The Great Rift

by Edward W. Robertson

  "I don't think this is happening," he said after a couple minutes of jiggling and prying. "I guess we'll just have to forget the bow, renounce our beliefs, and return home to retire as farmers." Blays reached down for an L-shaped rod with a crooked little tooth at its end, inserted it into the pad, and torqued his wrist. The lock squeaked. Rust flaked onto Blays' hand. He slipped the opened pad from its loops and dropped it in the grass. "Oh. I forgot I'm the greatest."

  "Congratulations, you have the skills of an eight-year-old orphan." Dante stepped into the darkness and lit a candle with a flicker of nether. The others crowded in beside him, accepting candles of their own. A wooden ceiling hung some twelve feet overhead, penetrated by a staircase that ascended into darkness above. At its other end, it descended through the floor to an even deeper blackness below. Melted remnants of candles sat on the floor. Burnt-out torches rested in wall sconces. The ground floor was bare except for a large wooden plank to bar the door and a few sacks of what was, judging from the mice droppings, likely to be grain.

  "I could only find the rope," Mourn said, extracting it from his pack. "I hope it's enough to get past the upper stairs."

  Dante tipped back his head, peering into the drafty heights. "I doubt there's anything wrong with the stairs at all. That was just a cover to keep us out."

  "Still, it's a depressing thought to come hundreds of miles and wind up ten feet out of reach of the object of your desire. I don't know what I'd do. Jump from one of the windows, I bet."

  "Me too, but only because of the shame of lacking basic problem-solving skills. Get moving."

  Dante led the way up the steps. The stairwell was so tight Mourn and Gala not only had to duck, they had to turn their shoulders, too, filling Dante's head with nightmare scenarios of one of them slipping and getting so thoroughly lodged between the steps that those above them on the stairs would be trapped, left to starve to death—or forced to burrow their way to freedom through a mass of hair and blood. After a complete turn, the stairs opened into to a round, plank-floored room. Drafts blew in through the arrowslits, disturbing Dante's candle. This room was largely empty, too, besides a few rotting chairs blanketed with cobwebs and an old set of dishes which weren't glazed but had instead acquired a fine finish of dirt.

  The following floors were just as barren. The tower's furnishings, in fact, gave every indication it had been in disuse for years now, if not decades, and that the last owners to put it to use had employed it as the watchtower/fortress it had clearly been built as.

  Then, some eighty feet up, the steps became a blank black space. Dante shoved his hands against the close walls, swearing, bracing himself against a vision of the fumbling body that would push him over the broken steps.

  "Hold it!" His voice echoed up and down. Blays nudged him, peering over his shoulder at the spot where the steps disappeared, a void that stretched beyond the curve of the staircase. Vestigial lumps of stone projected from the walls along the missing steps' former path, but these were just a few fingers wide and obviously crumbly even by the meek candlelight.

  "No problem," Blays said. "Mourn, get up here and throw me."

  "What?" Dante said.

  Blays gestured at the yawning gap. "He throws me, I land on the other side, we all praise my name."

  "You can't even see the other side."

  "Are you suggesting it's not there?"

  "I'm suggesting you will fall and break whatever parts of yourself you land on."

  "I'll cling to the wall. Like a handsome raccoon."

  "Raccoons, known worldwide for their proverbial jumping ability." Dante pointed at the cracked stone jutting from where the stairs had set into the wall. "At least try that before your leap of faith."

  Blays crouched down, forcing Dante back a step, and leaned forward to test the jagged stone remnants with his fingertips. Parts were wide enough for a firm toehold, perhaps for a whole shoe, but in long gaps the broken steps were flush with the sheer wall. Dust and sand sifted down into the darkness, sprinkling on the stairs a spiral below.

  "I don't know about this," Blays said.

  "Two seconds ago you were ready to send yourself smashing straight to hell."

  "Yeah, but that would have been over in a second. All this creeping along, waiting for the ledge to crumble underneath me...it seems kind of stupid."

  "I'll do it," Lira said from behind them.

  "You're not doing anything." Dante looked in vain for a fly or spider he could kill, restore to unlife with the nether, and use to scout the stairs ahead. "If you want to be helpful, start composing Blays' eulogy."

