The Cycle of Arawn: The Complete Epic Fantasy Trilogy

by Edward W. Robertson

  7

  A holy day, a joyous day, the midpoint between autumnal equinox and winter solstice when Lia left the land and Mennok reluctantly took up its reign. The day, by coincidence, of the execution.

  Dante watched the sun spark up over the roofs of the east. He'd loved this day when he was younger. The night before was Falmac's Eve, the Night of Fire, the night Carvahal flew down from exile to take arms against white-bearded Taim who'd thrown him out for bringing the fire to man; the night when head-high stacks of wood were burnt in the squares and boys wore masks and "robbed" men of apples and tin pennies in the street, "slaying" any man who bore a beard. The theater dressed in yellows and reds and bright-burning gems and played out Carvahal's original betrayal, how he lit a torch from the Millstar of the northern heavens and descended with it from the skies to the earth. Taim saw the blaze of its fall and gathered his children and his children's children to destroy whoever'd defied him, but Carvahal brought the torch to Eric the Draconat, he who ate dragons' hearts, and Eric climbed the ladder of the heavens to duel winged, scale-backed Daris and so win his northern army to face the forces of Taim. They met on the snowfields of the north and the snow churned and boiled under the heat of their blood. There Taim slew Daris, and confusion shouted across the land. Eric's rebellion of men and the half-gods and Daris' drakes were smashed, but in the final moment when Eric struck deep at Taim's heart with Anzode—the sword tempered in the hearts of 108 dragons—he actually spilled the god's blood upon the ground, forcing the father of the skies to retreat to his seat in their heights.

  Carvahal fled then too, bearing Eric's unconscious body to the hole in the north sky where Mallius' bow had punctured it long ago, and every year on Falmac's Eve Carvahal seduced the blackbirds of Mennok to bear him down to earth and drag the punishing fires of Barrod's sun away so he could wreak his rebellion by cover of dark and the earth could rest and heal. The next morning the farmers set down their scythes and plows and flails and drank to the cycle of the gods. They toasted Lia for her faithful bounty, praised Simm for making their wheat and oats and barley grow tall, thanked Barrod for the life of his yellow rays; they gave a cry for Carvahal's daring that would keep them warm through the winter, for the saturnine locking of the time of Mennok that would make the return of the gods of light and life all the sweeter. Many of them ended up passed out before the sun had gone down. Dante thought he could already hear the earliest revelers singing out in the city. The watchmen would partake too, he knew. There would be few better days for the confusion he meant to sow.

  "All set?" Cally said when he showed up twenty minutes later.

  "Yes."

  "Good. Overconfidence is a strong ally. People are always surprised when you try to do things you can't." He started at the soft skitterings in the dark corners of the tomb, then snorted. "You've been reading too much."

  Dante flushed despite the cold. "I haven't had anyone around to teach me different."

  "It'll probably make them think they're crazy. That should be fun." Cally wiped his nose. His ears and cheeks were pink. "Auspicious day."

  "Does the nether run stronger on Falmac's Day?"

  "Don't be daft," Cally said, rolling his eyes. "As if the forces of nature change because a kingdom throws a party."

  "I just thought—"

  "Ridiculous."

  "I walked out to their tree a couple days ago," Dante said after some silence. "It's in a clearing south of town. Not much in the way of cover."

  "I'm sure there'll be plenty of meatshields," Cally shrugged.

  "When do you think we should leave?"

  "Sometime before they hang him, I imagine."

  Dante pursed his lips. "I want to be there an hour early. I haven't exactly been able to find out how many guards they'll have, or how they'll bring him in. I won't know what I'm doing till I see that."

  "Fine."

  "Are you coming with me?" Dante said, heart jumping up a tick.

  "I'll be there," Cally allowed after a moment of hemming. "You realize I can't just wave my hand and bring peace unto the world."

  "Why not? What can they do to you? We can be so quick they won't know what's going on."

  "I haven't lived as long as I have," the old man said, tossing back his chin, "through vulgar displays of power."

  Dante glared at him through the dawn. "Why have it if you won't use it? What can you possibly be afraid of?"

