61. The Soundless Marsh (Gadarien)¶
The trail was overgrown, more like a furrow of slightly less dense underbrush. Beards of luminous blue moss descended from the canopy and bright yellow insects flickered through the trees, incongruously cheerful. Gadarien felt them as much as saw them, their wings creating tiny ripples in the air. It was challenging to stay focused amidst the barrage of sensation. Thankfully, the Gyre’s intensity had decreased significantly as they moved away from the Foucanta and the meridians emerging from it.
Gadarien had proceeded cautiously after the battle, leading them through the quiet back alleys of Rilão. Apparently the Deucanta were listening, because one of the Tementeira they’d slain had been a quartermaster carrying a load of travel provisions. Even better, the patrol hadn’t been competent enough to dispatch anyone to sound an alarm, and the Gyre had left no survivors. So the three of them simply walked out the northwest gate, blending in with other travelers headed toward Tenoava. From the road, it had been easy to slip into the forest unnoticed.
On the third day, the brush started to thin, transitioning into marshland. The ground became soft, threatening to swallow their boots. The going was slow, but by late afternoon they arrived at the edge of the Soundless Marsh.
A rotting stillness replaced the sound of birds and insects. Heat blasted them from above and below, the harsh sunlight reflecting off the brackish water, interrupted only by a scattering of blackened stumps that stretched wearily into the distance. Decaying wooden causeways clung to sinking stone pilings, the planks coated with a layer of invisible slime. This place was defiled beyond redemption. Life would never return to it.
A layer of what appeared to be glittering black roots lay just below the water’s surface. Vaye leaned over to peer at it more closely. “What is that? It looks like—”
She squeaked as her foot slipped on the algae and she pitched forward. Gadarien just managed to grab the strap of her pack and haul her back onto the causeway. “Are you trying to kill yourself?” he snapped.
“What?” Vaye said, confused. “It’s just mud and roots.”
Gadarien shook his head. “That’s fireglass. You can only see the tips peeking up through the silt, but some are as long as your forearm. If you fall in, they’ll punch right through you.”
“What are they, though?” Adranaya said. Vaye stared at the water, shaken.
Despite the heat, Gadarien shuddered. “Before the Sarmalan Conquest, the land all the way from here to Anash used to be rich and fertile, and it was a Feiçeira stronghold. There was a huge battle here, a siege that lasted months. The Vorkyrda finally ended it with a Teshkasir. It burned so hot that it melted the sand into glass, and the whirlwind pulled it into these shapes. With the vegetation gone, all the soil washed away and left this marsh. Nothing lives here anymore.”
“I think the same thing happened to Anash,” Vaye said quietly, looking toward the distant mountains.
Crossing the Soundless Marsh took the better part of two horrible, stressful days. Only the enhanced senses of the Gyre saved them from grisly injury or death. Even without a nearby meridian, it gave them an extra split second to react. Eventually the ground began to dry out, turning into flat expanses of sun-baked clay, and soon they stood on a worn sandstone ridge overlooking the Whirling Wastes.
Some said the desert had once been an ocean. Gadarien had never seen an ocean, but he’d heard fantastical tales of the ones far to the south: water so vast that it stretched all the way to the horizon, so deep that you could never reach the bottom. Supposedly there were cities just under the waves, filled with arcane treasures and protected by an invisible poison that would eat your skin.
The Whirling Wastes stretched south from Anash all the way to Baranaath, but fortunately their route only took them through a small corner of it. The expanse of hard-packed white dust held no treasure, but the winds that tore across it were still capable of stripping flesh from bone. The vortexes that gave the Wastes their name were violent enough to turn wagons into projectiles, and travelers who got caught in the storms seldom survived. The trail had disappeared in the marsh, but the mountains peeking over the horizon like chunks of broken pottery made it clear which way to go.
Far to the west, a cluster of dark lines appeared to float above the horizon on clouds of dust. As they drew closer, the structure resolved into an array of dark spires that towered above the landscape like the spears of an approaching army, one of the nameless ruins left behind by The Undone. The spires appeared to be made of metal, jagged and sand-worn, too straight and thin to be stone. Those that remained standing were at least a dozen times a person’s height. Some lay half-buried in the sand, while others stood supporting each other like drunks stumbling out of a tavern. A few were still connected by a corroded lattice, as though they had once been cavernous boxes. If the Wastes had once been an ocean, then this structure had somehow existed in the middle of it.
