The Twelve Plagues (The Cycle of Galand Book 7)

by Edward W. Robertson

  ~

  Carvahal's attendants had everything ready by daybreak, but Carvahal himself was content to meander through the morning drinking hot beverages and eating pastries, leaving Dante in the hopelessly frustrated position of one who's entirely dependent on the favors of their host but really wishes that their host would just get the hell on with it already.

  He soothed his annoyance by spending time studying both the lichstone and the shard, which he was tempted to think of as Celden, the White Star. He got nowhere with them, though for what he believed were diametrically opposite reasons: in the case of the lichstone, it was all but impenetrable; for Celden, he was pretty sure it would take nothing more to activate it than the wish to do so.

  It was comforting to have more weapons at hand. Yet less so when he wasn't sure if he had the proper skill or wisdom to know when to best use them.

  The bells struck eleven. Mercifully, a horn sounded from the courtyard, calling them forth.

  "Ready to move out?" Carvahal called to them from atop his ridiculously majestic and terrifying destrier, which looked like it might have been capable of jousting with the shadow-dragon. "Or would you rather keep sitting around in front of the fire all day?"

  "Ready, lord," Dante said, avoiding eye contact for fear he'd glare at the god.

  They mounted up horses finer than anything Dante had back in Narashtovik. A dozen attendants and soldiers made up the rest of the retinue. Dante guessed at least half of them were sorcerers. He wondered, not entirely idly, how many of them might be more skilled than he was.

  Carvahal struck out through the farmlands. When they came to the forest, the branches and thorns retreated from his presence, opening a tunnel through the maze that they were able to trot through in mere minutes.

  "No sign of barbarians on the waystone, lord," a woman announced as they exited into the grassland beyond.

  "Perhaps they're learning," Carvahal said. "Didn't think the cow-tenders were capable of that."

  "I found the ramna to be much smarter than I'd been led to believe," Dante said. "Even cultured, in their way."

  "I know the ramna better than most of their own do. They're still my enemies. That means I'm going to insult them as I do my enemies."

  Carvahal led them at a gallop for a while, seemingly more because he could and wanted to than that they were in any specific haste or danger. They crossed through the heights of red stone with almost as much ease as they had through the maze-woods. Plenty of light remained in the day when they came in sight of the rims of the crater that housed the milky lake.

  As they ascended its flank, a swarm of drakelets hundreds strong arose and circled above them. But a few blasts from Carvahal's retinue dispersed them, and the procession crested the ridge and rode downhill until they reached the green pebbles of the shore.

  Carvahal hopped down from his mount. "Leave the horses here. They wouldn't like it where we're going."

  "Probably for the best." Blays landed with a clash of pebbles. "Unless you're about to wave a wand and turn them into riding-fish, I think they'd have a pretty hard time swimming down to the doorway."

  "We're not going to do any swimming."

  "I hope you're not implying that's because we're about to drown instead."

  Carvahal ignored him, striding to the edge of the water, which wasn't half as cloudy white as it had been when they'd seen it two days before. It was a windy day, but the surface was perfectly calm.

  Carvahal lifted his right hand. Bubbles arose to the surface in a straight line away from him, scattered and few at first, but with increasing number and energy, until it was as frothy as boiling water. It sounded much like it, too. A second deeper roar grew beneath the first.

  The line of bubbles sank below the level of the water to either side of it. The seam grew deeper and wider until it was like an empty canal running far across the lake. As the water drained away, it exposed the lake bed in front of Carvahal, with more and more land becoming visible as the canal sank lower and lower. Within a matter of seconds, the lake was parted right down the middle, with a path of exposed if not exactly dry land running all the way to its center.

  Carvahal glanced over his shoulder at them and winked. "Just in case you'd forgotten what separates you from me."

  Blays looked on, impressed. "Well, I'm still better looking."

  Carvahal stalked forward, boots squishing once he came to the exposed lake bed. Blays followed right on his heels. Dante hesitated, then swore silently and fell in behind them.

