There’s nothing more that you can do here, old man.
As he walked, he thought about the Gypsy Scout’s words. Most likely, it meant that Rudolfo was near and intending to parley with the Marsh King. It would be a first, and to Petronus’s recollection, there had been a rather brief and nasty war between the Ninefold Forest and the Marshers. Four, maybe five years before his assassination. Jakob had captured the Marsh King and showed him his Physicians of Penitent Torture. Then he released him, and the Marshers never bothered the Forest Houses again.
Now they were Rudolfo’s only kin-clave remaining in the world apart from his alliance with Vlad Li Tam.
And they had Neb.
Petronus stopped and looked behind him at the dark line of trees against the sky. Remnants of his upbringing as a Gods-fearing boy momentarily usurped his Androfrancine sensibilities. It happened infrequently, but when it did it reminded Petronus of how fragile the human heart and mind can be when faced with potential loss.
All the way back to camp, Petronus prayed.
Neb
Th»s Nizee Marshers defied Neb’s imagination.
He’d run as fast as he could to keep up with the scout, tearing through the underbrush, ducking and weaving to avoid the branches that slapped him. The scout was fast and big, making no attempt now for stealth.
Neb ran for what felt like leagues before he realized the forest had changed. Fishing nets interwoven with branches concealed mud-smeared, tattered tents. Unkempt men and women, many slack-jawed and empty-eyed, wandered the camp. They wore unmatched bits of weaponry and armor scavenged from two thousand years of skirmishing, and they moved to and fro in silence.
Neb’s guide vanished, leaving him at the edge of camp. A young girl approached him. She was covered in filth, just like the others, her hair shot through with mud and ash, and Neb suddenly realized that it wasn’t simply different values around hygiene. They did this to themselves, painting themselves with earth and ash, for reasons that were sacred to them.
The girl smiled at him, and beneath the caked dirt, he could see that she possessed a coltish kind of prettiness. She was nearly as tall as he was, and he thought perhaps her hair was a mouse brown beneath the mud. Despite the dirt, she had it pulled back from her face and wrapped with a bit of red ribbon.
“The Marsh King summoned you,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“Y-yes,” he said.
She took a step closer to him and he smelled her. It was a distinct scent-the musk of sweat, the smoky smell of the ash, the traces of sulfur and clay in the mud. And apples, he realized. She extended her hand to him. “I will take you.”
He took her hand and felt her gently tugging him along, walking at a quick gait. He studied her as they went. She wore mismatched boots and a long man’s tunic cut down to fit her. Beneath it, a long-sleeved shirt that had once been white. Her calves were bare and gray with dirt. She wore no weapons that he could see.
The Marsh girl led him through a maze of trees and tents, dodging in and out of the Marsh King’s silent soldiers. “Why are they so quiet?” he asked, his curiosity finally getting the better of him.
“It is our faith. We have one voice in war-the voice of our king. So we only speak when necessary.”
Neb took her hint and remained quiet until they approached a tent slightly larger than the other, snug against the side of a low hill. “The Marsh King awaits you in there,” the girl said pointing.
Before Neb could thank her, she vanished, running quickly and vanishing around the side of the hill without looking back.
He swallowed and approached the unguarded tent. Dim light danced inside the filthy canvas structure, and as he pushed aside the free-hanging flap, he realized that the tent was just a foyer. A tunnel had been dug into the side of the hill, widening into a cave with tangled roots for its ceiling and mud for its floor. Sitting in the center of that cave at the foot of a large triangular idol was the largest man Neb had ever seen. Bits of twigs and food hung in his large black beard, and on his lap he held a massive axe, the head of which glistened in the lamplight like a mirror, throwing back the light and intensifying it. He wore armor of a similar sort-silver and mirrored like nothing Neb had ever seen before. The giant fixed his dark eyes on Neb, then looked quickly to the left to the idol. It was a meditation bust of P’Andro Whym, from one of the earlier heresies.
“Come forward,” the Marsh King bellowed in the Whymer tongue.
Even without the magicks, the voice was compelling. Neb shuffled forward. He looked around the room as he went. It looked like there was a back entrance-much smaller, certainly too small for the Marsh King, and shrouded with a heavy curtain hastily staked into the ceiling. There were scattered reed mats and piles of ratty blankets.
Neb wasn’t sure what to do next, so he erred on the side of caution and lowered himself to his knees. “I am here, Lord.”
Again, the Marsh King stared down at him and then looked away to the idol. “I will preach about you tonight,” the Marsh King said. “I will call you the dreaming boy because I have seen you in my dreams.” He looked to the idol, nodding slowly. “Now is set into motion the time of judgment, and the unloved children of P’Andro Whym will be the firstborn of the new gods.” Neb looked at the idol himself but saw nothing there but an old metal god. The Marsh King leaned down. “Do you understand any of this?”
Neb shook his head. “I do not.”
Another glance to the idol, head cocked to hear, then the deep voice continued slowly. “Do you understand what it means to be the reluctant prophet of Xhum Y’Zir? Because someday, you will be.”
“I do not understand, Lord,” Neb said. But the words, when they washed through him, left him shaken. He’d studied the fundamentals of the mystic heresies and he understood the straying from Androfrancine truth. His own dream of Hebda, dead and speaking with him as if he weren’t, was powerful regardless of whether or not it was real. Who wouldn’t listen to the ghost of their dead father?
But the Francines were clear: The ghost was just an aspect of himself, working out problems in his sleep.
Except for the part where those dreams came true, the Marsh King and his army perfect proof of that.
“How is it that you invade my sleep, Dreaming Boy? What are the things that you show me?” The Marsh King waited, glancing quickly to the idol. “Who is this resurrected Pope that will avenge the light by killing it?”
The fear worked its way into his stomach and it lurched. He knew about Petronus somehow. His hand wanted to go to the pocket now and check it again, make sure it was still there. But he didn’t. “I do not know, Lord,” he said again.
The Marsh King roared and leaped to his feet, moving past Neb quickly and moving to the tent flaps. “I will speak with you in the morning.” Neb watched him draw a large silver drinking horn and hold it to his lips. When he brought it down his face was covered in what looked like blood, and his satisfied sigh shook the walls of the tent.
The Marsh King strode into the night, his War Sermon booming out, a storm of words that could be heard as far as twenty leagues away.
Neb was still watching him when the girl approached. He jumped when she touched his shoulder and he turned. The curtain still swayed where she came from. “He will be all night,” the Marsh girl said.
“He’s preaching about me,” Neb said.
She nodded. “He is. The dreams were very powerful.”
“What do they mean?”
She laughed. “If I knew what they meant, why would the Marsh King summon you?”
Neb looked at her. She didn’t look as dirty as he’d thought she did. Or maybe it was the light. Her large brown eyes crinkled at the edges, as if she laughed a lot. But there were deep places there that suggested she cried a lot, too. When she smiled, her teeth were straight and white.