“Spirit journeys are mostly safe for the young and inexperienced,” Gas-a-ho said. “The older you are and the more you have seen, the more dangerous these places are.”

The shaman paused. “I think this is as far as I go,” he said. He smiled, and for a moment, the smile and the man’s confidence warmed Aneas.

“Whatever awaits will be horrible,” the shaman said. “This isn’t some nice name quest where you find a turtle or a hawk. But we need you back; and whatever it is, you can deal with it. That I promise. Remember it’s only you. Only you.”

The shaman stepped back. The trail had become squelchy underfoot, and the shaman’s bare feet were red in the unreal light. They were in a fetid swamp, not a marsh now; and the swamp was a swamp of blood.

Aneas stepped past him, and walked on.

It wasn’t far.

He emerged into the clearing, and it was and was not his casting sanctum. The rock was the same; the tree, which seemed miles behind them, was there, although somehow they had come upon the pool from another direction. The tree was full of lichen, and now seemed dead.

The pool couldn’t be seen, because it was full of corpses.

In the aethereal, he knew them all. They lay in the real attitudes of the dead; crushed together like baitfish, pale and unlovely. There was Ghause Muriens, his mother; and there was Wart; and there, Ta-se-ho; and there was Ricar Fitzalan and there, de la Motte and there, Anthony the stable boy, his first love; the first death he’d ever caused. And there was Gabriel’s tutor, Prudentia; there was a pair of men he’d killed to protect a secret; there was a woman who had loved him, and whom his mother had turned to ash.

Perhaps seeing her made him understand that this was a dream—a construct in his own head—just as Gas-a-ho said.

He took some deep breaths.

Gas-a-ho appeared behind him. “What do you think you should do?” he asked calmly.

Aneas made himself look at the pile of corpses. “Clear the spring, obviously.”

Gas-a-ho nodded. “We’ll smoke together when you are done,” he said. “Irene is with us now, in the real. We cannot help you, but we are here.”

“The mind is not so very complicated, is it?” Aneas said bitterly.

Gas-a-ho shrugged. “Clean the spring,” he said.

Aneas went along the last of the swampy meadow, feet squelching in the blood. It seemed unfair that there was so much blood, or that it was so fresh, but the symbolism was obvious.

He reached down. Wart, the old Jack, was atop the pile. He got his hands under the man’s shoulders. Wart’s dead weight was horribly real; his head lolled bonelessly, his teeth clacked as his jaw snapped closed.

Get it done, Aneas thought.