Transcribed by Mouse Writ, Seeker to the Old King

On the long, bumpy road to Badgerpool, Age 5.8 U.C.

My Dear King,

I see now why you have sent me on this journey, although I am still sour about it. The palace horse you sent with me, thoroughbred and young, went lame three nights ago. It’s this damned Capellen sand, Your Highness—good steeds weren’t meant to plod like this. Indeed, I have only seen the widest wagon wheel and the sturdiest ox pull through with any success. Although my purse is heavy with good gold coin—which I am grateful for—it was not enough to convince my last innkeeper to sell me even the shaggiest of his horses, not once I’d told him I intended to ride it all the way to Badgerpool.

“Ride him into the ground, yar more like to do.” That’s what he said to me.

I’m walking now, My King, with at least ten nights between me and that little withered town at the foot of Skyclipse—although I can already glimpse the white peaks on a clear day. I will find your good stories, and then perhaps you will send me somewhere warmer. Certainly, Inlay has a host of stories to share, and I hear the humidity is good for old bones.

But ignore me, you know how I can be. As you’ve told me many times before.

I am no longer alone on this road. The other afternoon, I set out from a town in eastern Capelle and collided with a wagon train. It was only three carts strong and driven by a group of travelers looking even more pallid than myself. By the chance of our timing, I walked along with them for a while, trailing behind in the back with a young woman waving a staff, trying to herd a group of sheep over the dunes.

I commented that they seemed to be making a better job of it than we were and offered her a pour of brandy. She introduced herself as [unnamed] and welcomed me to share their fire for the night.

Although I am homesick for Samwhin and the sledgetrees, Your Majesty, I will admit that nights on this seam where water meets desert, are an experience unlike any other. You sit as a single drop of ink sits in the center of a vast, clean canvas; the crisp sky stretched taught from horizon to horizon. It makes an atmosphere excellent for storytelling.

That night, I camped with the travelers. We crowded around a fire burning green and orange from the sea-logged branches we’d collected—the only wood to be found for miles. Usually, times like these can be passed with singing or merry chatter, but these folk let the silence settle in beyond awkwardness. I asked [unnamed] why her company was so drawn, and never have I seen such a storm of shadow befall so young a face.

I do hope you enjoy what she told me, My King:

“You ought to stop thinking of us as people. That’s a start. That might keep you from getting it.”

I asked her what she meant by this.

“There’s something inside us. That’s why we’re out here. We haven’t stopped moving for two summers. A lot of people remember that fractal age for how many crops died. We remember it for something else.

“You should be careful drinking from streams. Sometimes things turn bad a long way off and the water moves through the ground. We learned that once the hard way; lost half the herd to a bug.

“But then again, maybe we didn’t learn enough, since a summer later, we learned a lot harder.

“You see these veins? You see how blue they are, right?

“I’m not sure you really want to hear this story.”

I tell her that I’m out in this dessert for the purpose of hearing stories people might not want to hear, so there is no better person to tell. Her companions huddled around the campfire remained quiet, but they were watching us, waiting to see what she’d decide.

“Our town was small, set between the Steps and the sledgegrass plains. At the end of each harvest, we’d gather to sit and drink and watch the moon rise over the highest Step, and we’d cheer and dance long into the night on one of the last warm days before the leaves fell. A harvest festival where fewer than three couples got married, we considered slow. Living was hard, but we were happy.

“It’s important you realize we were happy, that no dark thoughts brought this Calamity on us.”

I told her that no Calamities have been recorded for near thirty ages, and they are hardly drawn to dark thoughts

“If it wasn’t a Calamity, then it was a dark magic. We’ll believe it was a Calamity—just nature remolding itself after too long staying the same. Better to think that it was for a reason, even if it’s one outside our understanding.”

Her words sparked the urge for proper debate, Your Majesty, but I resisted, and steered her back to the story.

“There was this boy—I can’t bear to think his name now—that lived in our town. His family’s home was on the river and his pop was a carpenter. This boy and I, we’d steal the scrap planks his pop cut for repairs and decorate them with leaves, and braided grass, and scraps of cloth for sails, and push them into the current of the river. Most of them toppled over before they got any real speed, but the ones that we’d been good about, we chased until we collapsed.

“His ma and mine thought they were good at sneaking, but my boy and I learned to hide beneath the window outside his kitchen when they thought we were playing. We giggled hearing them talk about what a good husband and wife we’d make each other one day.

