All the truths that mattered were banal.
Yet here was another truth. He had paid for this journey. His coin bought this man’s pain. The exchange was imbalanced, and so Mappo grieved for Master Quell, and would not shy away from his own guilt. Honour meant, after all, a pre-paredness, a willingness to weigh and measure, to judge rightful balance with no hand tilting the scales.
And so, they all here were paying to serve Mappo’s need, this journey through warrens. Another burden he must accept. If he could.
The formidable warrior sitting beside him stirred then and said, ‘I think I see now why the Trygalle loses so many shareholders, Master Quell. By the abyss, there must be warrens where one can journey through in peace?’
Master Quell rubbed at his face. ‘Realms resist, Gruntle. We are like a splash of water in hot oil. It’s all I can do to not… bounce us off. Mages can push them-selves into their chosen warrens-it’s not easy, it’s a game of subtle persuasion most of the time. Or a modest assertion of will. You don’t want to blast a hole from one realm to the next, because that’s likely to go out of control. It can de-vour a mage in an instant.’ He looked up at them with bloodshot eyes. ‘We can’t do it that way.’ He waved a weak hand at the carriage behind him. ‘We arrive like an insult. We are an insult. Like a white-hot spear point, we punch through, race along our wild path, and all that we leave in our wake I need to make sure is, er, cauterized. Seared shut. Failing that, a rush of power explodes behind us, and that’s a wave no mortal can ride for long.’
Precious Thimble spoke from behind Mappo. ‘You must be High Mages, then, one and all.’
To her observation, Master Quell nodded. ‘I admit, it’s starting to trouble me, this way of travel. I think we’re scarring the whole damned universe. We’re making existence… bleed. Oh, just a seep here and there, amidst whatever throbs of pain reality might possess. In any case, that’s why there’s no peaceful path, Gruntle. Denizens in every realm are driven to annihilate us.’
‘You said we did not even reach Hood’s Gate,’ the barbed man said after a mo-ment. ‘And yet…’
‘Aye.’ He spat on to the sand. ‘The dead sleep no more. What a damned mess.’
‘Find us the nearest land in our own world,’ said Mappo. ‘I will walk from there. Make my own way-’
‘We stay true to the contract, Trell. We’ll deliver you where you want to go-’
‘Not at the price of you and your companions possibly dying-I cannot accept that, Master Quell.’
‘We don’t do refunds.’
‘I do not ask for one.’
Master Quell rose shakily. ‘We’ll see after our next leg. For now, it’s time for breakfast. There’s nothing worse than heaving when there’s nothing in the gut to heave.’
Gruntle also straightened. ‘You have decided on a new path?’
Quell grimaced. ‘Look around , Gruntle . It’s been decided for us.’
Mappo rose and remained at Gruntle’s side as Quell staggered to his crew, who were gathered round a brazier they had dragged out from the belly of the carriage
The Trell squinted at the modest plot of land. ‘What did he mean?’ he asked. Gruntle shrugged. When he smiled at Mappo his fangs gleamed. ‘Since I have to guess, Trell, I’d say we’re going for a swim.’
And Precious Thimble snorted. ‘Mael’s realm. And you two thought Hood was bad.’
When she was four years old, Precious Thimble was given a breathing tube and buried in peat, where she remained for two days and one night. She probably died. Most of them did, but the soul remained in the dead body, trapped by the peat and its dark, sorcerous qualities. This was how the old witches explained things. A child must be given into the peat, into that unholy union of earth and water, and the soul must be broken free of the flesh it dwelt within, for only then could that soul travel, only then could that soul wander free in the realm of dreams.
She had few memories of that time in the peat. Perhaps she screamed, sought to thrash in panic. The ropes that bound her, that would be used to pull her free at dusk of the second day, had left deep burns on her wrists and her neck, and these burns had not come from the gentle, measured pressure when the witches had drawn her back into the world. It was also whispered that sometimes the spirits that lurked in the peat sought to steal the child’s body, to make it a place of their own. And the witches who sat guarding the temporary grave told of times when the rope-its ends wrapped about their wrists-suddenly grew taut, and a battle would then begin, between the witches of the surface and the spirits of the deep. Sometimes, it was admitted, the witches lost, the ropes were gnawed unto breaking, and the child was pulled into the foul deep, emerging only once every year, on the Night of the Awakened. Children with blue-brown skin and hollowed-out eye sockets, with hair the colour of rust or blood, with long pol-ished nails-walking the swamp and singing songs of the earth that could drive a mortal mad.
