The Great Rift

by Edward W. Robertson

  Though they'd seen no sign of pursuit during the day, Dante once again ruled out a fire, no matter how badly his feet and legs ached from the walk. The others were quiet and heavy-lidded, lost in their own thoughts of future days. Dante conjured up a small figure of light and shadow, sculpted its hair into Blays' tight crop, and shaped a tiny scabbard on its back and hip. For the next several minutes, he sent the figure bumbling over leaves, pawing through the grass, and scrabbling up trunks and limbs, each quest ending with an abrupt fall, be it of the figure to the ground or a spectral boulder on top of the figure, until Dante sensed his audience growing tired. With a flourish, the figure drew its swords, one white and one black, cocked its head in confusion, then drove both blades through its own ribs. It disappeared with a pop and a wisp of shadow.

  "I think you're in the wrong line of work," Blays said. "You should be touring taverns."

  "I thought it was funny," Lira said.

  "Thanks." Dante was surprised at himself; he wasn't normally the type to care about morale. The task itself should be important enough to command the focus of whoever pursued it. Perhaps he was trying to distract himself, too. He and Blays had been playing this shadowy business for years. Getting weapons to the scattered clans. Forging relationships and alliances. Traveling in disguise as merchants and field workers and Mallish pilgrims, all the while looking to subvert the Gaskan lords who claimed the norren hills. In its way, it had very much been a game, like children dressing up as pirates and bygone heroes, or concealing themselves with branches and cloaks while their parents pretended not to see them.

  All this was about to change. There would be no denying the realness of their actions once wheatfields burned and smoke rose from the ashes of ten thousand homes. Dante had seen plenty of skirmishes. One time he'd even fought in a proper battle with a few hundred to a side. They'd piled the dead in pyres and choked on the greasy clouds. What would the Norren Territories look like a month from now? A year?

  "I could tell a story." Mourn stared into the empty center of the camp. "If you are people who find stories entertaining."

  Blays gave him a skeptical look. "I prefer to be entertained by boredom. Stories and music just bores me. Which then entertains me. Which then bores me and—hold on, my head's about to burst."

  "Is that a no?"

  Dante smiled with half his mouth and gestured at the bare earth beneath their dewy tarp. "Does it look like you'd be interrupting our great works? Out with it."

  Mourn's watery brown eyes flicked between the group. "Okay. But promise you'll tell me if it gets too long."

  Blays mock-scowled. "Please, Mourn. There's a lady present."

  "This is from a very long time ago. From before the animals forgot how to talk." He pursed his lips. "Or maybe we just forgot how to talk to them. That seems equally likely, doesn't it? How come it's always their fault? Pretty arrogant of us talking creatures, if you ask me."

  "Getting long," Blays warned.

  "Back then, crows lived in big flocks. Fifty, even two hundred at once. They sang to each other because they thought it was fun. Their voices were different then, too. Not all nasty and mad. Instead, some had voices like thick blankets after a night in the snow. Others had voices like fast streams after a run through summer hills. For a long time, the flocks lived alone in the pines, singing to each other. Talking.

  "One day, a lost traveler wandered into their woods. He heard the crows singing. Talking. He tipped back his head, more lost than ever in their music, transfixed until that night when they roosted in the boughs. The traveler found his way home to the lowlands, and he told the others what he'd heard.

  "Soon, all kinds of travelers climbed to the high forests. They listened to the crow's song, too. After a few weeks of watching his fellow villagers climbing up and down the mountains, a clever man decided to catch some crows and bring them back to town so he could charge people to hear them sing. At first, he couldn't catch any of them. The crows knew the forests so well they could have escaped even with a broken wing. But the man came back with his nets every day, and finally, he caught two crows. He brought them home and opened a little theater, and all the other villagers came to hear the crows sing. To hear them talk.

  "But that didn't stop the people from hiking up the hills. Other men wanted to open little theaters of their own. Soon, everyone in the village wanted a pair of crows for their own home. For pets. To ease the hours on their farms and mills. More and more crows left in cages.

