The Cycle of Arawn: The Complete Epic Fantasy Trilogy

by Edward W. Robertson

  In other words, Cally wasn't leading the charge for norren freedom on the basis of principle alone. To further muddy the waters, the old man bristled whenever some new tax or formality had to be paid to the palace at Setteven, forcibly dispelling any illusions he held of Narashtovik's autonomy. Dante had no doubt this resentment fueled Cally's dedication to freeing the norren from their sometimes literal yoke. And if that were true, it was easy to imagine Cally had another motive in mind: that if the Norren Territories gained independence, Narashtovik could easily follow.

  "Outrageous," Dante said to Vee's accusation. "Cally's done nothing but help the norren."

  Orlen glanced between the two humans. "It is settled."

  "Great," Blays said. "Then in honor of our newfound mutual trust and appreciation, I'd like to let you know one of your people is a dirty, rotten turncoat."

  Vee didn't move, didn't even lean forward, but her presence seemed to increase in the same way the full moon grows larger the closer it comes to the horizon. "If this is a joke, human humor is stranger than the beasts that wash up from the deep sea."

  "It's no joke. Except maybe one of those cosmic ones."

  "Then be very, very precise about what you say next."

  The corners of Blays' mouth tucked in a subtle way that usually presaged the breaking of objects and sometimes people. Without removing his eyes from Vee's, he reached into his pocket, removed the drawing, and smoothed it on the deck, holding it in place against the steady breeze of the boat's passage.

  "We found this in the captain's quarters on the Ransom," Blays said. "Either Banning hedged his bets and warned the Bloody Knuckles they were about to have to rename themselves the Bloody Spinal Stumps, or someone from the clan wanted to give them an extra-sporting chance."

  Vee surged forward. Orlen barred an arm across her large chest. Her face hung before Blays like an angry moon.

  "Excuse her," Orlen said. "She is a staunch advocate of Vorgas' Three C's."

  "Vorgas' Three C's?" Dante said.

  "Clarity of thought, clarity of speech, and crushing the skulls of those who slander your clan."

  "Then let's add a fourth: Considerately not assaulting your dear, dear allies."

  Vee relaxed to her original position. "Your proposition is not a binary either/or. There is also the possibility someone saw you bumbling around Cling, recognized the clan, and surmised our purpose."

  "Fine," Blays said. "It could be literally anyone, up to and including me and my evil twin I've never met. That's a very useful way of honing in on who actually did it."

  "We will keep our eyes open," Orlen said.

  Vee restrained a sigh. "And conduct our own investigation. It will have to be a passive one until more information allows us to turn aggressive."

  Dante nodded. "Unless there are any more accusations or fists to be thrown, what, then, do you have for us?"

  Orlen glanced over his shoulder at the wide gray river. "Where this river passes through Dollendun marks the border between the Norren Territories and Old Gask. Are you familiar with the border?"

  "Big black line, right?" Blays said.

  "Very invisible, in fact, but people behave like their nightmare's own nightmare waits for any who cross from one side to the other. Norren do, anyway. Humans are free to cross the river as they please."

  "So you've enlisted us for any duties on the human side."

  "Which we believe will be considerable. This man Perrigan is a beefer, meaning a trader of meat, meaning a dealer of norren slaves. We'll need you to find out who he sold our cousins to."

  Dante scratched the base of his neck. His hair was getting long again. "Do you expect that will be difficult?"

  "How should we know?" Vee said. "Do you think we've met him before? Perhaps he is a braggart, and will tell you for the swell of telling you that he is a man who owns other, lesser men. Alternately, the secret of a client could be a thing he wouldn't reveal on pain of pain."

  "Again, very helpful to have such hard details," Blays said. "Now we know he could react in any conceivable way."

  Orlen ran his thumb along his scarred cheek. "We'll send clan-warriors with you to pose as servants. They can help with any unexpected situations."

  "Or attempts to murder you," Vee said.

  "We'll take Mourn," Dante said.

  "We will send Gala, too. She is one of our finest warriors."

  "I think Mourn will be sufficient."

