Fare Leeches

Overview

Fare Leeches are the parasites of the Veil, among its Drifters. Every crossing of the Veil costs something, a memory, a span of time, a piece of the traveller's resolve, and the leeches drink that cost. A traveller with a leech on them pays it twice: once to the Veil and once to the leech.

Appearance

A Fare Leech is as long as a finger, soft, flat, and the colour of fog, so that in the Veil it is all but invisible and on skin it looks like a grey bruise. Its body is faintly translucent, and a leech that has fed shows a dim, shifting light inside it, like a scene glimpsed through mist. It has a sucker at each end and moves by looping. It makes no sound. A traveller feels it only as a cold spot, at the nape of the neck or behind the ear, that does not warm.

Habitat and Range

They live in the thick fog of the Veil, where resistance is high and travellers move slowly, hanging in it as leeches hang in pond weed, and are scarce where the fog runs thin.

Behaviour and Temperament

A Fare Leech drops onto a traveller from the fog and latches on, usually at the neck or the scalp. It does not drink blood. It drinks what the crossing takes. As the traveller pays the Veil's cost, the leech takes a second share of it, and goes on taking for as long as it is on, swelling and brightening. It drops off when full and drifts away into the fog.

Abilities

Its bite cannot be felt and its feeding cannot be seen. A traveller with a leech on them comes out of the Veil having lost more than they should: two memories for one, a year for six months, the reason for the journey along with the way. A traveller carrying several may not come out at all, but drift.

Life Cycle

Leeches breed in the fog and their young are threads of grey too small to see. What a leech does with what it drinks is not known; some say that the light in a fed leech is the memory it took, and that it fades as the leech digests it.

Uses and Dangers

They give nothing. Experienced travellers and the guides and toll-keepers of the Veil, the Veil-Walkers, search each other at every resting place for cold spots, and a leech burnt off at once takes little. Crossing in thin fog, quickly and with a firm focus anchor, is the best defence.

Lore and Belief

Travellers sometimes blame Fare Leeches for every cost of the crossing, as though the Veil itself would take nothing without them; it would. Those who come home missing more than they expected tell of a cold spot at the neck that would not warm, and some carry a hot stone to press there. Many believe that a fed leech, crushed, gives back what it took; it does not, and the light goes out.

Where It Appears

• The Veil