  His boots sank an inch or two, but something firmer lay beneath the muck. Walking along a strip of earth down the middle of an otherwise still very full lake wasn't an experience he'd ever had before, but it didn't get truly strange until their heads dropped below the level of the water to either side of them. Dante would have stopped in wonder and more than a touch of foreboding if Carvahal hadn't been strolling forward like he didn't have a care in the world.

  The canal, or perhaps more accurately the reverse-canal, was just wide enough that Dante thought if he stretched his arms he could touch both walls of water at once. As he tried to do so, a sleek silver shape speared toward him through the cloudy water. A fish as long as he was tall sped at him much faster than he could run. As he stumbled back and fell into the mud, the fish, apparently sensing that something was wrong, bent hard to the right, one of its sharp fins slashing past the edge of the water and spraying Dante with droplets.

  As Dante got to his feet, other fish stirred within the milky waters, their scales dull as lead. He gestured to the liquid wall. "What happens if this collapses on us?"

  Carvahal glanced at the shadows hovering in the water. "Then they find out what you taste like."

  Gladdic frowned. "They paid us no bother when we arrived here."

  "They're much more tolerant of strangers arriving through the doorway than of people trying to depart through it."

  The ground was featureless except for the occasional rock or clump of weeds. A scintillating doorway grew visible ahead of them, standing just before the empty canal came to an end.

  By the time they reached it, the waters of the lake towered some eighty feet above them. Dante tried very hard not to think about that.

  The doorway resembled the others they'd seen, though the runes that covered its surface and the lines that gave it its shape were unique to it. Carvahal came to a stop before it.

  "So," Blays said. "Where are we going, then?"

  "To see Maralda, you fool."

  "That sounds like more of a 'who' than a 'where.'"

  "That's because I don't know the where. You better hope I don't need to."

  Carvahal extended his hand. Both ether and nether streamed from his fingers to the gateway. Whatever effect they were having was much too subtle for Dante to make out. Carvahal waited, murmuring to himself as he wove his sorcery.

  The dweomer of the portal shifted from blue to green. Carvahal grunted and lowered his hand, looking strangely unhappy. "You might want to be ready."

  "For?" Dante said.

  "Whatever awaits us on the other side."

  Dante frowned, too. He nicked his knuckle and drew the nether. Back turned to them, Carvahal nodded and stepped forward. The green glow of the doorway reached out for him, embraced him, and stole him away.

  Blays followed, then Dante. He emerged into darkness, and was struck by the increasingly familiar sensation of falling, but when a new doorway of light appeared before him, he seemed to be flying up to meet it.

  For a moment, he was nowhere and nothing. Then he started, frightened by a painfully loud buzzing sound that a deeper part of his mind identified as insects. The air was hot and cloying, almost steamy. He was surrounded by broad-leafed plants with carnival-colored flowers, and above these immensely tall trees, taller than any he'd seen outside of the tree-cities of Weslee.

  Carvahal tilted back his head and groaned. "Oh hell. She just had to pick this place, didn't she?"

  12

  Da
nte had instinctively crouched for cover as their new surroundings had burst into being around him. He stood, but kept the nether in hand. "You know this place?"

  "I do," Carvahal muttered.

  "That sounds better than having no idea where we are."

  "Only because you don't know what this place is like."

  Blays took in the surroundings, hands resting on the pommels of his swords. "Just how many different worlds are you people keeping hidden from us? This makes five now, doesn't it? Six, if you count the Pastlands?"

  "What are you babbling about? Are your senses that dull? We're in the same reality we just were."

  "We're still in the Realm?"

  Carvahal shook his head in annoyance. "Only the Realm is the Realm. Has it never crossed your mind to wonder what might lie beyond the mountains?"

  "I always figured it just sort of ended."

  Still muttering to himself, Carvahal drew a pulsing white sword, hacked at some brush in front of him, and started forward, swatting at the jewel-colored flies that were already taking an interest in them.

