The Twelve Plagues (The Cycle of Galand Book 7)

by Edward W. Robertson

  In past battles, the Spear of Stars had sucked sorcery right into it, being made all the more powerful by it. Yet as whatever this substance or force might be was drawn into the spear, its light flickered and dimmed. The rest of the cone rushed over the ground and the base of the cliff. Everything it touched went gray, indistinct, much like the skin of the creature itself, but more so—and then began to fade.

  Wherever the ground and cliff faded, it didn't stop until it vanished altogether. Leaving nothing but a perfectly smooth groove through the ground, and a hole in the side of the cliff.

  Wide-eyed, Blays leaped to his feet and ran hard. The spear's glow was starting to return, but only slowly. Dante sent another barrage of black darts at the monster, targeting neck, chest, gut, and limbs, seeking any weakness, any means of slowing it down. While it was only lumbering after them for the moment, Dante strongly suspected that was because it was recovering from its assault on Blays, and not due to being hampered by any wound.

  "Where are we going?" Blays said.

  Dante threw up his hands. "The tunnel, if we can find it! Failing that, anywhere but here!"

  Gladdic glanced behind them, face stoic. "We will not be able to outrun it."

  "I'd suggest it's still worthwhile to try!"

  "This effort is doomed. We must will ourselves away!"

  "Tell that to my legs!" Blays said.

  "This is not the world your legs believe it is. Now will yourself to somewhere else!"

  With a clang of insight, Dante caught on, willing himself not to be running alongside a cliff pursued by a shadowy horror, but rather to be walking up the road to Narashtovik. Then it struck him that there was no Narashtovik here, and he imagined the house he'd grown up in as a child, like the one he was sent to in the Pastlands, yet one just different enough from the one that had been real—or at least his memory of what had been real—that it could exist in the Mists instead.

  He felt a tug, a unique looseness to the existence around him. Yet he was still between the cliffs on one side and the woods on the other, and the shadow-dragon or whatever the hell it was still loped behind them, gaining speed and ground.

  "Not working," Blays said. "Will harder?"

  "Maybe this place is too fixed for that," Dante said. "A part of the Mists that acts real instead of like the Mists."

  "Whatever the case—"

  The creature leaped forward, inhaling, and landed hard enough to jar the ground. It thrust its head toward them and opened its mouth wide. Grim vapor poured forth with a soft crackle. Dante lobbed nether haphazardly, hoping to negate as much of the annihilating substance as he could. Some patches of it dissolved into empty air, but more rushed toward them, graying and vanishing the ground as it went.

  Blays swung the spear behind him, pointing it toward the center of the cloud. The cloud condensed, drawn toward the pulsing spear, spiraling inward like water down a drain as it entered the purestone. The spear's light sputtered and went out.

  Blays swore. Dante's blood ran so cold it froze anything he might say in his throat. There was an alternate possibility for why they couldn't will themselves away. The beast had a will of its own, didn't it? And it would be asserting that will to continue pursuing them, fixing them all in place. If that was what had them trapped against the mountain, then they'd have to break the creature's will to keep chasing them, if only for a moment.

  He reached into the cliff wall, trying to pull it out in front of the beast, cursing thoroughly when it refused to budge. Well, he'd have to punish the cliff for that, then. He shaped himself a giant mallet of nether and slammed it into a protrusion of rock. He didn't know if he'd be able break it any more than he could manipulate it, but the cliff burst apart, the rockslide cascading over the creature with a huge plume of dust.

  Anything remotely normal should have been crushed to death. Yet beneath the rubble, the creature began to stir before the dust even had the chance to settle.

  "Get out of its sight!" Dante sprinted around a bend in the cliffs. "Now will yourself away! To a passage through the mountain!"

  Still running, and spurred on by the clatter of rocks behind him, he envisioned tunnels and caverns and doors. He had the sensation of running so fast he was falling. The world shifted on both sides. The cliffs and woods were still there, but they'd become different. Different but also similar in a way that made Dante feel like his mind was cracking.