  "There's a difference between fear and prudence. And even if there isn't," Cally said, sticking his finger at Dante, "fear's a good thing to have. You might live longer if you had more."

  "Sounds like a pretty crummy life to me." Cally looked away from him, like the matter were too stupid to discuss. Dante folded his arms. "Just do what you can, then. I won't be holding back."

  "That's the spirit." The old man rubbed his jaw. "It's probably best if you hone your plans under the assumption I'll give no help at all. That way if I drop dead between then and now you won't be left in the lurch."

  They killed time speaking of the meaning of the figures in the Cycle and then about where they might meet when the two boys escaped. Cally suggested running (or riding, if circumstances allowed stealing a horse) into the southern woods, saying he could find Dante easily enough; he'd found him in the first place, hadn't he? The old man bitched for a while about the weather, made threats about sailing for the islands of the south. They watched the sun shed clouds and fog, resolving from red to orange to yellow, and then Cally once more took his leave.

  Dante couldn't quite understand how the day had come so quickly when the last week had dragged like a broken leg. He paced away the morning in the tomb, trying a couple times to sit down and meditate on the nether, but every time he tried he'd get five seconds of clear thought followed by five minutes of noodly worries about what if the watch carried bows which they probably would and what if the innkeep was there and recognized him before he made his move and what if he made it there and they were just too fast and turned Blays off before Dante could wade his way through. What would Cally tell him? Some paradox about allowing his worries but rising with them like an eagle on a storm. In other words, something useless under any practical circumstances.

  He took up the pen and ink he used to make his notes on the Cycle (though never within the book itself) and sat down in that late autumn daylight that always looked to him like the pure light of nostalgia: fuzzy, faintly yellow, hardly warm but not quite cold. He didn't care if no one would ever find his letter, or if it was only read when they tore down this tomb to build something living people could use. He didn't care if it had as little impact as if he'd written it in water, he just wanted something to leave behind. He had no kids, no lands, no books written by or about him, and if he failed his only notable friend would be every bit as dead. He spent an hour alternately scribbling on and shredding up his dwindling supply of paper. He tried to elevate his speech with the grand aphorisms of the men in plays, but that just sounded dumb. He tried to match the happy irony of the Cycle, but it sounded hollow. He tried to tell his story, at least the part where Blays had been unfairly condemned, but that ended up sounding whiny. He should have thought about this yesterday, let himself sleep on it. Now it was too late.

  He listened to the crows jabbering at each other and found them no help. The sporadic bells and shouts from the city weren't any better. He listened to the light wind whistling in the bare branches. No dice.

  At last, exasperated with himself, doublet damp under the arms, worn down by the jitters he'd had since waking, he set his pen going:

  If this note is found, it will mean my uncertain fate has been clarified, and to my detriment. I leave now to fight. I'd like to think the cause is just, but don't all men do what they think right? Let's leave the issue for once. Know only I laid my life at the door of a cause I felt worth it. I hope, if there is some final judge of these things, he will look on me with more mercy than he's shown so far.

  He signed his name and closed his eyes a whi
le. At least it was less foolish than his other tries. He tucked it under an urn. Who knew, maybe he'd be able to come back and rip it up before anyone could see it. If not, he'd have far more pressing worries than what some idiot thought of his final words.

  The bells of Whetton's many temples and pair of proper cathedrals tolled across the damp air. Two hours till that time. The walk to the Crooked Tree wouldn't take more than fifteen minutes. He meant to arrive an hour early, size things up. He figured the minimal chance of being recognized in that span would be outweighed by having the time to conceive a more detailed plan than "show up and start killing everyone."

  Where was Blays? Still clapped in his cell? On his way? Eating his final bread? Swearing at everyone within range? He'd forgotten to ask Cally whether he'd passed along his message, and now that too was too late. At once he felt himself on the brink of tears. Deeper than the chance he might never speak to Blays again, he felt ruptured by the knowledge that even if they survived this day, one would come when they didn't. Dante was sixteen years old. He quite possibly wouldn't live to twice that. At the outside, he had four times as long to go. What he'd lived so far felt like no more than a blink. He could barely remember anything beyond the last three years. Was that all life was? A brief bubble of memory that slid through the years until the sudden stop? If Blays died and he didn't, would he still think of Blays when he was twenty? Thirty? If he died and Blays didn't and Blays forgot him, would Dante then be gone for all time?

