No word of reason had reached him, perhaps, yet Lord Marbon’s face no longer was empty, vacant. But his eyes were not for them at all, rather he watched the lake eagerly—almost demandingly. A frown of puzzlement drew his dark brows closer together.
“It is here—yet it is not—” There was a querulous note in his voice. “How can a thing be and yet not be? For this is not of idle legend, I do stand in Zarsthor’s land!”
The boy continued to scowl at Brixia. “See?” he demanded. “Through the night and day he would come here, as if he knew this place as well as once he knew Eggarsdale. Now it is as if he seeks some place he knows well—but he will not tell me what!”
Uta left the girl, padded forward to the edge of the lake. The water was not rimmed by any growth of weed or plant. There was only a sharp line of light sandy earth enclosing it as far as they could see—an oval green-blue gem set in an unnaturally clearly marked tarnished casing of silver.
The cat looked back over her shoulder at the three of them. Daintily, as if urging them to watch her action, she advanced a paw, dabbled it fastidiously in the water, sending ripples out across the quiet surface. For nothing troubled that mirror of water. No insect skated across its surface, no fish sent bubbles upward to break.
Brixia limped around the boy to the cat’s side. She dropped her spear, knelt to view herself in that liquid mirror. But there was no reflection to be seen.
At first glance the water was turgid, unclear below its quiet surface. It was not muddied, for the color was not brown or yellow. Brixia cautiously advanced her own hand, felt the liquid, which was slightly warm, wash up around her fingers. Withdrawing those quickly she examined them. There was no staining of any kind left on her sunbrowned skin. And, when she held her hand close to her noise, there was no smell either that she could detect.
Yet it was plain the lake was not normal, judged by Dale standards. As she leaned forward again, striving to see what might indeed lie below, the bud fell out of her shirt. Though she grabbed, it had already floated just beyond her reach.
She had lifted her spear in an effort to hook it back to her when the boy cried out.
“What—what is happening?”
For, as the bud floated out upon the water, it did not appear to drift at random. Rather it moved steadily away from the shore, spinning in a spiral path. Where it passed the water cleared. The color remained, but the depths beneath could now be seen.
Below that now transparent surface were rising walls, domes. Caught within the filled cup of the lake there lay some settlement, or perhaps only a single spreading edifice, of strangely shaped building.
Out and on swirled the bud, and clearer grew what its passage uncovered. There were carvings on the sunken walls and the glint of other colors subdued by the hue of the water. Farther in towards the center the building stretched. Nor did it show any sign of ruin or erosion.
“An-Yak!”
Brixia, startled by the shout, only saved herself from falling forward into the embrace of the lake by clutching at the long grass.
“Lord!”
Marbon passed her in a single long stride, halting only when the water washed waist high about him, his hands stretched towards lay beyond. The boy splashed after, trying to drag him back.
“No, Lord!”
Marbon fought to wade deeper into that flood. He did not even look at his companion, his attention was all for what the floating bud had disclosed.
“Let me go!” He flung the boy away. But Brixia, who had found her balance, came to seize the man’s shoulders from behind. In spite of his fight to free himself, she held on as the boy came to aid her.
Somehow they dragged him out of the lake. Then he collapsed so that they had to support him between them, pull him back to the fire. Over his now inert body Brixia spoke to the boy.
“It is only because he is weak that we could master him,” she pointed out. “I doubt if we can force him away from this place.”
The boy had gone down on his knees to touch his lord’s face.
“I know. He—he is ensorcelled! What was that which you threw into the water? It was that which caused—”
Brixia stood away. “I threw nothing. It fell from my shirt. As to what it was—a flower. One which served me well.” She told him curtly of what aid she had had from the tree, and, in turn, its blossom.
“Who knows what manner of thing is to be found in the Waste?” she ended. “Much of the Old Ones’ owning and rearing may be here still. Your lord named that,” she waved towards the water. “Is it what he has sought then? The place of the Bane in truth?”
“How do I know? He has been one possessed, giving me no choice but to follow after. He has walked without rest, would not eat or drink when I tried to stop him. He is walled away in his own thoughts, and who may guess what those may be?”
Brixia glanced back at the lake. “It is plain that he cannot easily be kept from what lies there. Nor do I think that together we can carry him away while his senses have left him.”
The boy’s hands tightened into fists, and with them he pounded on the ground, his face twisted with both fear and concern.
“It is true—” his voice was very low as if he did not want to acknowledge that to her but the words were forced from him. “I do not know what I can do. Before he has been as a child I could lead, not my lord. I brought him to Eggarsdale for I thought that there his wits might return to him. Now he has brought me here—and within his mind he is as far from me as if the sea runs between us. He is ensorcelled, and I know not how to break this bond upon him. I know nothing which is of any use. Only what he has said of this Bane. Though the matter of that is still his secret.” He covered his face with his hands.
Brixia bit her lip. It was close to nightfall now. She looked around with a wanderer’s sharp valuation of the land. Here there stood no trees, nothing to give them any shelter at all. The fire burned on a stretch of gravel, but there were not even rocks to provide a barricade. She could no longer see the bud—if it still floated it must now be near the center of the lake.
The girl did not like the thought of being in the open when dark at last closed in. But she could sight no better camp than where they now were. Slowly she went back to the side of the lake.
Thirst parched her throat. Though she feared that stretch of water, and perhaps even more what it covered, Brixia knelt and scooped up a palm’s hold of it, setting her lips gingerly to the liquid. It had no taste, no scent her human senses could detect. Uta crouched beside her and was busy lapping. Dared she depend upon the cat to point out danger here?
The few drops she had sucked from her hand were not enough. With a fatalistic shrug the girl scooped up more and drank, then splashed handfuls to wet the tangled hair on her forehead, drip from her chin. It refreshed her, in a way renewed her determination to withstand whatever might come.
Gazing over the lake she half expected to see that the murkiness had returned, to once more hide the structures below. But that was not so, she could still trace wall, dome, roof, on and on outward. Nearly below her lay a paved way which ran straight ahead into the heart of the walls.
A smell of roasting meat drew her back to the fire. There the boy tended a skinned and quartered leaper he had impaled on sticks to sizzle over the flames.
“Is he asleep still?” Brixia nodded at Lord Marbon.
“Asleep—or entranced. Who can say which? Eat if you wish,” he spoke roughly, not facing her.
“You are of his House?” she asked turning the nearest of those chunk loaded sticks to roast its burden more evenly.
“I was fostered in Eggarsdale.” He still looked into the flames. “As I told you, I am younger son to the Marshal of Itsford—my name is Dwed.” He shrugged. “Perhaps there remains none now to call me by it. Itsford was long since swept away. You have seen Eggarsdale—it is dead as the man who marched from it.”