The Great Rift

by Edward W. Robertson

  He understood how to solve the one-way problem at once. If he could be either a Mouth or an Ear, either to able speak or hear, all it would take to be able to do both would be to combine two sets of these things. To create a linked Mouth A and Ear A, a second Mouth B and Ear B, then combine Mouth A and Ear B into one loon and Mouth B and Ear A into another such that words spoken into one loon would be heard through the other and vice versa. He did just that, axing his halved skull into quarters so each fraction contained part of the original structure of the skull's ear port. He then formed two proto-loons and had Lira speak into each in turn while he listened from the cabin. He could hear her through both pieces. She couldn't hear him, of course, because she lacked any link to the loons herself, but if he could solve that problem, all that would remain was to make the items permanent.

  Day faded from the porthole. He opened the window and flung the rat's headless body and bits of brain into the sea. He hid the intact corpses as well as his skull-pieces in his pouch, wishing for some ice or a cool hole in the ground. They were already starting to get a bit squishy. He cleaned his tools and his hands in the reddish water and then sloshed that out the window as well, splattering just a bit on the interior wall.

  Feeling work-worn but energized, he went to the second cabin to find Mourn, whom he engaged in a makeshift game of Nulladoon using pieces cobbled from stray barley, pennies, and bits of cork, with clay tea plates standing in as terrain. They set up on one of the common tables belowdecks. Before the end of their second turn, a pair of offduty sailors stood over their shoulders, brows knit, asking questions about the intricacies of play. Soon, most of the free crew stood about them, placing bets over mugs of watered rum.

  Dante lost, drawing sighs and curses from those who'd wagered on him and cheers from the opposition, but he grinned anyway. He'd already determined the shape of the puzzle of the loon. Now it was just a matter of filling in the pieces.

  * * *

  They made port in the Houkkalli Islands two days later. Dante scowled at the jagged crags and churning windmills. He was no closer to any solutions. Whenever he tried to load up his loons with enough nether to keep them functional after he dropped his focus, the bones leaked his shadows like a punctured waterskin. He'd done no better with the problem of getting the loons to make audible noise rather than restricting their transmission to the braincase of their creator. In fact, on dwelling on that problem, he'd only discovered another: that unless he wanted the loons to yammer aloud to everyone in earshot, he needed to find a way to make them whisper to their intended recipient alone. It was a reminder, and not a welcome one, that for all the ways he'd learned to command the nether—to forge killing spears, to make the dead walk, to bend reality to illusion—he lacked the scantest understanding of many of its subtleties. For him, trying to make anything permanent was like pouring water on a flat floor and expecting it to take the shape of an angel.

  "You look," Blays said beside him on the windy deck, "like someone's been squeezing your nuts all night."

  "That would be bad?"

  "Maliciously."

  Sailors called back and forth, trimming the Bad Tidings to angle it toward the island of cliffs and cold marshes where round houses hunkered in the wind.

  "It's the loons," Dante said. "I know the effects I need, but I have no idea how to create them."

  "Well, that's a bit of luck then."

  "Yes. About as lucky as a starving man with a net and no ocean."

  "No, I mean that we're here. In Keyote." Blays gestured to the modest city of stone homes and wood huts buffeted with shedwind stalks, tall reeds which held uncannily still in all but the harshest gales. "The Hanassans have their temple here. On Mount Sirini. You know, I don't get why mountains are so popular among the monks. Like it's such a feat of piety to walk up a hill. Anyway, the Hanassans know everything."

  Dante cocked his head. "How do you know about the Hanassans?"

  "What, you're the only one who gets to know things? They were my favorite as a kid. Used to make my mom tell me stories about them every night."

  He considered this a moment, then shook his head. "Even if they could help me, which they can't, they wouldn't want to."

  "We'll be in port all day," Blays snorted. "What else are you going to do? Dress those little rats of yours up in bonnets and booties?"

