A Discourse in Steel (27 page)

A verdant swath of rolling land stretched out before him, as much jungle as swamp. A green blanket of trees covered a rolling, rough landscape of ponds and lakes and streams. Hillocks rose here and there like boils in the terrain. The whole of the land looked broken, scoured, the streams and lakes and ponds old scars covered in a veneer of water. Even from a distance he could see the countless ruins that dotted the landscape, scattered buildings, a plaza, huge toppled columns, monumental sculptures. The verdure had grown over much of it, as if the thick vegetation were trying to hide a shameful secret, but then Nix saw scores of sites scattered across the terrain. And he also saw what he'd sought since entering the swamp.

The upper half of a thin dark tower rose above the tree line in the rough center of the terrain, a quarrel of dark stone aimed at the sky. He'd seen it from afar once before, when he'd assayed the Deadmire with Hinse, when the dreams had come. The tower was the only intact structure he'd seen then and it was the one he saw now.

That had to be important. It had to mean that's where they would find Odrhaal.

He realized he was hanging a lot of hope on unknowns, but hopes and unknowns were all he had. Besides, Mere had sensed the mindmage. They were on the right path.

He maneuvered himself across the tree to a limb that allowed a view behind them. The terrain looked much the same, but he did not see their pursuers. Of course the trees and undergrowth and rough terrain could hide an army. He descended.

“Well?” Egil said.

“I spotted the tower,” Nix said, and Mere and Egil both looked relieved. Mere touched his arm. Nix looked at Rose. She looked so pale. “It's not too far.”

“That's where we'll find Odrhaal,” Mere said, her tone hopeful.

“That's where we'll find Odrhaal,” Nix said.

They started off right away, moving as quickly as possible through terrain choked with ruins and fallen trees and enormous willows. When the vegetation allowed them to see ahead, they sometimes caught a tantalizing glimpse of the tower, looming ever larger as they closed the distance. The sun slid across the sky as they sweated and cursed their way through the mud and undergrowth and bugs.

Nix's burgeoning hopes began to falter as they neared the tower and he saw it more clearly. Egil did him the courtesy of saying nothing, but Nix's eyes told a story he did not want to hear. From afar, the tower looked intact but, through the occasional breaks in the trees, Nix saw that was an illusion, a trick of distance and false hopes. Mere seemed not to have realized it yet, and Nix did not have the mettle to tell her. As they broke through the tree line, Mere's doubts manifested.

“This is it?” she asked. “Are you certain, Nix?”

The tower
was
more intact than most of the other ruined structures, but cracks lined its crumbling façade, and chunks of facing stone had fallen over the years to collect in dark piles at the tower's base. The spike of stone rose from what once would have been a grand plaza, but which was now a scattering of cracked stones overgrown with creepers and trees and undergrowth. A few toppled, half-buried statues of serpents and serpent men littered the ground around the tower. One statue alone remained standing, though only because it leaned against the side of the tower: a robed serpent man, arms upraised, mouth open, tongue extended in a hiss. The statue stood next to the doorway at the base of the tower. The double doors were long gone, the hole of the doorway like a missing tooth.

“I'm not certain of anything,” Nix said softly. He walked for the double doors, jogged for them, ran for them.

“Nix,” Egil called, but Nix would have none of it.

He sprinted across the plaza, nearly tripping on a loose stone. He took the stone stairs two at a time and ran past the statue.

“Nix!” Egil called.

Nix stopped cold two steps into the tower, chest heaving, hopes failing. He'd wanted a miracle; he'd gotten shite.

Loose stones lay in a few scattered piles and the remnants of what once had been a ramp or circular staircase clung here and there to the crumbling walls. Undergrowth grew out of the foundation, shrubs and trees. Mud had leaked in over the years, coating the floor in grime. Vines veined the walls. Birds cooed in the heights.

“No,” Nix said. “Come on. No.”

He was standing in a cylinder as hollow as his hopes. Rays of light from the setting sun reached through the open top—it had collapsed long ago—and filtered down the tower's length.

He'd failed Rose and his failure stripped away his mask. He pretended to feel things or to not feel things so often that he'd almost forgotten what it was like to genuinely feel something.

