He stumbled out of the tomb, hunched down, and scanned the broken, churned-up ground. A part of him was close to hysteria: to hope he'd stumble over a fist-sized black object in the middle of all this destruction? He felt through the nether, hunting for any sign of its heft there, but it hadn't stood out to him during the brief moment he'd held it in the Woduns and it didn't stand out to him now.
Every few seconds, someone shouted from the darkness. Most were asking for help, but some claimed to see foreigners. Enemies. A hint of black shined from the mud. Dante bent and pawed at it, slicing his finger on a broken mug. Idiotic; Cellen didn't gleam.
He moved on. Pointless, his mind screamed. He ought to sneak up on the Minister and murder him. Split the man in half. But that would only martyr him. Someone else would march his troops on Narashtovik instead.
A silhouette jogged at him through the rain. He swept out his sword. Cee splashed up in front of him. "Somburr told me you'd be here."
"And I'm searching for Cellen. The Minister is back."
"I heard." She held out her closed hand. "So I thought you might want this.
It dropped in his palm with the weight of a mountain. Black, lightless. His knees quivered. "How did you find it?"
"Later." Her lips pulled back in a grimace. She tossed her head, looking away. "Now take it and use it before I do."
He crushed her to her chest, then stepped back and held Cellen in his open hand. It felt different this time. Ready. He fell into it like a hole in the ground.
The rain hovered in the air. Cee was motionless, her hair unstirred by the wind, which had stopped as well. The flicker of a fire down the broken flat became an unwinking glare. All the world was frozen. Ended. Complete.
A million new worlds began in that world's place. Every dream, every wish, waited like a doorway. All he had to do was step through. The power to level Corl. To expand his reach into the nether tenfold, and walk the earth like a god. To live and go on living for century after century, young and unchanged while everything else withered, decayed, and became replaced by its offspring. Doors spread to all sides, promising health, prosperity, strength and wisdom beyond all measure. He felt as tall as a loren, as invincible as the Woduns. As unstoppable as a river and as mighty as Arawn. If he chose the right door, he could feel that way forever.
The doors converged, coming together like cards fanned on a table being swept back into a deck. In a blur of possibilities and promises, they folded into a single portal.
He stepped through.
40
Nothingness. No sensations, no feelings, no thoughts, no place.
Then somethingness, although there was still no sense of time, nor self. Like the memory of sleep. There was an openness, and emptiness, like falling, or like the apex of a leap into space, but there was no sense of danger to this feeling. It just was. With it came the feeling of a thing about to begin, like the eastern horizon on the moment before dawn.
And then stars everywhere, as far as the eye could see—not that there were any eyes to see with—a field of black and silver that scrolled on and on like the view from a rolling carriage. It was infinity, startling and eternal and so achingly beautiful you felt blessed to be allowed to see it.
He was himself again. He was six years old and he was proud of this because it had just happened. For his birthday, his mother had given him a sling. Then she'd told him to go catch something with it so they wouldn't be hungry. He'd said okay and ran into the forest behind the houses and that's where he was now, only he'd kind of forgotten about the rabbits and the squirrels and was hucking rocks at trunks and leaves instead, or just whirling the sling around his head to hear it whoosh. The forest was big and he'd seen a lot of it because he wasn't afraid but there was always more to see.
He ran past the tree with the bees, hopping on one leg so they wouldn't sting him, and then past the birches, where he didn't stop to peel the papery bark because he wanted to get some more stones and see if he could use the sling to skip them all the way across the stream, and he went to do that for a while, and it was fun. When it got less fun, he went down to where the stream got wide and ran across the beaver dam to the other side. Running felt good, so he kept going, all the way across the meadow with the stumps and into the piney canyons on the other side. They smelled good, like when you cut them with a knife, but he'd never gone all the way through them because there wasn't anything to see in them.
