Duke Khuldara had left an ancient uncle in charge of the castle. I had met him before, I supposed, as I had been to Nhadtereyba at least twice, following the court on their occasional peregrinations through the kingdom. But on those occasions I’d had troops to command, chits to fill out, seneschals to argue with, and counts and countesses to appease. Now I had nothing to do, and neither did the old man, who invited us to a luncheon in the great hall.

  I sat in the empty, echoing hall and thought about the flotilla, reasoning that they had reached Doefrit’s Bend by now, or were about to reach it. What would they find? Had the White Cats raised the siege at the shrine? Was the king free, and waiting at Doefrit’s Bend for the fleet? What was happening in Rahasabahst? Were my children safe? My grandchildren?

  We were all thinking about the same thing, but none of us wanted to speak our fears aloud. We picked at our lunch. Peaches, pitted and filled with with honeyed pork. A favorite dish of the great and mighty, but incompetently made. No doubt the cooks were tired from their exertions the night before. We were served by youths who were barely more than children. All of the grown-up servants had gone with the army. The guard that stood by the doors consisted entirely of ancients, so withered and enfeebled that they could barely hold their pikes. I looked at them and saw my future.

  It was during that lunch that we heard the story of the haunted forest on the opposite bank of the river. I had heard it before, of course, or pieces of it, although I must admit that I have never been that interested in the folklore of the countryside. As a mere guard captain, I knew that the Kingdom of Pahyangoeda loomed as a vague threat to our west, and that the trade that came south from Hasra split at Nhadtereyba, which sits at the confluence of the Soemohngea and Alphaehanandi Rivers. Pahyangoeda may be even more cursed than our fair kingdom. Rahasabahst is plagued by bandits and teeters uncertainly on the edge of the Singing Woods, but Pahyangoeda is a marsh, with few roads, and the country people must go everywhere in flat bottomed boats.

  I was explaining all of this to Iyedraeka, to distract her, and myself, from thinking about what was happening at Doefrit’s Bend. And to distract her from the ancient uncle’s eating, as the old man gnawed at his food and let greasy juice run down his chin and onto his robes. The princess listened attentively, or at least politely, then turned to Martiveht and said, “You were going to tell some story last night before we fell asleep.”

  “I wasn’t,” Martiveht said. “I merely mentioned that a story existed.”

  “Something about ghosts,” Iyedraeka said, and the ancient uncle lifted his head. He was curious about ghosts, it seemed. Maybe because he was so close to becoming one himself.

  “The story of the Circle Marshes,” Martiveht allowed. “But perhaps I’m not the best person to tell it. I only heard it from a traveling songster a year ago, and I am sure that a native to the kingdom would tell it better.”

  We all looked at the ancient uncle, whose rheumy eyes wouldn’t focus on us, and who gave a shake of his oversized head. “I’m not a native,” he said. “I was born in Hasra, and came south when my sister married the king’s brother. The old king, that is. Not this current Poritifahr.”

  “When was that, Uncle?” Iyedraeka asked.

  He considered, his eyes staring back into the past and glimmering with a sheen that could have come from age or from sorrow. “Fifty years ago. No, fifty-two. No, it must have been fifty-six.”

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  “Then you are the only native here, Captain,” Iyedraeka said, turning to me.

  “I’m a native of the city,” I said. “I know little of the countryside. You had better tell it,” I said to Martiveht.

  She smiled slightly. “I admit that I knew part of it before the songster gave the entire story. It is used as an *exempla* among us Sasturi.” She settled back and took a sip from a cup of wine. Her mosaic-like face rearranged itself in a pattern of quiet consideration. “You all know of the Immortal of Taokeihla, of course. How he found an impossible object in a shallow place in the river, and brought slaves there to turn a giant drill head, trying to break through the riverbed. He believed that the Previous World lay on the other side of the river. An ancient belief. It is said that our world and the Previous World are like different sides of the same piece of cloth, and that rivers are silver threads that can be seen on both sides.

  “Many people died, for the Immortal was a cruel task master, and didn’t care that his slaves’s lives were ground down as they turned the drill head. He had build a circular walkway that spanned the river, two curved bridges over the water, and the slaves walked it day and night, pushing on giant spokes, and when one of them died they were replaced, and the great drill head never stopped turning.”

  “Still there! Still there!” the ancient uncle said, and we stared at him in confusion. He noticed and was annoyed. “Not the drill head,” he said, as if he were speaking to children, “the hole in the river bottom. But there’s no Previous World beyond it. Good fishing, though.”

  Martiveht smiled slightly and took another sip of wine. “When the tinkers came from Hasra,” she said, “and drove the Immortal east, into the Singing Woods, the freed slaves stayed living at Taokeihla, and founded their city there. But the ghosts of the slaves who had died drifted south, with the river. Some say that they acted out of kindness, if the dead can be kind, and refused to haunt their descendants. Others say that they refused to haunt the place of their torture. That even ghosts wish to flee from memories of pain.” She smiled. “This is the part of the story that is told as an *exempla*. But the songster told me that the ghosts of Taokeihla ended their pilgrimage here, on the other side of the river, in the marsh lands south of the confluence.” She nodded towards the west wall of the hall, towards the land that we would have been able to see if there hadn’t been stone and mortar blocking our view.

  “They made circles,” the ancient uncle said, contributing to the story in his off-kilter way.

  “Yes,” Martiveht said softly, “they made circles. It was all they knew how to do. To walk in circles, even in death. They’re ghostly footsteps shaped giant circles in the marshes, and the water began to follow the pattern they made. You will ask how ghosts can shape the earth with their passage. It is unknown. But remember that these ghosts were ancient. They haunted the land long before the Plague of Ghosts of the eight hundreds. Long before the founding of my order. They were like the Witch of Lake Zaira, or the Once Again Maiden. Ancient revenants who obeyed other laws then the spirits we know now. They made their circles, and reshaped the marsh, so that the water flowed in patterns, one circle interlocking with the next, and living people could walk along the dry land that bordered the circles of water.

  “But no one walks on the dry land that borders the circles of water. No one builds houses, or shacks, or inns on this dry and spiraling pathway. The land is haunted, it is true, but there is also a monster. A very beautiful monster, but a monster none the less. A woman, dressed in tapestried robes, who floats along the surface of the water, making a great circuit through the many spirals. Her hair floats out on either side of her face, and the long sleeves of her dress brush the banks of the channels. If any person sees her, they lose their ability to speak. They can only whisper, and when they whisper they only speak of the lady. If any person meets her, she rises out of the water, and the threads of her tapestried robes unravel, and weave in the air, reaching out to seize the man she met and pull him hard into her embrace. As soon as she touches him, he turns to thread, and falls into the pattern of her robes. It is said that the voices of these captured souls scream out beneath the water, and cause the fish to turn white and the plants to die. And still she makes her great circuit, floating softly on the surface of the water, and they say the channels grow deeper beneath her, so that the marsh lands go far, far down, as deep as the depths of any ocean.”

  Copyright KPB Stevens, 2026

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  from The Letters of Mahrmets Buefol