“One day, years after we’d last raced boats on the river, I heard at the market that this boy I loved was sick and bedridden, so I begged and borrowed some broth from my ma and went to visit him.

“The summer was hitting its peak and if was hotter inside than out, but I figured that was good; sweating’s supposed to be good for getting an illness out of you. And my boy, well, he needed all the cures he could get.

“He looked like a fallen log curled into his bed. That was the first thing I thought when his ma bid me take the broth in to him.

“All along his arms and neck, his blood was black and bulging in bark-like patterns under his skin. His arms were laying stiffly on top of the blankets, but I was too scared to take his hand, afraid of feeling what I knew I would if I touched him—the bumps of those raised veins.

At this point, [unnamed] began running her thumb over the inside of her own wrist, and she didn’t stop for the rest of her story.

“I fed him some broth, but he wasn’t talking, only watching, and I left in a hurry. It was the last time I saw him. It was for the best—I’ve got enough people’s faces haunting my dreams and his is the least of all for it.

“By the next moon, everyone was sick, or at least that’s what it felt like. My ma and pop were no exception. The only people who didn’t get sick are what you see around this fire.

“It took a few days for my folks’ blood to clog and push like it wanted to escape through their skin. A few more days after that, they stopped talking, stopped eating, stopped relieving themselves when I carried their heavy bodies to the outhouse.

“But they didn’t die. Instead, they laid there, skin bulging like it was filled with black snakes, and flicked their eyes while they watched me move around the house like I wasn’t their daughter they were seeing. I stayed up more than one night crying next to them, returning their unblinking stares, asking them to talk to me, just talk to me and tell me what I needed to do.

“I was fetching water for them one morning when I smelled smoke coming from upriver. The fields were brittle dry, so I took my full buckets and ran after the smoke trail, thinking I’d need to act quick to put out a brushfire before half the town burned. It wasn’t a brushfire; it was by boy’s house. [Unnamed] over there,” she gestures to a haggard fellow under a hood opposite the fire, “he and I just barely managed to put it out.

“I found my boy’s remains exactly where I’d last seen him, in his bed, next to what must have been his ma. His pop was in there too, lying between them. They were three black, twisted things, curled around each other.

“I can’t prove it, but my boy’s pop wasn’t sick—he wouldn’t have let them all burn like that unless he’d intended it. Now we know he had the right idea.

“More days passed, and my family didn’t change. Instead of sitting up asking them to talk to me, I sat up just watching them back. I had stopped wondering if they didn’t recognize me and started wondering if what I saw could still be recognized as my folks. While I sat, I thought about the knife in the kitchen and what my boy’s pop chose to do.

“It was another hot night, and I was feeling stretched, cleaning the sweat from my ma’s observant face, when—she moved. It was just a switch at her mouth, but it was more than she’d done since she’d become bedridden.

“I thought, she’s getting better. I thought the nightmare was coming to an end, and I thanked calma I hadn’t used the knife. I woke the next morning feeling fresh, hoping to see my ma rustling from sleep, or even resting with her eyes closed, but both my folks were gone. There were just blankets on the floor.

“I wasn’t worried—I was excited! Finally, my family was well enough to stand. I thought I’d go outside and find them fussing over the dead crops, and they’d get on me about needing to prune them.

“I ran outside, then all around the house. Ma and pop weren’t there. I went next door, thinking maybe they’d gone to see [unnamed] like they sometimes did for a cup of tea. But [unnamed] was outside his house too, looking around the side of his barn like I had. Both our sick ones had gone missing.

“Soon there were more of us, all looking for the people we’d lost. Is this a joke? We asked. If it was, it was a mean one.

“By the afternoon, there was only one place left to search, so we headed for the river.

“We found them all standing in a cluster behind the black skeleton of my boy’s house. They were up to their thighs in the water, looking downstream, not talking to each other. The air stank of sour milk and bile, and a buzzing frenzy of flies swooped at their faces unnoticed.

“I spotted ma and pop and called out for them. They turned towards me at once, but so did every other person in that river. We all stilled, nailed to the riverbank by sightless eyes, waiting for something to happen, but when we didn’t make any more noise, the sick turned just as smoothly back down river.

“We were deliberating who should be the first to wade in and begin pulling people out when [unnamed] shouted. He was pointing at the water.