  Orlen pressed his palms together and glared at Dante over his fingertips. "One servant among two men of means will diminish you both. Gala goes, too."

  Dante held up his hands, already regretting being brought into their outer circle of trust. "Fine."

  "Good. We are scheduled to arrive in Dollendun late tomorrow morning."

  "That's it?" Blays said.

  Orlen gave another of his monkish nods. "There is only ever so much."

  Dante stood, knees popping. He wandered with Blays along the railing, stopping once they were out of easy earshot of the norren or any idling crew.

  "That last thing didn't even make sense," Blays said. "And did you get the impression they were pushing another babysitter on us?"

  "Guaranteed. They still don't trust us."

  "Maybe they're right not to. I've always wondered why Cally was so interested in this whole business. The only reason I've never pushed him on it is because he's finally doing something I agree with."

  They hunted down Mourn to bring him up to speed and to pump him for more information about the border city of Dollendun. The Clan of the Nine Pines almost always stuck to the wilds, hunting the hills and fishing the lakes, but the clans frequently delegated unpartnered young men to roles as wandering scouts, both for the specific purpose of keeping up on the doings of rival clans and for the much broader aim of seeing whatever there was to see. As it turned out, Mourn had also spent a couple weeks in Dollendun, which was two more weeks than Orlen or Vee had spent there. According to Mourn, it was, for the most part, your typical large city: a scab of nobles, wealthy merchants, and shipping tycoons crusted over a great messy wound of laborers and peons.

  The difference was Dollendun was literally split down the middle, norren to the Eastern Shore and humans to the Western, and the only norren allowed to cross westward were slaves—in other words, some tenth of the total populace of Dollendun, a figure Blays found incredulous ("Why don't they just flex their biceps, pop their bonds, and start smashing skulls?") and Dante found dubious. With that many slaves running around, how could you tell which norren on the Western Shore were owned and which ones were free?

  Mourn explained. Slaves were branded on their right cheeks. All norren citizens were lawfully obligated to restrict their beards to an inch in length so the slaves couldn't comb them over their brands. Any norren man with a longer beard could be arrested on sight and (in the best-case scenario) deported to the eastern banks. Permits were allocated to allow norren leaders, traders, and diplomats to handle their business on the human side, but there were never more than a few dozen permits active at any one time, and even the permanent ones—most were day passes—had to be renewed annually at a steep fee. And yes, free norren had tried to thwart this system by branding themselves, wandering the Western Shore, and passing as slaves out on the errands of their masters, but all brands were registered at the Chattelry Office. Meanwhile, norren sporting unknown brands were eligible to be captured and held in the Office's cells, and if they weren't claimed within a month (at the cost of a claimant fee and, naturally, a second fee for registry of one's brand), to be auctioned at the monthly market to the benefit of Dollendun's coffers.

  In short, challenge the system at the risk of your eternal freedom.

  Other than being regularly invaded by Chattelry Office agents in pursuit of escaped slaves, the Eastern Shore was essentially left to its own affairs, however, meaning it bore but a superficial resemblance to the standard human sprawl of urban trade, labor, appointed offices, and law enforcement. Rulers wer
e determined through typical norren process, i.e. their murky theo-philosophical sparring grounds. But East Dollendun was special among norren cities in that it was the only one to be truly massive in the way Setteven was massive, or Bressel, or (of late) Narashtovik itself. This allowed for a phenomenon unique among all the Norren Territories and thus probably the world: the Nulladoon.

  "Oh come on, you can't just stop there," Blays frowned. "You wouldn't be telling us if it wasn't important."

  "It would take too long to explain," Mourn said.

  "We won't reach Dollendun for nearly a day."

  "That's what I just said."

  "Then be brief," Dante said. "It might be important."

  Mourn screwed up his face. "It's like...a game of dice."

  "That doesn't sound that involved."

  "That runs the city. And instead of the exchange of money, it determines the exchange of items and nulla."

  Blays glanced away from the grassy riverbanks. "Nulla?"

