Fiery Edge of Steel (A NOON ONYX NOVEL) (38 page)

It was almost impossible to believe that anything could grow beneath such massive shade, and yet, legends say that grass and flowers grew in the meadow abundantly. In late summer especially, white asphodels dotted the verdant green ground, marking it as a calm, cool place of respite for weary sailors. They say that Asphodel Meadow was a mirror image of heaven. That children played there, picnicking among the flowers, sleeping beneath the tree. But over time, the meadow grew swampy. People stopped coming, except for the Boatmen, who later used it as a different kind of resting place—one for the plague and famine victims who died following the war.

Legend says the dead loved Asphodel Meadow a hundred times more than the living ever had. For years the Boatmen’s boats came bearing visitors who would never leave. Hundreds of corpses, thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, the sheer number of them being so vast that the ground sank beneath their weight. It was said, when Asphodel Meadow was full and could accept no more, it flooded, not with water, but with tar.

I clomped along the boardwalk that twisted through the Dark Waters in my leather boots and borrowed linen clothes, damp from perspiration and humidity, heavy in body and mind, mulishly dredging up every shred of memory I’d ever had on the legendary Asphodel Meadow or any other meadow between New Babylon and the sea.

Hadn’t that tale about Grimasca from
Oude Rode Ogen, Bicho Papao, and Grimasca: Folktales for Children
had a verse in it about a meadow? One with a waertree and two streams? Maybe the two streams were the Secernere and the Blandjan. Maybe the waertree was the towering tree that had grown up in Asphodel Meadow. Maybe the meadow from “The Grim Mask of Grimasca” was Asphodel Meadow and that’s where we were headed now.

“Meghan Brun told me that one of the young men from the Shallows, Cephas, was bitten by something at the Meadow. Possibly a hellcnight. Why did the fishermen come to the Meadow to fish after that?” I asked Stillwater. “Even if Vodnik came to protect them, there must have been other fishing areas. Safer ones.”

“Because
Acipenser Paulus
lives in the shallow waters around the Meadow.”

“Acipenser Paulus?”
Not
another
demon, surely?

“A species of small swamp sturgeon. ‘Small’ being a relative term. They can grow to be twelve hundred pounds or more. One
Acipenser Paulus
will feed the people of the Shallows for nearly a week.”

“What about Athalie?” I said. “Why did she go to the Meadow? Seems like a dangerous place to bring an eight-year-old for a walk.”

“She wanted to see the place where her father died.”

“You mean ‘disappeared.’”

Stillwater shrugged. It was clear he thought there was no difference.

“What was Antony Rust, Zella’s husband, like? Did he and Vodnik get along?”

Stillwater snorted. “Everyone in the Shallows gets along with Vodnik. He’s our patron. Without him, we’d be dead. The Shallows wouldn’t even exist.”

But surely, even relations between a demon and his follower could become strained, especially if said demon slept with said follower’s wife.

I cleared my throat, warning Stillwater that I thought his answers were evasive at best, but he didn’t elaborate or provide any other information. I decided to treat him as a hostile witness.

“My Guardian knows the spell Veracity,” I lied. “I can ask him to cast it over you, but there can be unintended consequences.”

Stillwater stopped walking and we squared off. Everyone else stopped too. I don’t know how much of our discussion they’d heard with all the thunder and our clomping on the boards and the fact that we’d been traveling in a line, but they could tell from my stance, and Ari could tell from my signature, that Stillwater wasn’t being cooperative.

“Such as?” Stillwater said, calling my bluff. I glanced at Rafe, suddenly inspired by his threat from last night.

“It’s been known to turn some Hyrkes into frogs.” I shrugged. “But he knows Amphibian too so I’m sure we’d still be able to understand your answers. I’m sure they’d be fascinating,
and forthcoming
, with a boot pressed to your head.”

Rafe flexed his hand, which made me wonder if he really did know a spell that could turn someone into a frog. Only Rafe Sinclair would learn a spell like that.

“I know why you’re here,” Stillwater said. “You think Vodnik killed those men. And that girl. But it’s not true.” I sensed a change in Stillwater then. Resignation? Cooperation? His earlier belligerence seemed to deflate before my eyes.

“What do you want to know?” he asked. “That Antony was Vodnik’s most outspoken critic? Well, it’s true, but it doesn’t mean Vodnik killed him or his friends.”

“Then tell us what happened,” I said, motioning for everyone to continue walking. I wanted to reach the Meadow before the storm broke.

“When the old gerefa died last year, Antony and I both put ourselves up for the position. When Vodnik chose me over him, Antony started making trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“He started spreading rumors about Vodnik. That Vodnik was getting too old to rule the Shallows.”

I inhaled sharply. Those were serious accusations by a follower.

“Antony said we needed to find another demon patron to watch over us—because if Vodnik died before we found one, the
rogares
would get us.”

Unfortunately, it was true. That would be the fate of these people if their patron demon died before they found another.

“Antony’s suggestion made him unpopular,” Stillwater continued. “Vodnik’s been Patron Demon of the Shallows for over four hundred years. He’s raised us, watched over us, been our protector for so long no one can remember or imagine life without him. Even so, some believed as Antony did. A handful of men said they’d already seen signs that Vodnik was approaching his end.”

“What signs?”

Stillwater scoffed. “How should I know? I wasn’t one of them. They just complained. Said Vodnik couldn’t provide for his people anymore. That he’d lost his ability to lead the fishermen to the fish.”