  He frantically scanned the rocky wall. "This isn't working. There's still no way into the mountain."

  "We have eluded the creature for the moment," Gladdic said. "But it will find us again. I am certain of it."

  "Then help me find the stupid tunnel!"

  Dante jogged along the cliffs, heart beating hard. He was hit again by a sense of sameness, as if they'd gone in a circle, or like the Mists were repeating themselves like they'd done earlier that day with the field of hands. Perhaps in the exact way the Pastlands did when it was trying to trap you within it forever. He had to clench his throat to stop himself from screaming out in frustration.

  "There," Gladdic said.

  Dante's hopes jumped. He'd ignored the dullness of Gladdic's tone, though. And the old man wasn't pointing to the cliffs and a potential doorway there, but off into the forest. Where fallen leaves spilled into a new crevice opening in the ground.

  "Can't fight it," Dante said. "The spear's light is only just starting to come back."

  "No problem," Blays said. "We'll just take a nap."

  Dante took this for an unusually weak joke. But Blays spread himself out on the ground, clasped his hands beneath his head, and closed his eyes.

  "Are you insane?" Dante found himself on the brink of shrieking. "You're taking a nap??"

  Blays opened one eye. "And I'll wake right up in our world. Which isn't the nicest place in the universe at the moment, but at least we won't be dissolved into nothing."

  Dante threw himself to the ground while Blays was still going on. He rolled to his back and closed his eyes, hearing the rustle of robes as Gladdic got down beside him. Falling asleep in the Mists was one of the easiest things he'd ever done: you wished it to happen, and it did. And you woke back up in Rale.

  His heartbeats were loud enough for him to count them. To his right, from the woods, he could hear the earth crackling and crumbling into the depths as something emerged from them.

  "Something's wrong," he said. "I'm not falling asleep."

  "Nor I," Gladdic scraped.

  "Uh oh," Blays said.

  Dante opened his eyes and sat up. "What?"

  "What if we're not in the Mists after all?"

  Dante's eyes bulged so hard they felt like they'd turn inside-out. All three of them jumped to their feet and ran forward along the cliffs. Beneath the trees, a giant snake-like head emerged from the crack.

  "So," Blays said. "If we're not in the Mists, then where are we?"

  "Something enough like it to be fooled by it." Dante shot a glance behind him: the monster was almost loose, with just its hind legs and tail left to extract. "But everything about it's felt wrong, hasn't it? The children in the village. This place. That thing."

  A narrow crack opened in the rock ahead and he pulled to a stop and shined the ether inside it. Another dead end. The shadow-dragon—he thought it was the same one as before but there was no way to be sure—loped free of the trees and into the narrow clear space between forest and cliffs.

  It closed on them with paralyzing swiftness. Dante glanced across the cliffs, searching for the least stable-looking part of them. As the beast galloped toward them, Dante clubbed the nether into the cliff again, dropping four huge boulders and a slew of rubble toward the shadow-dragon's back.

  It swung up its head as if expecting this and exhaled. Solid rock grayed, blurred, vanished. Lesser pieces rained down on the creature, bouncing from its back and clogging its footing, but it stayed upright.

  Aware that it was almost certainly hopeless, Dante willed himself once more toward a way into the mou
ntain. It struck him that if this was not the Mists but a sinister not-Mists, then the girl in the village might have sent them here on purpose. To be destroyed. And there might not even be any doorways to be found.

  "Look!" Blays yelled. "Things!"

  A silvery-red lattice twinkled ahead where Dante had been probing the not-stone for hollows or tunnels. He slowed for a look at the patterns.

  "Useless," he said. "It's the same one from before!"

  He broke into a sprint. Blays stopped in front of the lattice. He took a step back from the wall and drew back the Spear of Stars, its light blooming across the sigils, causing them to writhe and dance. He punched the weapon forward.

  The boom was so loud Dante clapped his hands to his ears and doubled over. Shards of rock shrieked past Blays, traveling fast enough to kill him. But some sorcery of the spear diverted them to either side of him.