  "How can I explain the Nulladoon if you don't even know—" Mourn interrupted himself to sigh and lean his heavy arms upon the Boomer's railing. "It means...craft-favors. IOUs, sort of, but instead of money, it can be whatever the norren making the promise is famous for—swords, tapestries, dances."

  "Dances?"

  "I told you, it's complicated."

  Even this bare attempt to summarize the Nulladoon put Mourn into one of his moods. Dante had spent enough time in the territories to know what nulla were, but he had little inclination to attempt to wheedle, cajole, or flatter Mourn into explaining exactly what the Nulladoon was, particularly when belowdecks smelled like bandaged blood and infection, evidence of nearly a dozen wounded warriors suffering from everything from scrapes and bruises to deep sword wounds and one broken arm. By the time Dante finished treating them, the warrior's arm was free of its sling. Stitches were trimmed from slashed arms and bellies. Sweaty brows cooled and relaxed. If it came down to it, he expected each one could lift a sword by the time they debarked in Dollendun.

  The leadup to their arrival was an uneventful passage of forested shorelines. Through the bare branches, metal clanged and axes chunked. After the frost, bitter winds, and shadowed pockets of snow on their long descent from the hills, the hard, cool sunlight of Dollendun felt like a tepid relief. So too did the return to a proper city, even a foreign one. Docks choked the river on both its east and west, and the smoke of countless chimneys mingled into a single cloud above the river, but otherwise the shores of Dollendun looked like two different countries. On the west, wood cottages sprouted on the outskirts, often built right on to the walls of preexisting houses. Past a high stone defensive wall, the buildings leapt to three and four stories in height, crowned by the high, snow-shedding peaks typical of Gaskan construction. Houses stood wall-to-wall, so straight and narrow an arrow shot through one window might well pass straight through another on the far side. Except on the hastiest houses, those that leaned like beer-blinded longshoremen, the windows were ovals, ringed by dark wood that stood out from the blond pinewood walls and occasional splash of whitewash. Three hills stood at a reproachful distance from the urban crush, lush green courtyards visible between round-towered manors of clean white limestone.

  There were no such manors on the eastern side. No defensive walls, either. In fact, there appeared to be very little of stone at all, aside from some homes dug straight into the sides of the hills. Rather than cottages and shacks, the space between the surrounding meadows and the city proper consisted of tents, yurts, and other nomadic repositories. Sophisticated multi-family shelters with patterns and illustrations stitched into their oiled leather sides mixed with the crudest of pine-branch lean-tos. Further in, the round-windowed wooden houses rarely rose above two stories.

  "Hey Mourn, your people's side looks like shit," Blays said.

  The skin crinkled around Mourn's bovine eyes. "Hey Blays, your people's side looks like it uses the people from my side as beasts of burden."

  "I'm not criticizing."

  "Well, I am."

  Varlen and crew guided the Boomer to a dock big enough to tie the barge up. The clan had all but completely unloaded their gear by the time Dante finished reexplaining the situation to the stout captain, who was affronted that Dante couldn't be more specific about how long they'd spend in town than "a day or several." The river smelled of sewage and mud, sludgy vegetables and used cooking oil.

  To preserve the ruse they were a common barley barge with the usual assortment of random passengers, Dante stayed onboard along with Blays, Mourn, Lira, and Gala, who stood just under six and a half feet tall—practically a dwarf by norren standards. Despite her stony muscles, she was almost thin, too. With the rest of the Clan of the Nine Pines departing through the streets to camp out on the edges of town, the Boomer shoved off, tacking across the river to tie up at another dock and discharge its remaining passengers. Dante and crew donned hooded winter cloaks and descended the pier to the streets of Western Dollendun.

  The city was, at a glance, no different from all major cities. Men and women rushed along with a haste that seemed absurdly self-important to the outside eye, particularly when most of them were probably on their way to hold foolish discussions over too much tea or to broker business deals they would regret the moment they lay down to sleep. It was the sort of jostling, steaming hustle that exasperates everyone involved, leading to behavior that ranges from the annoying: people slinging elbows; carriage wheels throwing mud; what self-important pricks—to the potentially lethal: the reckless, wild-eyed speed of the horse-teams, who could easily crush a man if he didn't hear the driver's shouts, and who drove as if arriving thirty seconds early to their appointments would make the difference between laughing from the castle's roof and dying in the shit-caked gutters. Annoying or outright dangerous, these conditions struck Dante with equal irritation.

