Extraordinary Zoology Part 5

"Professor," Lynus said, "this fog is unusually thick, even for these woods. Swamp gobbers have been known to generate fog like this to facilitate an ambush."

"If a Tharn war party came this way, it would have scared off gobbers and bogrin alike," said Pendrake. "Besides, I expect the five of us look rather imposing, especially with Horgash and Kinik in our number."

Edrea spied something she hadn't seen since entering the woodsa"signs of permanent habitation. An eight-foot length of wooden walkway jutted out of the mud. Part of a pier, perhaps, but significantly narrower than would be comfortable for humans or Iosans, let alone trollkin or ogrun. It was maybe three feet wide. Barely enough room to walk single file, and none at all to get work done loading and unloading boats.

But that width was just right for gobbers. They and their slightly larger cousins, bogrin, would be right at home working atop this, out over whatever nearby body of water it used to jut into.

"Well!" Pendrake said as he rode up behind Edrea. "Gobbers indeed!"

"It looks like part of a pier," she said, "but I haven't found the lake yet."

They heard splashing, followed by a sharp curse in Molgur-Trul, the trollkin tongue. Horgash was making a spiteful and entirely dubious claim regarding Greta's lineage.

"You mindless rug-rack!" he continued in Cygnaran. "Just because you smell water doesn't mean you get to drink it!"

"We're over here," called Pendrake.

"I can hear that," said Horgash. "Greta was following just fine, but I suppose thirst and pigheadedness got the best of her."

"I found a bolt!" Kinik said. "For a 'jack, yes?"

"Let me have a look," Lynus said.

Edrea could barely make him out, a slim, dark-grey silhouette on horseback, just a half head taller than Kinik afoot.

"The full technical term is *counter-threaded joint bolt,'" Lynus said.

"The full technical term is hardly what's important about that piece of hardware," said Pendrake.

Kinik said, "Strange for a 'jack bolt to be in woods without a 'jack, yes?"

"Strange for a 'jack bolt to be in woods with a 'jack," Lynus said. Did he realize he was being a bit cruel?

"Not at all," said Pendrake. "Not if this pier is any indication. There might be a gobber village around here, and they can travel pretty far afield scavenging."

Horgash emerged from the depths of the mist, followed by his bison. "Greta probably has the right idea," he said. "Her nose is good. I say we water our mounts here and scan the lakesh.o.r.e for more Tharn tracks. In this soft soil we might be able to get a sense of their numbers."

The sh.o.r.e was less than a dozen paces to the right of the track Edrea had been following. It was littered with planks. A few pilingsa"the remains of the piera"jutted up out of the water like stumps.

The horses agreed with Greta about the quality of the water, but they seemed a little skittish. Aeshnyrr drank in quick nips, stepping back from the edge after each pa.s.s, and Codex twitched his ears while lapping. Sensible. There were a lot of things that might lurk under dark, still waters like these, waiting for thirsty prey.

Oathammer had his muzzle so far into the lake, Edrea wondered whether Lynus' gelding was trying to drink through its nose.

"Definitely a good place to water," Pendrake said. "I can see why a band setting a hard pace would detour here, though they should have topped up while moving through the stream." The professor scratched his chin. "Then again, the stream is a slow one, and if they were in a hurry they'd have been kicking up silt. I certainly wouldn't wish my own water bags half-full of mud."

Edrea considered their next steps. "In this mist," she said, "we can either stay with Greta and the horses or scan the sh.o.r.e for tracks. We can't do both without splitting up. I can't see more than a half-dozen paces in any direction."

"Can't you use your Iosan magic to see better?" Lynus asked.

Edrea sighed. She was tired, having walked all morning while the others rode, and she'd never been able to weave vossyl liumyn effectively when exhausted.

Not that she was about confess this.

"There is magic that will help me see through the mist, yes, but it also helps me see through underbrush. Some of the best signs I've found along this trail have been bent branches, and when I weave for sight I'm more likely to miss those."