  Dante laughed, flushing. Once the Bad Tidings had completed the rather tedious process of nosing up to the deepwater docks and tying off, he clambered down the ladder and made for town. He knew very little about the Houkkallians other than that they rarely left their homeland, they favored fur hats from the skin of a biskin (a ferocious bear-like predator that, as far as Dante knew, didn't actually exist), and it was virtually impossible to tell whether they were serious or pulling your leg. He couldn't even trust the directions to Sirini Temple he got from a local stevedore—"Walk up the mountain until you can't walk any more."

  Just in case the stories of the biskins were true, he took his sword with him, but left Blays and the others behind. This mission had the feel of a pilgrimage or an embarrassment, and either way it was best faced alone. The streets were paved with broad slabs of basalt with irregular sides but which fit together with minimal cracks between, as if they'd all been snapped off from the same massive table of stone. Live shedwind lined the paths to most houses, their straight green shoots eight feet tall. The road climbed a rolling hill. Behind him, the sails of the Bad Tidings gleamed white against the glittering gray sea.

  The town and the pavement ceased abruptly. Round stone farmhouses stood off the dirt road. Fields of green and brown stretched for half a mile or more; at their borders, dark firs rose in a towering kudzu. Ahead, the road led straight to the tallest of three modest mountains with white-painted peaks. The nearest mountain was banded with alternating shades of green.

  Dante saw why an hour later. With the ground rising beneath him, the madly hissing forest that had swallowed the path suddenly vanished in favor of motionless fields of shedwind. A couple hundred yards later, the forest resumed, only to cease just as abruptly for more shedwind some ways past that. Meanwhile, waist-high stone dogs bracketed the road at the border of each change. They had the straight spine and pricked ears of the watchdog of Mennok, but the statues' ears were decidedly foxy, their tails flaring and puffy. The eyes were simply hollows in the stone, but their sockets canted in a cunning expression. Which made no sense at all. Mennok was as somber as it got, his distanced gloom untouched and unaffected no matter how chaotic the earth or heavens became. The fox of Carvahal, meanwhile, lived to cause trouble. To play gods and humans against each other in any combination. He'd probably trick the trees if he could. Combining these two icons into one watching, laughing canine was either blasphemous or an incomprehensible joke.

  The alternating bands of firs and shedwind continued for four or five miles. Just when Dante thought the path would never end, it did. A flat and grassy plateau abutted a sheer black cliff. Crumbled basalt slumped against the cliff face. The road branched four ways, leading to four caves set into the vertical stone. Thirty yards ahead, a man stood across the path, dressed in furry leggings and several layers of jackets.

  "So you made it."

  "Is this it?" Dante said. "The temple?"

  "You were expecting lofty spires?" the man said without smiling. "Delicate stained glass that paints the floor in rainbows?"

  In truth, Dante had expected something quite like it. "Are you waiting here for me?"

  "Anyone who'd walk up a mountain must have an interesting question."

  "What if he doesn't?"

  "Then it is fun to laugh at him." The man touched his blond beard. "What is your question?"

  Dante went as still as the shedwind. What was his question? He couldn't flat-out ask about the mysteries of the loon; if its secrets got out, their entire advantage would be nullified, leaving them to face the armies of Gask with nothing but inferior numbers and prayer. Anyway, what would this cave-dweller kno
w about the nether? Of bending it to form artifacts that could outlast an age?

  The man tipped back his head, as if reading Dante's mind. "You came all this way without knowing your question?"

  "Maybe it's too complicated to pose simply."

  "Maybe you're too simple to make it simple."

  Dante tightened his jaw. "What do you know about the nether?"

  "Whatever it allows me."

  "Nice dodge. Has anyone who knows what they're talking about ever fallen for it?"

  The man stuck out his hands at arm's length, face contorted in revulsion. Black slime dripped from his fingers, pattering soundlessly on the dirt path and evaporating like water on a griddle. The viscous slime climbed his forearms, swallowing his elbows and then his shoulders. As it slithered up his neck and began to form a black mask, the man went motionless and smiled like a painting. The nether disappeared.

