While working in solitude on his swordsmanship, Jason glanced over to where Rachel and Chandra were using Edomic to break dead tree limbs. Before going to sleep at night, Jason privately kept trying to ignite dry twigs or leaves with the phrase Rachel had taught him, but had never even made anything warm. He had temporarily worried that perhaps the Word had failed against Maldor due to his lack of ability, but then he remembered that all of the syllables had vanished from memory after he spoke them together, so he must have said it well enough.
Sweaty and tired, Jason finally quit his exercises, joining the others around a small fire. Drake, Ferrin, and Nedwin had proved so adept at steering the group away from enemies that Jason often forgot they were on the run.
Aram sat, meticulously honing his sword. Dorsio reclined beside Galloran, the two of them eating dried meat and dense bread. Ferrin warmed a skewer of vegetables over the fire. Scowling, Tark whittled, cross-legged on a blanket. Drake leaned against a tree, eyes half closed, irises sliding eerily back and forth. From experience, Jason knew that the trancelike state was as close as seedmen came to sleeping. Nedwin was away scouting. Rachel and Chandra had yet to stop practicing.
After rummaging through a bag for food, Jason plopped down beside Tark, chewing salty meat. Tark held up a mangled block of wood. “It was going to be a duck. I may have to settle for a cube.”
“Or a headless duck,” Jason said, “without legs or wings.”
Tark dropped the wood in disgust. “I wish I had my sousalax.”
“You’re the only one,” Ferrin chuckled.
“I’ll second Tark’s wish,” Aram said, sliding a stone along his blade. “He could give me more lessons.”
“Lessons?” Ferrin groaned, covering his ears.
“I was getting good,” Aram protested. “Tell him, Tark.”
Tark chose his words carefully. “You were … one of the few men I have met with the capacity to sound the instrument.”
“I wasn’t good?”
“Good takes practice.”
“I was loud.”
“True,” Tark said. “I revoke my wish.”
“Not many men can blow a sousalax,” Ferrin said. “How did you get started?”
Tark grinned. “In my youth I worked as a diver at Ithilum. The job strengthened my lungs.” Tark puffed out his chest, pounding his ribs.
“I’m certain our enemies would gladly furnish any of us with an instrument,” Galloran said. “We’ve been hard to find.”
On a muggy morning, below an overcast sky, the ten riders reached boggy terrain. They had approached the Sunken Lands from a different direction than Jason had previously used with Jasher and Rachel, but the soupy marshland looked equally dreary.
Drake called a halt. Nedwin walked out of earshot as Drake explained that the horses would not be able to continue.
“Let’s strip any necessary gear,” Galloran suggested. “We won’t be back this way. Our path will take us beyond the Sunken Lands to the Seven Vales.”
“Maybe I could talk to the horses,” Rachel offered. “Try to send them around to the other side.”
Galloran dismounted. “We’re approaching the Sunken Lands from the southwest and intend to exit from the northwest. But the horses can’t go around to the west. They will find the mountains as impassable as the marshland. I suppose they could try to loop around to the east. It will amount to a long journey through dangerous country.”
“What if a couple of us herd the horses around?” Chandra said. “We might be glad to have them on the far side.”
Galloran shook his head. “I don’t want to risk losing anyone. Even by horseback, the journey will probably take too long. The horses would have to circumnavigate three quarters of the swamp in the time it takes us to cut across part of it. Besides, Maldor has strongholds east of the marshlands.”
“The western gate to the Seven Vales does not lie far north of the swamp,” Drake said. “On foot the journey will cost us only two days.”
“If we’re not sending anyone with them,” Rachel proposed, “I might as well try to convince the horses to loop around and meet us.”
“What if an enemy follows them?” Chandra asked.
“Nobody would suspect the riderless horses had a destination,” Ferrin said. “Any who find them will just try to take possession of them.”
“Very well,” Galloran said. “Give it a try, Rachel.”
“Put some extra effort into telling Mandibar,” Drake said. “I’d hate to lose him.”
Jason sidled over to Rachel as the others transferred gear. “Can you do that?” he asked quietly. “Tell them to come?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered back. “I know how to ask the horses to meet me. I’d have more confidence if I could accurately visualize our destination. But I’ve never been there. I’m going to picture us crossing the swamp by boat, and the horses running around to the east, and them finding us on the northwest side. We’ll see what happens.”
Jason watched Rachel move from horse to horse, stroking them and speaking to each one individually. When all of the desired gear was unpacked, she made a general declaration to all of the horses. Jason sensed that she was telling them to run eastward. Moving in a group, they galloped in the correct direction.
“What about Nedwin?” Ferrin asked. “There are many distinctive sounds in the swamp that may reveal our location. Has the time come to lose his ear?”
“I think so,” Galloran said. “Can you manage it?”
“Among his ingredients, Nedwin has salves for burns and infections,” Ferrin said. “He claims to feel no pain, so I’ll use a hot knife. We’ll poke out the eye on his hand while we’re at it. I’ll pretend like I’m just discovering the ear, in hopes they might continue to trust the nonsense he’s been hearing lately.”
Galloran nodded silently.
Jason felt chills as Ferrin strode away, drawing a knife. He was glad he wouldn’t have to watch.
Ferrin and Nedwin returned perhaps an hour later. A bandage around Nedwin’s hand had replaced his glove, and he also wore a bandage tied to the side of his head. He smiled, revealing hideous teeth. Jason realized his teeth must have been deliberately damaged while he was a prisoner.
“I injected nervesong into the eye and the ear just before the surgery,” Nedwin reported. “It meant I felt some pain when Ferrin cut and burned me, but not nearly what the displacers felt on their end.”