"Oh," Lynus said, "I never thought of it that way."

"Indeed, it is truly fascinating," said Pendrake. "But like any imperfect or questionable experiment, if it provides us with more information, it is preferable to remaining in ignorance. Wouldn't you say?"

Edrea sighed. The professor was right. And perhaps she wasn't that tired after all.

A true master arcanist might enact such a weaving with but a thought, but she was not quite ready for that. She traced the sigils for vossyl, an Iosan word for "sight," in the air before her, the rune glowing as she wove, then expanding into a ring. A deft twist of her hand traced liumyn, a word meaning both "light" and "knowledge," the gesture also serving to wrap the runes about her wrist, forming a glowing bracelet of Iosan script. Then she pa.s.sed that hand across her eyes. They watered and stung for a brief moment.

To her sight, the mist was now gone, the landscape clearly visible out to a hundred paces but rendered in sharp shades of grey, colorless, like an etching on tin. The water's edge lay just two paces ahead and to the right. The murky water was transparent to her. Amber outlines surrounded numerous small aquatic creaturesa"mostly fish, but a few frogs, and even a snake or two.

Just twenty paces along the sh.o.r.e to the left, wrapped around and amid a stand of giant cypress, stood the remains of the gobber village. The outermost structures had been smashed, but high within that stand of trees Edrea saw intact buildings, connecting catwalks, stairs, and more.

"I don't see Tharn tracks," she said, "but I found the rest of the gobber village." She told them of the ruined lower levels.

"Smashed like Bednar?" asked Kinik.

"A little."

"Where is it?" asked Pendrake.

Edrea pointed. There were amber-outlined signs of life within it, but it was all birds and rodentsa"nothing gobber-size. "If there were survivors here, they've fled."

"It certainly merits investigation," Pendrake said. "Perhaps we can learn some more about our quarry. And if we tie our team well away from the water, they shouldn't need a close guard."

Pendrake, Lynus, and Kinik led the horses a dozen paces upslope from the water's edge and tied them where Horgash had Greta tethered. Aeshnyrr relaxed, but Codex remained tense.

Edrea continued to scan the area. She hadn't seen signs of gators, dracodiles, or other large predators, but that didn't mean there weren't any hiding beyond the range of her woven sight. She concentrated again, reaching for the power to see farther. She thought she caught a hint of amber far out in the water, well past what she should be able to see. Her eyes watered. She clenched her teeth. The sigils spinning about her wrist pulsed a little more brightly.

"Edrea, whata"aaugh!" Lynus was right behind her, and suddenly they were both in a heap on the ground. The etched-tin clarity of the hollow went misty and grey. The mists swept back in on her vision, a throbbing headache rushing with them.

"Scyrah's rest," she muttered. "Now I can't see."

"Sorry. I came over to see what you were looking at and caught my foot on a root. Did I hurt you?"

"Just startled," she said, rolling clear of the clumsy youth. She tried to keep the anger out of her voice. "The sight is gone, and I've given myself a headache."

"That sort of disruption is unfortunately common among less practiced arcanists," Pendrake said, offering her a hand up along with a wink. "Proof positive that natural ability remains secondary to diligently focused practice."

Edrea fumed. The professor's jesting wink didn't change that he would prefer to see Edrea formally enroll at the university, as if the seventeen years she'd spent studying the world at her own pace counted for nothing, as if Professor Victor Pendrake, man of no magical ability whatsoever, could teach things he could barely even see, let alone practice. Iosan arcane tradition was older than human civilization, not to mention Corvis University.

Worse still, "diligently focused practice" in the university environment would place Edrea's use of Iosan magic under the scrutiny of actual spellcasting humans, something more than a few Iosans would take exception toa"the same Iosans who believed the decline of their civilization corresponded rather too closely to the awakening of human magical abilities for it to be mere coincidence.

