PART TWO

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Chapter Ten

THRESHOLD

Listen well: there were few places more unforgivably interminable in the Holy Realms than the Witchfell Marshes. Every inch of that sprawl of bogs and mud had evolved to slow, hamper, infuriate, and even kill. From the sinking mud to the flies as big as fists and starving for blood. I had only stared at the Witchfell from afar and watched the sun or moon glint off its distant silver waters. But everything is harmless at the right distance, reader, and I should have paid more attention to the gossip of travellers and southern merchants, and how the stories of how the marshes got their name. Otherwise I would have dared to stay on the road and not have spent my afternoon shoulders-deep in a bog, staring into the haggard face of death.

But I get ahead of myself.

If you remember, I was fleeing Canarva. And what a fine mess I was making of it. I careened into passersby and people standing gawping at the inferno in the north. Shouts pursued me, drawing curious looks from prosecutors and sellswords looming in tavern doorways. Running was suspicious no matter the time of day, and though the fire was a fine distraction, I did not escape unnoticed.

‘Halt there!’ cried one overzealous prosecutor, forcing me to lurch into an alleyway and clamber along piping to escape him. There would be no hiding in the sewers for me. No meeting with Midge and the others. They didn’t deserve the curse of me in their presence. Riveno had ordered me out of the city, and I had little doubt Lectra wouldn’t hesitate to kill anyone, even a guttersnipe child, to get to her godgear shard.

By the time I had reached the gates, I discovered them open as always. Trade never ceased in Canarva. Wagons and carriages and cart-drawing kumi came and went whether the sun shone or the moons glowed. It was a well-known fact that unless an army stood before the gates of Canarva, they would never close. I suspected it was because the guards grew bored long ago of heaving them open and closed every quarter-hour.

The fire had drawn the other guards and prosecutors away from the gates. Only half a dozen figures stood before me, checking the parchments of arriving merchants perched waiting on their wagons. Dashing between the two wagons, I caused their lizards to rear and snarl. I might not have escaped the guards’ attention, but I escaped the city nonetheless and flew out of the thick iron gates.

‘Oi! What you running from, girl? Get back here!’ bellowed one of the guards.

I heard the crunch of heavy armour in pursuit, but once the sound of panting grew louder, it ground to a halt.

‘Bloody gutter rats!’ came a cry. ‘Where’d all the archers and riflers go?’

I ran with my hands over my head as if that would stop an arrow. Nothing chased me beyond the shouts of irritated guards. No arrow came, and yet I kept hurtling along the dust-covered road as if it would at any moment.

Even a mile out from Canarva, I kept expecting a gunshot from behind me. Every wagon that passed, I thought prosecutors would jump from its cover and surround me. I was proved wrong with every wagon I passed, every step.

Had it been that easy? All along, I could have just… left. Sometimes a prison is more in the mind than a physical place. All I needed for me to realise that was everybody around me either dying or betraying me, and narrowly avoiding a bullet to my brain. Simple.

I made it three miles before I trusted myself to stop and face the world. At last, I collapsed into an exhausted heap at the foot of a mile marker. The weathered lump of stone and iron was cool against my clammy back. The sweat on my brow and neck turned cold and made me shiver. Finally, I dared to look back at Canarva.

Dawn light shone behind the eastern clouds and the form of the Great Watcher. Against the paling grey, Canarva glowed orange with flames. A pillar of black smoke extended from the city and reached out over me like a splayed hand. Faint ash drifted as if the city were its own miniature volcano for an evening. Another smaller fire had broken out in the western city, likely the remains of Riveno’s magic. The pealing of bells could still be heard. The Venerance cruiser had shifted on its mooring to hover over the south of the city. Beams of white light shone from its silvery belly as if the city was being searched.

‘You know what’s happening, urchin?’

With my gaze lost in Canarva and my heart still thudding, I didn’t notice the sound of wagon-wheels crunching on dirt, nor the clopping noise of heavy feet. I turned to see a tanned man perched on a short wagon with two wheels. Cloth-wrapped boxes of bright yellow and red surrounded the man as if he were afraid to keep his cargo out of arm’s reach. In the wagon’s tracers walked a beast of the south. A mammal. I had only seen few horses in my life, and after a lifetime of being surrounded by lizards, they never failed to look bizarre to me. They only had two eyes, for a start. They hadn’t any scales, only short striped fur and a mane that looked for scrubbing a floor. There were no claws at the end of its legs but thick hooves instead. How the hell it climbed anything was beyond me.

‘What?’ I replied hoarsely, my mouth full of dust.

‘The commotion in Canarva! Is something burning?’