  Dante opened the Cycle of Arawn and flipped through from beginning to end. After about 600 pages his blood went cold. He stopped, pawed back through the pages one at a time. Narashtovik. The final third was written entirely in the dead language of Narashtovik. How had he missed that? How had he dragged it around for a month without knowing he had no way of reading over 250 pages of it? He'd glanced at the last page or two before, but he'd assumed they were an appendix or a glossary, and since he couldn't read any of it he'd just put it out of mind. Foreign words always drove him mad. Besides, he'd been a little preoccupied with running for his life to spare much curiosity for what the next section would hold. This was, in no small terms, a disaster.

  In all of Bressel he'd found no works that would offer any significant inroads into deciphering the dead language. Were there any translations of the Cycle? Supposedly the fires of the books they'd burnt in the Third Scour rivaled the rising sun—well, that's what the priests of Taim and Gashen and all the others said, and he'd certainly never seen any evidence to prove them wrong. Most of the references he'd found to the old texts came in the form of warnings that owning them would result in your beheading, or after the initial post-Scour excitement had wound down, behanding. The Cycle wasn't strictly linear, which muddied the matter of the importance of the part he wouldn't be able to read, but surely there was something of value in the last hundreds of pages. Nobody would just throw together a pile of nonsense and build a faith around it. Cally would have something to help him, perhaps. At least point him in the right direction.

  The half-hour bell rang out and he remembered this was one more worry he could delay for now. Dante laughed nervously, feeling light as a gnat. Perhaps he should risk his life every day.

  Departing places without leaving anything behind was getting to be a habit. He double-checked the nooks and corners, then cycled down the list. The book in his bag on his back. His sword at his belt under his cloak. A knife on his other side. Bread and meat and waterskin in his bag along with the couple of candles and the tools of writing. Torchstone in his pocket, of course, and a few other necessities, his silver and flint and needles and salt and a couple neat rocks and those small objects he'd found in the tomb. Why was everyone else so eager to tie themselves down with things? They were idiots, that was why. A man should own no more than he can carry.

  By the time he'd gone a block from the churchyard he knew the crowd was going to be huge. The streets were stuffed with red-faced farmers and squads of young boys running around with a hand pressed over their left eye like the one Carvahal had lost in the battle in the snowfields. Carriages crept through the mob, unable to build up the momentum to give the pedestrians the choice of clearing a path or being stomped into the dirt. Impossibly, even more filth than normal clogged the gutters and spilled in the roads. Shattered mugs and the busted slats of barrels lay everywhere. Pigeons dunked their beaks in soggy hunks of bread and the stems and seeds of a dozen different vegetables. From all sides he heard laughter, whoops, the cheery hails of men and women who haven't seen each other in whatever they think's been too long. He kept his hood on his shoulders. Unless the followers of Arawn had already dispatched more men to rub him out and reacquire his copy of the Cycle, the only one in town at all likely to recognize him would be the keeper of the Frog's Head, and between the twin crowds of holiday and hanging he was no doubt more than a little tied up with his work. Dante running around with his face bundled up like a criminal would only have the watch asking why he was running around with his face bundled up like a criminal.

  The standing water in the streets wasn't frozen, but it wasn't far off, either. His breath whirled away from his mouth, just barely visible. It felt good to be moving. He strode with purpose, weaving his slight body though the blathering clusters of people. He watched their faces, how they laughed and told jokes and found common ground bitching about the boys running wild (with special emphasis on how things had been different in their day) and the unreasonable tithing practices of the churches and the signs of degradation in the criminal element of Bressel. One of them opined that men emanated a mischievous vapor which, when mingled with the same vapor of others in the level of density and proximity you can find only in such overpopulated hives as Bressel, resulted in a much more malicious strain, the kind that led to the careless robbing and killing of drunks and, eventually, widespread anarchy. Dante slowed to hear the man expound his theory, but the hundreds of other voices drowned him out; within seconds he was no more than a single note in the symphony.