  Blays waved at the smoke. "Come on, you idiot!" He ran forward and disappeared.

  In what was either a vote of confidence in Blays, or a gesture of despair about the beast that was presently bounding toward them, Gladdic had turned around the instant before Blays had blown a hole in the cliff. He swept his robe about his mouth to ward off the rock dust and careened into the entrance. Dante ran after him, wobbling on the loose stones underfoot.

  The creature hurried toward him, its chest inflating. It thrust its head forward. And exhaled. The darkening venom coursed across the earth and stripped it into nothing.

  Dante hurled himself through the gap. He lashed the nether behind him like a whip, striking the ceiling and collapsing it across the entry. A chunk of rock struck his back; another hit the crown of his head and he gasped, touching blood.

  The light of the Spear of Stars filled the stone hall. Blays beckoned. "Don't think we're done running yet!"

  The fallen rocks crackled, crumbling into nothingness. Dante beat at the annihilating vapor with the shadows and sprinted toward Blays, pressing a patch of nether to the bloody dizziness of his head. The passage was twelve feet high and fifteen across and he couldn't tell if it was man-made or natural. It looked as though it should be too small for the creature to pass through, but the thing had already thrust its head and shoulders into the hole, wriggling forward with uncanny speed.

  "It's still catching up with us!" Dante's voice echoed down the corridor.

  "To hell with this!" Blays skidded to a stop, reversed direction, and leaped into the air, cocking the spear back over his shoulder.

  He punched it into the wyrm's face just as it opened its mouth.

  The bang knocked Dante from his feet. He tucked his chin and crashed into the ground. Chits of rock ricocheted from the walls. Blays lay on his back in front of a mound of broken stone and fallen dragon. The spear had dropped from his hand, though its cord was still wrapped around his wrist.

  Head ringing, Dante got to one knee and lumbered toward Blays. Blays laughed and groaned and rolled to his feet.

  "Quit staring and keep running," he said.

  Dante nodded dully and did that. "How did you know you could break open the wall? It was protected by sorcery. You should have had to solve its riddle."

  "Riddles are for dopes without weapons stolen from the gods."

  They caught up to Gladdic, who nodded at them as if nothing had just happened. The tunnel sloped downwards, taking them deeper into the earth. Sometimes the air felt like it was growing cooler and at other times warmer. Sometimes Dante thought he heard slithering ahead of or behind them, but there was never anything to see.

  After some time, the passage leveled out again. Soft light flickered ahead, beyond the reach of that of the spear or Gladdic's ether, and Dante brought the nether to his hands. The way forward opened into a chamber too large to make out the walls or ceiling.

  Dante slowed, trying to control his breathing enough to hear anything or anyone that might be in the chamber with them. There was no clear source of the dim light. He suspected it was ambient ether.

  The shape of the room suggested how it was to be used: the floor was a bowl, sloping gently downward toward the middle, where a round stone dais rose several feet. He approached this, stopped at what he hoped was a safe distance, and sifted the shadows through the space above the dais.

  A breeze blew past his face. Much colder than anything he'd felt since entering this realm. The air wavered. He was struck once more by the sense he was falling as an empty rectangle of darkness appeared before him. It was almost perfectly black, yet he thought he saw some subtle motion within it.

  Blays edged up beside him. "Suppose that door-shaped thing is a door?"

  "I'm sure of it," Dante said.

  "Suppose it leads to the Realm of Nine Kings?"

  "Where else would it go?"

  "Since the Mists lead to the Realm, and this isn't the Mists, somewhere that isn't the Realm?"

  Dante walked around the dais, but the shape of the rectangle didn't change, as if the doorway was matching his movements. "I feel a wind from the other side."

  "What does it smell like?"

  "Air?"

  "And not the breath of another giant hell-creature?"

  "The shadow-dragon's breath smelled like the air after a thunderstorm. This just smells like nothing." Dante tried to send his mind within the doorway, but it was utterly shut to him. "You're right, though. We don't know where this leads. The question is, can we figure that out without stepping through it?"

