The Chronicle:

We have reached the beginning of a new year, and as it stretches like a blank slate before me, I cannot help but feel uneasy in my mind.  I look back upon the frantic year that has just come to a close, with a sense of awe and terror at everything that has come to pass in only twelve months.  A year ago, I was in the frozen steppes of Ussura with Lucas, Miranda, Ricardo, Brother Cadfaello, and the armsman Sebastian.  Now Miranda is in a coma, Brother Cadfaello has been silenced by the Church, Sebastian is dead, and Ricardo is in the lands of the Sidhe.  Lucas is Baronet Drachenheim, but also cut off from his resources and embroiled in the unsavoury political tangles of Freiburg.  And I am here in the cold isles of Vestenmannavnjar.

I really must learn to spend winter in the Western Isles and summer in the northern lands, rather than the opposite.

In that year I have visited every so-called civilized nation of Théah as well as a few wild islands.  I have walked through bleak battlefields and brilliant courts; I have fallen in love and I have made deadly enemies.  I have left the life of a proper Castillan noble-born damsel far behind, with a vengeance.  I am hardened, or at least less vulnerable than I was this time last year; faster, stronger, more determined, able to defend myself.  But I have not pursued my studies in the natural sciences and cartography nearly so well as I had intended.  I now command my own vessel and the loyalty of a crew far better and more dedicated than someone of my short experience should hope to.

And I begin this new year with a prophecy of the end times.
 

After our visit to the Oracle, Gris Hallisdottir and Rognvald Brandson took me back to Grimstadd Island with no further delays or detours.  In Rannulf's shipyard, my crew had finished repairs to the Maris Stella.  I asked Rannulf once again how I could repay him for his assistance, for I did not like owing an unspecified favour.  His answer was: "Fulfil the prophecy."  I kept my comments to myself, but I did not see why anyone would want to see fulfilled a prophecy that promised the end of the world.  I regret to say that no matter how grateful I may be for Rannulf's work on my vessel, I have no intention of helping the end of the world along as a means of thanking him.

I stopped to pay my respects to Captain Olafsdottir, since the Revensj was still in port, waiting for Gris and Rognvald, then we set sail for Eisen.  I think everyone on board the Maris Stella was just as happy to leave behind the coasts of Vestenmannavnjar.  We sailed back without any trouble from the weather, despite the unfavourable time of the year, a fact on which no one commented.  We quickly reached the coast of Eisen, then the mouth of the Roth River.  The Roth was not yet locked by the ice, and we sailed upriver, noting in passing that Die Zierlich was no longer beached, on to the confluence with the Rostrom where Freiburg is nested.

We dropped anchor at the Castillan embassy's pier as we had two months before.  I hastened to go ashore, hoping to see my family and friends, but to my great disappointment they were out of town and the butler, Armin, did not know when to expect their return.  I was strongly tempted to wait for them, but if I was going to act upon Gunrud Stigandsdottir's prophecy, then I should heed its words; the first stanza of the prophecy, the only one that seemed halfway clear for now, insisted on haste:

            The end shall see the beginning, and a service you must perform
            Deep in the land where all hope has been lost
            Deep in the land where blood feeds the crops
            There you alone must swiftly journey
            Seek that which is undying and find ruin
            Bring there a gateway and you will be rewarded at last.

I parsed this text thus: the end of the year 1668 saw the beginning of this new obligation placed on me and of these "End Times."  The land where all hope is lost and blood feed the crops must be Eisen, where I must "swiftly journey";  and "that which is undying" I had decided, after looking at maps and querying my Eisen crew members, must be the "Undying Swamp", the Unsterblich Sümpf that sprawled south of the rivers Rostrom and Roth in the province of Heilgründ.  I must "find ruin" there and "bring a gateway", which I assumed to be the rune Fornuft received from the Oracle.  I left our poor waisen in the embassy's stables; surely they would be better cared for there than on the vessel I was expecting to take to perdition before long.

I asked Armin to give Lucas, Juan, Melisandre and Ferdinand letters which I left in his care, then made my way to the great marketplace to purchase a horse.  Johann and his marines insisted on accompanying me.  I had told Johann the full story of the Oracle's prophecy, for I value his judgement and because I wanted him to be able to understand the cause for the many strange actions I expected to have to take as a result of this prophecy.  He was particularly unhappy with the idea of letting me travel alone to one of the most feared locations in Eisen.