For all his silks and his fancy horse, he didn’t seem the sharpest knife in the drawer.

‘The mansion of a baron named Wrekham,’ I told him. ‘And several of his neighbours’ houses by now, too.’

‘Gone gods,’ he said with a whistle. ‘Any idea what started it?’

‘I did,’ I sighed at the man, watching his eyes widen. ‘Shortly before killing the baron himself. It’s okay, though. He deserved it for blinding my brother. And my brother? Well, instead of thanking me, he betrayed me for a life with the Venerance. And the only person that seemed to give two shits about me was secretly an alchemage and died at the hands of a swordsaint while trying to protect me. Does that help?’

I watched the man’s throat bob as he swallowed nervously. He avoided my heated stare. I shrugged, looking down at my stained hands the box that was still clutched in my fingers. ‘All because of this,’ I whispered.

A copper-coloured shell landed in the dust at my feet, bouncing twice. I looked up at the merchant in surprise as he moved his horse on.

‘For your troubles and losses, girl,’ he muttered to me.

Whether he thought me mad, I didn’t care. I held up the round shell and stared at the carved face of the First Chosen, from his sharp frills to his rounded Drola snout. On the coin’s opposite side, the seal of the Venerance and the Great Watcher: six overlapping rings. The seal that had taken everything from me.

I clutched at the remaining blightpowder vials in my pocket as Riveno’s last roar of pain echoed in my mind. I bowed my head, tensing my jaw to push the noise from my ears. But in the darkness behind my eyes, I saw Aberan’s face and his stubbornly disappointed glare. I didn’t think of how he tried to spare me, I only heard his damnation.

You’ve got a devil in you, Dwellin.

All my so-called troubles and losses rushed me at once, and I let more than a few tears escape me. Whether Aberan was right or not, I was no monster. I mourned for the murder of Riveno. I mourned Aberan, too, and in equal measure. I decided my brother, like Riveno Reck, was very much dead to me. Maybe this had all been for stolen riches and petty revenge, deep within my soul; maybe the blame for Yver and Riveno’s deaths did lie with me, but Aberan’s betrayal was still the worst crime committed that past night.

Despite the handful of passing wagons, I was ignored and forgotten in a blink. It was the first time I had ever been truly alone. The emptiness of the road and surrounding wasteland made me as small as a mote of dust, and I felt just as fragile. Hunted, helpless. Doomed, even. I hated it. And here was I thinking the Prisons of Moonmoth had been my lowest point. If I slipped any lower, I’d have only the netherworld to wander.

In a moment of frustration, I took the shell in my hand and hurled it across the road. It clanged against the opposing mile marker and spun into the gravel. I almost did the same with the godgear shard, for all the trouble it had brought me, but Riveno’s words held my fist closed.

It’s all on you now, he had said. Hide it, destroy it, do whatever it takes.

I had never liked responsibility. Even staying a law-abiding citizen was apparently too much for me. It weighed heavy, and hidden behind my bent knees, I opened the small box and looked again at the godgear. I wondered how something so small and unassuming could cause so much chaos. I snorted. The same could be said of me. I held the box safe and close. I owed Riveno my life. The least I could do was honour his last wish.

I lay there shivering like a beggar and wallowing in my bothersome emotions until the sun poked its face above the Great Watcher’s carapace. I glowered at it for taking so long as I drank in its warmth. Outside of Canarva’s hotwells and factories, the Ashlands were cold. It wasn’t unusual to see ice gathered on the tops of the quieter volcanoes of the Glauskine Mountains.

While I attempted to stop quivering, I turned my head back to the city and the haze of smoke. I stared at the road, counting carriages and wagons until I noticed tight-knit groups marching the road. I noticed the do-gooder and his horse a mile back down the road. Two white-masked prosecutors stood with him, and if my bleary eyes saw right, he was pointing back in my direction.

Trust me reader: there is truly no rest for the wicked. Especially for one as wicked as I was turning out to be.

I cursed myself for languishing and pushed myself up on numb legs. The road to Canarva meandered due south before forking into other routes that led to nearby towns, to Bashkar, or Tempest and the Watchhaven. Even distant Jakah and Esferir. The rocky, leafless wastes stretched out in a flat plain punctuated by the occasional geyser or smoke stack. If geography is not your strength, then you should know this was the Asphar Stretch, a long plain of ash and pumice that hooked around Canarva and the volcanic north. The nearest tree was a hundred miles south, and half of those miles were filled with marshland. A vile marshland called the Witchfell Marshes, and I’d heard plenty of stories and gutter-talk about the ghosts that supposedly haunted it.