  "Remember to include a line about how I'm 6'9"." Blays ran his hand down his mouth. "All right. We tie the rope around my waist. I try to scootch along the side here. Mourn holds tight to the free end of the rope while Gala sets up below to catch me if I fall."

  "Meanwhile, Lira and I will shut our eyes and pray." Dante stepped away from the broken steps, pressing his back against the wall. "Let's do this."

  It took a full minute of awkward shuffling, retreating, and bumping around before Gala made it to the full turn below where Blays might fall and before Blays and Mourn got in position on the lower edge of the gap. Dante took up beside Gala and sent a small white light up to the broken steps directly above them, eyeballing exactly how much of the staircase was missing. Even from below, it wasn't easy to tell—the missing portion was a good twelve feet overhead, and the tight spiral quickly stole the ascending steps from view, making it more than possible there was another broken stretch further up—but he guessed some eight horizontal feet of stairs were missing. He anchored the white light above the ledge where Blays would cross, then slipped downstairs past Gala, keeping the nether close at hand in case of a fall. The whole stairwell smelled of fresh sweat and the sweet wax of burning candles.

  "All set?" he called.

  "I still think I should jump," Blays echoed.

  "If you fall, use your last thought to pretend that's what you did."

  "Make sure your head's out of the way. I don't want to get impaled."

  Leather scuffed stone. Blays grunted. His leg extended into view, tapping down on the cracked ledge. Dust speckled into Dante's eyes; he turned away, blinking hard. His light above flickered.

  "Lyle's balls!" Blays yelled. "Let's wait until the next time before we try this in the dark, huh?"

  "Just trying to add to your legend." Dante redoubled his focus, restoring the full glare of the white light. Blays clung to the wall, palms spread, his feet turned sideways for maximum surface area along the narrow, irregular, rising ledge. A rope trailed between his waist and Mourn, who'd installed himself at the lower edge of the gap, his feet and shoulders braced against the walls. Blays took a minor step forward, dragging his back foot after. Inch by inch, he struggled on, pausing regularly to strengthen his toeholds and dig his fingertips into the crannies between stones, grimacing, panting hollowly over the ticking sound of falling grit.

  His next step led him to a proper foothold, a flat chunk of step protruding a full foot from the wall. Blays extended his front foot and stepped onto the widened ledge.

  "Whoa!" He threw out his arms. Dante cringed, throwing his hands above his face. Blays chuckled brightly. "I'm fine. Good to see where your first instincts take you, though."

  Blays caught his breath, then carried on along the narrow lip of ruined steps. Within a minute, he reached the far side. Dante maneuvered around Gala and climbed up to the edge of the gap.

  "What now?"

  Partly occluded by the curve of the stairwell, Blays jerked his thumb upstairs. "There are some sconces and stuff on the walls. If I tie one end of the rope up here and you secure the other down there, it should be a lot easier to cross."

  Dante frowned. "If they don't pull right out of the walls."

  "Well, you don't have much choice. If you stay down there, I can tell everyone you're a coward and have three witnesses to back me up."

  Blays disappeared upstairs, rope dr
agging along behind him. He returned seconds later to sling the loose end downstairs. Dante caught it and wound down the steps until he located a wall sconce, then knotted the rope tight around its upturned iron fingers.

  He began the crossing before he could have second thoughts or face further taunts. Aided by the rope, against which he could lean most of his weight when toeholds were sparse, he proceeded quickly, heart racing; grit twisted under his soles as the rope's rough fibers chafed his palms. He stepped onto the solid ground of the far side with physical relief.

  "I think you've got a future in the carnival," Blays said.

  "I've got plenty of experience working with freaks."

  "Stop!" Mourn called, strangled.

  Dante whirled. Through his beard, Mourn was pale, features pulled in a tight rictus.

  "We're only kidding," Dante said, confused yet gently. "You don't have to—"

  "Don't go upstairs."

  "What are you talking about? We're fine, Mourn. We're not going to turn around with the bow right up these steps."

  "I just heard from Josun Joh."