  There was no one direction to the flow of people—there were public houses on every street in Whetton—but the general movement tended toward the south. No hurry, what with the executions over an hour away, and probably lots of boring proclamations and condemnations to kick it off, but wait too long and you'd get a place too far back to see their feet kick when they were turned off. A hanging wasn't a hanging when for all you could see it may as well be a sack of potatoes strung up on the branch.

  Even in the cold the people stunk. Dante tucked his nose into the collar of his cloak and was reminded he hadn't bathed since their stay at the pond. At least his ripeness was his own. A dark-haired boy brushed past him. Of course. They'd be drawn to the hanging like flies to a cow's ass. Dante pulled up his hood then and tugged it low enough to shade his eyes. George and Barnes would be out there somewhere. They knew enough about him to turn him in if there were any price on his head.

  Single-story houses began to outnumber those with two or three floors. Sometimes they even had strips of dirt or grass between them. Another couple minutes and he reached the trampled-down field that never quite recovered from the monthly crowds. Copses of trees fringed its edges, but the only tree of note stood planted at its center, casting a shadow over the path that cut across the grasses. A light crowd milled about, talking and drinking, buying meat pastries and finger vegetables from the stalls that no doubt materialized overnight here every four weeks like clockwork mushrooms. Dante stopped a short way into the commons to take stock, wishing he had a pipe to light or any other way to immediately look casual.

  Obviously the wain would come in down the path. Already people were mostly keeping clear of the rutted dirt. The tree spoke for itself. The prisoners on the wagon would be bound, but their heavy chains would probably be replaced with rope so hoisting them up and down wouldn't hurt anybody's back. Besides, with five extra pounds of iron on their wrists and another ten clamped tight around their ankles, the hangman might misjudge their weight and po
p their heads off when they fell.

  A few guards would walk ahead of the wagon, he imagined. A second wagon would bear the hangman and his understudy and their armed entourage. No officials, most likely, other than a bailiff or some other nobody with a loud voice. At minimum six men of the watch. Probably twice that, with the potential for more. They'd likely be in varying states of the inebriation that was impossible to avoid on Falmac's Day, but that wasn't going to be as big an advantage for Dante as it should. Their minds would want to be off raising tankards and groping paired deposits of fat like every other man, but their captains would want them martial, swords ready. Between a troop of armsman and the Crooked Tree, the crowds couldn't help remembering their place.

  People kept filing in in twos and threes and boisterous beer-sodden throngs. He figured the guards would cluster up on the way in, give themselves some protection from the revelers. That would be the worst time to try to take them. Ideally there would be a few self-important speeches to give the men of the watch time to disperse and get distracted by the fights and taunts of an intoxicated, high-spirited crowd; if he were really lucky a few guards would use the confusion to slip off for a pub. Dante would bide his time, then, and hope they wouldn't try to string Blays up first as an hors d'oeuvre. What about the other prisoners? Instant allies if he could free them. The watch wouldn't know which escapee needed to be killed first. That was it. He'd have to act fast, but he could make that happen. Then what? He headed for a copse of trees and thought that over as he searched for a walking stick suitable for staving in skulls—the men he released might have the fighting spirit, but they'd have a serious want for weapons.

  And that, he thought, was as far as he could take it. Let them get ready to strangle a few men, then set those men free and go from there. There would be at least a little fighting and a lot of running. Other than that, it was all up in the air. Maybe he'd be able to steal a horse, maybe not. Maybe Cally would strike down with a word everyone who looked at Dante cockeyed, but almost definitely not. He clenched his teeth, stomach twisting. He didn't like depending on all these contingencies. He wasn't sure he could trust himself to act smoothly in the confusion of battle. He considered himself a deliberate man, the kind of man who didn't make a choice until he'd thought it all the way through. That's what you did when you wouldn't tolerate mistakes, least of all from yourself. But this, this was chance, chaos, the toss of a die, the blindfolded plunge.