[The story so far: Trapped in the fantasy world of his best-selling novels, writer Simon Kettridge learns that his presence has doomed the Phaeland Empire to destruction at the hands of an evil arch-mage, Necromanata. While trying to undo this disaster with a series of letters to powerful and influential people, Simon falls in love with Leyna, the serving wench/prostitute at the inn where he's staying. Then he makes the ironic discovery that she is Necromanata's long-lost daughter, and that the key to the sorcerer's destruction may rest in the burial plot of Leyna's mother. Enlisting the aid of a wilderness wizard, Simon and Leyna set out for Beadle's Bog, the haunted marsh where Leyna's mother was laid to rest ten years earlier.
Acknowledgment: a tip of the hat goes to anonymous commentator "FUN AT THE INN," whose suggestion last chapter got me thinking of some interesting tweaks for this installment.]
Chapter 13
I sat on a stump at the edge of the bog, waiting.
Of course, I wasn't just waiting – I was also thinking, and remembering, and speculating.
About way too many things at once.
Leyna, of course: the feel of her in my arms, the smell of her hair, the smell of her elsewhere ... the continual, light-headed awareness of what she meant to me ... the awe of knowing that I meant something similar to her ... the questions of whether it could possibly last, what kind of life we might have together as relative peons in a medieval fantasy world – whether we'd even
have
lives much longer, considering who her father was, our questionable plans to stop him, and how a few hours from now we'd be summoning up a ghost in the middle of a swamp from which an alarming number of people failed to return.
But as much as she dominated and overwhelmed my thoughts, Leyna didn't exist in a vacuum, and the context that had brought us together couldn't be ignored no matter how much I might want to hide my head in her sand.
For one thing, Beadle's Bog stretched out ahead of me, misty and dank from an on-again/off-again drizzle. The air hung still and cold, heavy with smell of flat, raw mud and rank vegetation. I couldn't see far into its sparse-treed islands before gloom and haze turned everything indistinct. Thinking about Leyna meant wanting her to be here, but once she arrived, we'd head out into that ill-omened sump in search of a ghost.
I hadn't written the Mistress of the Bog into existence the way I'd done with other parts of Phaeland. When I racked my brain hard enough, I thought that
maybe
I remembered naming a spot "Beadle's Bog" on one of my many hand-drawn maps. But deja vu might explain it just as well. All I knew about this swamp spirit, I'd learned from the folk tales Leyna told me, or from Yilma Greenwarden's reactions when Leyna repeated the stories for her.
Vengeful. After the folk of her village had sacrificed her, the legends said her spite brought the swamp up out of its lowlands to flood the farms and poison the soil for miles.
Ancient. The folklore about Beadle's Bog had no specific dates attached, but Piperville's town charter included rules about not venturing too deep into the fens, and a good hundred and twenty years had passed since the charter's writing.
Powerful. According to Yilma, a feat like the destruction of Ulumth would almost always result in the spirit either consuming itself or being bound so forcefully to the land that it could never escape to the afterlife. In the latter case, its abilities would grow year by year with the aging of its bond, and only the destruction of the swamp would prevent it from eventually surpassing any mortal arch-mage in strength.
And if that weren't enough, if we managed to find the Mistress of the Bog, if Yilma Greenwarden could keep her from obliterating us with magic, and if we convinced her to help us unearth the coffin Leyna's mother rested in, the possibility remained that the brooch wouldn't be there, or would require some even more daunting effort for us to destroy it.
So for forty minutes – from the time Yilma dropped me off to the time she arrived with Leyna riding her deer-shaped back half – I ping-ponged between the delirium of newborn romance and the specter of apocalyptic or ghostly annihilation. When the sound of hooves drummed me out of my reverie, I hopped up from the stump in relief.
"My goodness!" Leyna said when Yilma cantered to a halt before me. "I thought she looked fast carrying you off, Simon, but I didn't half know the truth of it until I got on myself!"
I moved over to help her down, despite Yilma's back being significantly lower than a horse's. Her hand squeezed mine excitedly as she swung her leg over and slipped to earth.
"Have you ever
imagined
you might go that fast?" Her wide blue eyes held such innocent wonder at having attained thirty or thirty-five miles an hour, I felt bad that I knew about cars and jet airplanes. Not that it hadn't been quite an experience, riding Yilma's half-human/half-deer form at breakneck speeds across the fields and over the hills from Piperville to Beadle's Bog, her doe's hooves thrumming across the ground and sometimes launching us into gazelle-like leaps over brush or streams.
"I definitely haven't had a ride like that before," I said. "Much better than hiking all the way here from town, that's for sure."
