Finding the Way and Other Tales of Valdemar Read Free Page B

dank, green water carefully. No matter what you did, swamp water was pretty nasty stuff, rank with rotting vegetation, and stagnant. Not even a lizard liked the smell of it.
    At least it was only knee-deep here. Small blessing.
    This was where her staff truly came into play, probing every bit of bottom before they ventured onto it. As long as it stayed this shallow, nothing really large and dangerous could hide under the water, and things like water vipers generally tended to slither away rather than attack. So all they had to worry about were underwater obstacles, and the occasional poisonous serpent that wouldn’t slither away when disturbed.
    Oh, and anything they might attract with the sound of splashing.
    At midmorning, they came upon one of the islands that Sherra had told the Companion about, and at that point they were both ready for a rest. Slogging through water trying to make the best possible speed was not an easy task. They were both slimed, Sherra up to her waist, the Companion well above her knees. It showed more on Vesily; she had green legs now.
    Sherra hauled herself up onto the firmer land with a sigh; Vesily groaned as she lurched up out of the water. Sherra had expected to have to fight for a rest, but it was Vesily who asked first :Can we take a candlemark or so to recover?:
    Well! Sherra tried to keep from sounding gleeful. “Absolutely. Just let me dig a seep.”
    As Vesily folded up her slimed legs and dropped down onto the thatch of dried grasses that must have been accumulating here for a decade, Sherra cleared a patch of them away and dug a hole in the mat of roots until she was pretty sure she was below the waterline. This hole would quickly fill with water filtered through the roots of the plants and the earth itself, and once boiled, it would give them a clean source of water for a good drink before they moved on.
    Then she flopped down on the grass next to Vesily.
    Now that they were not moving, Sherra let her tired muscles relax, and let the warm sun soak into her. It felt wonderful. She had never pressed this far, this fast, into the swamp before. Vesily’s urgency had infected her, but they were both paying the price of that urgency.
    Her eyes started to close, and she let them. If Vesily was still feeling that driven, then Vesily could wake her up.
    On the other hand . . . if Vesily was as tired as Sherra, they might not wake up until the sun set and evening’s chill descended.
    Bad idea.
    So she left a little mental command to herself: I will wake up when the sun is a little past noon. That part of her that tended to such things noted the position of the sun on her closed lids, knew where it would be around about noon, and agreed. With that mental “watchdog” in charge, Sherra quickly reviewed their position.
    It was good. They were in the middle of this island, there had been no indication that anything used it as a home other than marsh birds, they were below the level of the tops of the grass and, so, invisible. They were as secure as they could be without erecting walls.
    All good, said the “watchdog.” Sherra let herself drowse. The watchful part of her kept an ear on the marsh sounds, the insects whining and buzzing, the frogs, the little marsh birds. There was some splashing that briefly disturbed her, but the sounds were small and irregular, so they were probably a fish or a frog jumping or striking at a bug.
    Finally it was a little after noon, and she woke fully, feeling much better. The Companion was still dead asleep; interestingly, all the slime had flaked off her legs, leaving her lying in a shower of little green flakes, and her legs were pristine again. Well, that wouldn’t last long.
    Sherra set her tiny camp-stove to blaze, blowing on its vents until the fuel became an ember. She balanced a full cup of the seep-water on the stove’s tines and revisited it after it had bubbled a few minutes. Sherra swapped that hot cup for a wide shallow copper bowl of seep