Sorrowen jerked his hand forward, as if swatting at a spider. Darkness zipped into the priest's back. He cried out, jerking forward, still caught in the broken boards. Raxa drove a black spike into his forehead.
Sorrowen grinned, then grimaced in horror at the sight of the slack body. No time for feelings. Soldiers were already streaking from the warehouse toward the docks. Raxa flicked bolts of nether from her hand like throwing darts. They converged on the lead soldier, cartwheeling him to the dirt. She grabbed Sorrowen's sleeve—he was still staring at the dead priest—and pulled him along the pier toward the river.
An arrow hissed past them, splashing down in the water. Raxa skidded to a stop at the end of the pier. There, a rowboat bobbed in the current—Raxa had spotted it while checking out the boats, noting it in the space in her mind dedicated to making sure she always had another way out, if not two or three. She shoved Sorrowen inside and untied the rowboat's rope from the cleat. They shoved off, Raxa rowing hard, the current sweeping them downstream from Keller's Pier.
"His body was just…" Sorrowen said. "He was gone. Like a shank of beef."
Raxa dug her oars into the water. "Yep."
"But how can that be right?"
"He shouldn't have gotten in a fight with us. You okay?"
"Yeah. Yes. I think. Are you?"
She nodded, gazing back at the pier. The soldiers were swarming into one of the smaller warships. Within moments, they were free of the docks, oars punishing the water. They'd be on the rowboat in another minute.
"Got much juice left?" she said.
"Juice?"
"Nether."
"Uh. Some." He glanced back at the advancing ship. "Not enough to fight an army!"
"We only need a little. In a few seconds, I need you to put a shadowsphere on the rowboat. Extend it past the gunwales, but don't cover the whole boat—leave the stern uncovered."
"You want me to hide us so they can still see us?"
"Just do it, okay?" Behind them, a man called out, spotting them. Raxa rowed on, giving them a few more seconds to catch up. "Now!"
They were swallowed in darkness. For an instant, she was afraid she'd been shot in the head with an arrow and was now dead, but she could still smell the river, feel the water tugging at the oars, hear the soldiers calling out in suspicion. She pulled in the oars.
"We're going over the side," she said. "Keep your head low and the sphere up. Follow me toward the closest dock. Us aweigh!"
She rolled over the side, plunging into the water. It was cold enough her whole body went tight. She swam underwater toward the west, pulling free of the dark sphere, then surfaced, keeping no more than her nose and eyes above water. Sorrowen surfaced right in front of her, making her flinch back. They were almost parallel with a dock fifty yards back toward shore. Avoiding any splashing, Raxa paddled for it.
The rowboat drifted downstream. The warship cut past them, oars bubbling through the water. Archers stood in the prow, bows bent. Men yelled out to the rowboat. Getting no response, the sergeant gave the order to loose arrows. They thunked into the rowboat's hull.
Raxa came level with the dock, pulling herself along it. Nearing the shore, loose flaps wrapped around her ankles. She kicked at the weeds and pulled herself dripping onto the firm mud. Sorrowen was right behind her, looking like a half-drowned cat.
She pointed toward the streets. They took off at a run, stiff from the cold swim. Water squished from their boots.
"Dry clothes first," she said. "Then we need to go to the loon."
"You found the cargo? What was it?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing? Okay, you get to tell Dante that one."
"They weren't delivering goods," she said. "They were delivering the ships."
Sorrowen stared at her like a cow. After a moment, his eyes popped wide. "Dante cut off overland routes into the Collen Basin. So Mallon built a fleet to invade instead."
"Did you see their hulls? Flat-bottomed. They can land anywhere. If we don't warn Collen, they'll never see the invasion until it's already behind their defenses."
25
The claws of the rats gouged his skin as they climbed up his body. Some stopped on his torso, pawing to his organs like a dog digging into sand. One continued up his neck and came to his face. Compelled, Gladdic opened his mouth. The rat reached inside his mouth with intelligent delicateness, took hold of his tongue, and tugged.
