Jean Rabe: The Eve of the Maelstrom

Ahead, Feril stopped. Groller glanced up and saw that she was studying a massive boa constrictor. She stood on her tiptoes, nose to nose with the snake, the exact length of which was hidden by the branches of the water hickory in which it was curled. The snake was dark green, the color of the leaves, and its back was spotted with brown diamonds.

“Furl? Furl be careful. Znake’s very big.” The wolf moved to Groller’s side, brushing against his leg, and growled up at the snake. The half-ogre reached for the belaying pin at his waist, his fruit-sticky fingers tugging it free from his belt. “Znake be dinner.” He moved a few steps forward and raised the weapon, saw Feril’s lips moving, the snake flicking its tongue at her. He relaxed a little, pursed his lips. “You’re dalking do the znake,” he said. “Thad means znake iz nod dinner. Good. I dod like znake meat.”

She nodded and motioned him away with her hand.

The snake was talking back, he guessed. He watched for several moments, saw Feril smile, close her eyes, the snake’s tongue flicking out to touch her nose, then he replaced the weapon. “Furl wod led us kill the znake fur dinner,” he told Fury. “Furl made ’nother friend. ’Kay. I really wand deer.” He moved away, continuing to look for hoofprints.

“Great snake,” Feril hissed softly, “you must be old to be so large. Ancient, most wise.”

“Not so old,” it replied in hisses that the Kagonesti mentally translated into words. “No older than the swamp. But much wiser than the swamp.”

Feril reached a hand up and ran her fingertips over the snake’s head. Its scales were smooth, and her fingers tarried, enjoying the luxurious sensation. The snake flicked its tongue and stared into her sparkling eyes.

“This wasn’t always a swamp,” the elf hissed. “My friends said this was an immense plain. People lived in villages around here.”

“I was born with the swamp.” The snake dropped its head lower. “I belong to the swamp. I know of no place else. I know of no people, save you.”

The Kagonesti held her hands open in front of her face, beckoning with her fingers, and the snake moved down to rest its head on her palms. Its head was heavy and wide, and she ran her thumbs along its jawline. “I belong to a land that’s covered with ice,” Feril told the massive snake. “So cold. A land changed by the white dragon. The land is beautiful in its own way, but not so beautiful as this place.”

“A dragon rules this swamp,” the snake hissed. “The swamp serves her. The swamp is... beautiful.”

“And you? Do you serve her?”

“She made the swamp. She made me. I am hers, as the swamp is hers.”

The Kagonesti closed her eyes again, focused on the feel of the snake in her hands, centered her thoughts until the supple scales filled her senses. “I want to see how she made this swamp,” she said, finally opening her eyes and returning the snake’s gaze. “Would you show me, great one? Show me what you can?”

The constrictor flicked its tongue and dropped more of its body, a thick ribbon of scaly flesh, down to the lowest limb. More than twenty feet long, the elf guessed. She began humming an old elvish tune, the notes soft and quick like the babbling of a brook. As the melody became more intricate, Feril let her senses flow down her arms into her fingers, let her senses edge into the snake’s form and flow over its body like the multitude of supple scales that covered it. In an instant she was looking at herself through the eyes of the snake, staring at the tattoos on her tanned face—the curling oak leaf that symbolized fall, the red lightning bolt across her forehead that represented the speed of the wolves with which she had once run. Then the snake’s gaze shifted, and she was looking beyond her form, staring at the thick broad leaves of a massive gum tree.

The green filled her vision. The color was overwhelming, hypnotizing. It held all her attention and then melted like butter to reveal a sheet of blackness. The blackness came into focus, breathed, became scaly like the snake.

“The dragon,” she heard herself whisper.

“Onysablet,” the snake answered. “The dragon calls herself Onysablet, the Darkness.”

“The Darkness,” Feril repeated.

The blackness shrank, but only barely, so she could just make out the dragon’s features rimmed by the gentle green of what was once the plains. The scents were not so strong and rich, the area not so pleasantly humid. It reminded her of the land in which she had been raised. “Home,” she whispered.

“This swamp could be your home,” the snake said.

The dream image of the black dragon closed its eyes, and the pale green of the plains around the overlord darkened. Feril sensed the dragon becoming one with the land, mastering it, coaxing it, nurturing it like a parent seeing to the development of a child. Trees grew about Sable’s form, raced like running water to cover settlements and farmland. The changes chased away the humans who foolishly thought they could hold onto their homes. The plains’ beasts began to claim the land. They no longer feared the people who had once hunted them, people who were now hunted by the dragon and her minions.

The willows that had once dotted the plains survived. Now they took on gigantic proportions, their roots spreading and their size swallowing up the birches and elms that formerly grew in small copses, the tops forming a dense canopy that became the feeding ground of black birds and passerines. The tips of the willows’ umbrellalike branches kissed the water that pooled on the ground. Feril’s gaze followed the water, which led her to sloughs, basins, and limestone outcroppings.

Saplings sprouted everywhere and became tall trees in the span of a few years. Giants, stretching more than a hundred feet to the sky, should have been ancient trees, but they were only a decade old. And the ground, even the high spots once covered by thick prairie grass, was quickly covered in ferns, greenbriars, and palmettos.

In the Kagonesti’s vision the earth continued to dampen. Thick pools of water became foul fens, the river slowed and became clogged with vines and weeds. Alligators lined its banks. The bay of New Sea, once crystal blue and inviting, took on a gray-green sheen. Then the sheen darkened and grew thick with moss. Plants rose from the bottom of the bay and poked through the surface carpet.

There was no longer any sign of much of the eastern half of the New Sea. There was only this expansive marsh, this extraordinary swamp—warm, primordial, and inviting to the Kagonesti. She allowed her senses to slip further from her body, to become drunk on this place and the vision of its existence. Just for a little while, she told herself.

Clouds of insects gathered and danced across dark, malodorous bogs. From the waters’ edges crawled snakes, small at first. But as they slithered farther from the bog, they grew. Egrets, limpkin, and herons skimmed the surface, larger and more beautiful than Feril had expected. Cricket frogs and mud turtles assembled at the edge, feeding on the insects and growing. The magic of the dragon, which was the magic of the land, enhanced them, nourished them, embraced them. Embraced Feril. The swamp enfolded her as a mother’s arms would comfort a small child.

“The swamp could be my home,” she heard herself whisper. “The beautiful swamp... the swamp.” The words were harder to form. “For just a little while.” Breathing was harder. Her chest was tight, her senses reeling. She didn’t mind; she was merging with this place.

“Furl!” The word intruded into her perfect world. “Furl!”

Groller clawed frantically at the snake, which had slid down the tree and wrapped itself around the Kagonesti. The half-ogre cursed himself for being deaf and unable to hear what was going on, for not being more alert, for not paying closer attention, for thinking the elf was all right. He had strayed, following deer tracks. Fury, snapping at his heels, drew him back to Feril’s predicament.