The marsh stretched as far as I could see, the dank smell of rotting plants rising up to meet my nose as I squelched through the mud, picking off the gray branches of drowned trees where I could find them. The wood was light and dry and would burn well.
I missed my father all the time, but I’d never missed him more than at that moment. He could light fire with a thought—it was his Weird. I had to resort to finding two rocks and striking them together until a spark finally caught the dried grass and twigs I’d stuffed into the center of a pile of sticks.
The Faceless paid no more attention to the fire than they had to me, and I drew close to it, holding my hands above the flames and trying to tuck my jacket around me.
I didn’t think I could sleep with all the worries about Dean, meeting the king and getting us both out of here banging in my head, but I’d drifted off, head bowed low, before I realized it.
The sound that woke me was inhuman, even for this place. It rose from within the earth, low and then oscillating higher and higher until I thought my eardrums would burst. It retreated, increased, as if everything around me in the marsh was screaming.
I got up and pulled a branch from the fire, the flame at the end of it flickering before me as I walked toward the sound. The Faceless never stirred, the wind ruffling the edges of their robes. They paid no more mind to it than statues would.
The marsh mud sucked at my feet, but the ground seemed firm enough a few inches down. I saw a blue light ahead, bobbing and weaving through the drowned forest, and doused my flame to follow it.
I couldn’t say why I was creeping around the Deadlands in the dark, just that the strange sounds and the blue light had captivated me. Dimly, I realized I was under the same sort of compulsion as when Lei had drugged me, but I couldn’t stop moving.
There were more lights, more moaning, only now it resolved into voices, whispers too indistinct to make out what they were saying.
All around me, the blue lights blossomed, and I could see they were tiny bodies, faces, with black eyes and long black teeth dripping with marsh muck.
I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t even do that.
What is she? one hissed. She’s not dead.
She’s marked, another whispered. Marked for the one who waits.
Not anymore, said the first. Now she’ll stay here with us, and we’ll let the marsh swallow up her bones.
All at once, just as I was starting to panic, a different kind of glow filled the marsh, and the bobbing blue shapes fled, screeching. The marsh gave one last, heaving groan and then everything settled again, except for the ever-present wind.
“You shouldn’t be out here alone,” a voice said. The syllables were clipped, from somewhere in Europe.
Reality crashed down around me like a thunderstorm, and I came back to myself. I found myself no longer standing in mud but in water up to my chest, feet sinking deeper into the muck with every passing second.
“Stay calm,” the voice said. “They lure you into the water and you drown without even realizing it. Before you can blink, you’re one of them, trapped in the Moaning Marsh for eternity.”
“You sure know a lot about this place,” I managed. The water was freezing, and my teeth chattered so violently I could barely talk.
“I’ve spent many nights here watching the glow,” the voice said. “Those things—I think they’re dead creatures from the marsh. Certainly not human.” The owner of the voice glided into view, managing to stay on top of the marsh even as I sank deeper.
“I try to help travelers when I can,” said Tesla. “But you’re not just a traveler, are you?”
I gaped, and stopped trying to stay afloat. Rancid water flowed over my lips and up my nose and I choked.
“Easy, easy,” he said. “You’ve got to move toward the shore.” Like the souls I’d encountered in the Iron Land, he possessed a slight silver glow, and when he glided closer to me, he illuminated solid ground about five yards away. “You can do it,” Tesla said. “You just can’t panic.”
I tried to move slowly, to float rather than sink, and eventually I pulled myself into the relatively solid mud, shaking uncontrollably.
“There, now.” He crouched beside me as I spat marsh water. I took the opportunity to look him in the eye, still hardly able to believe that out of all the souls roaming the Deadlands, I’d encountered him. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“You and I have very different ideas about ‘not so bad,’ ” I told him.
Tesla cracked a thin smile. “And I meant what I said before. I see a lot of Walkers, but you’re not one of them. You’re not just passing through; you’re going somewhere.”
“To see the king,” I agreed. His expression told me everything I needed to know about that idea. I tried to put on a brave face nonetheless.
“Then you’re going somewhere, but somewhere you’ll never return from.”
“I have”—I took a deep breath and decided to just come out with it—“I have so much I need to ask you, Mr. Tesla.”
He helped me to my feet and gave a wan smile as he regarded my soaked frame. “Please. Call me Nikola.”
Before I could tell him that I wasn’t sure I could do that, not until I processed that I’d actually met a great man such as him, albeit after death, he started walking, leaving me to follow.
We reached some rocks on the far side of the marsh. A line of blue sunlight had started at the horizon. “The nights are short here,” I said, and then wanted to bang my head against the same rocks for saying something so inane to Tesla himself.
“Nothing makes sense here,” said Tesla. “You’ll find that out if you stay much longer.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I’m just here for one thing.”
“No,” Tesla said. “You may have come here initially for selfish reasons, but now that the Yellow King knows of your existence, you are here at his pleasure. He will never allow you to find what you seek.”
I took in a shaky breath. I couldn’t seem to get rid of the bone-deep cold the marsh had put in me. “I just want to get my friend back. And I found him, so if the king is out to stop me, he’s slow.”
“I’m not talking about Dean Harrison,” Tesla said. “I’m talking about the real reason you’re here, Aoife. The Old Ones.”
I stopped walking at that, and folded my arms. “How do you know so much if you’re just a spirit?”
Tesla shrugged. “I was an inventor in life, and in death I have found ways to harness the energies of this bleak place. They feed me information, fluctuations in the fields.” He scraped a hand across his eyes. “Time was, I knew everything. Now it seems as if bits and pieces fall away as quickly as the bones that the souls grind on Ossuary Road.
“Stopping the Old Ones is something you will never accomplish,” Tesla said. “Imagine my horror when I found, through my Gates, that they were the spark, the source of magic and wonder in the universe. Something so horrible giving life to such brilliance, all across the Land.”
“I really just want Dean,” I lied, but Tesla shook his head.
“The king, the Old Ones—they are all threads binding the universe,” he said. “And I have not as yet figured out how the knot is tied, but I do know that if you pull one string, it will all unravel.”
I stared at Tesla and tried to look stony. “I have to try.”
“And once you steal from the king, and upset the plans of the Old Ones, what is your plan?” Tesla snapped. “You will be a marked woman.”
“I’m a living soul,” I said. “Somebody in the Iron Land is waiting for me.”