I blew a sigh. There was nowhere to hide on the open road and no way I was going backwards. I had no plan, but I followed the road as if I did. I was getting used to dealing with consequences.

Now they had my scent, the prosecutors were running along the road, checking every wagon that was coming or going. I kept my pace up, passing wagons that had no doubt seen me slumped on the roadside. I made it several miles before I began to tire again.

In a curve of the road where sharp rocks protruded from the ground, I took my chances and hopped aboard a wagon. Its master was so busy singing out of tune that he didn’t notice me, and I managed to crouch under a lip of canvas and spare my legs for a while.

The Witchfell Marshes were beguiling. They began gradually as muddy ruts between the rocks, or tiny puddles that steamed gently in the cold air. Their sulphurous stink was strong, even more than usual for the Ashlands, and while I stared at the dancing steam, the marshland seized the road without me noticing. Before I realised it had happened, the rocks of the Stretch had been replaced by the Witchfell. The puddles were now ponds ringed with yellow lichen and colourless grass. Instead of spears of rock, tall rushes poked from deeper bogs. Instead of drifting ash, a mist hung knee-high across the marsh. Fat flies buzzed around the wagon.

Although it turned muddier, the road remained solid and untouched by the marshes. I saw dried flowers in varying degrees of freshness and rot along the roadside. The driver of my borrowed wagon threw his own from a hide bag, and spared his songs to whisper prayers to the Great Watcher. I heard his muttered words. A shiver ran through me at the mention of witches and boggarts.

I’d hoped the prosecutors would grow bored of chasing me, or would be put off by the marshland stink, but there was no stopping them. I should have expected no different from such loyal Venerance pets. There was only one carriage between them and me, and its driver was waggling his fingers southwards just like everybody else that had seen me scuttle by. God-fearing lackeys, the bloody lot of them.

Waiting until a cloud of steam wafted across the road, I jumped down and darted for the roadside. Gravel scraped me as I slid down the short embankment and put my foot to the marshland. It sunk almost immediately, and I was forced to jump for a mossy knoll instead. It squelched as I held on for dear life, squeezing brown water over my hands. The bogs were treacherous even without supposedly being haunted. Plenty of the pools were roasting hot, or deep and thick enough with mud they could drown you. Crows cackled as I tried my hardest to stick to solid ground and follow a faint trail west.

The prosecutors had halted the wagon I’d stolen a ride on. The merchant was clueless by the shrugging of his arms, but the squawk of the crows drew one prosecutor to the roadside. He stared into the bogs with a silver spyglass held to his eye. I held myself still as a rock as he took an age to survey the marsh. He turned just when the hillock of mud I clung to crumbled under my weight. My foot splashed loudly in the bog-water as I rescued myself from falling, causing a handful of the birds to scarper. That was enough to make the prosecutor clamber down the embankment. Others followed, pistols drawn. Blightlamps were ignited to burn the gloom away.

I pressed myself to the mud once more, avoiding the reach of the lamps and silently cursing everyone from there to Canarva. The bogs were the only place to hide, and I slithered towards a wider pool that lay nearby. A shaft of light passed over me again as I reached its slimy edge, and I fell flat again.

‘Dwellin! Dwellin Dorr!’ came the shouts, holding me still. It was never good news for somebody like me when the Venerance knew you by name.

I was so fixated with the prosecutors that I failed to notice the dark shape creeping from the steaming pool at my side. Only when it seized my arm tightly did I look down with a yelp. There, with its fingers wrapped around my wrist, was a black and skeletal arm reaching from the waters. The cold of its touch burned my skin.

I don’t mind telling you how quickly I shrugged it away, or of the utter frenzy that overtook my limbs. I would wager you would have done the same, reader, whether you’re a child such as me or a strapping warrior. Go on, tell me you wouldn’t, and I’ll politely listen while you lie.

Clutching my wrist, I pelted my way across the lumps of mud and moss. My cry and wild splashing brought the prosecutors running. Their hollered threats filled the thick air.

‘Stop in the holy name of the Great Watcher!’

‘By order of Reverent Lectra, halt!’

‘Don’t make us shoot you, Dwellin!’

At least it was reassuring they wanted me alive.

A scream rang out as one of the prosecutors tumbled into a bog. He didn’t come up again, no matter how loudly his fellow pursuers yelled. One stuck a spear into the water, yelling for him to grab on. There came a resounding crack as the spear was broken beneath the water and came out splintered. The other prosecutors retreated, making the sign of the six circles. Only a handful of the dozen kept up the chase.

Making sure to avoid even the smallest pools of dark water around me, I stuck to the bare and winding path through the mists until the lights died behind me. Even then, I kept moving, just in case my footing crumbled and sent me falling.

