The Twelve Plagues (The Cycle of Galand Book 7)

by Edward W. Robertson

  Then again, there hadn't been any at the dead city until there suddenly were.

  The waters stayed gray until they were almost right up on the shore. Only at the last few dozen feet did they turn dappled again. Low surf helped wash them up onto a beach of pink sand. Keeping one eye on the water and one eye on the grass beyond the beach, they hopped out and dragged their boat clear of the surf.

  "Think we ought to bury this thing?" Blays said.

  "Oh dear," Dante said. "Did our boat pass away during the crossing?"

  "No, but all the trees look to have. So if any hail storms, monstrous crabs, or storms made of crab were to befall our boat while we're out trying to strike up a conversation with a dead entity, then it's going to be a long swim back to the mainland."

  Dante didn't see how there could be no trees on an island this rainy, but when he hiked up a coarse-grassed dune to prove Blays wrong, he didn't see any plants more substantial than shrubs. Admitting Blays' idea was a good one, he helped flip the boat and tried to shift some dirt over it, but like the shore of the city, it didn't want to move. They hastily tossed sand over the hull instead. Done, they arranged washed-up rocks and coral in a circle to mark the spot.

  As Dante brushed off his hands and stood to face the Spire, something leaped from the grass and landed in the sand before him. He uttered an undignified grunt and drew his sword. The creature was about the size of a goat, though it only rose to his knee, and much more unusually was that it looked more like a beast of the sea than of the field: its four limbs looked more like fleshy fins or stout tentacles than legs; its hide was bare and leathery, segmented like the skin of a turtle; and it sported a single long, straight horn like the tuskwhales that could sometimes be seen around Narashtovik and the more remote coasts of Gask.

  "Hyah!" Dante menaced it with waving arms. When that failed to drive it off, he kicked sand at it. "Come on! Get out of here!"

  The thing lowered its head, aiming its horn at him, and took a step forward. Blays lunged forward, his sword casting purple light across the beach. The creature threw back its head and bleated, a deafening noise like the sounding of a conch shell. Before it could do whatever it was going to do next, Blays sent its head tumbling across the sand.

  "What a wretched creature," Blays muttered, wiping his blade in the grass as its body keeled over and kicked its weird little legs a few times. "Although I will say I'm starting to wonder how these sea monsters taste."

  "If Nolost sent them, probably like twice-baked poison." Dante took a look around for any more of the things, then started forward. "Let's get a move on. I really don't want to spend the night here."

  He was afraid they weren't going to have any choice: it'd taken them hours to ascend the mountains above Barden, and they'd already been in this land for close to three hours more. Thanks to the clouds, he had no idea what time it was, but it was so dark it felt like the sun could set at any time. And if there was one thing he looked forward to less than paddling their way back to the dead city on the shores of Snarjlend, it was the idea of being halfway back when the sun sank beneath the waves.

  He was still debating with himself whether they should just stay on the island overnight even if there was some daylight left once they were done when he walked past a dune and into a mob of hundreds of angry warriors.

  16

  They appeared so suddenly it was as if they'd popped right up from the ground. Many held bows and arrows, though these were white in color and strange in shape. Others bore short spears, also pale in color; some held slings at the ready. Others yet carried clubs. These, at last, Dante recognized: femurs. Human thigh bones, studded with shark teeth. At once, he understood that all the weapons except the slings were made of bone from some creature or another.

  "What's our move?" Blays said quietly.

  "I'm not sure we can get them all before they get to us," Dante said. "And even if we could, I'm not sure that Farelin of the Nautilus would appreciate us massacring her worshippers."

  "Well. Go on and talk down the angry mob, then."

  To hedge his bets, Dante bit the inside of his lip until he tasted blood. "Greetings," he said. Something tingled against his sternum. He managed to prevent himself from calling out in surprise: it was the amulet Carvahal had given him. His voice sounded the same to his own ears, though, and the faces of the warriors showed no sign that they understood him.

