"Oh, for self's sake," Carvahal groaned. "Get off of me, will you?"
Blays advanced two more steps. The panther bared its teeth.
"Stay where you are!" Carvahal said. "Don't you dare stab her, you dolt!"
Dante paused the nether flowing to his hand. "What's going on?"
With his muscles straining so hard they looked like they might rip through his sleeves, Carvahal forced the beast off his chest and sat up, limbs quivering as he held it at arm's length.
"Don't you recognize me? Or worse yet, maybe you do."
Looking loath to take its eyes off the spear, the panther swung its head toward Carvahal and roared in his face.
"You're as obnoxious as ever," he said. "Will you get your grubby paws off me, Maralda?"
Dante blinked in confusion. The panther curled her purple lips, revealing every inch of her ivory fangs, then gave Carvahal a rough shove, knocking him to his back. She extricated herself from him and prowled around him.
"You." Her voice was unearthly: a deep fluid rumble that could become either a purr or a roar, though something like a woman's voice carried beneath the surface. "What here?"
Carvahal angrily brushed off his sleeves, watching her closely as he got to his feet. "Have you let your mind go that feral? Really, this is beneath you."
"Leave. Leave and go!"
"If you think I want to roll around with you in the dirt while trying to hold a conversation with the shriveled remnants of your mind, this is not only pointless, but laughably so. Even so, I am desperate enough that I have to try."
The panther made a huffing sound that Dante thought was laughter. "Speak and talk and blather."
"That's what higher creatures do, Maralda. I'm here because I need your help. That means I need you to be able to speak to me."
She huffed some more. "But I do not need you."
"Are you sure? I could probably pick the fleas out of your hide for you, if you like. Anyway, it's not me you need to be concerned with. It's them." Carvahal pointed to the three mortals, who had wandered next to each other to watch whatever was unfolding in front of them. "Do you know what they are?"
Her feline brows dipped in annoyance. "Meat."
"Of a very exotic cut. They are mortals, Maralda. Not from the Realm—from Rale."
She spat at his feet.
Carvahal sighed and rolled his eyes. "This time, I am not lying to you. Go on and smell them if you don't believe me."
"Eh?" Dante said.
Maralda drew back her head and hid her fangs. She glanced at the three mortals, then back at Carvahal, then at the three once more.
"And if I am lying," Carvahal said, "you can eat them."
She snorted, then plodded lightly toward them. She stood taller at the shoulder than any of them and her mouth looked wide enough to fully fit their heads inside it. Her wide green eyes swept across them. She settled on Dante, looming above him.
"If she starts to eat you," Blays said, "try to fight back long enough for us to get away."
She bent her head toward Dante's face. Her black nostrils flared, sniffing audibly. He could smell her, too, an animalistic odor that was strong yet inoffensive. Her breath whuffed over his face. She lifted her head, staring down at him, then moved to Blays, then Gladdic.
"Mortals. Rale." She cocked her head at Carvahal. "Why?"
"I will assume you mean why are they here, and not why they exist, which I sometimes have to ask myself as well. They're here because Rale is dying—and Nolost is the one killing it."
She seated herself, considering Carvahal with a face that was suddenly thoughtful, then slowly closed her luminous eyes. Her body blurred as the woods fell as dark as night. Shadows spun around her, cloaking all but the vaguest hints of her shape. They whirled faster and faster until some peak was reached, then began to bleed speed, wafting into the air and trickling into nothing.
The air brightened. The last of the shadows fell away, revealing a woman who appeared to be somewhere in her thirties. She was dark-haired and tan, with features not quite like any that Dante had seen during his travels across his own world: a short and sharp nose, a chin to match, her silver eyes tilted upward at the outer corners. While she wasn't as large as the panther had been, like all of the gods, she was significantly larger in stature than any human, with arms as strong as an archer's and legs as sturdy as a rider's.