That's when he saw the rabbit in the mulch beneath the tree. He didn't really want to kill it and that was probably why he missed it with his first stone. The stone spat dirt everywhere and the rabbit bolted up the canyon, back legs flying like the fastest thing in the world. He didn't stop to find his stone, just chased the bunny. He ran after it to the next canyon and then stopped to look at him. Rabbits weren't too smart and he guessed that was why it was okay to shoot them. He whirled his sling, but missed again.
It ran more and he chased more. It went into some brush and he looked for it and then stomped around to try to scare it out. It was smarter that time, though, because it didn't get scared. Maybe when he'd gone around to the other side of the brush it had snuck out the way it came in. Whatever it had done, it had tricked him. It was no good dealing with a tricky rabbit. He walked away from the shrubs so it could fool someone else instead.
He was further into the canyons than he'd been before and he wanted to see what was beyond. He ran on some more, twirling his sling around. He got to the top of a ridge. After a little ways beyond it, the trees thinned. There was a meadow with a house and some fields behind it. A girl ran toward the house, blond hair flying behind her, and he thought she was having fun like he was, but she was screaming: Daddy! Help me, Daddy!
He thought she was just a girl being scared of nothing, but a yellow dog bounded out of the tall grass, not friendly like dogs did, but in the way of a bigger animal that meant to eat a smaller one. The girl ran and ran but the dog got closer. He started running, too, whipping his arm around to build up speed in the sling. A dog was much bigger than a rabbit and he knew he could hit it, but he was too far away, the dog would get to her before he could get to it. She was going to get hurt.
Daddy! she said, and her voice pierced everywhere. It's chasing me!
The dog bounded at her heels. He slung the stone forward, thinking he might scare it, but it fell short in the grass. The dog nipped at her heels. She shrieked.
A man ran from the house. He had a stick in his hands and a mad look on his face. The dog swerved away but then remembered it was hungry and went back to nip at the girl. The man got to her and scooped her up in one hand like she was nothing. The dog stopped and backed up, watching him. You get away! the man said. Get out now! He swung the stick through the air. I'll beat the mean out of you!
The dog turned and trotted toward the woods, looking back over its shoulder. The girl pressed her face into the man's neck, crying. He stroked her hair. It's all right, he said. I'm here. You're safe. I'll always be here.
And the man was so strong Blays knew it must be true.
He was lying on his back. He was no longer nothing, or everything among the stars, or a child coming to terms with the fact he had no father who would always be there to protect him; he was lying on his back, and he felt fine, though he had the recent memory that this hadn't recently been the case at all.
A face hung above him. It looked scared. Maybe that was because it was dark and the roof above their heads was broken and splintered and leaking like a sieve. The face was Dante's. Blays sat up, wincing as if he expected pain, but there wasn't any.
Dante lunged forward and hugged him as hard as he could.
"Get off me," Blays laughed. "You're all muddy."
Dante withdrew and wiped tears from his eyes, but all that did was smear more mud around. "You're back."
His voice was so small Blays had to laugh again. "What..?" He looked around the cramped room with the shoddy roof. "Actually, let's start with that: What?"
Dante's face went through several emotions at once. He shook his head. "The Minister's hunting us. I'll tell you on the way. Just don't—get hurt again."
Blays stood. One of his swords was on his belt. The other was sandwiched between what appeared to be a pile of lumber and a ton of mud. He yanked it free. "Wait, 'again'? What happened last time? I feel fine."
Dante pulled him out of the tent-shaped room into a rainstorm. Oddly, instead of leaves and branches and whatnot, the cloudy sky was visible. To his right, a long, dark wall stretched in both directions. The usual bits of tree were everywhere, but the ground beneath him wasn't the hard, smooth surface of a flat. It was very definitely mud. Dirt. The stuff that sticks to the surface of the earth.
Cee was goggling at him, eyes like two full moons. "You..."
"Me," Blays said.
People were crying and moaning in multiple directions. Dante muttered into his loon. Blays had the feeling he ought to be more concerned by the rainy, shrieking, smashed-up chaos around him, but the truth was he felt great.
"The Minister's forces are on the other side of the trunk," Dante said. "Roughly ten o'clock. Ours are waiting outside the nearest loren at five o'clock. Somburr, Mourn, and Ast are already on their way to meet them."