Beyond the spires, a whirlwind wavered across the desert, sucking up the dust and spraying it outward in a hazy bowl. “I can feel it, you know,” Vaye said, staring at the distant column of dust. “The whirlwind. I can tell where it’s going next.” Her voice sounded detached, but he could sense the knot of unease in the Gyre. It had been present since they’d entered the Wastes, like an undissolved lump of flour in a bowl of porridge. “The Baranaathi call the whirlwinds ‘demon fingers.’ They say that Grandmother uses them to reach down and kill Her enemies. But all She really needs is someone like me.”
“What’s going on, Vaye?” Adranaya said, crossing her arms and exchanging a worried glance with Gadarien. She, too, had sensed Vaye’s disquiet. “You need to tell us.”
“It’s the mountains,” Vaye said, her eyes restless. “I think we have to pass through the ruins of Irkeset, the Anashi capital, to get to the Tine. It used to be known as The Chrysalis, but now we call it The City of Broken Glass. Even Anashi don’t go there anymore. And I think I know why.”
Gadarien and Adranaya shared an uneasy glance. “What are you talking about?” he said.
Vaye scratched absently at the back of her hand. “When I was a kid and I came over the border into Sarmala, our group was attacked by ghouls,” she said. “You might know them as Grandchildren.”
Gadarien smirked reflexively, but his smile faded as it became clear that she was serious. “Come on,” he said. “Grandchildren aren’t real.”
Vaye’s expression darkened. “Why would I lie about that, Gada?”
“But the Preceptors said—” Adranaya began, cutting herself short at Vaye’s sharp glance. “Okay. Sorry.”
“I’m telling you, I’ve seen them. They killed a bunch of people right in front of me. The only reason they didn’t kill us all was because of Belosveka.”
“The merchant who brought you to Thelenza?” Gadarien said. “The one you lived with for a while?”
“She’s… not just a merchant. She’s a Dzharian spy, and a sorcerer, one of the most powerful I’ve ever seen. She fought off the Grandchildren by herself. Honestly, she was terrifying, and she… well, it doesn’t matter what else she did. But one of the ghouls spoke to me in Anashic.”
“It spoke to you?” Adranaya whispered, her face grown pale. “What did it say?”
“Just a single word. It translates to ‘confirmed’ or ‘verified.’ It didn’t make any sense. But I’m telling you, they’re real, and they’re dangerous. And they live in those mountains.”
“I thought you crossed the border south of the Wastes, though,” Adranaya said. “How do you know the Grandchildren are in Irkeset?”
The Anashi shook her head. “I don’t. It’s just a feeling I have.”
“Listen,” Gadarien said, raising his hands placatingly. “Even if they are up there, we can avoid them. With the Gyre, nothing can sneak up on us.”
Vaye bit her lip. “I…” She clearly wanted to be reassured, but couldn’t accept what he was saying. “That’s not enough. I need to speak to Grandmother.”
Adranaya raised her eyebrows. Gadarien tried to keep the skepticism out of his voice, knowing Vaye’s hackles were already up. “Vaye, listen—”
“No, Gadarien, you listen!” Vaye snapped, pointing her finger at him. “Which, for a Feiçeira, you’re really fucking bad at. Grandmother is real, whether you believe it or not. If we’re going to make it through this alive, I need Her help. And to reach Her, I need your help.”
“Our help?” Adranaya said. “What do you mean?”
Vaye took a deep breath, calming herself. “I used to connect to Grandmother by smoking nownow,” she said. “Which we don’t have. But I think I can use the Gyre instead.”
Adranaya went still, but the pulse of fear that emanated from her echoed Gadarien’s own. It was one thing for Vaye to believe in the goddess, but this was a use of the Gyre not even sanctioned by the Anashic text. “Vaye,” Adranaya said. “If Grandmother is real, maybe some of the stories about Her are real, too.” She gestured at the spires, the closest of which was broken off near the top like an accusatory claw pointed at the sky. “She might really have destroyed the ancient world.”
“Yeah. Letting Her into the Gyre sounds a bit dangerous,” Gadarien said, allowing understatement to make his point.
“Sure,” Vaye replied, her voice as bleak as a burned village. “What part of this isn’t?”
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