"For someone who claims not to like it, you sure do an awful lot of it. But that's beside the point. What I mean to ask is this. Do you suppose the gods have infinite resources?"
"Why not? They're the gods."
"They do not," Gladdic croaked. "As proven by the fact that we are still alive and presently speaking with each other."
Lolligan smiled and lifted his glass. "Just my line of thought. Now, do you know what the most annoying bit about arranging caravans and ships' courses and such is? Some will say it's the paperwork. But to my mind, it's always been dealing with the damn bandits. The pirates. The vagabonds. You've orchestrated a meticulously planned and funded venture, you can almost hear the clink of the silver you'll see at the end of it—only for some drunken rogues to run off with everything at knifepoint and set you back to zero. It's enough to drive a fellow mad."
"So are your ramblings," Blays said. "Unless you're suggesting we shrug off all responsibility for this and go be happy bandits instead."
"That is precisely sort of what I mean! If you mean to go and confront the gods, why not? You've done so before. But you don't have to fight this war alone. We should send riders. To every corner of the earth."
Dante tilted his head. "We can't invade the Realm. We don't have time to muster an army."
Lolligan shook his aged head. "The idea isn't to march on the gods-realm. It's to tell the people to fight within their own lands, in every way they can, against all of the troubles that are besetting them."
"To slow them down as much as we can. Maybe even stall them, if only for a while."
"Allowing you all the more time to do whatever it is you're going to do. And best of all, sending out a few riders costs us virtually nothing."
"I'll drink to that," Blays said, and did.
Lolligan crossed his legs at the knee and leaned back. "I'll make the arrangements by the morning. Now, let us pivot to a matter a little closer to your own hearts. The welfare of your citizens. I'm sure you understand that if it were purely up to me, this wouldn't be an issue. But you've spent enough time here to know that it's not purely up to me. Very far from it."
"Then we'll call their bluff," Dante said. "If they want to waste their lives attacking Narashtovik's forces, I know who my money's on."
"Surely neither side wants conflict. That's just what will make it so easy to strike a deal of some kind."
"All of Rale—that's the name of our world, incidentally, revealed to us by Carvahal himself while we were in the midst of saving it—is under threat. This isn't the time for politics! Or your little deals!"
Lolligan held up a hand for peace. "Please, you know me better than to think I'm trying to swindle you. However, we've faced hardships of our own. Once the guilds learn you forced your way in here after they chose to shut down the roads to all trade—a sacrifice that crippled them—they're going to be furious."
"Who cares? There's not a damn thing they can do about it."
"We've just agreed that one of the best things we can all do is fight whatever we face in our own backyards. If you can drive out the sea monsters, or even just give them a good enough kick for people to start fishing and trading over the water again, every lord and guild will line up to take in your citizens."
"You aren't getting me." Dante fought to keep his voice level. "I don't have time for your errands. Your lords will do as I say. If they disobey, or persecute my citizens, when I return from dealing with the gods, I'll deal with them as well."
Lolligan shifted in his chair, frowning at his beer. "Even a token effort might suffice. A good little show at the cost of no more than a day or two of your time. You have to consider that the guilds of Gallador Rift aren't the only potential threat to your citizens. You only expect these divine disasters to get worse, don't you? What if one strikes your people while you're away? After treating the lakelanders so roughly, they'll never agree to help you out."
Dante clamped his hand to his temples. Either his head was about to explode, or he was about to explode the room. The one time that everyone needed to act most selflessly, and instead they were acting more selfish than ever. He wondered, if it came down to it, whether the gods would still let him bring a few hundred hand-chosen people to start over in their realm.
"Seems to me," Blays said, "like we already have a solution."
Dante glared at him. "Do we? Is that why I'm about ready to defect to the banner of King Sea Monster?"
"You already said these things must be coming through a doorway."
"I said they're probably coming from one."