He took off jogging away from the dark wall. He hopped over something. A body. Something clicked in Blays' mind. Somehow, the loren had toppled. He must have been in it. Gotten hurt in the fall. Dante had healed him. But how could the tree—?
"They're here!" a woman shouted. "The outlanders, they're right here! Gods save us! Gods—"
Something darted through the leaves and she went silent. But others were calling out in her stead, beseeching the Minister for help. Dante swore and broke into a sprint, diverting around the busted lumber of a pub. Martial commands barked through the night. Dante skidded in the mud, facing the box canyon of a shattered flat. He turned around, ran out the way they'd come in, and hooked around the debris. A couple of clicks went off, followed by thuds: the Spirish soldiers' mechanical bows.
"They're here!" a man said. "They're heading south!"
His bow clicked. The bolt flew through the shreds of Dante's cloak. Cee dropped to one knee and fired back. Her arrow hissed through the night. The man groaned.
The path ahead was hemmed in by the remains of a flat. The ground was strewn with broken wood, crushed branches, shards of ceramics, and splintered furniture. Blays wove through it, following Dante's path. After a hundred yards, the flat to their right ceased. Dante cut south through a field mounded by thick clusters of leafy branches. A loren loomed a couple hundred yards away, lofts alight with lanterns, but there was too much wreckage and rain to see if Narashtovik's army was waiting at its base.
More of the crossbows clacked ahead and to the right. Green-clad soldiers spilled over the remnants of a flat, shouting to each other as they fired on the three escaping foreigners. Dante veered to the left, putting more branches between themselves and the enemy.
The loss of vital seconds proved a crucial mistake. Ahead, a phalanx of green-clad troops poured from a gap in the flat, cutting them off. Rain glistened on swords and spears. Dante attempted to cut toward three o'clock, but that was only taking them further from the next loren, where their reinforcements were currently waiting to help them escape from Corl.
The Minister's men kept pace, paralleling them through the rain. With less debris ahead of them, they were able to close ground. Dante put his back to them, returning toward the main ruins of the tree. Blays and Cee followed. Dante spoke into his loon in quick, choppy barks, then went silent.
"We're doomed, aren't we?" Blays said.
"It's okay," Dante said over his shoulder. "Narashtovik is safe."
Blays splashed behind him. "You got Cellen! Well, I hope you used it to make us impervious to arrows. Or is that what brought down the tree?"
"In a sense." Dante pointed to a chunk of flat just ahead. It was fifty feet square and sunk partially into the mud, its surface just a couple feet above the ground. Smashed buildings sat atop it. "Time to make a stand."
He jumped up to its top. Blays followed, Cee right beside him. Across the field, the troops were a couple hundred feet away and closing fast. Bolts sailed through the rain.
Dante moved behind a free-standing wall. "Cee, pick off as many of them as you can. Blays, deal with anyone who gets up. I'll make sure few of them do."
With a rumbling slurp, the mud around the flat began to sink, forming a moat. Blays got behind a wall and drew his swords. He wasn't sure about the exact nature of the plan. It wasn't like they could hold off the entire force indefinitely. A better plan might be to flee into the woods, lose the Minister's pursuit, and circle around to rendezvous with their soldiers somewhere to the west. Then again, with potential lookouts in every loren from here to the Woduns, that would be more than a little difficult.
Regardless of their options, this was where they were, fortified in an elevated position with plenty of cover. More importantly, Dante had chosen it. And Dante was not in the business of being outsmarted.
Cee's bow twanged, firing through a crack in the wood wall. Enemy bolts answered, drumming into their cover. Through another crack, Blays watched the soldiers dash forward. One fell, struck by an arrow, but they were urged on by their captains. Once they came within a hundred feet, some took cover behind branches to snipe at the platform. Most continued straight forward.
Cee stopped firing, sighting down the shaft of an arrow. Dante was holding back, too. Blays joined them by default, but reached for the nether, trying to figure out how many figurative arrows he had left in his quiver. To his surprise, the shadows responded as if he hadn't touched them all day.
