Hiero Desteen: 01 - Hiero's Journey by Sterling E. Lanier Page A

mighty hissing, as if the grandfather of ail snakes were suddenly angry. They made haste to leave the area, and although Hiero was careful to watch the back trail for an hour or so, nothing appeared to be following them. Gorm was very cautious in the lead, testing all the mud patches they traversed to be sure that they were not some quicksand or ooze which would sink the whole party. Twice such areas were found, but the bear seemed quite able to tell them from the rest of the landscape, and the man gradually relaxed his fear of being mired in some sucking bog.
    The damp air was stirred by fitful breezes, and ever-stranger odors came to them as they went deeper and deeper into the watery waste. It occurred to the priest, watching Klootz's broad hooves flatten on the mud, that he might well be the first man to try the swamp with both a steed who was semi-aquatic and a priceless guide and outrider such as the young bear. This might mean that they would succeed and get through where others had failed.
    They spent another miserable day, this time in the rain, which fortunately was warm. Gorm had located another mound of rotted plant matter from which reeds and giant docks were growing, and once again Hiero hollowed out a cave into which they all had to crawl.
    It was still raining at evening, and Hiero had caught no more fish, despite repeated efforts. He and the bear shared some grouse, biscuit, and pemeekan, but the animal could discover none of the roots he had found earlier. Klootz, however, seemed quite pleased with the water plants near their mound, and there was no deep water nearby, so that he was able to have a roll in the muddy shallows.
    Eventually Gorm led off again, with a fine drizzle still falling and little if any light to illuminate their way. Possibly as a result, they had to swim on two occasions, though fortunately without incident.
    In actuality, they were all very lucky, if Hiero had only bothered to think for a moment. For three days, they had safely penetrated the great wilderness of water and yet had seen or encountered few of the monstrous life forms which inhabited it. And despite the swarms of noxious insects which caused them all such misery, Hiero, much the most susceptible, had caught none of the sickening fevers which made even the very borders of the Palood feared.
    Once again, the priest hacked away into an island of partly growing, partly dead plant matter. After adjusting the mosquito masks on the animals, he put on his own and prepared for another soggy, leech- and bug-ridden day of itching and cursing. They were camped on the edge of a dark, deep lagoon, but he ignored the black water, his wariness for once strangely lulled.
    The priest was so tired, however, that he soon fell asleep, despite the bites and the steamy heat. As the day passed, he lay in a sort of drugged torpor and the two animals slept also, hardly moving and simply enduring, while even the thick mud-plastered hides of the morse and the bear were drilled again and again by the sucking worms and clouds of waiting gnats and stinging flies.
    Exhausted they must all have been, but there perhaps was more to it than that. Deep in one of the saddlebags, a tiny bead of light glowed under a glass dial, brightened, dimmed, and then grew bright again. Forces and currents, invisible to the eye but nonetheless powerful, moved through the steaming fog which lay on the Palood. In dark places, unknown to normal mankind, consultations were held, fears explored, and decisions taken. Curious things stirred under the slime, and the Unclean concentrated their vast powers on the heart of the bog, where a telltale glow on one of their hidden control boards told them a deadly enemy of unknown power, a foe to their fell purposes, now lay concealed. From drowned cities, lost and buried forever under the fens and mud of the marshland, came the flicker of strange movement and unnatural life.
    The morning grew old. A pale sun shone through a watery fog and