"And so, unless you want to try to capture a leviathan and torture it into confessing the location of its lair, if we go after the monsters, sooner or later we'll find the doorway."
"Well, maybe, but that's assuming it's a doorway to where we want to go."
"Why do I have the funniest feeling you would have been a lot more sure of these things about five minutes ago? What's the other brilliant plan, go looking for the monster-hole where the monsters aren't? Or would you rather spend the next three weeks hoping nothing ambushes us on the road to Bressel?"
Dante wanted to argue with him, then scowled and leaned forward and set his elbows on the table. "Lolligan, finding a way through to the Realm is our top priority. Nothing else comes close. We can go after your leviathans as long as that continues to lead us toward their doorway."
Lolligan sipped his beer, watching Dante from over the top of it. "Then it sounds as if that would serve everyone's purposes."
"Maybe so. But you're going to need to sweeten the deal."
The old man snorted, his angular beard twitching. "Let's hear your terms."
"First, safe haven for my people. And either supplies of fish, or the right to fish the lakes. It isn't safe for them to subsist on our grain."
"Granted. With the reminder that my authority is quite limited, but this is what I think the others will agree to grant."
"Second, we need every piece of information you've got—both on the leviathans, and anything on doorways or portals that anyone might have in their libraries. Regarding the invasion, that means where it was first seen, any major sightings or attacks since then, any clues to where it might be centered."
"We'd insist on most of that ourselves as well."
Dante rubbed his mouth. "Lastly, a guarantee of your full aid in the event this effort falls through and we have to travel south. We likely won't need much. Supplies. The fastest winter horses you've got. That sort of thing."
Lolligan looked as if he was trying to hide his amusement. "That strikes me as a small investment to make in the service of seeing that all our future commerce has the chance to continue to exist."
"And if it doesn't pan out, you lose everything anyway," Blays said. "It's win-win."
"Forgive my presumption, but it sounds as if we have a deal."
"We do," Dante said. "Keep our people safe. Lend us all the aid you can. And we'll see if we can't rid your lakes of their beasts."
6
Lolligan left them to get things started. The manor of the lord who was hosting him flew into a flurry of footsteps tromping down halls, carriages dashing out into the streets, and important people having quick but high-spirited conversations. Dante could almost see the specter of rumor spreading through the city.
The people of Wending must have been huddled in their houses for days now, uncertain what was happening to them or what—if anything—could be done to stand against it. With a sudden plan in hand, their spirits would be soaring. Dante felt his lifting with them.
They caught some rest, then reassembled for a late dinner. Lolligan didn't return from his errands until they were being served their post-meal brandy, along with samplings of Gallador's famous tea. His cheeks were flushed and irregular patches of his clothes were damp where his overcoat had failed him, along with the cuffs of his pants: it was raining hard outside, enough so that water ran in streams down the slant of the street.
"I haven't seen
the city this busy since King Quelcannin had to liquidate his estates." Lolligan shivered, slicking water from his brow. "But that means my work is done, and I won't have anything else to see to until morning. Lord Perreven has invited us to his Celerium. Would you like to see it?"
This turned out to be a wide room on top of the manor's tower—and, almost incredibly, the ceiling was a dome of clear glass, reinforced with iron bands. On clear nights, it would provide a glorious look at the stars. On that night, it gave a view of drumming rain and stark bolts of lightning.
Perreven was near sixty, his wife a few years younger, and both were animated to meet the travelers who'd caused such a stir. Lolligan spent a great deal of time chatting with Winden; from what Dante could gather, he was looking to find out if there was anything worth importing from the islands that he could get himself an easy monopoly on. They drank more tea and more brandy, along with other liquids Dante couldn't identify but which Perreven was proud to share.
While Dante wasn't always thrilled by aristocratic chatter and opulence, after the last two weeks of hardscrabble travel, he would have taken a full week of it. Besides, Lolligan was an old and reliable friend, one of his earliest allies, who'd taken a chance on him when he was still just a boy. And there were few things more serene than conversing in a snug room with hot drinks while a storm raged right outside—especially when he knew that a titanic one was on its way to try to sweep them loose from the world.