  "The old birds in the flocks didn't know what to do. The people kept coming, more and more of them, and they had cunning nets and snares. They were patient, too. They hid in the trees until the crows landed for the night, then snatched them up in bags and carried them off to distant lands."

  Mourn paused, running his hands through his thick hair. All the while, he'd stared into the imaginary fire, even squinting as he spoke, as if warding away the glare of flames that weren't there. He let out a long breath.

  "But a young crow named Nonn was getting angry. Like all crows, he knew they weren't born with their sweet voices. Their soothing songs. Berries grew among vines that lived in the crowns of the pines, and if you ate the berries, the roughest voice grew as smooth as glass. Nonn wanted to tell the people about the berries. If they grew them for themselves, they could eat them and sing to each other instead of coming to steal the crows away from their homes.

  "The elders exchanged one look, then locked Nonn up in a cage of their own. They refused to let him out until he promised not to tell. The people kept coming. Stealing crows. Sometimes whole flocks. The old crows accepted this, because most escaped to have more fledglings and keep their flocks alive. When Nonn crew sick of his cage, he made his vow to the elders. He was released. He kept his vow. Perhaps it could have lasted this way forever, a few crows lost here and there to greedy hands while the luckier ones lived on. But one night on a hike up the mountain, a man dropped his lantern. Flaming oil boiled up the trunks. The whole forest burned to the ground.

  "The crows had wings, so the flocks flew together to a new forest. But this forest had none of the vine-berries. Soon, the crows lost their cool song, their warm words. They croaked and squawked. To their ears, the sound was so hard and ugly they couldn't stand to hear each other speak. The flocks broke apart. They stayed apart.

  "Now crows live alone. They glare at people from the branches. And when a man grows too close, crows curse and spit until he goes away."

  Mourn didn't move, but he seemed to shrink in the silence that followed his story. Lira nodded, eyes downcast. Blays' brows knit together and stayed tied, unusually serious.

  Dante watched Mourn. "I haven't heard that one before."

  The norren didn't look up. "What did you think?"

  "I liked it. Very much."

  "I mean about Nonn. Do you think he should have told the humans about the berries? Or should he have kept quiet like his flock wanted him to?"

  "The whole damn forest burned down," Blays said. "Of course he should have told them."

  "But he vowed not to," Lira said. "Could you betray your people like that? I'd rather hang myself."

  Blays cocked his head. "Can crows get hanged? They seem awful light."

  "It can't be done." She rose and paced the cleared ground, head rumpling the underside of the sagging tarp. "Your loyalty is all you have. If you forfeit that, you burn the forest of your soul."

  Mourn watched her, expressionless, then slowly turned to meet Dante's eyes. "What do you think?"

  Dante held up his palms. "I can't say. Yeah, the forest burned down, but Nonn didn't know that would happen. Judging from hindsight is like betting after the fight is won."

  "What would you have done?"

  "If I thought it was the right thing to do?" Dante shook his head. "I would have brought the berries down myself and broken the wing of anyone who tried to stop me."

  Mourn laughed through his nose, mouth maintaining its blank straight line. "If I had to bet, which I don't,
I bet you would." Cavernous sorrow opened across his face, then disappeared. He smoothed his beard. "Josun Joh doesn't speak to us."

  "That doesn't mean he frowns on what we're doing," Dante said.

  "Anyway, gods can't speak to you every second of the day," Blays said. "He's probably off doing godly things. Screwing a goose or whatever."

  "I don't just mean us," Mourn gestured across the small camp. "He doesn't speak to anyone. Well, I can't state that as fact. Maybe he really does speak to some people. We probably think they're crazy, though. But he certainly doesn't speak to me. Or to Orlen or to Vee."

  Dante glanced between the others. "What are you talking about?"

  "I said we don't speak to Josun Joh." Mourn reached for his silver and bone earring, carefully unclasping it from the rim of his coin-sized ear. He extended it to Dante, gaze level. "We speak to each other."

  Understanding hit Dante as quickly as the memory of a chore you were supposed to have handled the day before. Acceptance took significantly longer. Such a thing couldn't exist. It was just as imaginary as the Quivering Bow. And possibly just as powerful.