“Blossoming around where the sick stood, the river was swirling with black. Soon there was a long ribbon of it flowing from them and disappearing out of sight. When I looked back to find my folks, I couldn’t tell them apart—their skin was covered in black, bleeding globs. It was bubbling out of their mouths, their eyes, from the hollow of their throats, the bends of their arms, seeping through their clothes, and when it hit the water—

“It was their veins, boring out of their skin, popping out of them in chunky, black ropes. They hung in the water, stretched out like boats vying for the current, still moored at one end to the bodies they’d come out of. Most of the ropes were longer than I was tall and so abundant that it called to mind a lady’s long hair, fanned out in the bath. I have no idea how they fit inside my ma and pop without bursting from their casings.

“No one was deliberating going into the water anymore, not when those things that used to be our blood were sliding past each other, flexing, tangling, searching.

“Then, snap, snap, SNAP! Just little pieces of bodies pulled too taught, breaking like wet guitar strings. The first artery released downstream, curling, and twisting over itself as though delighted. Then another went, and another.

“Once untethered, bodies started splashing into the water, limp, lifeless. That’s what they were—bodies, not our people, not my ma and pop.

“I think now they had been dead flesh for a long time, maybe ever since their voices died. And we’d been letting them sit in our homes, watching us water them as uselessly as we watered our crops.

“No one went in to retrieve their remains, so they floated downstream, hounded by the descending flies.

“By that evening, the river was clear again, the crickets chirped, the moon rose over the Steps, but our town was gone. The sheep outnumbered us.

“We packed our bags and left that night. We paid as much due as we could and marked every tree along the river between our town and the sea, so no one thinks to drink from it. We paused for a while in a port town, and though the people were kind, none of us felt right sitting and sharing ale like we were regular folk. We packed and left again. We haven’t stopped moving since.”

Our fire had crumbled to cinders and sparks by the time [unnamed] finished her story. Everyone else had left for their wagons and bedrolls, even though it was early, and the fire was still putting up a shield against the cool night. Of course, I had many questions, Your Majesty, but most of them were unanswerable:

What caused this sickness? Why did it affect this little town in one of the most remote regions of Samwhin? Is it still alive in their river?

Instead, I asked her only two questions. The first was, “What was the marking you left on the trees? I should like to recognize it, so I don’t mistakenly sip water from your old river.”

She told me—rather frostily—that the symbol, SK, means “sick” to anyone who knows anything. She said in Samwhin, it means something else, too, but it is not important to this story and would only harm your heart, My King.

Lastly, I asked her, “Why haven’t you all settled down somewhere new? Surely you’ve denied yourselves the comfort of a home for long enough.”

[Unnamed] rolled up her sleeve to her bicep and revealed to me her arm. In the pale crook of her elbow, a network of raised black veins laced outwards. She rolled her sleeve back down, and it was a valiant fight I fought not to scoot away from her.

“I told you—it’s in us. We aren’t dead yet, but we don’t feel like people anymore either. Whatever we are, we’re meat, toting those things around. One day they’ll rip out of our bodies just like they did the rest of us. A tenth of an age ago, that spot on my arm was small enough to cover with a coin.”

[Unnamed] said more after that, but it wasn’t worth sending to you, Your Majesty; just all the meandering regrets of someone who knows she’s dying.

I will interject here that among the letters found in the Old King’s chambers, was a note marked from the far southern coast of Capelle. The letter was unsigned, and in a rough hand; not from one of the Old King’s Seekers.

The letter, short as it is, I have transcribed below:

“To the man who was once our King,

What’s in us is taking us now, sir, but we will use our last chance to kill it while it’s still trapped. Send good people, watchful people, to see that our sacrifice has worked. We have paid more than our due, so we leave it to you, now, to even our books.”

The note was received in age 1.7 U.C., long after the war for The Grove began, and so there is no evidence that any such good, watchful people were ever deployed to Capelle. It is impossible to know for sure, but the lettering is titled in the Samwhin style—I believe this to mark the conclusion of the wandering tribe Mouse Writ encountered.

Signed,

Mercurial Lascar, Age 1.5 Until Calamity

The next day, I let their train wander ahead of me until they disappeared over a dune. I was not sorry to see them go.

I do hope you have appreciated this story, My King. I will gather more for you when I eventually reach Badgerpool to finish my quota, though I cannot imagine what kind stories you hope I’ll uncover in that small, icy town that I could not find while sipping tea on Inlay. The lands out here are strange, and I am eager to be off the road.

In Your Servitude as Always,

Mouse Writ