We reached another fork in the boardwalk. Stillwater led us to the right and I casually grazed a leaf, turning it black. A year ago it would have been unthinkable that I’d be out in Halja’s hinterlands on my way to a legendary meadow tracking a mythological monster—and casually killing greenery as I went. But the fact was, these trees would survive. One leaf wasn’t going to make a difference to anyone but us.

“The truth is”—Stillwater paused, as if making a decision about how much he was going to reveal—“Vodnik
is
dying. About three months ago, Vodnik gathered up the men who’d been the most vocal about his age and diminishing abilities. He told them he didn’t want to frighten everyone else, but it was true—what they were saying.

“He said he knew a demon that could help. Someone who’d been hiding for centuries. A demon that was lonely and needed followers to look after. He asked them if they would be willing to help Vodnik find the demon and speak with him, to see if he’d be willing to become their new patron when Vodnik was no longer able. The group was full of malcontents. All the young men who loved to complain. About being hungry, about having to walk too far into the Dark Waters to find fish, about the frequent floods.”

Stillwater snorted disgustedly. “They didn’t deserve to be called fishermen. They were born
in
the Shallows, but they weren’t born
of
the Shallows, you know?”

I paused, but then nodded. I knew what he meant. It was the same way with waning magic. It wasn’t a happy kind of magic, but it made me who I was. It defined me. Without it, I would be someone else. Regardless of which outpost my history lessons had focused on, I’d always understood why settlers
left
New Babylon. Who didn’t dream of something better? Those who actually sought it were to be admired. But what I’d always had trouble understanding—until now—was why they stayed away. Why they didn’t come back once they found out there was nothing better in the outposts. But Stillwater made me realize that settlers stay for the same reason I continued to train as a Maegester. It was the same reason Burr had continued sailing on the Lethe. It was what we had. It was who we were.

“We set off that morning,” Stillwater said, “to find him, the demon that might agree to be our new patron when the time came.”

“Who was it?”

“Grimasca. Vodnik said he’d changed. That he wasn’t the monster everyone said he was. But Vodnik was wrong. And he lost sixteen of his followers because of it.”

Was Stillwater lying to me? Had Vodnik lied to Stillwater? Or was Stillwater’s story the truth? I couldn’t help thinking of what Ari had said earlier.
The best lies are the truth in disguise.

A
round midday we came to the Meadow. The entrance wasn’t marked, but it was unmistakable. After a wobbly walk across a portion of boardwalk suspended with ropes over a particularly watery section, we descended a set of six steps, the longest yet. At the bottom, the boardwalk split in two opposite directions, each curving around into the green swampy brush. The boardwalk here had railings and, if I had to guess, had been built to encircle the area in its middle, which was the blackest, ugliest lake I’d ever seen. Of course, it was no lake. It was a tar pit.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, I walked over to the edge of the rail and gazed out across the great expanse of bubbling blackness. The light here was different. It was greener, blacker. I looked up, knowing why before I even saw it. Still, it was a thing to behold. I’d never seen a waertree. They were few in number and waning magic users weren’t in the habit of taking nature walks. It was humbling to stare at something that was both so ancient and so strong. I’d probably have to stand at its base, touching it for at least a month before it would show any sign of weakening.

I craned my neck, shielding my eyes from the weird light, and squinted at the tree’s canopy. From my vantage point, it appeared to cover the sky. It didn’t, of course. Not even close. But it did cover the entire enclosed tar pit. Shafts of yellow sunlight pierced through small holes, making it look like a giant was up there, shining a flashlight through a huge spinach-colored colander. The tar looked like kale or collard greens that had been left in the icebox too long. It was a liquefied greenish black stew, full of bits and pieces of vine, twigs, and other long, thin things that looked disquietingly like human humerus, radius, fibula, and tibia bones.

I shuddered. If there’d once been flowers here, they were long gone.

The canopy’s leaves rustled and swayed with the wind, sounding as loud as a small waterfall. A thunderous crack told me the storm was getting closer. Recalling the many low-lying areas we’d just walked through to get here, I vowed to search this area quickly. The storm that had sunk
Cnawlece
three nights ago had started with similar rumbling, crackling thunder.

“We should hurry,” I said. No one argued. Stillwater glanced nervously at the sky. He seemed to be as afraid of the storm as any demon that might still be lurking in the Meadow, which gave me a new appreciation for the storm’s ability to possibly flood this area. “Can you show me where you were attacked?” I asked him. “And where you later found the butcher knife and spice box?” He nodded and motioned for us to follow him to the right. I started to follow but Ari stopped me.

“I don’t feel any demons here, do you?”

I’d been keeping my signature as wide as I dared and hadn’t felt anything except Ari the whole way here.

“No. How about you?” I said, turning to Rafe. “Do you sense any waning magic users with Demon Net?” Ironically, his spell would be the best chance we’d have to sense a hellcnight before it attacked us. I had to hand it to him. He’d known some useful spells after all.

“Just you and Ari.”

So that meant there weren’t any demons here. At least not now.

“Let’s split up, then,” Ari suggested. “We’ll cover more ground that way. Fara, Virtus, and I will head this way”—he pointed to the left—“and you three head to the right. We’ll refill the alembic and you can search the area where the attack occurred.”

“Okay,” I said. Ordinarily I would have been reluctant about splitting up, but it made sense with the storm coming.

Ari, Fara, and Virtus walked off in the other direction and Rafe, Stillwater, and I were left to circumnavigate this black cesspit of death as a threesome. I squared my shoulders and glanced at Rafe. He flicked his fingers toward me and I felt another spell slipping into place.