Many of the trees looked like ashes and oaks, or whatever the local variants might be, but others weren't much like anything Dante had seen other than banyans—and in fact he couldn't be sure they were multiple trees, for while they had discrete trunks, shared limbs stretched between them, creating little bridges through the air traversed by small furry things with long tails, big ears, and bigger eyes. Vines wound between the trees as well, and Dante couldn't tell if they were separate plants, or growing from the trees themselves.
There was little sound except the rustle of the leaves, the patter of the creatures in the branches, and the occasional hesitant song of unseen birds. Dante didn't see any houses or shacks or the like, and he began to wonder if Bagrad had suffered a fate similar to what had befallen Snarjlend.
After an hour of walking, the ground tilted upward. After they'd gained four hundred feet in elevation, it leveled back out. They stepped out from the trees and almost stepped right off a cliff.
Dante dropped into a crouch, grabbing at a smooth-barked trunk no thicker than his wrist. Empty space yawned ahead of him before the ground abruptly resumed eight hundred feet away on the other side of a huge pit.
He stood, inching back from the edge. "What does that look like to you?"
"A crater," Blays said.
"What does it not look like to you?"
"A crater with a Fountain of Iron in it." Blays drummed his fingers on his elbow. "Well, maybe it's just a very small fountain."
"There's not much down there but grass and a few bushes. I'm not seeing a place where even an underwhelming fountain could hide."
"Then maybe this land is full of craters and we're at the wrong one."
"I feel like Maralda would have mentioned that," Dante said. "We'll circle around the rim. That'll let us see if we're missing something down there—and if there's any other craters in the distance."
He moved to his right along the edge. The outermost trees jutted at an angle over the cliff, which was sheer for some twenty feet down before it started to gentle out, with the very deepest portion in the middle running sixty to eighty feet below them. The only movement within this was a few birds flitting among the bushes and the boulders scattered around the bottom.
Blays stopped and leaned toward the edge. He motioned his chin at something below. "What's that look like?"
"Bones," Dante said.
"Normally I'd say that everything looks like bones to you. But it looks like bones to me, too."
"Too big to be human. Could be a horse or a cow fell over the edge and died."
They moved on. The revealing of the bones gave him some small hope that they'd reveal what they were looking for as well, but that hope dwindled the further around they got without seeing anything more than a few other piles of old bones.
Halfway around the southern rim, Dante came to a stop. "I'm not seeing any fountains, of iron or otherwise. Either we're in the wrong spot, or it is."
Blays scanned the bottom of the crater. "We're sure of that? Maralda said this was a land of forests and caverns. Maybe the Fountain of Iron is underneath the crater."
"Didn't she also say the Cantag worshipped the thing? I don't see any sign of people anywhere."
"Yet I do see another hill further to the south," Gladdic said. "That could turn out to be a crater."
"I don't think it's here. We'll go and have a look at the other spot. If there's no crater there, we can always come back here and take a closer look at the bottom."
"Normally I'd be thrilled to hear those words," Blays said. He led the way downhill through the woods.
"Has it yet occurred to you to question the trees?" Gladdic said.
"I'm not sure how much they're going to be able to tell us, old fellow."
"They are already speaking to you, if you have the wit to hear them." Gladdic reached out and trailed his hands along the outstretched leaves.
"They still have leaves," Dante said. "Even though it's winter."
"Are we sure of that?"
The question was crazy enough that it took Dante a second to grasp it. "You think it might be a different season here? How would that even be possible?"
"I do not fully know. But consider how cold the winters of Gask and Narashtovik are. If you travel well to the south, to Bressel, they are still cold, but more mild; go further south yet, to Alebolgia and Tanar Atain, and the winter is rarely if ever bad enough to see frost. Travel even further, to the Plagued Islands, and winter brings no more than extra rains and cooler nights. The trees do not lose their leaves there, either.