  "Maybe you have noticed bad omens of late," he went on. "Storms. Sickness. Dangerous creatures—even monsters—invading your lands and waters. It might feel like the end of days is upon you. Well, there's a good reason for that. It's because—"

  "Silence!" That was the word he heard in his head, but to his eyes, the woman's mouth seemed to have said something else altogether.

  She separated herself from her host and gazed down at them from a low ridge of rough white stone. Her face was the color of orange ocher and so were her hands, and for a moment Dante thought he'd stumbled into a band of people with bright orange skin. Her shoulders were a ruddy pink, though, along with her shins, meaning the orange was most likely paint of some kind. But if so, all of her people were painted just as she was.

  She wore a tabard of gray leather that Dante was certain had been taken from the hide of some marine creature. It was sewn simply and belted across the waist; its hem hung at mid-thigh. She wore bracelets and necklaces adangle with shells and teeth and her hair was adorned with bits of metal. She looked to be about forty, but given her strangeness to Dante's eyes, he could have been off by ten years either way.

  "I smell lies." She bent forward at the waist, narrowing her eyes as she sniffed at the air. She carried a tall wooden staff—the only wood Dante saw among them—and held it before her in warding. Her eyes flew wide and she jerked upright. "Sorcerers!"

  The crowd gasped and muttered. More than a few wailed. Others shook their spears and clubs.

  An older man, wizened and gray, the orange parts of his skin patterned with pale scars, leaned toward the woman, baubles swinging from the purple shell he wore as a helmet.

  "Let there be a trial, master," he said.

  "A trial—yes!" Lithely, she jumped down from the little ridge and crossed before the three intruders, keeping twenty feet of space between them. Others of the band shuffled around to better encircle them.

  Dante brought the nether close, but made sure not to manifest it in any way. It would only be visible to another sorcerer—unless, of course, these people had found a way to detect nether-wielders despite not being able to wield it for themselves.

  "Yes. They are sorcerers," she said. "I smell it on their skin. I see it in their veins."

  "But how can you be sure?" said the older man.

  "How else could they cross the Sea of Horrors? How else can they speak the language of the Astendi, that is known only to the Astendi? They come wreathed in black magics!"

  "She's got us there," Blays murmured.

  "But these are only words." The old man's tone sounded more like advocacy for the devil than genuine concern. "And words lie like sorcerers' spells." He lifted his fist to the air. "We must have a test!"

  "A test!" the crowd echoed, raising their weapons to mirror his fist.

  The woman nodded. "You are wise, Uldrag. Perform the Test of the Cliff!"

  "Gladly," Blays said. "What do we have to do?"

  "You will go to the top of that cliff." She pointed to a wall of white rock a quarter of a mile away. It looked to be some thirty feet high. "And then you will jump off it."

  "Er, we will?"

  "Yes. For that is the Test of the Cliff."

  "But if we aren't sorcerers—and believe me, we'd never spend time around such vile, inhuman people, let alone become them—won't we just fall?"

  "Yes."

  "And then break things? Like our legs? Or our brains?"

  She stared at him with pewter-gray eyes. "Yes."

  "Right," Blays said. "Is there perhaps some other test we could take?"

  Th
e woman spun to face the crowd and flung out her arms. "They refuse the test because they fear it! They fear it will expose them! They are sorcerers. There can be no doubt. None at all!"

  Uldrag edged closer to her, nodding, shoulders hunched. "What is your judgment, my master?"

  She turned back to the interlopers, examining them carefully. Finished, she clucked her tongue. "They are to be harvested. For their meat, and for their bone-bricks, so that this island might live!"

  The masses cheered and waved their weapons about some more. Blays leaned toward Dante. "We've got about twenty seconds for you to talk some sense into them. After that, we'll have to chop sense into them instead."

  "Listen to me!" Dante thundered. "We mean you no harm. But we must speak to—"

  "Quiet!" The woman whipped something at him.