  "What the hell does that mean?" Blays scowled at Dante. "You look like you're about to kiss him with your eyes. And find out whether those eyes have tongues."

  "Um," Dante said. Mourn just gazed back. Dante hesitated, mouth half-open. Mourn couldn't really be saying that. If Dante said what he thought Mourn meant, he'd look like a fool. A child. The kind of simpleton who believes every story he hears about fairies, dragons, and the sexual prowess of men from the Golden Coast. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

  Mourn nodded.

  At last, Dante shook his head. "I don't know what you'd call it."

  "We call them loons," Mourn said.

  "Of course you do," Blays said. "Now tell me what they are before I embed you in this tree."

  "If I understand correctly," Dante said slowly, "loons are a way of speaking..." He glanced at Mourn, who nodded. "...across great distances."

  "Correct," Mourn said.

  Blays rolled his eyes and flung up his hands. "So? Battlefield trumpets can do the same thing."

  "Is there any limit to how far they can talk?" Dante asked Mourn.

  "Not that I know of," the norren shrugged. "But I don't know much about loons besides they exist."

  Dante turned to Blays. "If you're capable of anything besides flapping around like a salmon, think for a moment. If we had a set of these, we could tell Cally what happened right now. As soon as he got done shouting at us, he could then tell us what to do next." He gestured at the dark woods. "If we had loon-equipped scouts across Gask, they could report the moment some lord levies his troops. If we posted them along the river, they could tell us the instant Gask's armies cross into the Norren Territories. We would know every step of their advance as they took it. Meanwhile, their reports would lag behind—by hours, days, weeks."

  Blays' head tipped so far back he looked straight down his nose. "I can see how that could be useful."

  "Forget that Quivering Bow of yours," Lira said. "It sounds like you've found something even greater."

  Silence retook the camp. Again, Dante thought of his future. From their downcast faces, he knew the others were doing the same. This time, however, it was not with unease and mounting dread, but with wary optimism. Like spotting the hole in a rickety bridge before it plunged him into darkness. If he was careful, he could still find a way to the other side.

  But that was only true if he learned to harness the loon. To make more. He looked up from the bit of bone and metal. "I'm going to need this, Mourn."

  "I know."

  "I may have to take it apart. Or break it. For all I know I'll have to eat it."

  The big man raised his bearish shoulders. "Do whatever you want with it. It won't be speaking to me again."

  * * *

  Dante worked through the night.

  He hadn't meant to. It was just that, after what could only have been an hour and a half with the loon—two at most—he looked up to see the gray-blue breath of predawn warming the trees of the eastern shore. He sat back on the dirt, suddenly bone-weary, as much from nether-spending and lack of sleep as from the knowledge that he likely wouldn't get any rest until they were snuggled into a cabin on a barge, punt, or river-schooner headed for the sea.

  The loon had resisted him. Any artifacts powered by nether or ether were excessively rare. The only one Dante owned was the torchstone, a source of light as portable as a coin, immune from the dangers of blowing out or setting unexpected fires, and capable of glowing brightly for a couple hours before it needed some sleep of its own. Dante hadn't yet explored much artificing himself. He was aware of some theory, sure. The main problem appeared to be that the raw energy of nether and ether was notoriously difficult to bind to the solid matter of bone or rock or steel. It tended to slip away, to leach through cracks, to boil off. Eventually, for all your hard work, you were left holding a perfectly ordinary jewel or amulet or dagger. Fickle, shifting nether was particularly difficult to work with. Ether was more stable, more pure and abstract, in a way, and if you were clever enough, it wasn't impossible to bind the energy of ether-generated light to a stone meant also to generate light.

  For Dante, however, trying to wield the ether was like trying to wrestle a full-grown tuna to shore using nothing but his elbows. He didn't know why the ether resisted him so strongly. Maybe his inborn talent for handling the nether had come at the cost of being able to work its stabler counterpart. Not everyone who could work nether could work ether, and vice versa. Even among those who could handle both, most found one far easier to work with than the other, and thus specialized in it. In fact, if Dante devoted years to learning the ways of the ether, there was a fair chance he could learn to harness it. But why spend all that time learning to walk with the ether when he could already fly with the nether?