The tongue pulled away as easily as dough with too little water.
He awoke from the dream sheathed in sweat. He lay in the bottom of a war canoe. Stars and clouds fought to be seen through the wicked branches of the trees. Before the dream could fade, he held it in his mind, remembering the pain of his mutilation and the feelings that had arrived with each hurt.
He did so in part to punish himself, but also to tease out the dream's meaning. There were some who believed that dreams could hold visions sent by the gods. Pagans thought they were the dreams of dead spirits passing through you—or worse, that they weren't the spirits' dreams, but their experience in the afterlife. Others yet held that dreams were utter nonsense.
Gladdic thought none of these things. He believed that dreams were missives from the soul.
The rats had been Galand's. It would be simple enough to conclude that he was simply afraid of the sorcerer hunting him down again, but the primary emotion he'd felt on being eviscerated by the rats hadn't actually been fear. Not of physical violence and pain, at least. Rather, he'd felt as though he was being judged—and he'd feared that he deserved it.
Drifting on the waters of the swamp among the splash of the oars and the scent of the night, he let his mind drift as well. Galand dogged him everywhere he went. The man's pursuit extended beyond all reason. What if that was because he was beyond reason? Perhaps he wasn't in command of his own faculties. He might have been possessed by the gods to punish Gladdic. How else to explain his willingness to leave the land he ruled and risk his life so many times?
Not long ago, Gladdic would have considered these thoughts of his persecution first with self-pity, and then with rage. But he had changed, hadn't he? Yes. He had. He knew guilt. In truth, it had always been there. Yet his calling in Collen had been so righteous that he'd locked away his guilt like a filthy criminal.
Now, it rushed through him like the Celeset. It was strong enough to have compelled him to roll out the side of the canoe into the waters and their vicious fish, or to blast a beam of ether between his ears.
But he was now on a quest of far greater gravity than what he'd failed to do in Collen. The thought struck him like a thunderbolt: likely, the gods had cursed him in Collen in order to return him to Tanar Atain. And that was the truth within the dream of the rats. For rather than fearing them, he had accepted their terror, knowing his path was just.
He would carry that same acceptance into the depths of the Go Kaza. No matter the pains and horrors that awaited him, he would make his stand against the evil that brewed in the shadows.
Either way, he would find peace. Either he would bring light to the darkness that would consume the world, and know redemption. Or what awaited him at the Wound would put an end to this wretched life, where gods played with men like toys, and evil stood proudly on all sides.
He sat up in the boat. They were sailing in brute darkness, barely able to see what lay ahead.
In the Go Kaza, it was better that way.
~
The armada struck out from the captured city, oars churning the stagnant water. Dozens of canoes bore hundreds of soldiers away from Dara Bode. It wasn't the most overwhelming war band Dante had ever seen, but to the rebels' best knowledge, they easily outnumbered the forces that had escaped with the Drakebane.
The goal would be to run the enemy down before they could gain recruits from other towns and garrisons.
Dante sat in a double-hulled canoe next to Riza. Holding the mouse bone in his hand, a steady pressure built in his forehead.
"Northeast." He p
ointed inland, adjusting his finger. "Straight ahead."
Riza called the directions to Commander Barain, an older man with a piercing, hollowed-out glare, then turned back to Dante. "Do you know how far?"
Dante closed his eyes, examining the shape of the pressure hidden beneath his brow like a third eye. "Fifty miles from here, give or take. But they're on the move, too."
He'd tried more than once to send a dragonfly to shadow their foes, but whenever the insects had drawn close, his connection to them had been severed. He didn't know if that was the doing of Gladdic, the Drakebane's sorcerers, the so-called Knights of Odo Sein, or another force entirely.
He had too many questions and too few answers. Do Riza had been so busy organizing the pursuit that Dante hadn't had the chance to speak with him since reaching their agreement. But now that they were underway, Riza appeared to have few immediate responsibilities.