"How can we fulfil our duty as your bodyguards if you travel alone?" he protested.

I was taken aback.  "Bodyguards?" I repeated.  "I thought you had hired on as marines?"

He shook he head.  "We swore to protect you.  Why do you think there are always two of us on deck when you are on watch?"

That robbed me of words for a bit.  I had not even realized I had official bodyguards!  I felt sorry for them.  I knew I must be a very trying charge to guard.  I could hardly disagree with Johann's opinion that my travel plans sounded crazy; I would have had a very poor view of anybody else who came up with the same.  As a compromise I suggested that they accompany me to the outside edge of the Verzweiflung, the insalubrious shantytown which surrounds the city of Freiburg.

With the help of Johann and his merry band of bodyguards, I acquired a horse and the necessary equipment.  I loaded my supplies into its saddlebags and led it on.  I will not deny that it felt much safer to cross the Verzweiflung under escort than it would have alone.  The area is filled with the hopeful that have come to Freiburg to make their fortune but are sliding down instead of climbing up.  Many followed us around, trying to sell their services as guides, armsmen, artisans, minstrels, and whatnot, and had to be fended off by my marines.
 

We spent the night near the edge of the zone in a rather disreputable inn.  In the morning, we walked out of the Verzweiflung to the border of the königreich of Freiburg with that of Heilgründ.  A sign and a statue marked the border; in the statue I recognized the features of Eisenfürst Stefan von Heilgründ himself.

"Ah, yes, the Eisenfürst," I sighed.  "I suppose I had better not go visit him."

Johann gave me a stern look.  "You are not in good terms with Eisenfürst Heilgründ?" he asked drily.

I made a face.  "My cousins and I visited him a year ago," I answered.  "Unfortunately, one of our travel companions went insane and displeased the Eisenfürst.  I do not think he has any particular hatred for me, but I doubt the memory is pleasant.  The offender is now somewhere in Avalon, as far as I know."

Johann's closed face hinted at yet increased disapproval of my travel plans.  But we had reached the time to part company so I shook hands with my companions and climbed in the saddle to make my way south.  I looked back, fearing that they might decide to just wait there looking like a pack of abandoned puppies (maybe mastiffs would be a more appropriate image), but they were already on the move again, so I turned my mind to the Undying Swamp.

This area was created, or rather heavily modified, by the rerouting of a stream some eighty years ago.  Since then many sinister rumours have started circulating.  The atmosphere in and near the swamp is very unhealthy, and most of the villages in the area have long been abandoned.  It is said that many monstrous creatures live in the swamp; and deformed, poisonous varieties of numerous animals and plants are rumoured to emerge from the swamp from time to time.  Most famous is a giant snake called the Verschlingen which is believed to live in the swamp and is greatly feared.  Having seen first hand such creatures as the Beast of Dechain and Leviathan, I did not discard the tales but merely set them aside as something to remember.

I had not been on my way for much more than twenty or thirty minutes when I realized I was being followed.  I stopped and waited for the faithful Johann and his marines.  After a moment they caught up with me, making no effort to be inconspicuous.  I stared.

"Why hello, doña Constanza," Johann greeted me.  "We thought, since we had a few days' shore leave, that we would visit the Undying Swamp."

I could not quite hide a grin.  It was, of course, exactly the kind of stubborn trick I would pull was I in their place.  And I readily admit that if someone, a certain Captain for example, had insisted that I return to Freiburg while he went on alone to the Undying Swamp, I would have been very rebellious.  But the wording of the Oracle's prophecy (or "orders," as I thought of the text) was quite clear.  After debating with Johann a bit, I regretfully had to give him a formal order to return to the Maris Stella.  He seemed unhappy, but hardly surprised.

Then I resumed my progress towards the Undying Swamp, travelling at a brisk pace for as long as daylight would last.  The trip took me a few days, during which I noticed that my horse was developing a sort of cough.  In fact, the entire area was on the unhealthy side; while it was not nearly as bleak as Wische had been, many of the people I encountered looked sickly.  Even I felt less healthy, and meals seemed unable to quite satisfy, even when I ate from my rations rather than from the local food.  On the whole, however, Heilgründ was not much changed from what I had seen at the same time a year before.  Although the villages were poor, most had an inn where I could spend the night and get the poor horse stabled.  I regretted not having been able to bring an interpreter, but innkeepers are quick to understand basic requirements such as a bed, dinner, and horse fodder no matter what language a traveller speaks, as long as she has coin.