And what he felt was empty.

He'd failed her. She'd die in the thrice-damned Deadmire because Nix the Quick, Nix the Lucky, had thought himself so damned clever.

Tears tried to fall but he kept them in. He would not grant his grief the relief of release. He'd carry it, as he should, as penance for his failure. He stood there for a long while with nothing but his mistake for company.

At length Egil and Mere came in to stand beside him. Their presence made everything worse. They'd believed in him and they shouldn't have. At first no one said anything. Mere finally put the situation into words. “He's not here,” she said. “Odrhaal. And we don't know how to find him.”

Nix opened his mouth to speak, closed it, and just shook his head.

Rose whimpered in her sling and Nix could only clench his jaw and chew on his failure.

“You're not at fault,” Egil said and put a hand on Nix's shoulder.

“No, you're not. We had to try,” Mere said, then, “Oh, Rose.”

She turned away, covering her face, weeping.

Nix looked at Mere's shaking back, at Rose's pale, fever-blotched face, and his anger escaped his control.

“Fak all this!” Nix said, and stalked outside. “Fak it all!”

“Nix?” Egil asked.

“What are you doing?” Mere called. “Nix, what are you doing?”

Nix didn't bother with an answer. He knew he was being careless, foolish even, because the guildsmen might hear him, but he didn't care. He needed to give voice to his anger, anger at himself, at the guild, at Odrhaal. He paced around the godsdamned tower, shouting.

“Odrhaal! We know you're here! We need your help! You fakkin' answer us or I promise by all the gods…”

He left the rest of the threat unvoiced. The sounds of the swamp had fallen silent at his outburst.

“Odrhaal!”

Light filtered down through the canopy. Bird wings fluttered among the treetops.

“Odrhaal!”

Nothing.

Mere and Egil walked out of the ruined tower, the priest bearing the unconscious Rose, the Rose they were soon to lose.

“Nix—” Egil said.

“No!” Nix snapped, waving the priest off. “Mere can sense him. He's here somewhere. He has to be. Odrhaal!”

“Nix,” Mere said softly. “It could be some…residuum of this dead civilization that I'm perceiving. I can't be sure.”

Nix whirled on her. “You can't be sure?
You can't be sure
?”

She recoiled, eyes wide, and Egil stepped protectively in front of her. His frown and narrowed eyes told Nix what his mouth did not:
Back off.

A growl and hiss sounded from out in the trees, the growl and hiss that had plagued them since Channis had fled into the night. Nix drew his falchion and hand axe and stalked toward the trees. He wanted to kill something; he
needed
to kill something.

“Show yourself!” he shouted. “Come on!
Come on!
”

He walked along the tree line, staring into the shadowed foliage, the muddy earth sucking at his boots, but the creature answered him no more than had Odrhaal.

“Fak! Fak! Fak!”

He gathered himself as best he could and walked back to his friends. He could not look them in the face. He stared at his boots, his weapons limp and useless in his grasp.

“I…fakked this up, Mere. I thought…I thought it would go like everything always goes for me, like it would work out. I thought I could save her.”

He looked up to see Mere looking at him, tears in her eyes.

“You're not at fault,” she said.

“You're not,” Egil said.

Mere looked at her sister, at Egil, at Nix. “But what do we do now?”

Egil spared Nix the need to answer. “We camp here and then try to go back…”

He trailed off and no one filled the silence for him. There was nothing to be said.

They'd have to face the guildsmen and Rose would die on the way back.

Even Trelgin
fell silent as the boats carried them over what looked like a submerged necropolis. A metallic spire poked out of the water in the center of the lake, like the hand of a drowning man reaching up above the waterline to grasp at air he'd never breathe again.

“Has to be a lot of swag down there,” Mors said, leaning over the side of the boat.

Aye's around.

“Unless you're a fish, that's just where it'll stay, too,” Varn said.

“Keep your voices down,” Rusk said.

When they reached the far end of the lake, they found Egil and Nix's boat, pulled up on a muddy beach at the base of one of the hillocks that ringed the lake. They pulled their boats up beside it and hopped out. Quickly, Trelgin activated the dowsing rod and took a sense.

