The gnome had a point: if push came to shove, our muddy rise of land gave us the advantage of higher ground, but it was exposed and visible to all the surrounding territory. I'd learned enough from my father's stories to know that swamps in the Lower Planes are nasty places, filled with lurking vipers, stalkers made of ooze, and plants that suddenly lash their branches around your neck. Did we want to stay in plain sight with such threats slithering out there in the muck? On top of that, I wanted to get away posthaste from the portal at our backs – nothing more than a decrepit stone arch covered with clots of moss, but as soon as Rivi found a whistle to open the gate, she and an army of wights would come charging into this plane to retrieve the grinder. By the time that happened, we had to be long gone.

«All right,» I called to the umbrals. «Show us this portal of yours… but no tricks.»

«Tricksss? Tricksssssss? No play tricksss on friendsss… promisssssssse.»

For some reason, that didn't reassure me.

We kept our distance from the fiends, giving them a lead of about thirty paces. «Keep peery,» I told the others, as if they needed the advice. «We grab any chance of escape that presents itself, and we watch for any sign of a trap.»

«What kind of trap?» Hezekiah asked.

I patted his shoulder. «Let's watch for every kind of trap, shall we?»

But that was easier said than done. The swamp was filled with rustles and slithers, with bogs of quicksand and shrubs sporting poison-drenched thorns. For the umbrals, this was home: they knew where they could step and where they couldn't, which snakes were harmless and which would strike if you walked within range. The rest of us had no such knowledge; and with each step along the muddy trail, my nervous tension screwed up another notch.

Approaching a patch of blooms whose smell made my head spin… were they giving off dangerous gas, or just a cloying perfume? And that clacking sound to the right… tree branches knocking together in the breeze, or a monster sharpening its claws? Every ripple in every pool… every drop of mist falling from the leaves overhead… every insect suddenly buzzing past our ears… we jumped at everything. Kiripao snapped his nunchakus at unknown phantoms; Yasmin plunged her sword into the undergrowth once or twice a minute, never telling us what she had seen; and even Hezekiah was jumpy, yelping at every odd gurgle of water, every croak from a frog.

My nerves were just as strained as my friends', but I concentrated on the umbrals, not creeping menace from the swamp itself. The fiends seemed in high spirits, conversing with each other in a language that consisted of hisses and hand gestures. From time to time they actually laughed, with a throaty sound like a dog being strangled. Whatever «tricksss» they had up their sleeve, they were obviously congratulating themselves at the cleverness of their plan.

This umbral snickering continued as they led us past a dozen black-water pools. After an hour or so, the tree cover thinned as the ground grew damper; and about a league ahead there appeared an honest-to-goodness river, perhaps ten paces wide. Trying to get a good view of that river, I almost missed something important closer to home: the fiends had stopped laughing.

In fact, they had stopped talking altogether – no hissing and none of the intricate hand gestures that made up their form of speech. They clutched their wings tight to their bodies, and they walked with a cautious, silent delicacy, like cats picking their way through mud. Why? I waved the others to a halt, placed a finger to my lips, and squinted carefully ahead.

Although there were no trees nearby, the path was still bordered by scrubby bushes, most of them reminiscent of nettles and burdock. At this very moment, however, the umbrals were passing three bushes that stood out from the rest: taller and fuller than the others, with leaves that had a soft reddish tinge to their green. The front fiend kept his gaze glued tightly to the bushes as he drew near them, and his pace grew even more cautious. Clearly, our «friendsss» intended to pass those bushes with the utmost silence… so just for the sake of interest, I pulled out a whistle from the Glass Spider and blew an ear-piercing blast.

With the force of an explosion, all three bushes expelled a barrage of white-wood flechettes, V-shaped thorns whizzing through the air. The fiends were mowed down like wheat, reaped by a thousand tiny scythes. Shreds of shadow were ripped from their bodies and scattered over the bulrushes behind them, black clots flung across the green.

The leaders of the party fell butchered without a single sound. The ones farther back, partly protected by their fellows, didn't die immediately, but uttered breathy little shrieks as the projectiles cut through their bodies. They shouldn't have made such noise – it stirred the bushes to shoot another fusillade, thorns imbedding themselves in shadow flesh, shadow wings, shadow eyes. The umbrals fell in tatters, their bodies perforated like moth-eaten clothes.

«Quickly,» Wheezle shouted, «we must get to them now! We must perform the proper death rites.»

«Don't be barmy,» Yasmin snapped. «We can't get close to those bushes.»

«We must!» Wheezle repeated. «Keep blowing the whistle, honored Cavendish. The plants cannot shoot thorns forever.»

And the little gnome was right: the bushes' supply of ammunition was limited. When I blew the whistle again, the responding volley of flechettes was smaller than the first two bursts. Three more whistles and the attacks had dribbled out; I gave another two toots just for safety's sake, but by then Wheezle was urging Yasmin to run full speed toward the slaughtered fiends. «The death rites are crucial!» he kept shouting.

«Dustmen,» Yasmin muttered and made a face. But she bounded into a sprint down the muddy path, goaded on by Wheezle shouting, «Faster, faster!»

The rest of us jogged along behind, wondering what could send Wheezle into such a tizzy. It didn't surprise me he knew the death rites for umbrals – Dustmen study the sentient races of the multiverse, just to know how to bury each one. On the other hand, I had witnessed dozens of deaths since I met Wheezle, from the Collectors incinerated by the exploding giant, to the Fox and all the others we'd killed inside the Glass Spider; our gnome had shown no urgent need to give them a proper send-off. He hadn't even offered a prayer for Oonah… so why did he care about monsters who'd tried to have us julienned by vegetables?

The moment Yasmin reached the closest fiend, Wheezle demanded to be set down. Quickly, he plunged his hand into the umbral's belt pouch and pulled out a dark sphere about the size of a walnut – twin to the gem-like orb we'd seen before, the one used by the umbral who tried to steal our souls at the portal. Raising the orb in his hand, Wheezle called out, «Come, beloved, to your —»

Yasmin clamped a hand over his mouth. «No magic, Wheezle! You're covered with dust – it's too dangerous.»

«This is not magic, honored Handmaid. I am simply calling a soul that may yet be lingering near this body.»

«Using that gem was magic before. Remember a certain umbral bursting into flames?»

«The umbral was attempting to steal a soul against our will; such theft does require magic. However, showing a soul that we have a receptacle available for habitation… that is not magic. The soul chooses for itself whether to enter the gem.»

Yasmin didn't look convinced, but she kept still as Wheezle called out again, «Come, beloved, to your home. A mansion has been prepared for you. Live in it and be glad.»

The dark orb flickered with a sudden thread of light. The gleaming strand shuddered once, twice, then blossomed into a deep purplish glow. It lit the gnome's face with a soft violet radiance and he smiled. «Good. Good.»