She wore a black dress angled to bare one shoulder and one knee. It was otherwise very simple in shape and stitching—which was not to say by any means ugly or inept. Instead, it felt terribly ancient.
She gazed at Carvahal for some time. "Carvahal. Your name is Carvahal."
He offered a moderate bow. "It's been a long time, Maralda."
"After enough time, time stops holding meaning."
"The rest of us are still ruled by it. Particularly my friends here. As I said, Rale is being killed. I doubt it will last more than another few weeks."
"Rale." She frowned as she spoke the word. "Nolost."
"On top of that, it's all part of a scheme being executed by Taim. This confluence of factors means there's little I can do. But I thought—I hoped—that you could help them where I can't. You may be their only hope."
"Tell me what exists."
Carvahal did so, sparing her the details in favor of the broader strokes. She stared off into the forest, her face so distant Dante suspected she might not be listening. When Carvahal finished, and Maralda gave no reply, nor stirred at all, Dante was sure of it.
"I don't know you," she said, as if she was talking to someone in a dream.
"Nonsense. We knew each other for eons."
"I know you don't know me. So how can I know you? These men—what do I know of them?"
Carvahal lowered his chin. "What would you like to know?"
"Words are lies. Only what is done can be trusted. A feat—you will perform a feat for me."
"No."
"You foolish man, feats are how we—"
He shook his head. "No, Maralda. There isn't time for that. Not when mortals are dying with every word we speak. Do this for us, and I will owe you a great boon. That is my oath to you. But you will want to do this even if I promised you nothing in return."
Her features swept together in suspicion. "Why?"
"Because if they succeed, it will mean the end of the mortals that you loved."
"What if that is just the correction of the original error?"
"I don't take your meaning."
"If Rale was a mistake? Better for it to be wiped away than for the mortals to forever suffer. Hasn't this crossed your mind? Are you even more stupid than you are cruel?"
He held her gaze, his face as hardened as a plank. "If you think we're so low, then it was no mistake to separate them from us. This way, they are free to live their own lives as they will, away from our blunders and malice."
Maralda gazed into the distance, acting once more for all the world like she hadn't heard a word he'd said. She walked off through the moss, her right hand extended behind her and to her side, fingertips trailing ether in her wake.
A small shadow dropped from the trees. Maralda stopped and watched as it flew and looped in front of her. It was hard for Dante to see, but he thought it was the littlest bird he'd ever seen. Another one joined it, the two creatures helixing around each other. At once, the air was filled with them, the flock squeezing together and then pulling apart, soaring one direction only to career into a new course with back-breaking abruptness, shifting from one formation to another as if they weren't animals but a supple liquid that had been gifted with the breath of life.
A few of the birds (if that's what they were) returned to the trees, disappearing into the leaves and the darkness. A trickle became a flood, dissolving like fog under the sunlight, until a single one remained: then it fluttered away as well.
Maralda stared after them for a long moment, then walked back to Carvahal. "The future is unseen—except that if Rale is erased, there will be fe
wer futures to not be seen. I doubt I can help you. But I will if I can."
~
Carvahal explained in greater detail the situation before them, focusing especially on Nolost and how Maralda might be able to help them. She asked no questions, and spent most of this humming or murmuring to herself, punctuated by a few moments when she plucked up a pinch of moss like a striking snake, burned it between her own fingers with the ether, and watched the smoke like a sentry watches the horizon.
Part way through, Blays elbowed Dante in the ribs and nodded toward the trees. Creatures stirred there, too lost in shadow to see anything about them except that they were large. Dante had the sense that they were drawn to Maralda, but he couldn't tell if they were hostile or somehow charmed by her.
"Thinking we can kill the entity is a fantasy," Carvahal finished. "But maybe we can trap it in Varalan. Or at the very least cut off the passages it's using to reach Rale. You're the only one I know who might be able to do this."