  He tried to duck away, but it hit him square in the chest. Goo splattered his rain-damp cloak. Whatever it was, it smelled off, like fermented sea-meat. At once, he was so dizzy that he canted to the side. He had to widen his stance and reach for the wet ground to stop himself from falling over. He started to send the nether into his veins to cleanse him of whatever was afflicting him, then remembered in the nick of time that doing so would get him afflicted with a volley of arrows.

  "Now there comes the question of justice," the woman said. "Whose otobi was it that the magic-touchers killed?"

  Even within his haze, Dante noticed "otobi" as the first word that his talisman couldn't translate.

  "It belonged to Family Yerab," said the old man, gesturing into the crowd with his palm up. It occurred to Dante, somewhat belatedly, that the man was the Astendi equivalent of a priest—although one that, perversely, couldn't use nether or ether at all. Among the group that Uldrag had gestured to, a young man moved next to a middle-aged woman and whispered in her ear.

  "Then to Family Yerab shall go the harvest. Hold them down." She drew a long knife from her belt—one that, instead of being made of bone or shell, was forged from steel. Armed warriors moved closer to them on all sides.

  "Well," Dante said. "Time to do something horrific."

  He raised his hand.

  "Wait!" The plea came from the middle-aged woman he'd noticed moments before. "Master Lidenda. I am grateful for their meat and bricks. But Family Yerab would take them as slaves instead."

  The woman, Master Lidenda, scowled at her. "Yerab-Pila, you know that can't be done."

  "But our fish-pen has been damaged by storms. So have many of our houses. They look strong enough to make the repairs—at least two of them do. As for the third, his meat looks too gristly to eat anyway, and we can take his bricks from him after we have wrung all the labor from them."

  "They have cast some spell on you to make you insane! If you try to make a sorcerer your slave, they will bewitch you, then slit open your eyes and belly and fill them with sand. And you can do nothing to stop them."

  Pila lowered her eyes. Beside her, the young man stood up straight. "Yes we can, master. For they are here to see the Great One. If the slaves turn on us, she will never speak to them—and more, she will curse them! She will curse their very blood!"

  Master Lidenda frowned like something large was having a hard time making its way down her gullet, then turned toward Dante. "Is this true? Did you come to see the Great One?"

  "Yes," he said. His tongue felt thick in his mouth and he wasn't entirely sure that he was speaking the words he was meaning to say. "That's just what I was trying to tell you. We must go to the Spire of the Nautilus and speak to the spirit within it. The world is in grave danger. We're the only ones—"

  "The world has never cared for us! Why would we care for it?"

  "Because you're part of it. You share its fate. If we—"

  "Shut up!" She pointed her long steel knife at him. "Yes, I think it would be better to watch you toil as slaves. How did you get here?"

  "By paddling." Through the fuzz, Dante realized too late that was probably a stupid thing to admit. "But the hail smashed half a dozen holes through our boat. We were barely able to keep it afloat until we got close enough to swim to shore."

  She squeezed her eyes until they were almost closed. "You lie to me. Find their boat—and put them to work!"

  A score of warriors hooted and ran through the grass toward the beach they'd arrived on.

  Pila approached the three captives, eyeing them warily. "You will come with us, ugly ones. You will do as we say. For the boy is right—defy us, hurt us, and the Nautilus will curse you, and everything you do will come to ruin."

  Dante exchanged a quick look with Blays.

  "Of course, Yerab-Pila," Gladdic said, matching the accent on her name perfectly. "For you have spared our lives, and we will not forget that."

  Pila gave him a suspicious nod, then pointed them forward.

  "One more thing," Lidenda called. "They killed your otobi, but it was my land they violated. You will have their labor—and I will have their weapons."

  She dispatched more warriors to them. Not at all sure that he was doing the smart thing, Dante let himself be disarmed. Blays didn't look bothered by it at all. Not even when a tall, lean warrior took the rod-shaped Spear of Stars from him and passed it to Lidenda.

  She gave it a test swing, then cocked her head. "What is this? Its end is much too heavy, it feels wrong in my hand."