  Dante ducked a red and disturbingly veiny vine. "So what other part of your world is this?"

  "Yent. If I'm not mistaken. Which I greatly hope I am."

  "What is Yent?"

  "Untamed and hostile. Stay ready."

  The density of the foliage made it impossible to see more than a stone's throw ahead, and Dante had been under the impression that the towering hardwoods, creeping ivies, and various small creatures passing through the branches were all part of a typical if vaguely unsettling jungle. Then the solid ground to their right vanished, except for a thin arm of stone angling upward to hold aloft a disc of heavily forested earth like a laden platter supported by the agile hand of a servant.

  Blays kept walking but edged away from the cliff. "Is that normal here?"

  "The word 'normal' does not much apply here," Carvahal said.

  Gladdic had been silent for some time, scowling at the abundance of beetles, and especially at the potato-sized ants that sent lesser insects fleeing wherever they advanced.

  "If we had stepped through the doorway by ourselves," he said, "would we have found ourselves back in Varalan? Beneath the mountain?"

  Carvahal didn't look his way. "Probably."

  "Yet you can use it to travel to other places altogether."

  "It surprises you to learn I can do things you can't?"

  Gladdic glanced at Dante and raised his eyebrow a fraction of an inch. Dante gave a cautious nod, but Gladdic said no more.

  Carvahal tipped back his head, inspecting the canopy or something else that only he could see. He reached inside his vest, did some rummaging around, and withdrew a bronze figurine of a wheel. He clenched it in his hand. Nether flowed from his fingers into the plants as he passed them. The ones touched by the shadows drew back from the god as best as their stems and trunks allowed.

  "I don't think they like that," Blays said.

  "The entire point." Carvahal hopped up onto a fallen tree lying across their path. "It will make Maralda believe intruders have come to Yent. Because, of course, they have."

  "What'll she do when she learns that?"

  "Why, she will try to kill them."

  "But 'them' is 'us.'"

  "As I've told you, she doesn't want to be found. We could hunt for her for years without finding so much as a single one of her hairs. That's why we have to make her want to find us."

  Leaves rustled from the lowest branches of a tree ahead of them. Carvahal came to an abrupt stop. He lowered his sword to his side.

  A barrel-sized object broke through the leaves. Two yellow eyes, the pupils narrow vertical slits, fixed on Carvahal. A forked black tongue flicked forth and waggled up and down before retracting. The snake's scales were a dappled green.

  Carvahal eyed it, reoriented himself 45 degrees to his left, and continued chopping his way forward, keeping one eye on the serpent. Dante locked both eyes on the thing until it vanished back into the leaves, and then he locked his eyes on the leaves instead.

  Blays ducked a branch sporting thorns as big as icicles. "If that's how big the snakes are in Yent, I'd hate to see the rats they eat."

  A small gap appeared in the shrubbery, broadening to a clear path. Carvahal gave a sigh of relief and straightened, wiping the sweat from his brow, but after a few steps forward, he came to a stop and cocked his head. A soft breeze parted the grass ahead.

  "No, I don't think we'll be going this way," he said. "Any time the jungle starts making things easier for you, it's time to start walking in the opposite direction."

  He broke from the path, struggling to cut a hole through the screen of plants, which was the thickest it had been yet, so much so that even his enchanted sword had a tough time making any progress. After an increasingly foul string of curses, he raised his hand and assaulted the branches with a cone of whirling ethereal knives.

  Scowling, he angled away from the path, but soon straightened out to advance parallel to it. The air was indecently muggy, yet the shade was so plentiful that Dante wasn't even sweating as he trod through the pungent bed of fresh-cut leaves.

  "I will admit," Carvahal said, stopping once more, "that this is not quite what I was expecting."

  The others maneuvered forward. To their right, a pit yawned from the ground. The other trail led right to it; the fall was cleverly hidden by the plants to either side of it, which grew several feet past the lip of the pit. It was impossible to say just how deep the hole was, because the whole thing was filled from front to back with bones. Dante only recognized a fraction of the species they belonged to. Bloated, pale green vines crawled among the remains, their sucker-like flowers opening and closing on the empty air.