"I know how to deal with Gladdic," Dante said. "But I don't know how to combat the Knights of Odo Sein. What can you tell me about them?"
Riza took a seat on a rowing bench, gazing ahead into the trees, vines, and clouds of gnats. "The Knights of Odo Sein exist outside the Body of Tanar Atain. Rather, they are its sword. They are devoted. They are potent. And they are vicious."
"When we fought them, they seemed to be able to stop all sorcery in its tracks."
Riza chuckled. "That is precisely what they were created to do. Above all else, they are the reason Tanar Atain lives in misery. Many years ago, an order of sorcerers sought to topple the Drakebane dynasty. To their credit, they succeeded. To their disgrace, when the deposed tyrant returned from the wilds with the Odo Sein, the sorcerers had no answer to their powers."
"Do they use artifacts to suppress the nether? Or can they do this through a magic of their own?"
"If I knew a secret like that, they would have killed me long ago."
"Is it safe to assume they'll be traveling with the Drakebane?"
"Oh yes. They are his bodyguards, servants, and executioners."
"How many will there be?"
The nobleman shrugged lightly. "The Odo Sein keep their ways secret. Their numbers, too. Personally, I'd count them at no more than a score, but the Odo Sein have always been more interested in the hinterlands than the cities. Who knows how many more they have lurking out in the Deep Swamps?"
"And they were created to stop sorcery?"
"The Drakebane will tell you that our own sorcerers forged them to defeat the Dragon of Ages and his manifold demons. But the Drakebane would say that. In the old ways—the ways that were drowned out in the babble of a billion beliefs—there was no mention of the Odo Sein. Our defeat of the dragon was always a temporary victory. And it was told that, one day, for all our efforts, we would finally lose."
Dante was immediately intrigued: he knew almost nothing of Tanarian religious beliefs other than that they didn't seem to believe in the Celeset. Such a thing was bizarre, almost eerie. Gask, Narashtovik, Gallador, Houkkalli, and Tantonnen all more or less followed the same tenets. Mallon denied Arawn's status, but otherwise recognized the same gods and goddesses. Collen and Alebolgia emphasized things that were simply wrong—or beside the point, if you wanted to be charitable—yet the questionable branches of their faith extended from the same trunk Narashtovik grew from. Hell, even the Wesleans believed in a system that had its roots in the Celeset.
Every corner of the continent believed in some form of the Twelve Gods. Well, except the norren, at least, who followed their own ways, as they always did. But Dante thought that human and norren beliefs could coexist without contradiction: it made sense that different races could be overseen by and responsible to different gods.
But as far as he knew, the Tanarians were human. It was harder to see how their beliefs could coexist with the fact of the Celeset. Regretfully, he didn't have time to explore that just now.
"I know I can put Gladdic down," Dante said. "But the Odo Sein are another matter. If you can think of anything that could help me deal with them, we'll all be in a better position to do less dying."
He turned and waved his arms over his head, signaling Volo to bring her canoe beside Riza's vessel. They'd been offered space in one of the command ships, but Dante had thought it wiser to maintain some semblance of independence. Volo matched the double-huller's speed and course, drawing within inches of it. Dante hopped across.
He explained what he'd learned. Blays listened with a singlemindedness he rarely displayed outside of their strategy sessions. Naran paid close mind, too, although he sat with his hands folded and his spine straight, as if he were an attentive student.
Dante nodded at the sword sheathed at Blays' hip. "The short of it is that, right now, the only weapons we have to fight the Odo Sein with are one of their own swords, and a dirty lizard horn. We have to come up with more."
"None of your skills worked in their presence?" Naran said.
"I couldn't so much as touch the nether to put it to use. It was like it was locked behind a glass case. Same with the ether."
"Same here," Blays said. "I couldn't shadowalk. Couldn't get a bridge going."
