The Black Star (Book 3)

by Edward W. Robertson

"There's no way down," a voice called from far behind them. Dante closed his eyes. It was the Minister. "Your friend is dead. Give yourselves up, and I'll ensure your deaths are just as fast as his was."

  He let a few seconds pass. The torches swam closer, half hidden by stray branches. Back toward the trunk, house doors opened. Silhouettes walked out with their hands up.

  "You don't understand the generosity of my offer," the Minister continued, audibly closer. "The alternative is you force me to hunt you down, and I force you into a box through a hole that is juuust too small for you to fit through. Unfortunately, that means you'll have to leave half your skin behind. We'll keep you in the box until the weather warms up. Then we'll move you to a cage and hang you, flayed but alive, for the crows."

  He laughed a little, then his tone grew weary. "Actually, I just made that up. That should illustrate there is no limit to the ways a man can inflict pain. Yours will be slow but ever-present. It will last as long as I want it to last. You will wish you had chosen differently. But soon, you will forget that you had another choice, because you'll forget your life was ever anything but you and your pain. That will be your world. Until I choose to let you die.

  "Does that sound implausible? Who would possibly have the patience to pursue justice for such a long time?" He chuckled, the noise hanging in the air. "Who indeed."

  "Decide," Somburr said softly.

  "We can't hide." Dante glanced to all sides. "Even Blays couldn't. I felt the Minister push him out of the shadows."

  "Then we're dead men. The only thing we can do is to try to take him with us."

  "If Blays taught me one thing, it's that there are always other choices. It all depends on how foolish you're willing to look."

  The torches were within a hundred feet now, advancing slowly as the soldiers inspected homes and thrashed the branches.

  Somburr laughed wryly. "We have failed in everything. When it comes to our esteem, we have no more distance to drop."

  "Funny you should say that. Ready for a leap of faith?"

  Before Somburr could answer, he jogged toward the end of the flat. The branches thinned, showing scraps of dark sky. The rain fell in merciless layers. Dante reached the end and stared into the darkness. He couldn't see anything but a few spindly branches below them, but the ends of flats weren't typically blazing with light. And the rain hazed everything.

  It didn't matter.

  "I can smell you out there." The Minister's voice was closer than ever. "It's time to decide. End it now? Or spend decades of torture wishing you could?"

  "Hang on to me," Dante said. "And pray my mind is as clear as it feels."

  Somburr took his arm. Together, they walked off the end of the platform.

  Rain fell with them, as if suspended in midair; after a moment, they outpaced it, speeding downward through the night. The Minister was saying something more—commanding his troops, Dante could hear it in his tone—but that tone was merely annoyed, with none of the urgency of someone who understood what had just happened.

  A sky of grief and an ocean of wrath threatened to swallow him. He wanted to be consumed, but he kept it at bay, opening an eye in the storm of his mind. He only had to hang onto the calm for another few seconds. That knowledge was what saved him.

  Branches ripped at them. Somburr clung tight. Beside them, flats flashed past, wood smoke hanging in the rain, bleak lights shining from cracks in the shutters. Dante leaned forward to try to fall away from the tree's mass, but it did little good.

  A flat zoomed up to meet them. White heat shot through his body. Blood flowed from a score of scratches and scrapes on his face and hands. He fed it to the nether, then drove the shadows straight down. The thunder of the crack boomed through the night. Splinters burst around them, spinning in the rain. They passed through the hole in the flat without a snag.

  He still couldn't see the ground, but he felt for it, his consciousness speeding through the nether suspended in the air and the rain, and then he felt dirt, muddy and rich with death and life, eons of it, the grave of the world since the birth of the first things. He was moments away from it. Finally he could see it, puddled and sopping. But that was just the surface. What lay beneath was hard enough to smash them beyond recognition.

  Beside him, Somburr began to murmur the last prayer of the Cycle of Arawn. He'd started too late; they'd be dead before he reached the third line.

  "Hold your breath and shut your eyes tight," Dante shouted into the wind.

  He moved his mind into the dirt. He made the dirt take on water, and prepare. He wondered if it would be enough.