"The pattern is undeniable. And so it is likely true that we are somewhere south of Tanar Atain and north of the Plagued Islands. Yet there is one other possibility. For what happens as you keep going south? Does the pattern hold, to where the winters become hotter than the summers? Or is it that the seasons themselves invert—that winter becomes summer, and summer winter?"
"Next time," Blays said, "can you promise not to make my head hurt again unless there's a pub within a thousand miles?"
"Even if you're right about the pattern," Dante said, "this doesn't feel like summer to me. Just a—"
"Stop there!" A large humanoid figure covered in strange plates, horns, and growths stepped out from a tree and pointed a bizarre blackish sword at them. "You are trespassing! Is there any reason that I shouldn't kill you?"
"Several," Blays said. "Especially if you're not a fan of committing accidental suicide."
Dante had decided the figure was human underneath his armor, which looked to be a patchwork of both regular leather reinforced with studs and strips of iron, and of several different hides he could only guess as to their sources, seeing as they were a mix of hard, bony plates, scaly leather, densely-packed little spikes, and protruding horns, with each patch being its own suite of colors, most of them bright. The man's helmet had been harvested from a single source: apparently, the head of a giant mantis-like insect.
In each hand, he bore an item that seemed to be both bracer and blade: the broad end covered his forearm and elbow while the pointy end extended fifteen inches past his wrists. They were dark purple and their cross-sections were triangular. They looked to have been carved out from some awful beast—the stabbing sides looked like horns or teeth, while the armored sections were overlapping scales.
As odd as his armament might be, the man's face was even stranger. For his skin was starkly gray, as if he'd rubbed it with ashes. And his eyes were yellow—not in a sickly way, but golden and feline.
"When you speak," he boomed at Blays, "I hear one voice in the air, and a different voice in my head. There is only one being that can speak two voices at once. Devils!"
He drew back his right arm and sprinted headlong at Blays. They were already close enough that Blays forwent his spear and drew his swords instead. The sight of the nether snapping along them did nothing to dissuade the man from charging. As he punched at Blays with his weapon, Blays stepped to the side, crashing his left-hand blade into the man's spike to guide it past him.
The two objects met with a piercing ping. Blays' sword sprung away; from the way he blinked, Dante could almost feel the shock running up his arm. Dante had the distinct suspicion Blays' blade would have shattered if it had been made of normal steel.
"Devils indeed, to withstand such an attack," the man growled, confirming Dante's thoughts. "Were the abominations not enough? Now you profane us by wearing human skin as well?"
"We're not devils." Blays kept his guard up but made no move to menace the other man. "Now, it's true that a fellow of upstanding character might not want us as friends, lest his reputation suffer. But we're not here to do you or this land any harm. Just the opposite."
The man grimaced and pressed his right hand to his ear. He shook his head. "Again you speak with two tongues. I will cleanse you!"
He came at Blays again. Blays was skilled enough that he could hold off most swordsmen for an effectively infinite amount of time without running any real risk to h
imself, but the stranger's feet moved as gracefully as if he'd been skating, and his jabs and slashes were just as subtle, further aided by the way his weapons seemed to repel Blays' when they struck each other. After one such clash, he stepped inside Blays' guard and drove his spiked blade in an uppercut toward Blays' chin.
Blays threw his own feet out from beneath himself. His head jerked back. The man's right arm whisked harmlessly past, but he was already punching toward Blays with his left, knocking aside the Odo Sein sword Blays stuck out in defense. As the spiked weapon descended on his throat, the dart of nether Dante had thrown slipped between two of the patches of creature-hide and plunged through a patch of cow leather just beneath the base of his neck.
The man grunted and fell heavily onto Blays, who was just hitting the ground. Blays caught the man with his arms and twisted his body, tossing the man onto his back—and using the momentum of that to roll into a crouch, from which he stood.
He lowered his swords. "He looks pretty dead."
"That's because he is." Dante let the rest of the shadows go. "You got lucky. I'm not sure the nether would have punctured any other part of his armor so easily. At least not in a place where it would knock him dead."