At this, Maralda snapped out of her trance and whirled on him, grabbing his collar in her fist. "That's what you drew me out of the dreaming for? That? I will not do it!"
"What is wrong with you? No, never mind, we don't have anywhere near enough time to get to the bottom of that. You just told me you would help us. You're even more inconstant than I remember."
"You talk even more than I remember."
"You won't have to hear me prattle on while you're telling me why you're going back on your word."
"But if I tell, you will only argue with me all the more. I will go instead." She released him and stepped back, lifting her right hand in front of her face. Shadows surrounded her, obscuring her form.
"Oh no you don't!" Carvahal waded into the shadows, waving his hands about to disperse them before they could coalesce any more. "If you know something I don't, that is the very reason I came to see you!"
Her hand had already partly transformed into a black paw. She struck at his face. He ducked it and hit her square in the chest with an open palm that splashed ether across her and brought her transformation to a halt.
"Be reasonable," he said calmly. "If you're still capable of reason."
She sneered at him, flashing what were now frighteningly large teeth, then closed her eyes in anger and shifted back to her human form.
"I said I would help," she said. "That was before I heard your plan."
Carvahal gave her some space. "What, pray tell, is wrong with it?"
"You have a man…a treater of the ill…" She made a spinning gesture.
"A physician?" Dante said.
"Physician! This person, this sick-treater, a sick man comes to him: his blood is poisoned. And you think the physician should cure him by stopping up his veins."
"Are you suggesting we use…leeches?"
"What you want is not a cure. It won't last and it can't last."
Carvahal paced between a pair of trees. "Yes, but nothing lasts forever. Perhaps not even ourselves."
"But this will not even last the effort needed to do. When Rale soon quivers again, you come back to me again, and I rebuke you. That makes this all wasted time I could be walking the wilds: so I will refuse you now instead."
"You can't know what the future holds!"
She snorted at him. "I know you and the others too well to believe it will go any other way."
"Even if you're right, isn't it worth it to allow ourselves the chance? Even if we're only able to keep Nolost away for a single generation, think how much Rale will be able to prepare for his return!"
"You came to me because you don't understand the ways between worlds as I do. I am telling you that even if you close the passages between Rale and Varalan, it won't buy you a generation. It would only buy you a matter of weeks—or of days. If you don't believe what I tell you, then I'm not of any use to you, and this is without purpose."
Carvahal was stymied by this. Maralda lifted her hand to her face, calling to the nether.
"Hang on," Dante said. "So our plan is stupid. Do you have a different one?"
"That which already exists. That which Carvahal has already seen."
"I have seen more than a few things over the years," Carvahal replied, patience strained. "Forgive me if I need to be reminded of this particular which."
She stared him in the eye, oblivious to the mortals. "Rale can only be saved the same way it was built—the same people—the same forces."
"That can't be done. I could only convince a few of the gods to this cause. Even then, things aren't like they once were. We couldn't bring the same powers to bear. Without those powers, we'd be far too exposed. Even when we did have them, surely you remember what it cost us."
"The cost is just what I mean."
He peered into her eye, then shook his head and stalked about like a wolf beneath treed prey. "Your mind was hard enough to follow when it wasn't half-mad from isolation. At this point I have about as much chance of understanding its twists as I do of convincing that rock to fetch me my toast."
"Can you do that?" Blays said.
"Not the gods," Maralda said. "The Four That Fell."
Carvahal came to such a fast halt his head and shoulders lurched forward. "Raging hells. That's your plan?"
"Much better than yours."
"I am not so sure!"
"Leave me be, then. For it's the only one I'll have part in."
"You can't truly believe they can destroy Nolost."
"I believe that a wind can blow itself out. That a storm can spend itself and leave the season at peace. Would you try to stab a storm?"
"When a storm comes, all you can do is try to take shelter. The question is whether the Four That Fell can even provide that shelter."
Maralda shrugged her regal shoulders. "No entity's power is infinite."