  "It is used," Blays said, "to clear plugged-up commodes."

  "What is 'commode'?"

  Blays explained. She gave the rod a disgusted look, then slung it to the ground. Its head thumped through the topsoil, its handle canting from the ground at an angle. Dante tried to make it look like he wasn't trying to memorize exactly where they were.

  The Family Yerab consisted of about twenty people. Their age varied, but they all carried weapons of some kind, and kept them in hand as they marched the three outsiders inland. A fraction of Lidenda's people wandered off on their own business, but most traveled in the same direction as the Yerabs, chattering excitedly with each other about the capture of the foul sorcerers and the wiseness of their leaders.

  "Are we sure that was the right move?" Dante said quietly.

  "It was that or commit a massacre," Blays said.

  "I repeat the question."

  "At present, we know nothing of the Spire," Gladdic said. "It might have dangerous defenses, or be more difficult to enter than Barden. So it is wise not to murder those who know its ways until we are certain they are useless to us."

  "Anyway, we're all cooped up on a little island," Blays said. "Our weapons aren't going anywhere."

  They gained a little height as they moved from the coast, but other than a handful of hills and the Spire at the center, the landscape looked to be little but low dunes, some covered with grass, others mostly sandy, with tails of sediment to the leeward side where the wind blew these dunes when they weren't pasted together by rain. Shallow valleys wound between the more permanent dunes, some of them holding pools of what might or might not be fresh water. The island wasn't barren, but it was much less lush than it seemed like it ought to have been.

  With little to glean from their surroundings, Dante shifted his attention to their captors. When they'd been surrounded by scores of armed men, the warriors had seemed rather menacing. Looking at them individually, though, while well-muscled, they were as lean as Tanarians, and shorter yet. Dante was larger than all but the biggest of them.

  Not that it made much difference when they were outnumbered a hundred to one.

  As they traveled, the group separated into smaller bunches of twenty to forty members. It soon became clear that each sub-group was a family or clan: not only were they varied in age, from teen boys to the venerable (mostly men, though there were women among them as well), but each group marked itself with a trinket of some kind: one with green feathers dangling from their right ears, another with a blue shell worn on a thong around the neck, and so forth.

  Master Lidenda's group was the only one that violated this pattern. About
half of them, including herself, wore a bracelet adorned with scraps of iron around their left wrists. The other half of her people lacked this. Instead, they each wore a trinket of one of the other groups. Representatives from the other clans, perhaps.

  They crossed a field of yellowish hardpan and ascended a long, low hill. On the other side, the land had been divvied into parcels separated by shrubs and short walls of white rock. Each parcel was large enough to graze a decent herd of cattle on, if they'd had any such thing, and at a glance, there looked to be roughly the same number of parcels as there were clan-families.

  The buildings were like nothing Dante had ever seen. The most arresting of them were built in the shape of house-sized shells—no, strike that, they were shells, as large as the biggest ones they'd seen in the ruins of the city. Their colors were faded and bleached, though, and they were patched in many places.

  The structures that weren't made from single shells were much smaller. Meaner. Mostly made of bones, culled from whales or some other huge fish, with grass thatched between the bony frames. Due perhaps to the irregularity of the materials, they were asymmetrical and crude, shack-like in both size and quality. The difference between them and the aged majesty of the shell-houses was as stark as the difference between a royal feast and a compost heap.

  "They'll try to lie to you, Yerab-Pila," Lidenda warned her as the families began to diverge toward their own parcels. "If they give you any trouble, give them no mercy: sound the horn, then kill them."

  Pila bowed her head. "Yes, master."

  They trooped down a dirt path and into a parcel that held three of the shell-houses, though one was so badly damaged it looked to be abandoned, and another thirty or so bone shacks. There were no animals out in the fields besides a few birds. The fields were mostly grass that looked to be used for thatch or the woven clothes that most of the people wore, though a few sub-parcels bore quasi-orderly lines of plants that, while currently dead, might have produced something edible when they were in season.