Lark Rising (Guardians of Tarnec) (32 page)

But no—the Wood was reappearing, the bare brown earth
growing hazy and the veil of gray closing hard. With a moan I charged forward, pushing into the mist. For a moment it resisted, a suffocating drape of velvet, holding me back. The energies whipped, bit through me. I think, even, that a tendril of vine reached for my ankle, but I clawed at the mist, thrust it apart, and then I was through, gasping and shaking. Dark Wood faded behind, and I stood at the edge of the endless, dull expanse of brown.

How colorless was the sky! No sun, no blue, simply a sheet of gray overhead. I waited to recover, to listen, but there was nothing to listen to except my own panting breath. Complete and utter desolation. Goose bumps shivered over my skin, and the silence began to swallow me.

But then, no. The silence broke sharply. A raven’s cry—severe and shrill and insistent. I looked up to see his dark form against the gray sky.

A raven … One had brought me the third sign, set me on the path to this very moment. However fates had transpired, intertwined, this was where I stood. There was no going back. I couldn’t go back. I had to stop the tears and the moans and the whimpers. I was not the same girl who left Merith. I was a Guardian.

“Trust yourself,” I said loudly, thrusting my voice into the empty air. I set my jaw; I’d shivered too much from exposure and fear and doubt, shied from too much my whole life. This was my journey,
my
task. I would find the Life amulet, the orb. I would claim it for Tarnec. I would find Gharain. I would claim him for Evie. I would trust myself.

I hoped I could hold this burst of resolve.

I took a step into the brown, and then watched the wet dirt slime over my foot and gasped. A bog.

Worse than a marsh, this was the terror of all travelers. I froze at the deadly misstep, and then gently eased my boot out of the muck and backed onto firm ground. A bog, a quicksand; frantic movements would pull a man down, and slow motions as well would sink a soul deep, make it impossible to retrieve his foot, or his footing. Movement must be steady, light, and quick. Steady, light, and quick. I kneeled down at the edge, closed my eyes, and held my hands out, sensing through them for the drier spots, the safest path to take. And I
could
smell it; I
could
feel the subtle changes against my palm. I kept my eyes closed, and stood slowly, walking right three paces before I stepped out once again into the mire. The muck bubbled and hissed but did not suck me under. I thanked Nayla for the boots she’d provided; though wet to my ankles, inside the leather stayed dry.

The squelch, the slight sinking of weight, and whining tug to pull my foot up, away, and take another step. I was deliberate, feeling my way blind, sketching what must be a jagged line across the empty landscape. I had no idea where I was going, and yet I’d come this far—something else would happen to point the way.

I walked for a long time.

It was a slow shift in sensations, beginning as a wisp of mist brushing against my cheek. Then the scent of the bog changed—a faint smell of burning wood; a fire, I thought. And suddenly my foot came upon firmer ground, and soon I was
walking silently and easily across the bare dirt, following the hint of smoke. The mist swept by, still challenging any view—but I paid little attention to that kind of sight, preferring more often to close my eyes.

It is, I suppose, why the hut seemed to appear from nowhere. I stopped short.

Brown upon brown: the ragged hovel jutted out of the dirt, solitary in this middle of nowhere. A one-room, sharp-peaked, slanted little thing—precariously upright on no foundation; had there been a breath of wind, it would have toppled.

I moved to it. It had to be empty, for how could anyone live in this nothingness? Closer. The place moaned as I neared, and I stopped at the chill from that sound. Then I shook myself and walked forward. Our own cottage moaned sometimes in a harsh wind—

And then the hair on the back of my neck pricked, and I whirled around with a gasp. There had been nothing behind me—
nothing
, I knew it. And yet this thing—female or not—was simply there, an apparition from the mist but as real and brown as the dirt on which we stood. The thing’s hand was out, spindly fingers scraping at my shoulder blade, jerking back at my sudden turn. Then, arms crossing chest, it inspected me with eyes sunk so deep in its bony face I could not tell their color.

“This is your birth day,” it hissed. “I smell it.”

And so it was. I’d forgotten.

“Birthday Girl, you walk where you do not belong.” The voice was reed-thin, a whistle from a scrawny throat.