"Oh, you think I just accidentally maneuvered him so you'd be able to see and attack the most vulnerable part of his defenses?"
"You did not do that."
"Well of course you think it's ridiculous when the concept didn't even occur to you." Blays sheathed his weapons and gave the corpse an appraising look. "Speaking of armor, let's have a look at this stuff, shall we?"
Dante kneeled next to the dead man and leaned in for a better look at the patchwork, studiously avoiding touching it yet—he had the suspicion parts of it might be poisoned. Hodgepodge that it might be, it was almost seamless, and he couldn't see any stitching or other bindings between the numerous different sections.
"He was skilled," Blays said. "Wouldn't be surprised if he's part of an order like the Odo Sein himself."
Dante made a quick scan of the surrounding brush. Seeing no legions of armed knights, he returned to his investigation, sending his mind into the dead man's armor.
"It's absolutely filled with nether," he announced. "That's partly because it was all taken from dead animals. But there's something more to it—"
A branch snapped. He swung up his head. A bird cheeped to itself from the canopy. The air had warmed further in the couple of hours since they'd arrived in Bagrad and there was no wind and besides the bird the only sound was the unassuming drone of flies sitting fatly on leaves. That was why it felt so strange that Dante couldn't hear the thing rushing at them across the forest floor.
It was bigger than a bull and its head was oversized and triangular. Its hide was purple-gray and pebbly and Dante would have sworn he'd seen it among the dead man's armor. A long horn jutted from its snout, perfectly capable of gutting a man, but it was probably less dangerous than the thing's big round feet, which looked like they could squash a skull without so much as feeling it.
The clamor of its charge should have been thunderous. Yet Dante could hear every note of the bird's happy chirping.
"Incoming!" He bounced to his feet and scrambled away from the corpse, scooping up shadows with both hands.
"A cavalry charge, eh?" Blays drew the rod from his belt. "I've got just the thing for that."
He moved directly into the animal's path, then bent his knees, turned his hips, and spread his feet. He punched the rod out in front of him into the shining length of the Spear of Stars. He secured its loop around his wrist and braced its butt against the ground.
"I've got a horn, too," he called to it. "And mine's much bigger."
As if the beast could understand his words, it dropped its head and snorted, aiming its horn right at him. Its eyes were set well back on its skull, spaced widely and protected by thick ridges of bone. Dante had never seen one of its kind before, but the fury in its eyes was as obvious as a sunrise.
It sped silently toward Blays. He deepened his crouch, bracing himself all the more. It wasn't until the thing was just a few strides away that Dante could finally hear the whisper of its stumpy feet against the turf. Without warning—without even taking its eyes off Blays—it changed direction to gallop toward Dante.
Eyes bulging, Dante scrambled back. Blays dashed to put himself between them, but the creature was already tearing past him; he swung the spear like a sword, but its tip just missed the beast's wizened hide. Dante had the nether at the ready, but judging by the look of the thing, he wasn't sure that it could punch through the thing's skin and skull. Especially if it was one of Nolost's creations, which it had the look of.
So instead of assaulting it directly, he delved into the ground and yanked up a boulder directly in front of its face.
The impact of the two objects should have been loud enough to make Dante wince. But all he heard was a scuff like a boot being kicked over dry dirt. The boulder completely obscured his vision; had the animal managed to stop itself short? Bringing more nether to him, he circled warily around the rock as Blays moved around it from the other side.
The creature lay on its side. Its horn was broken near the base, dangling from itself by splinters. Its eyes were open and glazed.
Blays edged a step closer. "Is it…?"
Its flank heaved as it drew an uneven breath.
"No," Dante said. "So make sure it is before it gets back up."
Blays frowned at the thing, positioned his spear, and drove it home. The beast stiffened like a plank, then relaxed. The blow wasn't anything a normal animal could have survived, but Dante would have checked its pulse—if not for the enormous volume of matter that had immediately begun exiting its backside.
