Page 58 of A Drop of Corruption

“The hell kind of sword is that?” asked Tangis.

I turned and hacked at the wall of growth. The green blade cut through the branches like they were simple grass, and soon I had made a narrow portal in the vines and branches; yet the wall was thicker than I’d thought, and I was forced to keep going.

“Follow me,” I said to Malo. “But stand clear of my blade.”

They did so, filing in behind me as I slashed my way along, cutting a dark path piece by piece and ripping out the tangled branches to clear the way.

Finally the brambles came to an end, yet I did not see daylight filtering through the gap I’d rent, but a shadowy, quivering luminescence.

I pushed through the remains of the wall and staggered into a deeply shaded clearing. I squinted into the shadows about me.

Then I froze.

“Kol?” whispered Malo behind me. “Why do you tarry? Keep going!”

I stood still for a very long time, struggling with the sights before me, my words choking in my throat.

“Kol?” Malo asked.

Not knowing what else to do, I stumbled forward and allowed her and the others to enter and see what awaited us. My mind was so swimming with bewilderment and terror that I hardly registered their gasps and screams, though I wished to scream myself; indeed, I wished to scream until my lungs would break.

Chapter 23

It had been a camp,once. That was obvious fromthe rings of tattered tent shapes, the firepits scattered here and there, and the ramshackle lookout tower on the western side, complete with a quiver of arrows hanging from the tower’s top.

Yet everything had been altered, from the blades of grass to the trunks of the trees at the edges. It was as if all life within this place had been instantly transmuted into something else: I saw trees with leaves akin to tongues, creased and pink and dripping; tents whose fabrics appeared to dissolve into dusty moth wings; firepits sprouting not flame or ash but coiling cairns of flowering fats and bones; grasses and weeds whose shoots were weighed down by not blooms but queer bunches of malformed human teeth, or fleshy lobes akin to ears; a flabby trunk of a tree, its bark fleshlike and patchy, and sprouting thick shocks of curling dark hair; yet worst of all were the people.

And they clearly had been people once. You could tell by the shapes: each had a head, and arms, and the arms were always raised, as if to ward off a blow; yet the bodies had somehow unraveled, turning into wild storms of fishbones, or bundles of warped leathers, or boiling, spidery clouds of gossamer threads, with clutches of teeth suspended in their glistening heads.

I stared about in horror. It was dark within the dome of growth, yet shafts of hazy, amber sunlight came stabbing through in places, shivering with the wind and sometimes illuminating some new horror at the edges of the shadow, or giving those close to me the illusionof movement. It was as if this little leafbound bubble of the world had gone utterly insane.

“By hell,” said Malo. “By hell…”

“I…I am to be sick, I’m sure,” gasped Tangis. “I’ll be sick in my helm, or…or I am mad, I am mad, surely.”

Some of the wardens were crying out or screaming. Sabudara traced signs in the air, signaling to some god for protection.

I fought to keep control of my thoughts, forcing myself to be calm and contained, to see this sight and engrave it.

“This is where it happened,” I whispered. “These people’s abdomens bloom fish bones—for their bellies were full of fish. The firepits overflow with fat or bones, and strange plants—for they must have roasted meats over them, and the residue was dusted with pollen, or molds…”

“By Sanctum,” said Tangis. “Then that would mean…” He counted them silently. “That would mean nigh on forty people met their deaths here, if not more.”

“But—again—how in hell did ithappen?” demanded Malo.

I calmed my mind and looked about the clearing, trying to spy any pattern in the chaos. Unless I was mistaken, the bodies seemed to be raising their arms to protect themselves from some blast, perhaps, and all of them appeared to be fleeing the center of the clearing.

I looked past all the crooked growths and shimmering shadows. There, in the center of the clearing, sat something very curious.

It appeared to be some kind of brewing instrument, resembling a dozen small, interconnected ceramic pots set in a leaning column, stationed over a firepit. The pot on the top featured a chimneyed glass dome, with nearly three dozen brass pipes running from it to the many other pots below. Hanging in the center of the top glass dome was an intricate bit of wiring that looked rather like a tea strainer, as if built to hold some delicate reagent, but now it was empty. It all appeared fabulously complicated to my eye, so much so that I couldn’t imagine how anyone could have assembled it here.

I pointed to it. “Have any of you,” I asked, “ever seen a thing like that before?”

A shifting as they all moved to look. Then Tangis’s voice: “No.”

Malo spoke up. “No…but it is fermentation stuff, to be sure.”

“Fermentation?” I asked. “Like the fermentation works, in the center of Yarrowdale?”