He would return to the emergency on the morrow. Just then, he wished to be nowhere else but where he was.
~
He woke much later in the morning than he wanted and rushed through the morning necessities deeply annoyed with himself until he spoke to Lolligan and came to understand that they wouldn't have enough information to set out until the next day at the soonest, at which point he became annoyed with the limitations of reality instead.
But there was no sense wasting time, and after his breakfast of fruit-sauced whitefish with cream and eggs, he called on the Minister of War, a doughty black-browed man who reminded him of Olivander, and they rode down to the docks together.
The waters were placid, though grimy and brown from all the soil washed into the lake by the last night's storm. After some back and forth with the minister and the merchant-admiral he'd brought with him, Dante cut his arm, called to the nether, and lifted a low ring of earth around the bay, leaving a good gap in the middle so boats could still sail in and out. He spaced a second ring a little past the first, and a third beyond the second. The two officials shook his hand and took their carriage back up to their manors.
Dante folded his arms and watched the murky waters. They looked perfectly empty. As empty as the deserts of Collen. It was silent except for the gentle lap of the waves and the scuffs and squeaks of the bumper-sacks the sailors placed between the hulls of their ships and the docks.
"What do you say?" Blays had appeared without any warning at all, though somehow Dante had known he was approaching. "Should we go out for a sail?"
"We don't know where we're going yet."
"Oh, not to go anywhere. To see what we stir up. Wouldn't hurt to get a little practice close to shore before we go hunting for big game."
"That's either a great idea or a very awful one."
They went to round up Gladdic and Captain Wanders. He might have taken Winden, if she'd insisted, but she thought it better to stay back and act as warden over the dreamflowers in case something happened to them—though it would be a different story once they were actively chasing after a doorway.
Lolligan had already acquired a new vessel for them, another sloop by name of the Golden Dart. Wanders gave it a thorough once-over, scowling all the while, then gave its hull a knock.
"Looks fine enough," he said. "Don't matter what I think, though. Only opinions that count are those of the winds and the waves."
They climbed aboard. Blays still hadn't fully overcome his lifelong distaste for boats and was no use at all, and Gladdic was both elderly and one-armed, leaving Dante to serve as Wanders' crew. But conditions were easy enough that the captain didn't need any help as he guided the Dart toward the gap between the barricades Dante had lifted earlier that day.
Dante gave his arm another scratch. Nether wafted toward him with curious uncertainty. He gripped the gunwale. The sloop slid smoothly through the gap and out into open water.
Wanders cut to port until they were running nearly parallel to shore, only gradually venturing toward deeper waters. Red-legged stilts stalked through the muck on the banks, and wispy clouds of tiny flies hovered over the water, but there was no other life to be seen.
Without being ordered, Wanders heaved the boat around until the bow had almost switched orientation with the stern, so that they were traveling back in the lateral direction of Wending, though still a little away from shore. He'd just steadied out when something knocked into them from below.
"When I suggested this idea," Blays said evenly, "it didn't really sink in that it meant we were going to be the bait."
"A little late now." Dante thrust his mind down into the waters, but he couldn't read them like he could the earth. "Wanders, how deep is it here?"
"Five, six fathoms," Wanders said. "Hold course?"
"Cut back toward—" Another pounding against the hull made him bite his tongue. "The shore. But not too hard."
The first two blows hadn't felt nearly as hard as the tentacles of the great beast they'd encountered. Nor even hard enough to threaten to crack the boat. Yet the next one punched hard enough to send them reeling.
"I believe we have seen enough," Gladdic said.
"Agreed," Blays said. "Let's haul this thing in."
Dante launched a long bolt of nether under the boat. He couldn't see a thing, nor feel his target, but he felt the strike land home—and dash apart in a way that suggested it had only left a scratch. The creature rocked them again, confirming his suspicion.