At last I reached the very last village near the edge of the marshy region.  It was too small, neglected and poor to have an inn, although like every other town I had crossed it boasted a statue in the centre of the town square, this time one of San Gregor slaying the drachen.  On the same plaza I noticed a Vaticine church, dedicated to San Gregor as well.  I made my way there and tied my horse outside, before climbing the three steps leading inside.  There, I took the time to light a few candles, make a donation, and pray for a few moments; I felt sure I would need it before long.

A priest approached and greeted me; he looked quite out of the ordinary, for he had lost an eye and an arm.  I responded to his greeting in Théan, and asked if there was some place in the village where I might be able to find refuge for the night, if only a stable, for suitable compensation.  He assured me that he could find a farmhouse where I would get a bed, a meal, and stabling for my horse.  Father Adolf was a nice man and seemed happy to have a visitor from out of town, so I questioned him regarding the Unsterblich Sümpf and its legends.  Unfortunately, he could tell me little enough that was new, though his words confirmed the rumours I had heard on the swamp, its unhealthy atmosphere, and its foul bestiary.  The good father insisted that travellers walking into the swamp rarely came back, and even more rarely did they come back without grave injuries.  I learned that he had once been a knight of San Gregor trained to fight in the Gelingen school, looking for monsters to slay.  This is how he had come to lose his arm and eye and changed occupation.

He found a family of farmers willing to take me for the night.  But my rest was not going to be as long as I had hoped: in the middle of the night, I was shaken awake by the farmer's children, looking upset and babbling in Eisen.  I quickly got dressed and armed, and followed them.  They led me to the church; it seemed the entire village was assembled in the town square in the flickering light of torches.  A look at the church revealed that part of the roof had collapsed; alas, it was the part of the roof above the rectory wing in the back.

In the dark of night, towards the swamp, I also noticed another torch bobbing, but there was no time to investigate this light.  I pushed my way through the crowd and joined the crew which was attempting to clear the rubble and get inside.  It took several hours of hard work to get the debris out of the way and reach Father Adolf, but he was alive.  While the village bonesetter bandaged the poor Father's wounds, I asked a few questions, but Father Adolf had heard nothing, having been sound asleep at the time of the collapse.  I asked him if he knew of any enemies who might want to cause him harm, but he could think of no one.  I left him to get some rest.

A few hours later, with the light of dawn, I climbed onto the intact portion of the church roof and examined the edge of the damage.  I found no trace of foul play: no sawed beams, no burnt wood; it looked like the wood which was very old, had just collapsed on its own.  Still, I was disturbed by the coincidence.  Was this the ruin I was to seek, then?  I thought perhaps I should join the crew already working on clearing and rebuilding the damage, and look for more clues.  But the rest of the church was in good shape, and I was not quite in the Undying Swamp yet.  I could see nothing missing in the church, and no signs of any secret passages or crypts revealed by the collapse.  The rebuilding would surely take several days.
 

Then I remembered the light that had been moving towards the swamp.  I headed in that direction, looking for tracks in the snow.   I soon found those of a single horse, and followed them until I encountered the beast that had left them: a horse had fallen dead and been left there.  He looked extremely old, and must have dropped of exhaustion, although from his tracks it didn't look like he had been moving fast.  I doubted if he could have.  His tack and harness were also very old, the leather cracked and brittle; he had been shod, but the shoes were rusty.

I looked around for signs of what had become of the rider, but found none.  No trace of a fall, or of someone walking away from the dead horse.  Yet surely this horse had not been walking around on his own, let alone carrying a torch!  I decided the answer to this mystery and the object of the service I had to perform both lay ahead.  I retrieved my own horse and my baggage, and started again towards the swamp, on foot and leading my horse so I could watch better for any tracks.  In any case, riding would have been increasingly difficult as the ground became more and more marshy; despite the weather, the swamp was only partly frozen.