  Dante rolled his eyes. "Josun Joh's less reliable than a choleric's bowel movements. What's he got to say this time? That by 'the highest place' he meant the bow's been stolen by eagles, and we'll have to enlist the Vulture King to get it back?"

  "He says we've been betrayed and Cassinder's personal army has surrounded the tower downstairs."

  Blays blinked. "That's...specific."

  A prickling, dreadful heat washed over Dante's skin. "This is a thing that's happening now?"

  Mourn's eyes were bright beneath his heavy brows. "Look outside."

  An icy wind knifed from upstairs. Dante headed up, Blays on his heels, into a dusty and cobwebbed storage room. He dimmed his light until the chests and sacks littering the floor were dim shapes of black and gray. Beneath the torn flaps of a burlap sack, a glimpse of tightly-sheafed arrows sent his heart thumping. He moved past them to a window of tall sectional glass with a couple broken panes. Stars twinkled silently over the black field. Dante extinguished his light, Blays his candle.

  "See anything?" Dante whispered.

  "A bunch of dark stuff. Think Cassinder's army is made out of coal-men?"

  "Wait." As his eyes adjusted, he began to pick out movements that couldn't be ascribed to breeze-ruffled weeds. Starlight glinted on steel. Eighty feet below, a row of men kneeled across the road from the tower's front door. "Mourn's right."

  "You're sure? Because that would mean bad things for us. Stabby things."

  "Twenty of them. Maybe more." Dante retreated from the window and relit his candle, crouching to hide the light from the soldiers below. "It's all right. The bow's up here. We can use it to escape."

  "There is no bow." Mourn's voice filtered up the stairway, ethereal, dolorous, shamed.

  Dante returned to the top of the gap in the stairs. Mourn hadn't moved. "Their soldiers are at our feet, Mourn. Very soon, they're going to come up this tower, or set a fire below, and you will be roasted like a very hairy and treasonous pig. Now tell me what you're holding back."

  The norren looked down at his heavy palms. Fear and doubt added years to his face. He closed his eyes. "There is no bow. Or anyway, if there is, it's just a bunch of legends that built up around a very normal weapon. When you came in questing after it, Orlen let you believe it was real."

  "What?"

  "He saw what you could do. That you're a sorcerer. He thought he could use you to—"

  Gala rose behind the seated Mourn, blade in hand. "That's enough."

  Lira's sword flashed from its sheath to point at Gala's back. In the same instant, Dante shaped the nether into a swirling black ball. "Silent. Or you die."

  Gala's face took on a resigned smile. "I don't fear death. I do fear my clan."

  "We're going to die down there anyway, aren't we?" Blays shouldered past Dante, nearly toppling him down the empty gap. "What does it matter what we know? Our brains aren't tea leaves. When our skulls get split, all that will leak out is a bunch of goop. So sit your giant ass down and let the man talk."

  Fleetingly, Gala's smile widened. She lowered her curved blade, sheathed it. "Fine. If he wants his final act to be the dishonor to his clan, let Josun Joh judge him."

  Mourn kept his gaze on Dante. "Orlen was using you to get back the cousin-clan."

  Dante swallowed against the tightness in his throat. "And now he's sold us out to the enemy while he rescues his people from the mine."

  "No!" Mourn's face jerked up, tight with pain. "Orlen just wanted your help. He didn't think he could secure it without making you believe you'd get the bow. You were sold out to Cassinder by one of our other clansmen. He thought it was the only way to get his family back. He's the one who tipped off the Bloody Knuckles, too. Once he saw we were poised to take back the Clan of the Green Lake ourselves, he confessed to Orlen and Vee."

  "Is that it?"

  The norren's gaze flicked past his shoulder. "The raid on the mine is real. So is the timing."

  "Meaning there's hope of an even bigger distraction." Dante glanced at Blays. "What do you think?"

  "That they'll kill me over my dead body." Blays grabbed hold of the rope and searched for a toehold down the ruined steps. "We should get downstairs. Block the door or see if we can make a run."

  "I'll be right behind you." Dante turned and jogged back upstairs. His mind whirled with anger and the helpless sense of being duped, of illusions torn away like shabby clothes. But there was no time for the self-pity or humiliation that welled beneath his outrage. On the upper floor, he lit his remaining candles and hurriedly placed them throughout the room. Cassinder's forces thought they had surprise on top of numbers. No reason to disabuse them of their own illusions.