Gladdic sent a trio of white darts flashing into the water. He grimaced, drawing forth three more. "If we are doing it any harm, it is too subtle for me to sense."
Blays had drawn the Spear of Stars to its full size and was crouched in the bow trying not to dismember any of them with it as the Golden Dart rolled, rocked, and jolted.
"Every creature that's ever tried to kill us has had a hole in its armor somewhere," he said. "Just ram some shadows down whatever end it points at you!"
"I can't see what I'm doing," Dante said. "And it won't come to the surface!"
"Better hurry." Wanders was calmer than any of them. "Before the Dart joins the Skate down there in the dark."
On cue, the next blow from the invader came with an audible cracking of wood. Water spurted through a hole in the boards. Wanders cursed and pulled to starboard, back toward Wending, which now looked much too far away; Gladdic swept his arm across his body, deploying the ether to restore the boards as best he could; yet in the same moment the creature struck again, with another crack and a second spout of lake-water.
Dante had hacked at the unseen foe with several more shadowy blades to no obvious effect. He gritted his teeth. "We'll do the same as we did on the Dart if we have to. Hold fast among the wreckage and wait for it to expose itself to Blays' spear."
Blays gave him a disgusted look. "If that's the best we can do, we'll run out of boats long before we find the doorway!"
"Do you have a better idea?!"
"Yes," Gladdic said. "I do."
He spread his feet wide, bracing himself, and sowed ether into the water like handfuls of grain. He creased his already-wrinkled brow, remaining focused even as a forward blow swung the stern up out of the water. He chopped his hand to the side, then flipped it palm-up, raising it skyward.
The water bubbled and churned. Dante drew back, nether in hand. Something dark and broad broke the surface, water sloughing from its ridged back. Two eyes, glassy and hateful, rolled toward Dante.
With a cry, Blays leaped forward. The spearpoint gleamed li
ke the soul of a god. He drove it straight down through the abomination's head. The thing gave a mighty thrash of its dense tail, drenching them all, shuddered, and went still.
The shape of the thing made no sense to Dante's eyes. It looked like a squat shark, mottled gray in color, but around its middle protruded a thick, frost-colored band. After a blink or two, he realized that's exactly what it was: Gladdic had wrapped the thing in ice, which had then bobbed it up to the surface where Blays could strike it down.
With a gloop, Blays wrenched the spear free and inspected its point. "I want more of these."
Dante edged toward the gunwale. "What is that thing?"
"Whatever it is, I suspect you're about to start cutting it up."
It was indeed a shark—or at least a warped cousin of one. Its body was almost as stout as a barrel, its fins and tail thick as sides of beef. Its skin was covered in hard plates and the seams between them were filled with wizened warts. Its gaping yob was twice as full of teeth as any shark he'd seen, but worse than any of this was the two smaller mouths, one of which grew from each side of the main. The rightward of these mouths was opening and closing feebly, blood leaking from within.
"Wrong," Dante said. "I'm not touching that thing. Wanders, bring us back to port, will you?"
The captain grunted and wrestled with the tiller.
Blays wiped some goo from his doublet. "Well that was half of a disaster."
Hearing a splash, Dante darted a look behind him. "That's exactly why we're practicing on the little ones first."
"They are within their own element, and we are out of ours," Gladdic said. "It will not be easy to purge them from the lakes."
"We only promised to try. We might at least be able to shut off the source of them."
They docked in Wending. Wanders inspected the damage to the Dart, scowling all the while. They left him to it and returned to the manor of Lord Perreven to regroup and discuss their encounter with the three-mouthed shark. Most of the conversation involved methods of getting the monsters up to the surface where they could be attacked. Dante soon suggested the use of live bait, i.e. tossing goats and such into the water, and the conversation sputtered out after that.
The Twelve Plagues (The Cycle of Galand Book 7) Page 7