out into the water until she was almost up to her neck, and then
her furry companion abandoned its float and swam quickly to
reach her, scrambling up on her shoulder as she hauled it to
shore. “There, there, little one, you’re safe as well now, aren’t
you?”
A moment later Triss stumbled ashore, one side of his sun-
browned face scraped raw, his clothing torn and bloodied. He
sat long enough for the Owl to check him over, then rose to
walk back down to the river with the others. Standing together,
they looked out over the empty water.
There was no sign of either Cort or Stresa.
“I didn’t see the Scat after the serpent struck the raft that
last time,” Gavilan said quietly, almost apologetically. “I’m sorry,
Wren. I really am.”
She nodded without answering, unable to speak, the pain
too great. She stood rigid and expressionless as she continued
to search futilely for the Splinterscat.
Twice now I’ve left him, she was thinking.
Triss reached down to tighten the stays on the sword he
had picked up from the supplies they had salvaged. “Cort went
down with the serpent. I don’t think he was able to get
free.”
Wren barely heard him, her thoughts dark and brooding. I
should have looked for him when the raft sank. I should have tried to help.
But she knew, even as she thought it, that there was nothing
she could have done.
“We have to go on,” the Owl said quietly. “We can’t stay
here.”
As if to emphasize his words, Killeshan rumbled in the dis-
tance, and the haze swirled sluggishly in response. They hesi
tated a moment longer, bunched close at the riverbank, water
dripping from their clothing, silent and unmoving. Then slowly,
one after another, they turned away. After picking up the back-
packs and supplies and checking to be certain that their weapons
were in place, they stalked off into the trees.
Behind them, the Rowen stretched away like a silver-gray
shroud.
CHAPTER
16
HE COMPANY HAD GONE less than a hundred yards from
the Rowen’s edge when the trees ended and the night-
mare began. A huge swamp opened before them, a col-
lection of hogs thick with sawgrasc and weeds and laced
through with sparse stretches of old-growth acacia and cedar
whose branches had grown tight about one another in what
appeared to be a last, desperate effort to keep from being pulled
down into the mud. Many were already half fallen, their root
systems eroded, their massive trunks bent over like stricken gi-
ants. Through the tangle of dying trees and stunted scrub, the
swamp spread away as far as the eye could see, a vast and im-
penetrable mire shrouded in haze and silence.
The Owl brought them to an uncertain halt, and they stood
staring doubtfully in all directions, searching for even the barest
hint of a pathway. But there was nothing to be found. The
swamp was a clouded, forbidding maze.
“Eden’s Murk,” the Owl said tonelessly.
The choices available to the company were limited. They
could retrace their steps to the Rowen and follow the river up-
stream or down until a better route showed itself, or they could
press on through the swamp. In either case, they would even-
tually have to scale the Blackledge because they had come too
far downstream to regain the valley and the passes that would
let them make an easy descent. There was not enough time left
them to try going all the way back; the demons would be ev-
erywhere by now. The Owl worried that they might already be
searching along the river. He advised pressing ahead. The jour-
ney would be treacherous, but the demons would not be so
quick to look for them here. A day, two at the most, and they
should reach the mountains.
After a brief discussion, the remainder of the company
agreed. None of them, with the exception of Wren and Garth,
had been outside the city in almost ten years-and the Rover
girl and her protector had passed through the country only
once and knew little of how to survive its dangers. The Owl