on longings and needs, on what-ifs and what-might-have-beens,
or on what once was and could never be again.
She felt her throat tighten and the tears spring to her eyes.
Even with Faun sleeping in her lap, Garth a whisper away, her
grandmother found again, and her identity known, she felt im-
possibly alone.
Sometime after midnight, when Triss had given over the
watch to Dal, Gavilan came to sit with her. He didn’t speak,
just wrapped the blanket he had carried over around her and
positioned himself at her side. She felt the warmth of his body
through the damp and the chill of the swamp night, and it gave
her comfort. After a time, she leaned against him, needing to be
touched. He took her in his arms then, cradled her to his chest,
and held her until morning.
AT FIRST LIGHT, they resumed their trek through Eden’s Murk.
Garth led now, the most experienced survivalist among them. It
was Wren who suggested that he lead and Ellenroh who quickly
approved. No one was Garth’s equal as a Tracker, and it would
take a Tracker’s skill to get them free of the swamp.
But even Garth could not unravel the mystery of Eden’s
Murk. Vog hung over everything, shutting out the sky, wrap-
ping everything close about so that nothing was visible beyond
a distance of fifty feet. The light was gray and weak, diffused
by the mist, reflected by the dampness, and scattered so that it
seemed to come from everywhere. There was nothing from
which to take direction, not even the lichen and moss that grew
in the swamp, which seemed clustered like fugitives against the
coming of night, as confused and lost as those of the company
who sought their aid. Garth set a course and stayed with it, but
Wren could tell that the signs he needed were not to be found.
They traveled without knowing what direction they were tak-
ing, without being able to chart their progress. Garth kept his
thoughts to himself, but Wren could read the truth in his eyes.
Travel was steady, but slow, in part because the swamp was
all but impassable and in part because Ellenroh Elessedil was ill.
The queen had caught a fever during the night, and it had spread
through her with such rapidity that she had gone from head-
aches and dizziness to chills and coughing in a matter of hours.
By midday, when the company stopped for a quick meal, her
strength was failing badly. She could still walk, but not without
help. Triss and Dal shared the task of supporting her, arms
wrapped securely about her waist to hold her up as they trav-
eled. Eowen and Wren both checked her for injuries, thinking
that perhaps she had been scratched by the spikes of the Darter
and poisoned. But they found nothing. There was no ready ex-
planation for the queen’s sickness, and while they administered
to her as best they could, neither had a clue as to what remedy
might help.
“I feel foolish,” she confided to Wren at one point, her wan
features bathed in a sheen of sweat. They sat together on a
log, eating a little of the cheese and bread that was their meal,
wrapped in their great cloaks. “I was fine when I went to sleep,
then woke sometime during the night feeling . . . odd.” She
laughed dryly. “I do not know any other way to describe it. I
just didn’t feel right.”
“You will be better again after another night’s sleep,” Wren
assured her. “We are all worn down.”
But Ellenroh was beyond simple weariness, and her condi-
tion worsened as the day wore on. By nightfall, she had fallen
so often that the Elven Hunters were simply carrying her. The
company had spent the afternoon wallowing about in a chilly
bottomland, a pocket of cold that had strayed somehow into the
broad stretch of the swamp’s volcanic heat and become trapped
there, sending down roots into the mire, turning water and air
to ice. Ellenroh, already on the verge of exhaustion, was weak-
ened further. What little strength remained to her seemed to