  As they struck the surface of the mud, rather than compressing, squeezing beneath them until it was as hard as rock, it flowed away. They fell through the watery muck and it fell with them, descending beneath the skin of the earth. Clay closed over them like a cold hand. Dante forced himself not to breathe. Just a little longer.

  They lurched to a stop. He squeezed Somburr's arm twice. The dirt thickened beneath them until they began to rise. His lungs burned. Mud poured over his body, filling his ears, pooling inside his cloak. He exhaled, forcing his lungs to do something besides inhale, burbling the thick earth.

  With a flatulent pop, they burst to the surface, filthy and gasping. Dante's legs were too shaky to stand. He lay in the muck, hammered by the rain.

  "We're alive?" Somburr croaked.

  "Time to complete our duty." Dante forced himself to his feet. There was some shouting going on above them, but none that seemed alerted to the fact two interlopers had just plunged to their apparent death only to be reborn from the earth. "No matter what happens, keep them off of me."

  "What are you doing?"

  "Destroying the Minister—and his ability to make war."

  He drew his sword, the curved bone of Barden dull white in the faint light coming from the buildings in the roots of the tree. Dante walked through the mud, holding the blade at his side. Somburr splashed behind him. A rooty tendril forked from a larger leg of the tree. Dante raised his sword and wheeled it down. The weapon passed through with a crisp snap of wood.

  "Gods in the sky," Somburr whispered.

  Dante dropped his mental walls. The sea of fury crashed down upon him.

  He strode from root to root, cleaving each one with angled downward strokes. Many were too wide for his sword to part with a single blow and he had to sever these with a series of axe-like cuts. Chipped wood spun to the ground. A man approached the noise, lantern held aloft beside his head. Somburr struck him down with a beam of shadows.

  Within a minute, Dante had cut through thirty roots. Bass croaks filtered from the tree, but it hadn't yet begun to sway. He moved to one of the largest roots, one as wide around as a house, and hacked at it relentlessly, boring through with a series of savage swings. The blade never snagged or caught, sliding out as easily as it drove through. When it slashed through the last segment of the root, the loren groaned like a sick giant.

  Two soldiers ran down the stairs attached to the roots, demanding to know what was going on. Somburr replied with spears of nether. The men tumbled over the rails and splashed into the mud.

  Dante began to laugh. He was moving too fast for them. The Minister and most of his troops were still three hundred feet above, most likely threshing the foliage for their hidden quarry—and for Cellen. Even if they understood what Dante was doing, it would take them minutes to get down the stairs.

  He would not give them that long.

  He moved to the next-largest root. It split within seconds. He destroyed all those around it, feeling outside of himself, holy, the avatar of Arawn's anger. Nak looned him to let him know his people were nearing. Dante barely had the presence of mind to acknowledge this. All he could see were the roots.

  Many were enveloped by buildings, out of reach unless he were to hack his way through the houses and pubs, too. But more than enough were exposed.

  Another clap of false thunder shattered the darkness. The tree listed, leaves shaki
ng with the sound of breaking surf, then juddered to a stop, leaning visibly. Shrill screams pierced above the roaring moans of warping wood. Somburr knocked down anyone who came close. A single arrow flew past Dante. People fled their homes in the roots, dashing into the woods clutching children and bags of hastily assembled goods.

  The tree listed again, squealing and crackling. It leaned and leaned, as gradual yet inexorable as a sunset. Twenty feet away, a root popped in half, showering a house with shards of wood. Dante was covered in mud and blood and splinters, hands blistering, clothes soaked. Another root snapped under the pressure of the tree's gigantic weight.

  "It's time to go," Somburr said.

  Dante lowered his sword. It was gummy with sap, but showed no signs of wear. He began to speak, but was drowned out by another cacophonous groan. Dust and sand fell from where the roots bundled into the base of the trunk. Scores of people were screaming from the rounds and flats. Feet trampled the stairs.

  Dante backed up, mud sucking at his boots. Wood cracked on all sides. The tree lurched to the right. He turned and ran. He'd no sooner cleared the roots than a body fell into the muck in front of him.