“That way,” he said, nodding up the rise. “I think—”

He stopped and inhaled sharply, the sound wet with drool. Rusk followed his eyes and saw at the top of the rise a tall figure standing in the shadows of the cypresses, partially hidden by the undergrowth. It was bipedal, with dark, scaled skin and overlong, muscular arms and legs. It was hairless, its eyes set in ridged sockets, and the whole of its features gave it a reptilian cast.

Rusk cursed and fumbled for his weapon. Varn and Mors unslung their crossbows, but by the time they had them in hand, the figure was gone.

“What in the Eleven Hells was that?” Mors asked, his voice even more high-pitched than usual.

“Looked like a…” Varn said, and shook his head. “I don't know what it looked like.”

“Swamp's got all kinds of secrets,” Rusk said, feigning confidence. “Just stay sharp.”

“We leaving the boats?” Trelgin asked.

“You said they went that way,” Rusk said, nodding up the rise. “Unless we plan to turn back now, we have to leave the boats.”

“We could leave a guard,” Trelgin said.

“I ain't staying at the boats with that thing out there and a drowned graveyard behind me,” Varn said, and the other men nodded.

Rusk looked a question at Trelgin. Trelgin's eyes went to Rusk's tattoo, its seven blades.

“We can't turn back, now,” the Sixth Blade said, resigned. “Come too far.”

“Get the gear out of the boats,” Rusk said. Night was falling. They'd have to camp at the top of the rise. Rusk did not welcome another night in the swamp, especially with an unknown creature out there in the dark.

“What do you think these boys are even doing out here, Rusk?” Varn asked.

Rusk could only shrug. The Deadmire was no place for a man, and if guild law hadn't put him in such a bind, he'd never have come at all.

Egil set
up their camp inside the empty spire.

“It's shelter,” he said over Nix's protests. “Fewer bugs, no wind. It'll be better for Rose.”

Nix had let the matter go, but better for Rose seemed almost a moot consideration.

Night soon shrouded the swamp. Nix knew he'd be unable to sleep, so he stood watch. For hours he stared at the inky air inside the ruined tower of a lost civilization, listening to Rose moan and thrash, listening to Mere fret and weep.

Nix and Egil sat in silence and did nothing, for there was nothing they could do. After a few hours Rose quieted and slept. Mere and Egil soon dozed off, too.

Nix sat alone with his thoughts, his regrets, the darkness of the tower his own personal Blackalley. He clenched his fists, his jaw, cursing himself for letting it all go so wrong. Maybe they could have gotten Rose to Oremal in time, or maybe they'd have encountered a mindmage en route. Instead Nix had led them into the stinking, sodden sewer of the Deadmire, where Rose would die, another ghost haunting the swamp.

He stood and paced because he had to, because he couldn't sit still, because he despised himself for his arrogance. He treated everything like it was a game, like no matter how the pieces moved, it'd always turn out all right for Nix the Quick, for Nix the Clever.

“Nix the stupid fakker,” he whispered.

He walked to the doors and slouched down in the doorway, staring out at the swamp. Insects sang, the cadence rising and falling. Fireflies winked on and off out in the darkness, a constantly changing constellation. Kulven's silver light leaked dimly through the canopy. The breeze whispered among the vines and leaves, carrying the stink of decay.

Nix felt like he was standing on the grave of an old world, a secret world buried under the stink and filth. He'd tried to dig up Odrhaal for Rose and all he'd ended up with were hands covered in mud and stinking of shite.

“Fak,” he whispered.

He loved Rose the way he'd have loved an older sister. And he'd failed her.

“Fak, fak.”

He stared out into the darkness, spent. He still refused tears. He'd carry it, bear the grief because he deserved to bear it.

His eyes grew heavy as the day's events weighed down on him. He knew he'd soon fall asleep. He tried to rise, to go rouse Egil to take a watch, but he could not move his body. Alarm spiked his adrenaline but still he could not move. He opened his mouth to call out but couldn't summon a sound.

Fak. Fak.

He felt a tickling behind his eye, a pressure against his skull. He turned his head—he could at least turn his head—and found himself eye to eye with the face of a serpent.