Wicked As You Wish (A Hundred Names for Magic #1) - Rin Chupeco Page 0,118
to our time. I’ll go ahead; stay on the same path I take, and keep the firebird inside the sack. Fire here could literally burn the place down. Ken, tell the horses not to stray.”
At their advice, everyone slid off their mounts. The area stretched on to the foreseeable distance, unmarked by any visible landmarks. One wrong step could mean stumbling into odd pockets of a viscous mud-and-snow mixture not unlike quicksand, as Ken, cursing, found out when his right foot stepped onto an innocent-looking mound only to sink right through it.
Alex kept a careful watch on his pet, but the firebird was listless, barely stirring. Its unusual lethargy worried Tala. Living weapons of destruction weren’t supposed to act like this.
“Nya said Ikpe’s tower was enchanted to repel magical beings, even if they aren’t nightwalkers,” Zoe said, watching it lie sluggishly inside the saddlebag, its beak the only part protruding out. “It might be a while before its effects wear off.”
“Aren’t there rumors about this place?” Ken was talking faster than was normal, even for him. “About people who went into the marshlands but never came out, and about the marsh king that lives in the swamps, eating anything that moves?”
“The what?”
“The marsh king. Mum used to tell stories about him when I was a kid. Branches for arms, rules underneath the swamps, snatches babies, and eats travelers up? Eyes of flame, whiffling through tulgey woods?”
“That last part wasn’t even the marsh king, that was the jabberwock,” Zoe said. “You really need to pay more attention in class, Ken. There are bolotniks in Avalon swamps, and they’re toad-like spirits. The marsh king’s an urban legend. Like Bloody Mary and alligators in the sewer and Paul McCartney being dead since the sixties. A singer from the United Kingdom, West,” she added hastily, before West could open his mouth. “The legend about the marsh king is that they catch unwary maidens and drag them to their burrows in the deep to be their brides, but that’s ridiculous.”
“Still a pervy little twonk,” Ken muttered.
Nya made a face. “I’ve heard stories about that. We’ve never had much reason to explore these parts, but I’ve known a couple of scouts of ours who’d set out here but never returned.”
“Do you have any information about this place you think we should know?” Zoe asked her.
“They used to make small offerings along the shore,” Alex said unexpectedly. “On the Lyonesse end of this swamp. My father did it himself every year, before and after the winter season set in. He said it was to commemorate our ancestors, some who were Slavic, who may have inadvertently brought the bolotnik curse to Avalon when they first came here to live centuries ago. He’d send a basket full of sweet treats made up to resemble people, so that the bolotnik would go after that instead of his subjects. He brought me here when I was three. I was watching the basket when it floated out, and I swore I saw it sink down abruptly, like something had reached up and grabbed it from below.”
“Alex?” Tala asked, because he was struggling not to cry.
“I’m fine.” Alex glanced at the solid-looking frozen ground and took a deliberate step forward. “We don’t have anything to offer it now, and it’s been twelve years. Best to get through this place as fast as we can.”
“So, we’re walking through the territory of basically a huge-ass frog with a sweet tooth, hoping we don’t wake him.” Ken was dripping in sarcasm. “Fan-fucking-tastic.”
It looked to Tala like the marshlands were more than capable of hiding hundreds of marsh kings, lying in wait for careless travelers to pull down into its depths. West pulled his cloak tightly around him, and Zoe’s eyes were glued to her mare’s hooves, observing every spot and patch the horse treaded on, on the lookout for partly frozen quicksand.
Tala found herself walking beside her best friend as they led their horses through some of the narrower, less stable areas Loki directed them to. A couple of times she wobbled, unsure of her feet and worrying that every foothold might turn out to be an unexpected sinkhole. Each time, Alex reached out without thinking and steadied her before she could stumble.
Dinner that night was a quiet, dismal affair. Loki decreed one generous patch of ground to be safe, and Nya made small attempts to sweep their camp free of loose debris, before giving up a half hour later when more snowdrifts piled up on