  "It does not matter," Gladdic said. "We must enter!"

  "Why do—"

  "Because of that!" Gladdic was already rushing past him, robes aflap, and pointing behind himself, toward the entrance to the chamber. Where the shadow-dragon stalked silently forward.

  "Oh hell," Dante said. He bounded forward and threw himself into the darkness.

  10

  Coldness surrounded him on all sides. He gasped.

  And sucked his lungs full of water.

  Coughing and gagging, he thrashed his legs. Toward the light. The light hanging above him. Two others kicked and struggled beside him. The water was cloudy, almost milky, and he had no idea how far away the light might be until he broke the surface and found himself beneath a dim and cloud-strewn sky.

  "I know we're all half-drowned," Blays managed to choke out. "But I think we should get out of here!"

  They bobbed within a round lake of white water. More than halfway across it, some five hundred feet away, the surface rippled. Whatever was making those ripples was heading straight toward them.

  Dante flushed nether through his lungs, forcing more water out of them, and made for shore. Ridges encircled them, implying the lake was inside a crater. He couldn't see anything beyond its rim.

  He swam through the water at a perfectly normal speed instead of a comically fast one. Meaning they weren't in the Mists, and had most likely left whatever place they'd just been in as well. That was probably a relief. It was a lot less of a relief that something was already chasing them, and that he couldn't see what might be lurking below him in the water.

  Soon enough, they approached a shore of round green pebbles. Reaching down, he felt solid ground, and waded ashore, backing up a good distance from the water. Just eight feet out, the ripples shrank away and went still.

  "Anyone recognize this place?" Dante said. "Or have any reason to think we're where we actually want to be?"

  Blays nodded. "This is it. This is the Realm."

  "How can you be sure?"

  Blays inhaled deeply through his nose. "Smell that?"

  "Smell what? Dirty travel garb that's now soaking wet to boot?"

  "The Mists barely have any smell at all. This place is filled with them. Everything looks a lot sharper, too. Like everything is more…real."

  "The way it feels in the Realm of Nine Kings." Dante wrung out his heavy cloak. "Good news at last. But if this is the Realm, let's get away from the portal before its guardians decide to take an interest in us."

  Except for the occasional green boulder
, the slopes of the crater were gentle enough for grass and trees to grow on them, and they had no trouble hiking up to the rim. There, the lands stretched out before them. In general shape, the Realm was somewhat like Gallador Rift, with imposing walls of mountains enclosing it to the east and west, and a broad valley spread between them.

  But that was where the similarities came to an end. For rather than sprawling lakes, the interior of the Realm was a dizzying patchwork of geographies that could shift from one to another over the span of just a few hundred feet. And while it gave the appearance of being smaller than the Rift, perhaps just a hundred miles from the eastern range of mountains to the western, that was because the mountains never seemed to get any closer or further away until you were right on top of them, making it impossible to gauge the Realm's true size by looking at it. But Dante had traveled from the eastern mountains to the western range, and knew it was far larger.

  On top of that, any of the formations and monuments were like nothing seen not just in Gallador, but in any mortal land that Dante had ever been to. Such as the one they gazed on to the south.

  Dante pointed to it. "What does that look like to you?"

  Blays squinted. "Somewhere designed to murder anyone who comes to it unwanted."

  "That could describe any of the gods' kingdoms. But that one is Allamar. The kingdom of Carvahal."

  It was just far enough away to look a bit indistinct, as was common in the Realm. Even so, there was no mistaking the wide ring of forest enclosing its farms and fields, nor the three giant towers that made up the city.

  "Well that's a piece of good luck," Blays said. "Considering that's right where we want to go."

  "Is it?"

  "Who else is going to be willing to help us? Urt might, if we can navigate whatever strange game he'd make us play before allowing us to see him. Arawn might decide that things are finally serious enough for him to stop being so damn neutral. But it's pretty damn clear that Carvahal's the only one of them we can trust."

  "Placing the fate of our world in the hands of the lord of deception," Gladdic said. "These are strange days indeed."