When the first of the enemy got within twenty feet, Cee fired, reloaded, and fired again. Two men were down before the others neared the flat and were stopped by the moat, crying out in dismay. Cee felled a third soldier. A couple tried to leap across, but fell to the bottom with a thick splash of mud and rain. From so close, Cee could hardly miss. One man after another was knocked into the mud, but there were far more troops in the field than arrows in her quiver.
The men turned and ran for cover. Blays knew better than to celebrate. The crossbows rattled Cee's wall with a volley. Blays felt the incoming nether an instant before it burst in behind the bolts, exploding the wooden wall. Cee cried out, shielding herself from the hail of splinters. She threw herself flat and scurried behind the wall protecting Dante, bolts shredding the air above her. Dante fired back, nether streaking from his fingers. Men screamed in the field.
Blays risked a look out. Forty feet away, a crew of soldiers heaved up the planks dropped by the men Dante had just killed. They ran toward the moat. Dante hurled more dark lances at them, but the energy burst into tatters, disrupted by someone hidden in the ruins.
The Minister's troops hurled boards across the gap. Dante splayed his hand. Nothing happened. He swore and drew his sword. Cee dropped one of the enemy troops, then ran through the open space to join Dante. Soldiers ran across the planks and charged their position. Cee cast aside her bow and drew a short sword and a knife.
Blays stepped into the nether. Invisible, he ran sidelong into the opposition, taking one through the neck and another through the ribs. The blades didn't sink in as easily as they should have—it was like hacking into thick gelatin, or semi-frozen meat—but the men shrieked in shock and pain. Blays struck again and again, felling them. The others raised their swords, turning in fearful circles. Blays wheeled his sword down on the head of a third, aiming for maximum demoralization. The man slumped to his knees and fell on his face. Six of the men broke, running back across the boards.
"Engage them!" the Minister shouted from the darkness.
Blays dismantled a fourth with stabs through the ribs. That sparked the others to vacate this place of mysterious death. They burst forward, swarming around the wall hiding Dante and Cee. Crossbow bolts tore past Blays, killing two of those who had chosen to retreat. A stray bo
lt hit him in the leg. He faltered, falling out of the nether.
He threw himself back into cover. Swords flashed behind the wall. Men made unpleasant dying sounds.
"Arawn on a platter, that thing is sharp," Cee said. "It went straight through their swords!"
"It had better," Dante answered. "It's made from a god's bones."
Blays inspected his leg. The bolt had hardly penetrated his calf. He removed it and hastily bandaged the wound. The storm of bolts tapered off, leaving them in a lull of rain and mist. Shouts erupted to the south. Blays peeked through a gap. Most of the men in the field had turned to face the other way. Impossibly tall figures ran from one patch of cover to the next, closing on the Spirish forces. And then the clash of swords drowned out the rain.
Dante emerged from the cover of the wall. "Well, we managed to hang on long enough. Good work. Ready to run?"
Blays leaned against the boards in front of him. "Engage as we go? Or is this one of them all-out retreats?"
"Our duty now is to get everyone home safe." Dante strode forward. "That means we—"
He threw up his hands. Splinters burst from the wall. Shadows erupted around him, knocking him down. He forced himself back to his feet, but his face was as white as the moon. "Run. Run as fast as you can."
Before Blays could reply, Dante took off along the flat, running headlong between the ruins of the buildings. Nether streaked toward him and he flung out his hand, disrupting it into nothing. He reached the end of the fragment of flat and leapt across, arms windmilling. He landed on the chunk beyond, leaning forward so far it seemed impossible he didn't fall.
Down in the field, a lone man ran toward him, hunched over, long limbs swinging. Cee fired. Her first shot was behind him. Her second shot was ahead. Her third shot was true, but the Minister held up his palm and the arrow snapped as if it had hit a wall. He threw a hive of shadows at Dante. Dante continued to run sidelong, batting them away with furious gestures.
The Black Star (Book 3) Page 62