The further west I went, the thicker the swarms of biting insects became. I didn’t know if they wanted my blood or to shred me to the bones, but I must have looked like a lunatic the way I jumped about and waved my hands in the air. I was almost willing to take a dip just to be rid of them.

That was how I came to quite literally stumble across the corpse.

The thing tripped me hard, and I almost flew head-first into the nearest bog. Two glassy eyes stared up at me from beneath the rippling surface before I told myself it must have been my reflection. I turned to see who had tripped me instead.

I stared down at the insect-picked body of a young man in patchwork scale mail. A curtain of white and dishevelled hair hung across his face. When I gingerly moved it aside, I saw the missing eye of the corpse’s grey and decaying face. His throat had been cut. A white and blue sash, now soiled in blood and grime, wrapped his torso. I don’t know how I remembered his name, but it came out of my mouth anyway.

‘Arso Lon.’

It was the hunter from the city. The man who had been a candidate for Canarva’s prophecy. How in the netherworld he had ended up here, dead and rotting, I had no idea. My brother crossed my mind, and I wondered whether he would also find his way to a bog. I didn’t know how to feel about that, and I pressed on, focusing on my footing and putting distance between me and death instead.

The marshlands were not all bog-water and mud, as it turned out. There were sprawling flats amidst the marsh, some of which had hardened under the seasonal sun. Forests of reeds formed strange grasslands here and there, where fat purple frogs covered almost every available surface and flies didn’t dare to venture. I was glad for any chance to be away from the darker pools. They didn’t offer any steam like the others, and I couldn’t help but stare into their glassy windows.

However, all the respites aside, the bogs still ruled the marshland. The path I followed finally dwindled to nothing but a band of dark water, a small river far too wide to jump across. I wandered its edges back and forth for an hour trying to find a way around it, but I saw none. The path continued on from the other side of the river, twenty feet or so away. I could see what looked like old footprints in the mud on the far bank.

‘Gone gods,’ I muttered to the empty marsh. I looked forward to the day I would have a choice of my own making. Drawing my trusty cleaver from my pocket, I took a dozen steps backwards, gulped in a lungful of breath, and started to run. With a yell of effort, arms windmilling, I launched myself for the other bank.

For a blessed moment, I thought I would make it, and then my feet caught the water and I came down with a splash. Only my hands reached the muddy bank. As I thrashed my way ashore, I saw the footprints in better detail, and to my horror, they were not footprints, but the clawed handprints of those as unlucky as I was.

A vice-grip grabbed my ankle, wrenching me further into the water. I kicked out, catching something solid before my other foot was seized. My cleaver dug into the bank to no avail, carving out a chunk of mud as I was dragged into the icy water. My cries came out of me in a stream of bubbles.

Beneath the surface, cold black limbs reached for me. Bony fingers wrapped in spongy flesh sought to pull me down. They pulled at my shirt and trews and hair, and I slashed the cleaver at every one until they recoiled. I came up gasping and collided against something leathery.

A figure hovered in the water before me. Its horrid face was half-submerged, one of a corpse-like woman, with charcoal skin pulled taut over a grinning skull. Eyes like black bullets stared back at me. Her ears had long rotted away. Strands of hair floated around her sharp cheeks. I thrashed to get away from her.

The creature rose up, revealing dwindling rows of sharpened teeth and a scrawny neck. A hand emerged as she levelled a finger and a broken talon at my face. I trod water as I tried to find purchase beneath my feet. It was all I could do to keep hold of the box and the blade.

Her voice was of nails on slate. ‘A wild one,’ it croaked. ‘It clings to life.’

‘Leave me alone or I’ll cut that ugly head from your neck!’ I warned the creature, sounding much braver than I felt. I felt a pressure in my skull as though unseen hands squeezed me.

‘It is a child of death,’ it spoke, twirling its twig of a finger. I tried to hack it off but missed, gulping a mouthful of the foul, brackish water instead.

‘What do you want?’ I yelled.

‘It is betrayed,’ she told me.

I shook my head. ‘Shut up!’

‘It mourns.’

I felt the cold seeping into my bones. My fingers had already turned numb. ‘Please stop.

But the creature pressed on. ‘It is alone. All that it loves dies or betrays.’

My heart felt as though it was crafted from iron. It dragged me down while the creature spoke my own fears to me.

‘It is hunted. Helpless.’

I hadn’t the energy to disagree. I felt despair clutch me tightly.

‘Doomed.’

My eyes grew heavier the harder I fought. Even the promise of the godgear failed to rouse me.