Edrea identified more closely with the Seekers among her people than with the Retribution, but even those committed to gleaning knowledge far beyond the borders of Ios knew to keep secrets. Edrea's muttered curse, "Scyrah's rest," actually crossed the line.

Edrea blew out the breath she'd been holding, the string of additional curses unspoken. It was unfair to be this angry. She couldn't tell Pendrake any of this, so how could he know better?

"Edrea?" said the professor, a note of concern in his voice. "Are you fit to proceed?"

"Apologies, Professor," she said. "Just . . . taking a little mental inventory. I'll be fine, but I won't be seeing through the mist until this throbbing ceases."

"Sorry," Lynus said, more meekly than before.

"I'll lead," said Horgash. He strode past Edrea and Pendrake and quickly faded into the fog. Pendrake followed, and Edrea hurried after him, Lynus and Kinik behind her.

They picked their way through the smashed, splintered planks at the sh.o.r.e, taking additional care to stay close to one another. Horgash led them deeper into the stand of giant cypress. Fallen debris lay everywhere.

"Overengineered, as usual," said Horgash, thumping on something in the deep mists ahead. When Edrea caught up with him, he was bouncing up and down on the third step of a flight of steep stairs. "It may look like it was bodged together in a rush, but this stair will hold all of us, and Greta." Rotting ropes attached to the bottom suggested the flight was originally devised to be lifted into the trees, but it now stood permanently grounded.

They climbed the stairs, pa.s.sing two destroyed landings as they ascended. The first intact deck was twenty feet above the barely visible floor of the marshy vale. They walked along it, navigating meandering catwalks and peering into the high, empty habitations of gobbers. Most of the doors were only five feet higha"easy enough for Edrea or Lynus to duck into, but little more than crawla"holes for Horgash or Kinik. Furnishings remained, as did some larger, heavier tools, including an anvil that Edrea couldn't imagine any number of gobbers maneuvering up to this height, but all the cupboards and tables were empty.

"I figured out where that counter-threaded whatsit came from," Horgash said, pointing down. There at the edge of the lake lay the wreckage of a steamjack, face up in the mud.

"That head looks like it's from a Lancer," said Lynus, "but the hull is a real mongrel. Some Khadoran parts, some Morrow-knows-what, and I think that left pauldron is part of the cow-catcher from a railway engine."

"It went down fighting," Pendrake said. "I judge it to have been knocked backward, boiler-down. If the water were just six inches higher, perhaps during the spring rains, that would have put the fire out and taken the 'jack right out of the fight."

"If that's true," Lynus said, "then whatever happened here happened four months ago."

Edrea considered the signs around her and shook her head. "More like sixteen."

"Really?"

"Look at the splintered edge of the second-story catwalks." She pointed at a hairy growth one level down, back the way they'd come. "That's more than four months of fungus in the wrecked wood. The 'jack fell there when the water was high, during or just after the spring rains. Then there was a full summer of growth, autumn spores, a winter, and then another full growing season."

"Tharn arrows in Bednar," said Kinik, "but none here. If gobbers were fighting in the trees, arrows would be stuck in wood everywhere."

"Maybe sixteen months ago the Tharn had different tactics," said Lynus.

"And a smaller pet," Horgash said. "No flattening here."

"Not flattened," Edrea said, "clawed. Right there, on that tree trunk." The claw marks, healing from a season of tree growth, reached almost to the level of deck they stood upon. Something huge and hungry had attempted to scale the tree to get at the highest gobber-sized morsels.

"As there were no claw marks in Bednar, we find no arrows here. And from the absence of the usual bric-a-brac, I think many of the gobbers survived, grabbed what they could, and fled," Pendrake said. "I think we can conclude that this was something other than a giant burrowing serpent and a Tharn war party."

A gurgling, huffing noise sounded out across the lake.

Lynus looked at Pendrake, wide-eyed. Pendrake scowled and c.o.c.ked his head to the side.