  "Oops," he said.

  "I spoke too fast," Dante said. "But that display was awfully fast itself. My problem lies in making such things last."

  "A lasting mark," the man nodded. "The concern of every young man. And likely every young woman, too. But they hide it better."

  "If the nether comes from my hands, how do I make it stay once I take my hands away?"

  The man tipped his forehead forward, frowning. "You think the nether comes from your hands?"

  Dante blinked. "That's not what I meant."

  "Strange. Because that is what you said."

  "Well, where do you think it comes from?"

  "Me?" The man looked genuinely surprised. "Oh, I believe I'm Arawn in human skin. I have yet to be proven wrong."

  "Do you know how to get it to stick to a thing?"

  "This is no longer interesting." The blond man nodded downhill. "I think you belong back there."

  "Already? But I came all this way."

  The man raised a brow. "It really isn't that far, you wimp. Now move, for I have praying to do."

  Wind gusted through the plateau, stinging Dante's eyes with grit. The man didn't seem to notice. Dante waited for several awkward seconds, then turned and started back down the banded mountain.

  In town, he found Blays ensconced in a bench recessed into the floor of a tavern just past the docks. Blays smiled over a stein of kaven so heavily spiced it must have been brewed locally.

  "Well?" he sipped. "How'd it go?"

  Dante shook his head. "I think he made fun of me."

  "Is that it?" Blays said. "I could have done that right here and saved you the trip."

  * * *

  By the time they finished at the pub, Dante had a hard time climbing the wooden ladder back to ship. In the cabin, Mourn snored on the bunk across the room, his hairy shins jutting from the edge of the bed. Blays banged through the door and flopped into bed with his boots still on. His phlegmy breathing soon joined Mourn's.

  Dante hated the oracular speech of monks and priests. If you used enough vagaries and poetry, you could make anything sound profound. The wise man heavies his plate with eggs, for the wisdom of the unborn is unbound by perspective. Either the blond man knew how to help him, and should have said so explicitly, or he didn't, and should have been equally explicit about that. No wonder so little ever changed. When people weren't lying outright, they peddled half-truths and obscurities.

  Next morning, Blays woke with a scowl. He slung his feet off his bunk and crinkled his face. "Did I step in something?" He squinted at the soles of his feet. "Did I sleep in something?"

  "Just yourself," Dante said.

  When Blays left for breakfast, Dante quickly took his satchel of rats next door, confirmed Lira was out, then occupied her cabin to chop up the rodents' bodies, clean out their skulls, and dump everything else into the sea. He spent all morning and afternoon with the nether, saturating the fresh bones with shadows that melted away the moment he turned his mind elsewhere. How could he possibly convince it to stay? If it was a spirit, an essence of the thing to which it was attached, how could he force it to stick to an object it didn't embody?

  Sunset bathed the cabin red. He left Lira's room for his first meal of the day. He intended to return to his work, but Mourn asked for a game of Nulladoon, and as he wavered, three other sailors eating at the table goaded him to accept the challenge. Mourn's play was careful and thorough. In the end, his last pebble was too strong for Dante's final orange seed. By the time they dissected the game over two beers apiece, Dante was too tired to even think about nether or bones or cryptic monks.

  That left him two days until Narashtovik. Two days to find something to bring to Cally's door besides apologies and empty hands.

  He paused mid-stride on his way to the plank that served as the head. Empty hands. Empty hands he filled with nether. Was that what the monk had meant with his question about the nether's source? Because his hands weren't quite empty: they possessed a drop of nether themselves. If he honed his focus like the point of a pen, he could draw the substance from his palms like a line of ink. If he then spent it, it returned in the next hour or day, didn't it? There was a reason he felt drained from practice and refreshed with rest. It was no different from the way his physical strength wore away and then returned. Presumably, any object that contained nether would regenerate it—or rediscover it?—with enough time.

