treetops. From the sound of it, the trees were teeming with them, probably all of the variety that ate insects, which were becoming quite abundant.

When Isabel came across a different set of footprints, she stopped to examine them. A closer look told her that it was two men, walking in each other’s prints. Soldiers from Karth had found her friends’ trail and were following them. She wondered at the meaning of it. Were they lost or were they scouts? Did they have some means of communicating with the bulk of their forces? And how close were the Sin’Rath witches? Isabel was far more concerned about running into them than she was about the soldiers. Her shield spell made her all but invulnerable to normal weapons, but the witches were something else altogether.

She slowed her pace, taking more time to stop and listen for the enemy in the mist, but the fog had a dampening effect, muffling sound and limiting visibility. After some time, she decided the dampening effect worked both ways and started moving more quickly again, still stopping to examine the trail from time to time, but not as often.

Before long, she thought she heard a voice up ahead. She froze, listening intently, caution mixing with trepidation. She heard it again and started moving, swiftly but quietly closing with the soldiers.

“We’re lost,” one man said.

“All we have to do is follow these tracks and they’ll lead us right to the rest of the men,” another said.

Isabel could just make out their forms in the fog ahead. She stopped, crouching down behind a stump, and considered her options. They were soldiers of Karth, either controlled by the Sin’Rath or acting on orders from someone who was. Ultimately, they were innocent, undeserving of the swift death that Isabel could have easily delivered. But that inconvenient fact presented a dilemma. While they were innocent, they were still after her. What’s more, they were going to wind up at the boathouse just ahead of her and discover that they were following the wrong set of footprints. Lost and alone in the swamp, it was hard to say how they would react to her arrival.

She had to subdue them or lead them astray … but how? She decided to follow at a distance, even though they were traveling slower than she would have liked, while she waited for Alexander to check in on her. She didn’t have to wait long.

“How long have you been following them?” he asked quietly, appearing next to her.

“Half an hour,” she whispered. “I don’t want to kill them, but I need them out of my way.”

He smiled at her and winked before vanishing. She crouched in the mist, waiting. A few moments later she heard them shouting.

“Stop!”

“You’re our prisoner!”

Then she heard running, muffled by distance and fog. She waited until Alexander returned.

“They should be off chasing ghosts for a while,” he said. “You can get ahead of them for now.”

“Keep an eye on them for me?”

“Of course,” Alexander said and then he was gone and Isabel was again moving through the swamp, remaining vigilant but focusing on covering ground as quickly as possible. She knew they would probably double back when they lost Alexander in the mist. If they got back on the trail, they might reach the boathouse before she could build any kind of decent raft, and given the death leeches in the water, Isabel wasn’t willing to cut corners.

Then she stopped dead in her tracks, blinking in wonderment, remembering that one of the jars of powder in Hazel’s workshop was labeled concealment. She wasn’t sure what that meant, but it was certainly worth a try. She found the jar of dust and carefully sprinkled a pinch on the ground behind her. The trail left by her friends’ passage as well as her own vanished for twenty feet. Smiling fiercely, she raced forward another twenty feet and sprinkled more powder, erasing any evidence of her passage for forty feet. Satisfied with the effect of her vial of magical powder, she forged ahead. Even experienced trackers would be thrown by the sudden disappearance of tracks that were so clearly evident before. At a minimum, they’d have to circle to reacquire her trail and that would take time.

It was late in the day when she reached the boathouse, which was really no more than a shack with a little dock jutting into the black and murky water of the swamp. The trail had become more circuitous as she neared the deeper water, winding around pools and bogs to stay on solid ground.

Alexander appeared when she arrived.

“They’re half a day ahead of you and moving steadily toward the mountain. The water stays pretty deep between here and there, so once you’re floating, you probably won’t set foot on solid ground until you get there. Those two men have picked up your trail again but I don’t think they’ll get here before dark.”

“Good,” Isabel said. “If I’m quick, I can have a raft in the water with an hour to spare.”

Isabel worked steadily, tearing down support beams and wall struts from the boathouse to use as the foundation of her raft and wall boards to use as the floor, tying them all together with rope until she had a simple raft about eight feet long and five feet wide. She cut a board into a paddle and then found two long, straight branches to serve as poles. It was nearly dark when she shoved off. As the mist and coming night swallowed the silhouette of the skeletal boathouse, she heard two men complaining that they’d followed the wrong trail. Then their voices were swallowed by the gloaming swamp as well.