  There was nothing to be said about the scene except in the form of screams, so they made their way onward, Carvahal carrying the bronze wheel aloft in one hand while clearing trail with the other. Two more of the platter-like formations rose into the sky on spindly stems of rock. A swarm of orange hornets descended on them from nowhere and the three sorcerers swatted them with nether while Blays ducked and dodged like a stage performer. The stings hurt like stab wounds and swelled grotesquely, and if they hadn't been able to heal themselves, Dante thought they would have fallen to them.

  As it was, they came out no worse for wear, but the attack dropped them into a dour mood that had them hiking along in silence. The ground cleared before them. Not into a path, but what would have been an open field if not for the trees, which had become so tall and lush that it was dark as twilight beneath them, letting nothing grow on the forest floor except a springy carpet of moss. It was as quiet as it was dim, with a few birds calling forlornly to each other from the heights.

  Gladdic drifted forward, gazing up into the trees as he reached out to touch a trunk. "Is this a temple?"

  "Looks like it might be, doesn't it?" Carvahal said. "Though the others I've seen here tend to have more in the way of walls."

  Dante glanced at what he thought was movement in the distance, but saw nothing. "So there are people here?"

  "If you can call beings who act like they do 'people.' Think of the ramna, except lacking all sense of—"

  A shadow fell from the trees. It was the size of a horse, but despite its bulk it was perfectly silent, eyes gleaming as it swooped toward Carvahal, a long, thick tail extending behind it. Blays yelled out, pointing to it, but Carvahal was already in motion, angling his sword over his head while pulling an immense sphere of nether to his other hand.

  The creature—a cat, Dante now saw, perhaps a panther—seemed to skip forward across space. It plowed into Carvahal's chest. His sword spun from his hand as he crashed into the ground under a mass of muscle. Blays drew his swords and lunged at the beast. Its tail was much longer and weightier's than a cat's, like that of a furred crocodile, and it lashed this at Blays, sending him flying.

  Carvahal drove a wedge of shadows at the beast's throat. It raked its claws through the nether, dispers
ing it, then slashed at the god's face. He shoved his arm between them and took the blow across his forearm. Dante had the impression the gods were even harder to wound than the White Lich, but the cat's claws gored through his skin, exposing flesh and drawing blood.

  "That," Carvahal said, "was a mistake."

  Dante pounded the creature's side with black darts. Twists of fur puffed away from its flanks, but he drew no blood that he could see.

  Carvahal summoned more nether to him, grasped hold of the panther's snout, and let loose. The cat roared and pulled back from him, shaking its head furiously as it slashed at him in warning. Carvahal kicked his legs beneath him, springing to his feet, but the beast shrugged off the sting of the nether and launched itself at him anew, sending their bodies rolling across the mossy ground.

  "What is this thing?" said Blays, who'd picked himself up and was now warily advancing on the fray.

  "Something that's forgotten there are other creatures just as mean as it is."

  Carvahal had grabbed both of the great cat's wrists and was wrestling its claws away with sheer strength, bobbing his head to avoid the snap of its long-fanged jaws. Despite the fact he was an immortal god, and probably capable of feats like lifting a house over his head with one hand, the panther was wrestling him to a standstill, its jet fur going glossy as it rippled along the contours of its straining frame.

  Dante made several more attacks on it, as did Gladdic, but these produced no more than quickly-healing scratches. As Blays approached it from behind, the beast whipped its tail at him again; he cartwheeled backwards, avoiding a broken rib or two by mere inches.

  As he regained his balance, he slammed his swords home in their sheaths and drew forth his spear, jabbing it in the direction of the tail that had just missed him. "Looks like mine's longer."

  The great cat spun about, somehow keeping Carvahal pinned beneath it, and stared at the weapon. Its nostrils flared; its pupils contracted to slits. It glanced down at Carvahal, then back at the spear.