Into the Fens
The fens arrived as a smell before anything else — old water and deep mud and the slow decomposition of things that had been working at it for a long time. Then the ground went soft underfoot, the reeds closed in, and the wide grey sky of the open fens replaced the forest canopy.
It was not a friendly place. The light sat low and flat over dark water. The fog moved on its own schedule. Everything was quiet in a way that felt less like peace and more like patience.
"The scribe really didn't want to document this, did he," Cylia said.
"No," Arya agreed.
They moved in single file along the driest route, which wasn't very dry.
The stirges came out of the fog in a dense, whirring cloud, which is the only way stirges arrive — suddenly and in numbers. They were small and proboscoid and absolutely committed, and the next several minutes were defined by a combination of striking, ducking, and swatting, with occasional fire from Arya when she got a clear angle. Nobody involved looked particularly dignified.
They dealt with the stirges and kept walking. The fens continued to be the fens.
The lizardfolk were standing on a raised bank of firm earth when the party spotted them, watching the approach with the still patience of creatures used to waiting. Two of them, scales mottled in fen-green, giving nothing away. They didn't look hostile. They looked like they were making a decision.
Arya kept her hands visible. Elaazar made no sudden movements. There was a moment of mutual assessment that could have gone either way.
Then the pendant moved.
It was a small motion — the chain at Arya's neck shifting, the rune warming against her skin. She'd felt it near the statue in the woods, that same low pulse. She wasn't sure what triggered it. But the light must have caught the pendant's rune at the right angle, because the effect on the lizardfolk was instant.
Their eyes went green. Not the natural colour of their irises — a flat, lit green, like something behind the eyes had replaced whatever was usually there.
They attacked.
The fight was defensive and fast and happening in terrain that strongly favoured the lizardfolk, who knew every soft patch and hidden root in this stretch of fen. The party kept their footing through a combination of skill and luck and won more through disengagement than defeat — the lizardfolk broke off when the fight stopped going easily, retreating into the reeds without a word.
The party stood on the raised bank breathing and watching the reeds for movement.
"Something controls them," Arya said, looking at the pendant. It was cool again now. "When this activates, it does something to creatures with the right sensitivity. I don't know what."
"That's a problem," Elaazar said.
"I know."
The voice came from behind them.
"For what it's worth," said a woman sitting on a fallen log at the edge of the fen, where she had apparently been watching the entire encounter, "that's the third time I've seen those lizardfolk act like that near that pendant. The other two times, people didn't make it back."
She had the look of someone who slept outside by preference and carried everything she needed in a pack that was worn but well-organized. A rogue, by bearing and equipment — not the dishonest kind, or not primarily that, but the professional kind. Someone who worked alone and knew how to be invisible when that was useful.
"Jackie," she said. "And you're the ones from the Keep, based on the fresh bruises."
She already knew about the pendant. More than that — she'd been looking for it. Her employers, she explained carefully, were also looking for it. Not to take it. The specifics were complicated, and this wasn't the place. But when they were ready to travel to the next city, she'd be at the Keep waiting. There were people there who could help Arya understand what she was carrying.
Arya looked at her for a long moment, weighing the offer and the person making it.
"We'll find you," she said.
Jackie nodded, settled back on the log, and said nothing else, which was a very clear signal that the conversation was done and they should continue.
The sword ferns were near the fen's eastern edge: a wall of grass with blades thick and stiff enough to cut, growing so densely it amounted to a solid barrier. The direct route was through it, and the direct route was inadvisable.
Arya found the variation in the growth where the plants ran slightly different — a faint line of colour that ran through the middle like a path that had almost stopped existing. They walked it in single file and came out the other side with minor cuts and the particular satisfaction of not having had to fight anything else today.
Behind them, the fens settled back into quiet. The stirge symbol at the statue had led them here, they'd learned what was here, and somewhere in the cult's plans this place meant something. Jackie's words sat with Arya on the walk back.
People who could help her understand what she was carrying.
She had not told the others, yet, what she already suspected.
Next episode: The Tamarack Stand looks wrong from a distance and gets worse up close — and a trap with fire at both ends teaches the party what the cult is willing to do to people who follow too closely.