Bog Hag. Her name came to me in a sickening rush as I looked at her; was it Raif who’d described one once, said his grandfather had seen her? Maybe Ruber Minwl had reached this bog. The decaying clothes, decaying skin, decaying smell that lay heavy around her—weren’t these Hags created from the dead souls of plants, animals, and persons who drowned in the bogs … or did they feed on them?

“You do not … BELONG!” The Hag shouted the last word. I flinched at her shriek, and barely held my footing.

“But I am here,” I said breathlessly, for I did not know how else to respond.

“Then here you will die.” She leaned toward me, toothless mouth splitting open. Oh, she smelled of dead things, and her nearness chilled through my bones. And yet … Troths too reeked of death, but their scent was more horrifying—of vicious, brutal death, the aftermath on a battlefield. This Hag’s smell was the heavy odor of death’s return to earth—after decomposition, after pain. Something about that made me less afraid. I stood a little firmer.

“I do not stay,” I said. “I seek the way—”

“The way?” A cackle for a laugh. “The way?”

“Yes.” I took a deep breath. “The way to the Myr Mountains.”

“Hah!” Another cackle, a gloating one. “You are far, aren’t you, little thing?”

I wondered why she called me little. I was no less tall than she, with her hunched back stooping no grand stature. Was this bravado? Was she also afraid? I was emboldened. “I do not
think so,” I answered carefully. “I think I am near.” And then, even as I wondered why I made this up, I said, “You know the path. You can show me.”

The Bog Hag was taken aback. She jumped as if I’d struck her. “You dare!”

I nodded, feigning certainty, and she shrieked, “The path! The path!” She turned, and I watched almost disbelieving as she ran little circles before me, tossing herself like a bundle of sticks—scrawny arms and legs flying every which way—before repeating, “The path!”

I waited, watching her leap and writhe until at length she calmed herself and returned to me in her hobbled gait. “You ask something forbidden, little thing. You invade; you ask the forbidden. My answer for you is death!”

But I said more loudly, “I ask for the path. It is the only answer I accept, for—for it is my birthday, and I have that
right
.” Did I? I’d made this up as well.

She cackled again, shivering with glee. “Brash you are!” She leaned in. “But as it is your birth celebration, I will allow your question before I kill you, if you answer me this: what makes you dare seek the path?”

“I am from Tarnec. I am sworn to reclaim the Life amulet.”

She flung herself back, cowering this time under my words. “Guardian!” she shrieked, as if to ward off a blow. And she leaped about me again, surveying me from all angles even as she danced out of reach. I heard her mutter about my hair, something about the sign. I also heard her curse herself. Tricked she’d been, she swore, tricked.

She lied. She knew me; she’d reached first to my shoulder—my birthmark. This display was distraction. And with a sudden dawning of horror, I looked down at my feet, realizing that the dance she was doing was scraping a pointed boundary around me in the rough dirt.

A spell. She would capture me within it. I leaped out before she could finish, shouting, “Stop!”

My voice thundered across the empty landscape, and the mist threw it back. The Hag crumpled and cowered below me, ducking under those stick arms, whining. I said sternly, “You
will
show me the way.”

“Birthday Guardian,” she keened, “you would threaten a helpless creature? Dark thing, dark thing—!”

“Stop it!” I yelled. “I wield no threat; I wield my right. My
right
.” She cringed again, churning herself in the dirt, and I laughed, exhilarated at the power my words radiated because they were true. Guardian—it
was
my right. I was even louder. “Do not pretend fear, Hag! Do not hope to charge strength from my ignorance.
Show
me the way.” My voice echoed long over the barren earth.

The Bog Hag relaxed and raised herself from the dirt. “True answer,” she muttered. “Day of birth; I am bound to point the path. So, I will show you—show you, little thing. You must follow me.”

She leaped forward, all bones and joints, and danced toward the hut. She turned her head once to look back at me. “Follow, little thing! You’ve not much time.” And she cackled and jumped for the door.

I followed her, to the single door, which she pushed open, then into the darkness. There was no window in this hovel. The boards were flimsy and gaping; little of the gray light showed through. And though it smelled of the smoke I’d sought, there was no fireplace, no fire.

