Lily said very little, and bore the quiescent malice that permeated the Marsh with apparently stoic resistance, but every night, wrapped in their blankets and within Anest's protective embrace, she would lay trembling with exhaustion before sleep overtook her, attesting to the price she paid for maintaining her resolve.
It was shortly after dawn on the sixth day that they reached a region like a dimple in the land. At its bottom lay a perfectly circular pond. The gently sloping sides of the bowl-like depression were altogether devoid of copsewood, and were instead the brown, beaten-down remains of what had once been tall grass. At the pond's edge the browned grass gave way to a thick barrier of rushes, once tall and lush, now turned yellow-brown, broken, ruined.
Yet there was an underlying vitality to the surrounding vegetation that didn't escape Anest's attention. It was not visible to the eye, but rather to the senses on a subliminal level. Neither copse nor grass nor rush were completely dead. What life there was had withdrawn itself, appalled by the ravening malice that now emanated from the once pure waters.
The waters of the pond were no longer pure. In all the Marshes of Morag, its waters were stillest and blackest in this place.
They had reached the heart of the Marshes of Morag.