The captain frowned at the looted sword. "Yet you say their weapons displayed unnatural powers."
"Their swords were crackling with so much nether they were as purple as a twisted nipple."
"That's a damn fine question," Dante said. "Why do the swords work when nothing else does?"
The question lingered in the canoe like an odor no one wanted to claim. Blays brushed off a cobweb they'd just passed through. "Do you actually expect us to be able to answer this? While I'm at it, should I also explain why bad things happen to good people?"
"I expect you to try to help." Dante reached out his hand. "Here, give me the sword."
Blays unbuckled it, passing it over sheathed. Dante drew it slowly. Initially, the metal was a dull black, as inauspicious as a sleeping body, but once it was free of the scabbard and exposed to the light and air, bolts of silver-black nether sizzled from its cross-guard to its tip, turning purple and then fading from sight, only to be replaced by a new wave of shadows.
Dante followed them down to their apparent source: the grip, crafted from a swamp dragon's horn. Yet the tough chitin deflected his efforts to move inside it. He could have used the nether to scrape a hole in it, but with extremely little desire to accidentally destroy their only working artifact, he turned to the swamp dragon horn instead.
Wielding the nether like a carver's chisel, he chipped away at the horn's armored exterior. Minutes later, he broke through. He was expecting a reaction of some kind—a blast of shadows, or even, for some reason, a small explosion—but nothing happened at all. The hollow interior was nothing more than an empty chamber roughly the size of an index finger.
Dante turned the horn in his hand. "There's nothing there."
"Maybe it's only a useful vessel," Blays said. "Try cutting into the one on the sword to see what's in it."
"What if I damage it?"
"So what? If you break it, can't you use the ether to restore it?"
"That's just…" Dante was about to call it "idiotic," but once he stilled his metaphorical knee, he rubbed his chin in thought.
"A good way to learn how to fight back against our lethal and mysterious foe?"
Rather than verbally conceding Blays had a point, Dante carefully worked away at the pommel of the sword, leaving the blade sheathed. As the horn's outer shell thinned, Dante quieted his mind, preparing to send the ether to reverse his work. But on boring to the center, he found it was hollow, too.
He gave it a good inspection with the nether, then sat back with a scowl. "Empty. I'll refrain from comparing it to anyone's skull."
Naran cleared his throat. "You're certain that when the sword is in active use, the nether is coming from the horn?"
"I'm not certain of anything. When you approach a problem, certainty is the enemy of the solution."
"Could this be similar to your loons?"
He drew the sword again. Dark lightning shimmered along the blade. This was an encouraging sight, as it meant he hadn't ruined anything—yet—but even with the hole dug into the horn, he still didn't see any source for the power. The weapon wasn't drawing nether from outside itself, either. He spent a good minute passively observing, then a long span poking, massaging, and vigorously eyeballing every square inch of the weapon.
Satisfied that there was nothing to see, and highly dissatisfied that that was so, Dante became thoughtless, asking the ether to restore the item to its original purity. The hole in the horn faded.
He sheathed the sword. "This makes no sense. It has to be coming from somewhere. Nether can't just appear like magic."
Blays looked stupefied, then grinned like a kid who's discovered where his parents hid the cake. "Yes it can."
"If that's what you believe, it's no wonder you can barely conjure up enough nether to dab a quill in. The shadows are always there."
"True enough. But you can't always see them."
Dante leaned back. His mind spit out the answer like a lemon pip. "Like the Cycle. You think?"
"I do my best not to, but sometimes I can't stand to watch you flail about. So let's find out. Hand over your torchstone. The horn, too."
Dante rummaged through his bag and handed over the stone and the horn. Blays picked up the sword, whisked it from its sheath with a flourish he'd obviously spent many hours practicing, and disappeared.
Volo paddled on. The canoes were approaching a narrow gap through the trees; captains hollered orders, directing the armada into a double-file line. As soon as the force passed through the gap, they dispersed once again.
The Wound of the World Page 44