"That noise sounded very big," Kinik said.

"Shhh," said Pendrake.

"Mother Dhunia," Horgash said. "This is an ambush. The Tharn laid tracks for us, led us right into the middle of a fog drake's feeding ground."

"Fog drake. Yes, that's the sound," said Pendrake.

"Not a true dragon," Kinik said, "but big, dangerous, and can see us even in mist, yes?"

Yes, Edrea cursed silently. She traced vossyl and was rewarded with a single, flickering half sigil, followed by sharp pain behind her eyes.

"Exactly, Kinik. You've done the a.s.signed reading," Pendrake said. "Now, reading those claw marks, we're safe up here, but our mounts are staked out like bait." He began to run back along the catwalk. "Bah!" he shouted almost immediately. "Horgash, which way to the stairs?"

"Wurm take the stairs!" said Horgash. He dropped over the rail, grabbed the deck on the way down, and hung from his hands for a moment. "We're on the third story, but gobbers are short." He dropped into the mist.

Kinik peered over after him, threw her war-cleaver like a spear into the mud below, and followed.

Edrea watched her vanish and thought better of taking that route herself. If she hung from the deck, her feet would still be a full fourteen feet above the mud and debris below. She turned and ran along the catwalk, quickly catching up with Pendrake.

"I remember the way," she said, slipping past him.

"We'll follow you, then," said Pendrake.

The huffing sound came again, accompanied by splashing. If Edrea could trust her sense of direction at all, the drake was headed toward their animals.

Aeshnyrr, I'm coming.

She breathed deeply as she ran, attempting to clear her head. Past the big room with the anvil, left around the largest tree, then straight ahead, and she could see the stairs.

Her breathing deepened with exertion as she ran down the stairs, and by the time she reached the bottom, the pain in her head had subsided. She inhaled, closed her eyes, traced again. She felt the ring of Iosan runes flare to life about her right wrist, and when she opened her eyes she could see everything.

Outlined in amber, the horses and Greta stood straight ahead forty paces. All stamped nervously. The sh.o.r.e and the pier's pilings lay to the left. Also left, and a bit behind Edrea, lay the sodden ruins of the gobber tree-homes. The amber silhouettes of Horgash and Kinik ran through those, slowed by the debris. Out in the lake, the small shapes of fish, frogs, and snakes were scattering in the path of a much larger outline.

It was a fat, vaguely reptilian silhouette with stubby wings and a head like a snake's, only closer to the size of a pony. Not a pony's head. A whole pony. This thing was huge. Abruptly, it turned, and Edrea realized it must be hearing footfalls along the sh.o.r.e.

"It's coming for us!" she shouted. "What's the plan?"

"Poke holes in it until it stops moving," Horgash said, running toward her. His paired swords were in hand now, each as long as a great sword and twice as broad.

"Edrea," the professor said, his own ancient-looking sword in hand, "the beast is huffing fog, thickening it. I can't see much past the end of my blade. This *poke holes' plan needs a spotter. You can see again?"

"I can spot, and I can shoot." Edrea shouldered her rifle. "Everyone form up on me!"

Lynus and Kinik came stumbling toward her, their hurried steps hampered by poor visibility and soft ground. Kinik had retrieved her war cleaver and held it at the ready. The enormous weapon had to be close to six paces long from b.u.t.t to blade, which was farther than Edrea thought any of her friends could currently see in the thick fog.

"Kinik," she said, remembering how Lynus had stumbled into her earlier. "Stop right there. Any closer and you'll hit one of us with that thing."

Kinik stopped in place.

Edrea stepped behind Pendrake and Horgash and aimed her rifle between them, at the fog drake only she could see. "It's big, Professor. Too big. Coming from that way, underwater, swimming with its wings."

"Hah!" Pendrake exclaimed. "Lynus, I told you that was what those were for! Too small for flight on any specimen we've examined."

Much too small on this one, Edrea thought.