Effie extended her arm over the gunwale and let her hand touch the greasy black water. She hoped it wasn't bog. Eggtooth had been most particular about that: it was bog she and Chedd would be fed to, not river water.
Annoyed with herself for still shivering, she set her mind on something else. She tried to sort out who and what she was without her lore. Effie Sevrance, daughter to Tern and Megg, sister to Drey and Raif, bearer of the stone lore, Hailsman: those were her names and titles, Tem and Megg were dead. Drey might be too. She doubted if she'd see Blackhail in a very long time—Clan Gray was the direct diagonal opposite of Blackhail, and maybe a thousand leagues away-and to top it all off a fish had eaten her lore. Now she was simply Effie, sister to Raif, bearer of no lore, not even the twine that had held it. Did that mean her knowledge had gone? She didn't know. Some days it felt as if it had.
And then there were days like today when something tingled in the center of her breastbone, right in the place where her lore used to lie. It had happened while she and Chedd were eating the fairy shrimp. They were tiny things, floating upside down in the icy water. Chedd said you ate them whole and raw, so that's what they did. They'd tasted like fish fins, which, as far as Effie knew, were the one part of the fish you weren't supposed to eat. Chedd had disagreed and said quite seri-ously they tasted like fish eyes. Bony fish eyes. That had them both laughing. And that was when she'd felt the queemess in her chest. It was like a thumb jabbing against her chest. No laughing matter. Not today.
After that she didn't eat any more shrimp and went to sit alone by the boat. Some of the shrimp shell had stuck in her throat. Now Eggtooth's words were stuck back there too. Tie stones to their chests and sink 'em.
The ghost of her lore, that's what she decided to name the sensation in her chest. The ghost of her lore had spoken and given her a warning about today.
And tonight. Effie swatted a black fry who fancied a piece of her wrist. The horn-covered lamp clipped to the bow of the boat created an eerie circle of light She wished she could paddle. To do something would be good, to get tired and a bit sore, and have something else beside her thoughts to think about—if that made any sense. Waker and Waker's father were poling though, standing in the boat and using long sticks to punt — through the water. T he fiver was too shallow for paddling, barely a river at all anymore.
The Mouseweed. Only a few days earlier Effie had thought it an underserving sort of name. She and Chedd had spotted beaver dams and big barnacly trout, and the river was at leas thirty feet across. Now the only things to spot were flies. And its width had grown decidedly uncertain. Black water wept beyond the banks and into fields of sedge and rushes. The hills had ended and the land had sunk. The tallest things around were the alders and silky willows, trees clinging grimly to last summer's crisped leaves.
The river was too shallow for paddling. And too full of weeds. The water meandered around great islands of bulrushes and cattails, and then widened into wet fields. Channels were no longer obvious and Waker and his father needed to be able to turn the boat on a point.
Four days back they had passed Clan Otler's roundhouse in the night. Waker had snuffed the prow lamp and his father had propelled the boat while he himself did something strange. Waker had sat forward in the prow seat and made sweeping motions with the pole. Chedd had whispered that Waker was checking for trip wires above the water. Effie had frowned at this at first, thinking it a highly unlikely figment of Chedd's overly dramatic imagination. Trip wires above the water indeed. What was next, attack fish? This odd behavior had gone on for nearly an hour—Waker pivoting the butt of the pole against his chest as he swung the tip in a half-circle—and during that time Effie couldn't come up with a single explanation that sounded better. And Waker had never repeated the action any night since then. It certainly made her think.
Oder's roundhouse had been lit with fiery red torches that doubled their light by reflecting in the water. It was strange to see a roundhouse built from wood and raised on stilts. The Otlerhouse was huge and beautifully made. Entire stripped logs had been carved into curves to form the roundwall. The cedar gleamed in the firelight, thickly oiled against mist and river damp. Three turrets rose from its domed roof. Lamps burned in the top galleries of each tower and the windows were guarded by meshed wire stretched over X-shaped frames. Both the towers and the roundhouse were roofed in white lead; probably to reduce the risk of fire, Effie guessed. Lead had also been added to the chinking between the logs, endowing the roundhouse with a series of pale horizontal stripes that reflected in the dark water as glowing rings.
As far as Effie could tell normal kinds of trees—oaks and cedars and elms—grew at the rear of the roundhouse, so solid ground must lie back there. At the front of the roundhouse a series of landings and jetties projected out across the water and many small boats were tied up there. Guards were watching from both the turrets and the highest landing, but they never spotted Waker's boat. Waker's father was poling through the reeds on the southern shore and you couldn't even hear his paddle enter the water.
Effie had wondered about the passing. Beforehand both Waker and his father had been nervous, shifting in their seats, making adjustments to the load, communicating in the terse hand signals they seemed to prefer over language. Clouds had snuffed the moon and there was no mist. Good and bad. Just as they spied the first lights, Effie felt a little creepy sensation crawl along her skin. She thought it might be a cloud of midges, only how had the midges managed to fly into the bodice of her dress? Then she thought about the day Eggtooth had stopped the boat by chucking a big stone into the water. She remembered the prickly sensation in her mouth when Waker's father had removed her tongue and teeth; either winking them out of existence entirely or concealing them behind shadows so deep that no normal glance could find them. Whatever had gone on, Effie had been mightily glad to get them back.
The night they'd floated past Otler she suspected Waker's father had been up to his tricks. Nothing as drastic as with her teeth but something—a blurring or shadowing or some subtle misdirection—had taken place. How else could you explain the fact Otlermen armed with crossbows and looking out across the water had not seen a shallow boat containing four people moving along the opposite shore?
The creepiness Effie had felt subsided quickly once they'd passed the roundhouse. Waker's father had rested in the back while Waker returned to poling. The whole episode struck Effie as odd. Otler and Gray were neighbors, they shared borders and vulnerability to Trance Vor. You'd think they'd be friendly out of necessity if nothing else, seeing as they were both stranded in the far southeastern reaches of the clanholds. And they both held war oaths to Bludd. So why then couldn't a Grayman paddle past Otler at midday? Because Clan Gray is different, stupid. It's cursed. Effie frowned. Needing some distraction she did the crawly hands on the back of Chedd's neckJghedd's head jerked back and his hand came up to slap away the fly. Effie pressed her lips together to stop laughing and ended up making a snorting noise instead. The beauty of the crawly hands was that she could do it easily to Chedd but Chedd wouldn't do it easily back. It was a masterstroke of gaming and it very nearly made up for the now-legendary disaster that had become bear: naked!
"Eff," Chedd said, using the kind of voice she had not expected, quiet and puzzled. "There's half-things around."