Water seeped lugubriously from the crowns of gigantic mushrooms and other fungi. Ghostly white growths loomed before them, diseased of appearance, loathsome of smell. Buncan drew his cape a little tighter around his neck. Even the otters were subdued. The dampness didn’t bother them, but the gloom did. The dour surroundings muted their irrepressibly cheerful sibling banter as effectively as the soggy earth hushed the creaky wheels of Gragelouth’s wagon.
“So these are the Muddletup Moors,” Buncan commented uneasily, not because it was necessary but because the continued silence was unbearable. Peculiar hisses and squeakings emanated from the undermorass, while phosphorescent shapes darted within, hinting at unpleasant horrors just beyond the range of ready vision. Displaying a subdued but unshakable sense of assurance (or hope), Gragelouth picked their way through the intimidating vegetation.
“I’ve ‘eard all about the Moors, I ‘ave.” Squill knelt on the cushions behind the driver’s bench, peering between Buncan and Gragelouth. Like his enthusiasm, his smile was forced. Moisture beaded up on the tips of his whiskers. “Mudge talked about ‘em a lot. ‘E’s been through ‘ere an’ back an’ come out tail intact every time.”
“E just never said wot a really depressin’ place it is,” Neena added unhelpfully.
“Therein lies the true danger of the Moors.” Gragelouth shifted the reins in his thick fingers, his gaze darting nervously to left and then right. “It infiltrates the mind and weakens the will to resist, to go on. Eventually you give up and just stop. Then the spores come, and the white tendrils, and enter your body. They grow in you and on you and use you up, until nothing is left but a collapsed skeleton. That, too, is eventually returned to the muck.”
“Glad to see you don’t let it bother you,” commented Neena dryly.
Squill’s expression was sullen. “I ‘ave to admit this ain’t the ‘appiest place I’ve ever been.”
The atmosphere of the Moors was already beginning to get to them, Buncan realized with a start. The all-pervasive aura of depression and hopelessness pressed down relentlessly.
“How about a song?”
“Cor, that’s a good idea, Bunkles.” Neena levered herself up from the cushions. “Somethin’ merry an’ ‘olesome.”
“No spellsinging,” Gragelouth admonished them. He eyed Buncan’s duar warily. “I thought it was agreed that was only for emergencies. I admit I am depressed, but not mortally so. Not yet.”
“No spellsinging,” Buncan agreed. “Just something to buoy us up and beat back this gloom.”
“That could be useful,” the merchant reluctantly conceded.
“Right.” Buncan struck the strings, flinging frisky chords into the brooding ah- like a noble casting gold pieces at an impecunious crowd. Behind him the otters began to harmonize playfully.
“Got no time to be sad today
There’s a time to be sad and a time to play
Place to be cryin’, place to be dyin’
We’re gonna get outta here ‘cause we be tryin’
To motivate this wagon on its way.”
The music drifted out across the Moors, penetrating and pushing aside the gloom as if it were a dirty, rotting curtain. The weight of the oleaginous air they were breathing lightened perceptibly, while the nearest sphacelated fungi seemed to recoil from the unrelenting cheerfulness, a perception that turned out to be anything but imaginary.
“Will you stop playing that music?” pleaded the growth on their immediate right.
“Blimey, Mudge were right.” Neena examined the giant toadstool. “They can communicate when they want to.”
“How can you sing?” declaimed a chorus of shelf fungi from nearby, “when there’s no hope left? When all is doomed?”
A cluster of mushrooms no higher man a dray lizard’s belly chimed in. “When existence defines itself through unending misery.”
“If you put it like that,” Buncan found himself muttering. A paw came down hard on his shoulder.
“Watch it, mate!” Squill’s bright eyes stared into his own. “Remember that’s ‘ow they work, the Moors. If the atmosphere doesn’t get you, then they try fatalistic philosophy. That’s wot Mudge always told us.”
Neena glared challengingly at the rutilant fungi. “There can’t be depression where mere’s music. Keep playin’, Bunkole.”
Buncan looked down at his duar. The polished surface of the unique instrument seemed dulled, the strings uneven and fraying. “I don’t know if this is doing any good.”
This time Squill grabbed him by the shoulders and half spun him around on the bench. The duar bonged against Gragelouth’s knee. The sloth winced but said nothing, resolutely tending to his driving.
“Fok your ‘don’t knows,’ mate! This ‘ere swamp is the mother of all indecision. Wake up, and play!”
Buncan nodded, blinking. The effect of the Moors, he realized, was so insidious you weren’t aware of what the place was doing to you even as it happened. Fortunately, otters had a very strong natural resistance to depression. He directed his attention to the duar with a vengeance.
Immediately the air seemed brighter, clearer. The grim fog rolled back and fungi in the wagon’s path crawled or oozed aside. Seeing that the music kept the creeping enervation at bay, even Gragelouth made an attempt to join in the singing.
They were feeling much better when the Moors responded, not with additional intimations of infectious ennui, but with music of its own: a distant, wild baying. It stopped their own singing cold. A prickly clamminess crept down Duncan’s back like a rain-soaked centipede.
“Wot were that?” Squill murmured, wide-eyed. “Sounds like somethin’ that crawled out o’ river-bottom mud.” He looked to the merchant.
Gragelouth was sniffing the air. “I do not recognize the sound. Nor do I look forward to encountering its source.” As he finished, the noise came again: flagrant, whetted, and definitely closer.
Buncan shook the sloth’s arm. “Don’t stop now. Not here. Can’t we go any faster?”
“My team was bred for endurance and not sprints,” the sloth told bun. “You can see that for yourself. They are making the best speed they can.” He glanced nervously sideways. “There is something about that sound which is more evil than mere depression.”
“Penetratin’, wotever it is,” Neena observed as the wild baying echoed through the morass. It definitely was not the wind: Wind was unknown in the Moors, where even a stray zephyr grew quickly depressed and died. The howling was dark and deep and rich with carnivorous import.
“I see somethin’ movin’!” Squill rose and pointed to their left.
A flash of movement among the undergrowth, a glimpse of bright red fireflies; then nothing. Gragelouth sat rigid on the bench. There was nothing he could do to speed his plodding, slow-witted team along the slick, potholed path. His nose twitched.
“I sense many presences.”
Buncan eyed him curiously. “You can sense presences?”
“A metaphor, young human. Can’t you feel them out there, around us?”
“I don’t feel anything except damp depression.” He fingered the duar nervously.
“No aura of menace? No overweening sense of incipient doom?”
“No more so than what we’ve been feeling since we left the Bell woods.” The baying and howling was constant around them now, drowning out the other background sounds of the Moors.
“Then you may be a spellsinger, or half a one, anyway,” the sloth murmured, “but your perception leaves much to be desired.”
So does your breath, Duncan wanted to say, but he was interrupted by Squill’s sudden shout.
“Crikey!” The otter was pointing again.
This time Buncan had no trouble picking out the pair of burning red eyes directly in front of them. They bobbed slightly as they advanced on the wagon. Unable to turn either to right or left, Gragelouth tugged on the reins and brought the cumbersome vehicle to a grinding halt. As he did so, the owner of the fiery gaze appeared out of the mist.