"If you were intending to desecrate that man's corpse, I suggest you hurry," Gladdic said. "Before anything else arrives to assault us."
"I just wanted another minute," Dante said. "Then we'll get back on our way to the Fountain."
Blays put away the spear. "Or continue to head in the wrong direction through a wilderness filled with people and animals that keep wanting to kill us."
Conceding the possibility of this—though not conceding it out loud—Dante killed a couple of the fat flies and sent them up into the air. But he now had two subjects to study, not just one, and it took him a moment to decide to go back to the knightly fellow. Realizing he didn't have infinite time, and that he could (probably) cure himself even if there were poisons or venoms within the armor, he found where the mail shirt was clasped up the side and went to work undoing it.
"What are you doing?" Another man had appeared even more silently than the beast. Like the dead man, he wore patchwork armor—though his was less intimidating and a bit shabbier—but he only bore one of the claw-bracers, on his left arm. He gaped at Dante, his red beard quivering in fury. "You are robbing him!"
The man extended his weapon and tensed his legs before the charge.
20
"I'm doing no such thing." Dante stood, trying not to do anything burglarish with his hands. "I was merely—"
The man strode forward, lifting his left arm to point at Dante with the blade extending from his forearm. "Defiler!"
"He is no such thing, you idiot," Blays said. "He was trying to save him!"
"How so? He is dead!"
"Yeah, and so is whatever that thing is." Blays pointed to the motionless creature. "We heard them fighting. We came as fast as we could, but your friend was already wounded. Very badly. Even my friend here—the greatest healer in our land—couldn't save him from his wounds."
The man turned to Dante. "Is this true?"
Dante nodded. "Every word."
"And who are you, and what lands are you from?"
"Dante Galand, High Priest of Narashtovik."
"I have heard of neither. I think you are lying to me!"
Without another word, Blays vanished. Dante could feel him moving about through the shadows. The man pivoted as if he could as well, but
his senses weren't sharp enough to keep up with Blays, who reappeared behind him and slid his blade against the man's neck.
"How easy would it be for me to kill you right now?" Blays said. "About as easy as pissing first thing after you wake up. But I'm not going to. Not unless you make me. Because we could use your help."
The man turned his head slightly. "With what?"
"Noticed anything troubling in the last few weeks? Like, say, huge killer monsters? Or storms? Plagues? Blood-red lightning? People's organs filled with hideous green worms? Volcanoes where there weren't any volcanoes before?"
"The Hell-Flood."
"Is that what you call it? I might steal that. We're here to deal with the Hell-Flood."
The man chuckled meanly. "You sound as though you think you can stop it."
"We can," Dante said. "You don't think we got here on our own, do you? We were sent here by the gods on a divine quest."
A thrill went up his spine: for he understood, for the first time, that these words were true.
Blays lowered his sword from the man's throat and sheathed it. "If you think we killed this fellow, go ahead and try to kill us for it. You don't look as fearsome as he does, though. So you'll probably be dead too, and we'll be no closer to sparing your people from the Hell-Flood."
The armored man looked between the three of them. His jaw tensed, but he said nothing.
Gladdic inclined his head toward the dead man. "You knew him well?"
"He was my chengya."
"I am not familiar with this word."
"You speak Cantag, but don't know chengya?"
"We do not truly speak your language. That is but a gift of the gods. Words that we have no concept of remain foreign to us."
The armored man frowned, weighing this. "My chengya. My captain-uncle—or captain-cousin, if the chengya is younger than those he shows the way. He is the one who has learned the ways so well that he has become able to enter an infested-place and restore it to a peace-place."
His expression had been stern, almost angry. But as he lowered his eyes to the body, all of that fell away, and his eyes glistened. He half lowered himself, half fell to one knee before the chengya.
The Twelve Plagues (The Cycle of Galand Book 7) Page 31