  A decision he regretted quite bitterly now that he was faced with the loons. As the others had bedded down on the hard dirt, he walked a short way from camp and delved into the loon. Physically, the main body of the earring was a single knuckle-sized talon or tooth scrimshawed with norren runes too fine to read. A short silver chain contained two pea-sized bones, one shaped like a wishbone or stirrup, the other resembling a C or the curve of a jaw. The chain connected the talon to a silver icon resembling an arrowhead; Dante suspected it was a stylized pine tree. On its back, a blunt hook helped secure the arrowhead to a fold of the inner ear while allowing the talon to dangle free. Meanwhile, a clasped ring would connect it securely through Mourn's piercing.

  Dante closed his hand over the loon and shut his eyes. He breathed slowly, deadening his thoughts, focusing on the feel of moonlight on his skin, the taste of the wind, the noise of the stones. Nether pooled around his hand and sunk through his knuckles. Where it touched the loon, his inner eye saw its shape. Threads of ether wound through both silver and bone, the hair-fine strands as bright as sunlight on a pane of glass. His mind-sight swam closer and closer until each thread loomed as big as a rope. Perhaps it was a rope—at closer look, what appeared to be a single thread was composed of hundreds of other minute fibers. He moved closer yet, examining a fiber, and saw it too was woven from hundreds of threads of its own...

  He pulled back, dizzy. The bright white threads faded. The loon was a simple thing again, a physical trinket of metal and bone. It felt like short minutes had passed. In the gaps in the canopy, the stars had leapt a quarter of the way across the sky.

  He closed his eyes and delved again. Did the structure of these threads within threads lend the item its power? Or did that just happen to be the form that power took when the ether that formed them bound to the matter? This time, he kept his focus broad. The gleaming white threads converged at three distinct points. One node met inside the tiny wishbone. The other met inside the tiny C. The other was less densely-packed around the blunt hook on the backside of the arrowhead, more resembling a tight net than a solid ball of ether.
Other threads tangled through the earring as well, sparse by contrast. Structural support, perhaps.

  Subjectively, he spent an hour or so poking at the loon with delicate probes of nether, exploring crannies, turning it over for a better feel for its whole. And when he emerged, the dawn approached the eastern shore.

  He rose to urinate, then rooted through his pack for his water skin and a torn-off handful of bread. Long stale. At least the humidity kept it moist. Then he fitted the loon to his ear, holding it in place—he had no piercing himself—and listened.

  A minute later, he'd heard nothing but the pinejays greeting the sun. He waited for Mourn to wake up, empty his bladder, and gargle a mixture of water and salt, then held up the loon. "You both hear and speak through this?"

  Mourn tipped his head to one side. "I used to."

  "Was it always active? Or did it only speak to you when someone had something to say?"

  "It spoke like an old monk. Rarely, and only when telling me what to do."

  Dante smiled. The others woke soon, stretching, rubbing their limbs. Blays spit the dryness from his mouth. Lira stretched and executed a choreographed set of martial exercises. After a cold breakfast, they cut through the woods toward the town on the river. Dante's head felt like a bruised cloud. They paused at the edge of the woods. Gray light touched the wet timbers of the town. A few pedestrians mingled with the mule teams hauling sacks and wagons to and from the piers. Smoke rose from the chimneys of pine-board houses.

  "Look like anyone's planning to kill us?" Blays said.

  Dante squinted. "No more than usual."

  Lira frowned between them. "That's usual?"

  "We have an unfair share of detractors."

  Blays hoisted his sword belt up his hips. "Probably because I'm so pretty."

  Two barges creaked at the piers. A rowboat inched downstream. Seagulls soared over the gray waves. Dante's pockets felt very light. He needn't have worried. Down on the docks, where the water smelled like wet rocks and fish bones, Blays haggled with a bargemaster. The captain expected a load of coal and timber that morning. He'd be taking it all the way to Yallen. Shorthanded, he offered the four of them passage in exchange for helping to load the barge and guard it from pirates on their way to the sea.