  Above, the tree tilted crazily, a man too tired to keep standing but too sore to lower himself any faster. It was so big it felt like it wasn't the tree that was tipping, but the world: that the earth had spun loose from its axis and was yawing madly toward some final end. The loren was tipping away to Dante's right, roughly to two o'clock, but he ran for a hundred yards before stopping.

  "And what now?" Somburr said.

  "I watch my revenge."

  "Congratulations. There is no way for the Minister to survive. But what about Cellen?"

  Dante hadn't given that much thought. Since Blays had been knocked to the palace flat, his only concern had been tearing it all to the ground. The loren's lean accelerated. Dark shapes fell from above, thudding into the muddy ground. A cup smashed six feet from Dante. He backed further away. Roots snapped one after another in a ceaseless chain.

  The top of the tree swung through space, smashing into its neighbor, flats snarling and popping. The screams faded, hidden behind the deafening roar of rending wood and the thousand impacts of branches against each other. The fall slowed, tangled in the other tree; the entire loren rolled loose and cleaved down through the air. Dante crouched and covered his ears. It hit the ground so hard he was jarred onto his side.

  Branches cracked and settled. Debris rained everywhere, heavy lorbells and fluttering leaves; rain poured through the hole in the sky; survivors wailed from the wreckage and the neighboring trees.

  As Dante watched, lost in the spectacle, steps sounded behind him. He whirled. Mourn, Ast, Cee, and two of the scouts jogged up, weapons out. They came to a stop, gaping.

  "What am I seeing?" Ast said.

  "You did this, didn't you?" Mourn said.

  Dante wiped rain and mud from his eyes. "Blays is dead. Now, so is the Minister."

  Cee drifted forward. "What about Cellen?"

  Dante gestured toward the enormous crown of the felled tree. "It's somewhere in there."

  "The Minister may be gone, but his army remains," Somburr declared. "We have to find Cellen before one of his commanders regroups and secures the tree."

  Dante glanced back into the woods. Hundreds of lights had come on in the homes in the other lorens. Silhouettes lined the flats. "Our people will be here in minutes."

  "They can only hold back the resistance for so long. We don't have time to waste."

  "It's just a little black ball, right?" Cee glanced between them. "How are we supposed to find that in ten thousand tons of fallen tree?"

  "We'll have to figure that out on the job." Dante put away his sword and ran toward the tree. The others fell in step behind him.

  Except for leaves and rain, detritus had stopped falling from above. Broken branches and smashed homes jutted from the mud. Dante swerved around a severed leg; the body was nowhere to be seen. People lurched through the remnants like zombies, reaching out for Dante as he passed. The tree had been a tenth of a mile tall and, with flats reaching to all sides, at least as wide. Many of its branches had torn away and were now jumbled among flats and former structures. It would be impossible to search in an orderly fashion.

  "This will sound like a dumb question," Cee said, clambering behind him up the ramp of an upended flat. "But do you remember where you last saw it?"

  "The palace flat. Good luck recognizing it now." He slid down a branch and dropped to the ground. One foot landed in mud, the other in what was left of a body. He grimaced and stepped back. "But I know where to find it."

  His clothes were sodden and heavy with mud. But blood was the most insidious substance there was. Whatever it touched, it stained. He turned the nether on himself. It swirled to his knees, seeking Blays' blood. He hesitated, then opened a connection between that blood and the rest of it.

  Pressure pricked the front of his head. As with the deepstone, it didn't appear in a single point, but several. He chose not to think through the implication. One point pulsed much stronger than the others. He headed that way, scrambling over branches and boards. A pair of legs projected from the mud, the body buried from the waist up. Dante made his way around a miraculously intact public house, its sign dangling from the chain above the door. Its roof had collapsed and a subsequent fire was attempting to start inside, but despite whatever lamp oil it was feeding on, it could find little purchase on the rain-soaked wood.

  "Help me!" a woman cried, clutching the rags of a body buried under a crush of branches. "You have to help me!"