  The others had already disappeared downstairs. Dante hardly slowed on his way across the rope spanning the gritty ledge. On the other side, he lit his feet with tiny white lights to show him the way and hurried to the ground floor, where the others waited in starlit darkness.

  "I count about forty versus five." Blays slid down from the narrow window to give Gala a pointed look. "Or should that be four?"

  She shrugged her broad shoulders. "I hope to see my clan again."

  "With that kind of enthusiasm, let's bump it up to four and a half. We could just let them siege us. Mourn and Gala are very large, so it should take several weeks to eat them."

  "We need to run," Dante said.

  "I'll lead the charge." Mourn gazed at the black window. "To erase my betrayal, I'll try to absorb as many arrows as I can."

  "You getting shot to death is not a plan." Dante crept to the window. Beyond, silhouettes of soldiers arranged themselves on the other side of the road. A picket of three or four troops waited further down the road toward the mine; presumably a similar group was blocking the opposite route to the manor. More than two hundred yards of open downhill slope separated the tower from the pine forest to the west, the obvious place for Dante to lose their pursuers—or to string them out and battle them in clusters rather than en masse. "Suppose they've got cavalry, too?"

  "In reserve at best," Blays said. "A horse snort carries pretty far at night."

  "So the good news is the cavalry might trample the arrows right out of our backs."

  "Can you make us invisible?"

  Dante shook his head. "Too complicated. I would have to match the illusions to whatever was around us. On all sides. Constantly."

  "Is that all?" Blays gritted his teeth. "But you could make illusions of us. Which could run out to do battle, swords in hand."

  "While the real usses make a break for the woods."

  "While you wrap us up in one of those balls of darkness. Like back in Bressel."

  "Wouldn't be able to see where we're going. We'll trip constantly. The'll be on us in seconds."

  "Will you stop making this so damned hard?" Blays laughed. "So we hold hands. Mourn's in the middle. I'm at the front. You focus on keeping the sphere cente
red around Mourn's big head, keeping the darkness just wide enough so I can peek out the front and make sure we're not about to plunge into a ditch."

  "That is insane." Dante laughed, too, waving one hand in dismissal. "Don't bother to ask. No, I can't think of anything better."

  Lira shook her head. "I don't understand a word of what you two just said."

  "Don't worry, neither did I," Blays grinned. "Just hang on to my hand and cut anyone who tries to take me away."

  "Are those the same orders you'd give a man?"

  "I don't know. Become one and we'll find out."

  Dante wasn't troubled by the idea of maintaining the shadowsphere during their run. In that alley in Bressel, the ball of darkness had been the very first time he'd used the nether—in fact, it had appeared completely by accident, a physical manifestation of his quite conscious desire to escape the men who'd been pursuing them. In much the same way he could hold a conversation while watching a play, he was certain he could keep up the sphere and their illusory doubles even while being tugged along blind down a hill. If he tripped, however, or inhaled a fly, all bets were off. Then it would be them, in the open, before some forty armed men.

  There was just enough space in the tower for the five of them to string themselves out hand in hand. Dante conjured the shadowsphere, concealing them inside a ball of perfect black. He shrunk the sphere until Blays called out that he could see, then held its size in his mind, memorizing the influx and arrangement of nether that would keep it at its present circumference.

  When he let the sphere fall away, the starlight was so crisp and silvery he could see the faces of the soldiers across the road. Dante drew the wavy knife he'd won at Nulladoon and traced a stark red line down the back of his arm. Nether fed on the blood as it ticked to the floor. One by one, he shaped the shadows into doppelgangers of their waiting crew. The matches were far from perfect—their flat eyes and chunky hair would easily be discredited in direct sunlight—but under full night, the hulking forms of two norren would be unmistakable. He finished the illusion with two human males, one blond and one dark-haired, and a woman with her long brunette locks clamped tight in a ponytail. Lira watched her double walk to the door with the strange half-smile of someone who's just heard something unspeakably rude.