She poled her way through the cypress trees until it was too dark to continue, then tied off to a tree and lay down for the night, calling Slyder to her for company and comfort. It was a fitful night. Isabel wasn’t afraid of the dark, but she was wary of what might be lurking in the swamp. While the dangers she’d faced since entering the mist weren’t what she’d expected at all, they were deadly in the extreme. Anything that upset her raft and tossed her into the water would be the end of her, so every little ripple brought her fully awake and alert. By morning she was exhausted and sore from trying to sleep on bare boards.

She sent Slyder into the treetops, above the mist, to get her bearings and then set out, pushing herself through the water with one of the long poles. The water was nearly four feet deep in most places, but occasionally much deeper. She worked steadily through the morning until her shoulders burned from exertion. Over ground, Hazel was much slower, but on the water in a boat, with Hector and Horace to row, they would be moving much faster than she could. Isabel had no expectation of gaining on them, but she was determined not to fall too far behind.

From the absence of waterfowl, she assumed that this part of the swamp was also infested with death leeches. It was a frightening thought: nothing but murky water in every direction and all of it hiding death. She shuddered, trying to focus on her goal, on what she intended to do once she arrived. That was much simpler. She was going to burn a hole through Hazel.

Alexander appeared near midday.

“This part of the swamp looks as devoid of life as the rest of it,” he said.

“This whole place is like a tomb,” she said. “I wonder where those leeches came from.”

“Probably Siavrax—what better way to keep unwanted guests away from your secret laboratory?”

“Do you think he would really kill a whole swamp just to keep people away?”

“He summoned the Succubus Queen,” Alexander said. “There’s no telling what he was capable of.”

“I wonder what I’m going to find on that mountain,” Isabel said.

“I had a look around and I’m afraid it’s not so empty of life,” Alexander said. “It’s mostly a jungle until you get up toward the top where the vegetation thins out.”

“Any predators I should know about?”

“A few animals: jaguars, snakes, boar, monkeys, and some type of wild dog that hunts in packs,” Alexander said. “But there’s also something else. I consulted the sovereigns about them before I came to you. They’re called vorash … another one of Siavrax’s creations.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Isabel said.

“No, they’re built almost like a man, two arms and two legs, except they have two broad, powerful, clawed fingers forward and one back on both their hands and their feet. The head is elongated like a dog’s, only bigger, and they have tentacles sprouting from each shoulder ending in clawed hands as well. They’re supposed to be terribly strong, very aggressive, and completely territorial. They can climb better than a monkey and prefer to attack from above, sometimes carrying prey into the trees and dropping them to their death.”

“Great,” Isabel said. “I think I’ll try to avoid them altogether.”

“Probably wise if you can,” Alexander said. “Malachi said Siavrax created them to use as soldiers in the jungle but they were less than obedient and not terribly smart.”

“Anything else?” Isabel asked.

“The fortress is mostly inside the mountain except for the ruins of the keep on the very top,” Alexander said. “It looks like there are a number of ways into the lower levels that are accessible from smaller structures in the jungle.”

“That sounds promising,” Isabel said. “The less time I can spend in the trees, the less time the vorash will have to hunt me.”

“From the course Hazel’s taking, it looks like she’s heading for one of these side entrances.”

“Almost like she knows where she’s going,” Isabel said.

Alexander nodded.

“She was playing us all along,” Isabel said. “I wish I had time to read more of her journal.”

“Maybe when you stop for the night,” Alexander said. “I’ll be back when I know more.”

Isabel moved through the swamp, damp from mist and sweat, her arms and shoulders burning, but she pushed, determined to cover the distance quickly. At dark she tied off to a tree and tried to read some of Hazel’s journal, but it was like reading one side of a conversation. Isabel wondered how much of that conversation had taken place in Hazel’s mind and how much actually made it onto the page.

From what she could gather, Hazel needed a woman of her lineage to complete the transference, whatever that was, and she was very excited to have finally brought Ayela to her. Apparently, she’d been trying to influence the Princess of Karth for some time, using a dream-whisper spell and had all but given up. When Ayela arrived, Hazel began making preparations for the transference spell but could only complete it in the mountain.

She didn’t say why.