I kept travelling in as straight a line as I could, in the direction the dead horse's tracks had indicated.  All around me the air carried stenches of rotten eggs or ammonia depending where I stepped, the trees were twisted in bizarre shapes, and even the birds seemed to sing in minor key.  In the midst of the marshes, I came across the remnants of a village which had long been abandoned.  From the state of decay of the collapsed houses and the one building which had been built of stone masonry, the church, it looked like the empty village had been rotting for perhaps two hundred years.  I checked for nests of ghouls or other unpleasant creatures but found nothing.  It looked like the inhabitants had taken their possessions with them, abandoning in an orderly fashion rather than escaping some imminent peril.  I was puzzled; from what I knew this area had been taken over by the swamp some eighty years ago, but this village was much older.  Had there been some older blight which had been forgotten after the new ones captured everyone's imagination?  And was this village the ruin I was to find?

I decided to push on.  Fortunately, my horse was not getting too skittish to control, and if his health did not improve it did not deteriorate markedly either.  As I kept moving forward, I encountered a most impressive sight: I came across a track like a logging road cut through the marshes, the crushed sinuous track of a snake of such gigantic proportions that the mind could barely grasp it.  From the marks it had left, I pictured it as a rival in size of the Beast of Dechain, although it was apparently land-bound.  I clucked to reassure my horse, keeping up a soothing patter, and gingerly crossed the snake tracks.

At night I made camp, hoping my small fire would keep more beasts away than it would attract.  The second morning after I had started my trek through the Undying Swamp, I found signs that someone had visited my little camp in the night.  Although nothing was damaged, it looked like someone had rooted through my baggage and even come close and examined me, although I did not think I had been touched.  The visitor had left footprints, some of those no more than a handspan from where my head had rested.  The footprints were those of a very large man, with boots soled with a smooth sheet of leather without a heel piece, in the Vesten fashion, and they looked very fresh.

I hurriedly grabbed my bags, tugged on my horse's bridle, and started following the tracks.  The man could not be more than an hour ahead of me.  I followed then leading on, straight ahead in the direction I had already been following, for half a day.  But there was something very strange about these tracks: the more I followed then, the older they looked as I progressed, instead of looking fresher, as if the man had been walking backwards.  By the time I lost them completely, they looked as if they had been weeks old.

Puzzled, I kept moving forward.  I turned this event over in my mind, and started thinking that it looked as if the tracks were ageing faster than they should.  And that village that had looked so old should have been abandoned only eighty years ago.  In my youth, I had heard from Ricardo O'Bannon many stories of the Sidhe in which the heroes aged too quickly or not at all in the lands of the Sidhe; was the Undying Swamp similar in this respect?  Still I moved forward.
 

That night, I tried to remain alert and sleep with one eye open.  But although nothing disturbed my sleep, I woke up the next morning to see more tracks.  And more than that, I found that the nightly visitor had left a group of whittled sticks, arranged to form the rune Herje.  Ruin was near.  I hurried to follow the tracks, but once again they decayed fast and I lost them by mid-day.  The fourth evening, I decided not to sleep at all but instead keep watch for my visitor.  I used the sticks, and a couple more that I cut and stripped of their bark, to form the rune Fornuft and left it in plain view.

Despite my efforts to remain awake, I must have slept for come dawn I woke with a start.  The sticks had been rearranged into a third rune I did not know; and I could see bushes and branches still swinging where someone had moved through a moment ago.  I jumped to my feet and ran in pursuit, leaving horse and luggage behind.  I could not catch sight of the mysterious visitor, though the bushes were whipping back behind him and his tracks were plainly visible.  I called for him to wait, but to no effect.

As I raced to catch up with the prowler, I heard my horse whinny in terror far behind me; then the sound was abruptly cut off.  I had a half-second of hesitation, but continued my headlong pursuit.  This was the closest I had come to catching the mysterious visitor, I feared I would not get another such opportunity.  I ran on.

Then suddenly I emerged into a clearing and beheld a longhouse of dark smoky wood in the Vesten style, larger even than the one which had held the feast on Grimstadd Island.  The tracks led to its door.

I knocked at the door, insistently, but received no answer.  After a circuit around the longhouse showed that there was no other door, I came back and knocked again, before trying the door.  It was unlocked, and swung on leather hinges.  The inside of the house was dark, the only light that of the door where I stood and of a smoke hole in the ceiling.  Once my eyes adjusted, I finally noticed a man, sitting at the far end.