"And when destruction is thwarted, it sometimes blows itself out in frustration well before its power is exhausted. I'm not convinced this can be done—but I agree that you know more about it than I do. If this is your deal, I will accept it."
"It is my deal."
"Very well." Carvahal plopped down on the trunk of a fallen tree and laced his hands together. "Time for one more lesson," he said to the three humans. "With any luck it will be the last one needed, because even I, scofflaw that I am, am growing weary of violating the custom against revealing the deep secrets. Then again, we're outside both my realm and yours, so maybe I am absolved for this one." He cracked his knuckles and looked up. "The White Tree. The one you call Barden. What do you think it is?"
"Very gross," Blays said.
"A curse upon the north," Gladdic said. "A manifestation of the foulness that comes from worshipping the shadows without heed for the light."
Dante rolled his eyes. "Be that as it may, Barden isn't natural to our world. It came from yours, when Eric the Draconat fought Taim, severed his knuckle, and planted it in the ground."
"Nope," Carvahal said.
"Oh, Lyle's balls. Are any of our beliefs true?"
"Some are, and others are surprisingly close to it—true in spirit if not in fact. I don't think your mind can fully grasp how much time has passed between now and when these deeds were first done. You should feel lucky that you know so much of the truth or something like it at all." He narrowed his eyes. "I am led to wonder, in fact, if someone seeded your ancestors with tales they shouldn't have told…"
"That sounds like something you'd do. So what is the truth about Barden?"
"Yours is one of the close truths. The White Tree does grow from a god, but it isn't Taim. And it isn't just his knuckle. It's his body. His corpse."
"The White Tree is…grown from the body of a dead god?"
"Don't sound so aghast, it looks like exactly what it is. Forging Rale was not easy. It required battling and taming many different entities and elements. Two of us died in this struggle. And so did two of their greatest titans."
"The Four That Fell," Gladdic said. "I have heard no rumor or legend of this."
&
nbsp; "You might have. You just don't recognize what it was an echo of. Regardless, Barden is one of these, and as everyone but Blays might have guessed by now, there are three others on Rale as well."
"Ah," Blays said. "Let me guess. You expect us to visit all four of them. And steal things or something. We're going to have to hike across the entire world, aren't we?"
"No." Maralda was looking up at something in the trees. "You won't have to do much travel. The doorways will do that for you."
"There are portals?" Dante said. "At each of them? My city lies just south of Barden, and I've never heard of such a thing."
"You would never find them on your own. That is one of the reasons Carvahal has pressed me into this."
Carvahal looked up from the log he was seated on, lifting one brow. "If you think I'm happy about being involved in this, you have eaten too many wild mushrooms."
"What exactly are we supposed to acquire from the Four That Fell?" Dante said.
"Oh, you're not gathering anything. Yours will be a different task altogether: to rekindle their souls."
"We're bringing them back to life? To fight for us?"
"No and no. The full story would take hours to tell, so I'm going to keep this as simple as possible. As we worked to forge Rale, our efforts drew the attention of deeper powers. They sought to take the world and bend it to their own ends. The war that followed—the War of the Forging—threw the very geography of Rale into chaos, with the entities raising mountains in our way, or flooding our work with new oceans, or splitting great chasms across our lands. Some of what they did made no sense to me at all. Maybe they were reshaping things to be what they would have liked to live in, or what they found beautiful. But there's often no understanding how they think, and sometimes it's best not to try.
"With the amount of devastation being wreaked, it was only a matter of time before those on both sides began to die. This only made the struggle more bitter and fierce. Just as the very foundations of Rale were on the brink of being ripped apart, Lia approached the shades of the dead with a proposal: pool their powers so that Rale couldn't be warped and manipulated anymore, and the war would drift to a halt on its own. None of us was certain they'd be able to do this, but due to the nature of those that had fallen, we thought it was at least possible.
The Twelve Plagues (The Cycle of Galand Book 7) Page 18