‘It will be forgotten.’

‘No,’ I told it in a whisper, spitting water. The spell I was under cracked like old bone. The creature’s magic was revealed. I forced my eyes open to glare at the creature. That fear was too deep. Too great. ‘That’s where you went too far, witch.’

Her obsidian eyes blinked furiously. I felt the grip on my skull grow looser even when she crooked her finger. ‘It is a thief! It is a murderer!’

‘Guilty as charged,’ I replied with a shrug.

The creature was backtracking now. Its jaw quivered as it dribbled water from between its teeth. ‘It is alone!’

I smirked at her, swimming closer. The realisation was like shackles breaking. All the fear I’d carried from Canarva washed off in the water. ‘I might be alone, witch, but I am free of Wrekham and Canarva.’

‘It is hunted! Helpless!’ the crone screeched at me. ‘It must stand against them all!’

I found mud beneath my feet and stood taller than the creature at last. ‘Then let them hunt me. I have a promise to keep and all the power I need in my hand.’

‘All that love it shall die! It will bring death and ruin! It is a harbinger of pain. A lord of destruction. A wretch of proportions undreamed! Villain!’

I tilted my head, thinking on that for a moment.

‘Then so be it.’

The shriek pierced my ears as I swung my cleaver, driving the blade into the witch’s neck. She fought me with weakened arms, but another strike sealed her fate.

‘How?’ she burbled as it sank slowly beneath the water. Blood the colour of pitch eked from its wound.

‘Guess you’ve never met somebody like me,’ I told the dying witch before her last gasp.

With a grunt, I dug a fist in the mud and hauled myself from the frigid water. I wiped the black blood on the grass and spat foul water. A low wall of earth lay before me. I climbed to its peak, still shaking from my battle. Standing as tall as I could stretch, I stared across the foul marsh and let out a scream. I screamed until my throat burned, my lungs were empty, and all the crows had fled.

I never expected a reply.

A deep and distant fanfare or horns answered me. The faint shape of Canarva sat to the north, and above it, the shadow of the Venerance cruiser. The craft had left its mooring, and the throb of its blightcore engines washed across the plains and marshes. I hunkered down as it set its course for me. Hidden amidst the veils of mist, trusting in my mud-smeared camouflage, I watched as the silver cruiser passed low overhead, spinning mist and cloud in its wake. It did not slow but instead sped up, blazing a path for the south. Staring at the dark portholes and windows, I wondered if Aberan stood there, at the side of his new master, Lectra, and whether he looked for me. I hoped he was. I couldn’t teach him and his precious reverent a lesson if he was dead.

Before you wonder whether my glorious tale can be boiled down to a simple story of me getting my revenge, you needn’t worry. Take another sip of your ale or tea or rum and know this: revenge is for the shallow-minded, and very rarely simple. Far too many stories of chosen ones are built on revenge and it makes for a weak foundation. Trust me: I had already learned that lesson the hard way. All revenge gets you is a level footing. Even. No better than your enemy and more wounded for the trouble. I didn’t want to be even, I wanted to be better. I didn’t want to win, I wanted to crush the game entirely. I didn’t need a prophecy to tell me my fate.

Perhaps Aberan had been right. Perhaps there was a devil in me. I was beginning to agree.

To the pounding of propellers and with the cold breath of its engines washing over me, I raised to point my cleaver. I had a whole speech bubbling up when the ground shifted beneath my feet. Mud crumbled as I came crashing onto my arse.

As it turned out, I wasn’t standing on rock, but rather the scaled back of a colossal snake. And when I say colossal, I couldn’t see a head or a tail in either direction, but it moved with purpose nonetheless, meandering slowly and calmly between the bogs. I clung onto its thick scales. If it meant I didn’t have to walk for a while, I wasn’t that stubborn that I couldn’t refuse a free ride, especially if it was out of this horrid swamp. Every villain needed somewhere to haunt, and I would be damned if I was going to lurk in a marsh or a wasteland of lava and rock for the rest of my life, like some antagonists seem to have a penchant for doing. Imagine willingly living in a volcano? Or enduring ash all hours of the day? It boggled my mind. I wanted beaches and palm trees, and smoke-free sky thank you, and all that lay in the south, waiting for me.

Cleaning the mud from the box, I opened it once more to check the shard. It had barely moved. ‘First,’ I said to it, ‘we need to find out just why you’re so important.’

I tucked the box into my shirt but I kept my cleaver close. It was bizarrely enjoyable, riding a snake. Calming, to be honest, So calming, in fact, I might have even closed my tired eyes to the slithering sound and drifted off into an exhausted sleep.