He was the largest man I had ever seen, taller even than Jemy.  He was dressed in Vesten fashion, and his hair was gathered in long thick braids.  On his bare shoulder I saw a large tattoo of the rune Herje.  He looked at me.

"Why are you here?" he asked.  I heard his voice not as sound or language, but in my very mind.

"I have been charged with finding ruin," I answered.

"You have found Ruin.  Who sent you?"

"The Oracle Gunrud Stigandsdottir.  She told me to bring there a gateway."  As I spoke, I pulled out the Fornuft rune hanging at my neck on its string of sinew.  I saw no supernatural sign, no magic, no indication of what I should do, but I judged that this must be the time to take it off.  I slipped it over my head and held it out for the man.  "Is this for you?" I asked.

He took the rune.  "Yes, this is her work," he said.

There was a long pause.  I was a bit flummoxed by the anticlimax.  "Well, then, that's taken care of," I muttered and turned to leave.

Just as I reached the door, the man spoke again in a flat voice.  "Javier will die before the year is out."

I whirled around and stared at him with widened eyes.  "What?!"

"Javier will die before the end of the year," he repeated without inflexion.

My heart was suddenly beating hard as if I was running again, and my mind was a blaze of wild thoughts like raging flames.  I took a deep, shaky breath to try to return to some semblance of calm.  "How?  What happens?" I stammered.

"Oh, there are a number of ways he can die," the man answered with almost bored look.

I gritted my teeth, struggling for calm and for logic.  Javier is a common enough name, I thought, clinging to tatters of hope.  "Which Javier do you speak of?" I breathed.

The Vesten looked at me contemptuously, making it clear there was only one possible answer.  The rage that was filling me reached boiling point.  "You son of a bitch," I hissed.  I turned on my heel and walked out, slamming the door as hard as I could.  This does not work nearly well enough with leather hinges.

In a daze, too angry to see clearly, I somehow found my way back to the camp I had left behind.  There, I found that most of my gear and luggage had been destroyed, crushed by the passage of the giant snake!  Of my horse there was no trace.  The miasma left by the snake's passage was so potent, I was seized by a violent nausea.  As soon as I had recovered enough, I gathered what I could salvage and made my way back to the village at the outside edge of the swamp, too slowly for my taste.  By the time I reached it, Father Adolf was well enough to celebrate his first mass since his injury.  I attended it sombrely.

I assumed that the roof of the church rectory had collapsed because Ruin had been there and his presence had caused the wood beams to age too fast, just like they had done for his horse, the swamp village, and the tracks.  I suspected I had been protected from this effect by the other rune pendant received from Gunrud Stigandsdottir.  Had he been following me, that night in the village?  Listening to my conversation with Father Adolf?  Attracted, perhaps, by the runes I carried?

I bought another horse from a farmer and made my way back to Freiburg as fast as I could.  I did not know for sure what I wanted to do; part of me wanted to abandon the Oracle's damned prediction, another part wanted to actively thwart it, and the third argued that perhaps the only way to subvert it was from the inside, by following it closely.

I must know more to act with any intelligence, for the rest of the prophecy was garbled.  I thought the "first", "second", et coetera referred to the months, but could understand little more.  The second stanza did not seem to refer to any action of mine at all.  The third was not very helpful either: death always did seem to follow at my heels, and what in heaven was "the land without"?  Is not all land without of something or other?  But the fourth stanza bid me seek one who crossed swords with my father and drank to his health in seas of blood.  Perhaps this could refer to Aaron Blackstone.  Seas of blood?  Did this refer to the Straits of Blood, or perhaps to that area south of the Vodacce Keys that sometimes runs red where Lorenzo Island used to be?  I must know more about my father and his enemies.  I needed to ask those who had known him: uncle Enrique, uncle Andrès, perhaps aunt Margarita, or uncle Julio.  I would also try to find out what that other rune had meant, the one Ruin had assembled in response to Fornuft.

I did not know what I would do about this prophecy, but I was seething with fear and rage.  I bit back oaths that would have only been a poor attempt at assuaging my feelings, for I felt as if the entire world was listening, waiting for dangerous promises to tumble from my lips.  I had no one to turn to, no one I could tell this story to, no one I could ask for help.  Even to Melisandre I would have to give an amended account, for some secrets are not mine to tell.