“You enter,” muttered the Bog Hag. “But you do not belong.”

“I told you that I do not stay. Where is the path?”

I could hear her toothless smile widening. “This is the path, little thing,” she hissed softly. “You are on it.”

“Where?”

My blunder to show that momentary uncertainty; her grin nearly split her face. “Do you not see?” And then with her cackle, “Of course you do not see—”

“It is my right to know—” I stopped, realizing already it didn’t hold the same power.

“NO!” she shouted in my ear. “It is
only
your right to be pointed the way. It is all that you asked.”

“You play with me, Hag!” I cried. But then the memory came in one crushing blow: Twig warning me to be specific.
The Hag was right. The Hag was right
was the sickening realization. I should have asked her to open the path.

“Hah! I’ve pointed you! I’ve done my bound.” She leaned into me. A wave of rotting leaves fell around my shoulders. But they were her fingers, playing—drawing back strands of my hair. I slapped her off, but her fingers hovered.

“Your glorious hair I will keep,” she crooned. “ ’Twill dress me fine.”

And I gritted back, trying to stay commanding, “You’ll not have it, Hag. You’ll have nothing from me!”

“Not true, little thing! Not true. You are trapped here. You cannot see, so you cannot move. I’ll have every piece of you.”

“Open the path,” I hissed.

“Hah! That does not come for free.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Something you cannot give.”

“Name it!”

She crowed again. “What matters a name? You are lost, Birthday Guardian. You shall stand here until you waste away.”

I turned immediately to leave, but she was right. No longer was there any door. We merely stood in this dark place, no way in, no way out. I reeled back to her, desperate. “Open the path! Tell me what you want!”

“Why?” She preened. “You cannot deliver it—”

“Tell me! I demand it!” I stabbed my hand into my pack, the moonstone the largest thing to grab. “Here! A great gift for a Guardian! I will give you this!”

“Hah!” the Bog Hag screeched, and slapped my hand away. “The treasure is beyond you, little thing. A drop beyond your grasp.”

There was a change in her voice at that, something beyond the triumph of besting me. Something that became loss, rage, and despair. “And you do not tell me what it is!” I shouted at her. I stuffed the moonstone back in the pack and dug for something else—anything else.

“Never! I keep you instead!”

“Then I’ll learn without permission!” I yelled in return, and caught up her arm in my hand before she could jump back.

She screeched, she clawed at me, but she could not break my grip. I remembered the sensation of pulling Gharain from the rifting earth—my arm was as vinelike here; I would not let go. She leaped and tugged, but I was the stronger. Desperate determination; it was my only chance. And then I felt her energy come through my hand and I saw what she wanted:

A thousand souls swirling in an ever-tightening spiral. Plant and animal—a branch, a body, all draining into that spiral—smaller, tighter, until the souls were funneled out in one tiny teardrop. A single tear of blood.

She shrieked and squirmed, even as I released her arm. And I said to her in grim triumph, “I have your treasure. Open the path.”

“Give it to me!” she screamed. “Give me! I bring it home!”

I pulled open my pack, and ground my hand in once more to clench the tiny gem that Twig had bequeathed. I cried, “Open the path!”

“Let me see it!” she begged. “Let me but see it!”

“Open it first!”

“I swear it! I will open the path for you!”

I held up the little thing between my fingers. There was no light, but it gleamed anyway: a precious jewel—a thousand souls squeezed into one blood-red tear.

“Mine!” the Bog Hag whispered. Then she screeched, “Mine!” And even as she cried, a wall of the hovel shimmered
and dissolved, revealing a rocky outcrop in the lonely wild of the Myr Mountains. Immediately, the eerie pull of the mountain caught at my body. I felt the drag toward its hard face.

“There,” she screamed. “There you are! Give me the tear!”

“This is the way?” I hissed.

“I am sworn. Give me!”

“Take it!” And I threw the teardrop high in the air, heard her spring to catch it, and I stepped far out.

“Thank you, Twig,” I whispered as the bog faded with the Hag’s victorious last shriek.