Yilma stood beside us, turning her antler-crowned head this way and that to peer out through the murk as she caught her breath. She'd barely seemed winded after dashing me here from the Nestled Goose, but the additional two trips must have taxed even her magically altered body, because her lungs worked like bellows, and a fine sheen of sweat covered every inch of her human half, gleaming where her skin lay bare and turning her tight white top slick and translucent across her breasts. I made a point of not looking too directly at the deep brown areolas laid visible by the wet fabric over them. Only a few hours had passed since I'd palmed those nipples and caressed the delicate swells they topped, with my belly against her furry tail and my cock jammed fully up into the very human, womanly cunt beneath.
Going into a dangerous supernatural bog while distracted by that kind of memory probably wasn't a good idea.
"Give me a moment to get my wind back," said the hindaur, turning from the swampy vista to face us. "Then we can head out. Assuming you both are ready?"
I looked at Leyna and she at me. For the first time since I'd met her, she wore pants – a pair of tan breeches in a denim-like material. Above them, she had on a woolen tunic cinched about the waist by a belt, while below she wore high black boots well-scuffed with use. On someone else, the outfit might have looked like peasant garb. But with her pixie-cut hair and bright eyes, the contrast to her normal dress-and-corset ensembles gave her a look of adventure. My fantasist's brain wanted to see her with a bow and arrows or a quarterstaff, swashbuckling against the thuggish minions of some wicked feudal lord.
"Ready as ready gets," she said to Yilma.
"Me too," I added.
"All right," Yilma said. "Another moment or two, then, and we'll set off."
Leyna put her hands to her waist and peered off into the swamp, her face determined and alert, yet uneasy at the same time. "Don't let us rush you ..."
Shaking her head, the greenwarden took a final, deep, recuperative breath. "It's not you that puts me in a hurry. We'll need to find our way well into the bog before starting the summoning, and I prefer to do so before nightfall. I can make my way in the dark through most any wilderness, but it wouldn't do for either of you to take a wrong step from lack of light."
"Right," I said.
We'd headed out from the Nestled Goose in late afternoon, after Leyna negotiated an evening off from Burgham the innkeeper. ("Half a week's bed money for missing a single dinner rush!" she'd complained. "I'd say it was robbery if I didn't feel bad abandoning him on such short notice.") By ferrying us at breakneck speed, Yilma had shortened a two-hour hike to an hour of deer-quick dashing back and forth. But even so, we had no more than an hour and a half or two hours of good light remaining. And traveling the swamp didn't exactly promise to be a speedy affair.
Yilma opened up her satchel before we moved out, produced several powders and ointments from within. She dusted or dabbed us with each, explaining the various stinging bugs and serpents and prehensile vines from which we needed protection. Then she passed around a waterskin for us each to drink from – and I noticed that it didn't seem to lose any volume or weight as I drank or even when Yilma tipped it up for a long guzzle.
Then: the bog.
We'd gone to the general store and purchased some hiking boots and heavy pants for me in preparation for the journey, and I quickly found myself glad to have them. Though Yilma kept us from what she said were the most treacherous stretches of ground, we still trudged ankle-deep in mud on a regular basis or had to forge through rasp-edged grasses higher than my knees. Periodically, the ground would fall away entirely, and the greenwarden would have to carry us one-at-a-time across open, brackish water that she bridged by summoning lilypads to her bidding.
It made for hard going, and despite the declining temperatures as dusk approached, I found myself sweating with the sustained exertion.
Little did I know.
As the already-spare sunlight dimmed and threw the bog into shadow, I asked Yilma how much farther she thought we needed to go.
She kept her voice low. "We've been deep enough in the swamps a quarter hour or more. But I'm sensing something, very close now, and it has an allure of vibrance to it."
"Mm," said Leya, "I like the sound of 'allure of vibrance!'"
"I like the sound of 'very close now,'" I mumbled. Leyna's shoes must have fit her better than mine did me, or else her day job kept her more used to staying on her feet for long periods.
Yilma shushed us, then led us forward. Perhaps a hundred paces on, I spotted a glow through the trees ahead – faint and green, but steady enough I didn't doubt my vision.
"There," Yilma pointed before I could open my mouth to say anything. "That's it. Come quietly."
Leyna and I followed her. The light grew and condensed into a single unwavering source in a clearing up ahead. At about the same time, I heard voices from the same direction, though I couldn't make out specific words. Yilma raised a hand to stop us, then cupped it and her other one around her mouth.
"Halloo!" she called out. "We approach with good intent – would you mind us joining you?"
The voices consulted amongst themselves before a very deep one responded, "Approach!"
Leyna and I looked at each other and at Yilma. The greenwarden gave a reassuring smile and motioned us forward with a tip of her antlers.
In the clearing, we found the most peculiar gathering I'd seen in Phaeland yet.