  Heart thumping, he spread out his assortment of bones. He sucked nether from the walls and himself, spinning it into the veiny network that connected him to the dead rats' dormant senses. And then, with all the care of a hobbyist mounting a butterfly or a traveling barber pricking the cataract in the eye of a patient, he drew the droplets of nether from the bone itself and used them to smooth a tight sheath around the shadows he'd drawn from himself.

  He held his breath. If he could have, he would have held his heartbeat. Gently as sleep, he removed his focus from the pair of loons. The veins and their sheaths stayed in place. For a minute, Dante did nothing but watch. Nothing changed. Nothing faded or slipped away into the crevices it had been called from. At times, the sheath glimmered darkly, as if rippling under a pale moon, but Dante saw no movements of any other kind, and detached from the loons, he couldn't feel them, either.

  Not with his mind, anyway. The two loons lay on an old cloth on the floor. He touched the nearer one as cautiously as if it had just been plucked from a boiling pot. He felt nothing but bone. He lifted it to his ear. Heard nothing but the dumb hiss of a cupped seashell. He brought it to his mouth, paused to think, and said "I don't—"

  "I don't—" said the loon still resting on the cloth.

  Dante sprawled back, banging his spine into the side of the bunk. He crumpled forward in pain. Several seconds later, when he was fit to walk again, he snatched up the second loon, burst from the cabin, and plowed through the neighboring door. Blays sat straight up, bedsheets flapping, and pawed at the recessed shelf beside his bed, rattling his scabbards.

  "I've got it!" Dante said.

  Blays glowered, face puffy. "Unless 'it' is an unstoppable fire, or a giant hole in the floor, you can tell me about it later."

  "Take this." Dante pushed one of the loons at Blays' groggy face.

  "What is this? It looks like a bunch of bones wrapped up in string."

  "It is. Now stay there." Dante ran back outside and slammed the door, drawing a stare from Lira, seated a short ways down the hall. He ducked into her room, closed the door, and brought the loon to his mouth. "Blays Buckler prefers the company of aquatic mammals."

  "Holy shit!" Blays' voice piped from the bundle of bone in Dante's hand, followed by a painfully loud clatter. Something hard scraped against wood.

  "Are you dropping my priceless artifact?" Dante said.

  "No! I mean, it talked! I mean, you get hard from dolphins."

  "I will now be accepting nominations for sainthood. Of me."

  "That requires proof of godly ancestry," Blays said through the loon. "No more than four generations removed, if you can trust my mom." The door to Lira's cabin jarred open. Blays w
andered inside, still speaking into the loon held in front of his mouth. "Which I do. Because she also told me I was the handsomest boy in Mallon."

  "Close the damn door," Dante said, hustling to do just that. "So there now exists the non-zero chance Cally won't use us to mulch his garden."

  Blays turned the bundle of bone and string over in his hand. "I'll admit this is impressive. Not impressive enough to redeem yourself for sparking a war. But probably impressive enough to get you off the hook if you'd slept with his sister."

  "Cally's sister would be a hundred years old."

  "And no doubt bearded. But hunger turns stones into soup."

  "Once I had the idea, it really wasn't that hard to piece together." Dante reached for the other loon, holding one up in each palm. "It's based on the same principle I use to delve into the senses of dead animals. Through forming two such linked pairs, then splicing those pairs together, you more or less have the basis for a functional loon. Except only I can use it, because I'm the only one with the nethereal link. If I then go on, however, to exploit the object's own inborn nether to support the structure instead of using my external focus to do so, it turns out that—"

  "Fascinating," Blays said. "Now shut up and let's tell the others. Except not like that, unless you're sick of them and want them bored to death."

  Dante glanced at the closed door. "I need to ask Mourn a few questions. I don't think Lira needs to know, though."

  "Why not?"

  "Because I don't really trust her."

  Blays raised his brows. "Of course not. It's not as if she's pledged her life to you."

  "I pledge to serve you bacon shaped to spell your name every morning so long as we both shall live," Dante bowed. He straightened and met Blays' eyes. "Guess who's going to be deeply disappointed tomorrow morning?"