  Dante strode past, swerving away from the worst of the fall, passing quickly over the sparser wreckage of the fringes. The pressure grew slowly, then mounted. He turned back into the thick of things, following the nethereal cord over a cracked flat. Beside the trunk, a handful of survivors were emerging from the rounds, gawking in shock. Ahead, a flat was broken over a giant round limb, its middle propped up by ten feet. Dante passed under it.

  On the other side, structures lay in a dense rubble of wood—and stone. The palace was unrecognizable, a mound of devastation that looked as if an angry Gashen had descended from his throne of war to pound it to pieces with his sledge. The pressure in Dante's skull became painful. As he approached a jumbled wall, including a twenty-foot chunk of flat, he knew he'd found it. He closed the connection.

  "He's here." His voice quavered. "There's a good chance Cellen is, too."

  "Check the bodies," Somburr said. "Especially the Minister's, if you see him. They had a few minutes to find it before we brought down the tree."

  The others moved out, but Dante stared at the rubble. He pulled on a loose board. It bent, then slid from his fingers and whapped back into place. He got out his sword. With four cuts, he knocked a door through the wood, the rectangle dangling from an upper corner. He pulled it toward him and trimmed the wet scrap of wood holding it up. It dropped to the mud.

  The back of a head showed beneath a muddy cloak. Dante dropped to his knees. The body was more intact than it had a right to be, but even if Blays hadn't been dead when the loren fell—and Dante was sure he had been—he would be now.

  Somburr freed the body's right hand from the muck and opened it. It was empty. The left arm was smashed and it was clear at a glance its hand held nothing. Dante felt himself collapsing, tumbling in on himself from all sides. He could no longer hold it in. He wailed, one long and pointless note that seemed to hold all his sorrow in its tune, but when that trailed off, the hurt was still there. He told himself that he had killed the Minister, but found that mattered for nothing.

  Blays was dead. Blays was dead, and though that death had come in service of saving Narashtovik, Dante had been the instrument of his passage. As he'd been for so many others. Blays had been his only friend at a time when that friendship was the one thing standing between Dante and being stabbed in the streets of Bressel. Blays hadn't had to do that. He could have gone his own way. Instead, he'd
gone with Dante, saving him. In the process, he'd doomed himself.

  Somburr crouched beside Dante and hesitantly touched his shoulder. "It isn't here."

  Dante shook his head, spilling tears. Rain drummed the ruins. Wood clacked, stirred by someone outside the makeshift tomb encasing Blays.

  "This isn't helping us," Somburr said. "We have to find it before the Spirish soldiers find us here. Or this was all for nothing."

  Dante knew this was true. But he couldn't bring himself to speak, let alone stand. He knelt there, rain soaking his knees and shins. After a moment, he heard Somburr leave.

  His loon pulsed. Mechanically, he answered. Nak said, "Your troops inform me they're nearly on scene. And highly confused about the nature of that scene. Where would you have them meet you?"

  "Doesn't matter," Dante said.

  "Er, I assume it matters to them. Since they don't know where you are."

  "It's over. Tell them to stay where they are."

  "You found it?" Nak's voice rose. "Dante, what's going—?"

  Dante shut down the loon. He moved into the nether, but as before, there was nothing to use it for. The flesh was inert. The nether in it was now tasked with consuming, not mending. He might force it back together, but that would be nothing more than ghoulish cosmetics.

  But perhaps that was not true. Perhaps that was just what he had been taught. It didn't make any difference that people like Cally had never been able to bring back the dead. He wasn't Cally or any of the others. He sat back, calmed his mind, and touched the shadows.

  "People of Corl!" A voice boomed through the night. Dante looked up in shock. The Minister's voice was ragged, husky, but as strong as ever. "After a thousand years, the agents of Narashtovik have come back to try to finish their genocide. They are among us! Find them! Find them and shout out so they may be purged."

  Dante surged to his feet and reactivated his loon. "Nak, tell the troops to circle to the northeast of the downed tree. And to be extremely careful. The Minister's right on top of us. Got it?"

  "Got it."

  Dante cast about. He had to find Cellen before the Minister could clear the area. He didn't know how the man had survived—he must have evacuated across a connecting flat to another tree—but the world had once again turned on its head. All that mattered was Cellen.