  Dollendun was, in short, exactly the same and exactly as different as every big city in the world. It was unique in its particular blend of spices, smoke, and waste. It was identical in its bustle, the urban pace someone from nowhere would dismiss as a fine place to visit but not live, while visitors from other big cities would peg as interesting, in its own quaint ways, but not half so much as wherever they were from. In Dante's case, it wasn't as large as Bressel or as historically, almost mythically charged as Narashtovik. Still, it was a city in the way all non-cities aren't, and he breathed the air as if it were the vapors of a cleansing tonic, observing shops and citizens as if they held secrets he'd never uncover. By the time Blays selected an inn entirely at random, Dante was already regretting a departure which would inevitably come too soon.

  The three-story structure's eaves and cornices were heavy with elaborate Gaskan Old Empire leaf-carvings, but the inside was drafty and stained. Perfect for maintaining appearances on a limited budget. Dante and Blays got pleasantly drunk, which is what one does in new cities, particularly when plying locals and regular passers-by for information, but learned nothing revelatory about Perrigan the beefer, other than that he resented the slang term for his profession and that he lived on Sounden Hill. Dante woke with the sun nearly full overhead. His mouth tasted like soured beer. Mourn watched reproachfully from the common room, munching on bread and celery. Dante dispatched a letter of introduction to one of the messengers trotting up and down the boardwalks, then returned upstairs to wake Blays, a task every bit as dangerous as wandering into a pirate's ambush.

  Their subterfuge was simple. They'd pose as Mallish aristocrats resettled in Gask in the hopes of trebling their fortunes shipping tea from the valleys of Gallador to the busy southern ports. All they needed was labor, which they'd heard the norren provided in spades. Perrigan replied via messenger that evening for a meet on the following day.

  "It's been so long since we've been somewhere proper," Blays said that night, as if he'd needed a full day to absorb the shift from wind-swept grass and birded hills to bustling city. "The clan won't mind if we dawdle on their cousins
, will they? What's three more days in chains to people who expect to spend their whole lives in them?"

  Mourn gazed over the foamy tower of his beer. "If Vee heard you, she'd split you like a log. Not a log she liked, either."

  "Well, Vee's not here, is she?"

  "I'm making a decision in my capacity as leader." Dante glanced at Gala, who hadn't said four words since they'd stepped onto the docks. "I declare this beer is for enjoying, not arguing. We'll see what happens tomorrow."

  Beyond the greasy oval windows, wagons hauled grain and clay and stone and hay to the houses on the hills.

  The carriage arrived on schedule the following noon. Mourn and Gala held the doors while Dante and Blays seated themselves on the hardwood bench. The norren gave slight bows, then circled to the back of the carriage and stepped onto the running boards. The vehicle's body groaned and lowered under their weight.

  "Why can't they sit in here?" Dante said.

  Blays peered at him from the corners of his eyes. "Because they'd squish us to death? Oh yes, and they're slaves?"

  "It was rhetorical." Out the screened window, humans came and went, hopping over piles of horseshit and stopping outside of teahouses to snag passing friends by the collars and grin in their faces. Around them, silent stooped men carried sacks and letters, faces grim and grimy. Norren strode on errands, too, bearded lighthouses among the seas of humans. The giants' cheeks were cut close or shaved bald, showing shiny pink lines, letters and simple icons.

  The carriage swung uphill. Gala and Mourn stepped down to trot along behind. A paper fluttered from a high window. In a narrow gap between houses, a norren sat in the mud, clutching his bloody face. The road leveled out. The crush of structures cleared out in favor of wide lawns, green shoots pushing past the brown of winter. Dante pressed against the carriage door as the driver swung onto a cobbled road. Ahead, the pavement reeled straight toward a white stone manor that could have served as the keep of some towns. Whip-thin trees lined the path and the house's front, their branches blue-green and needly.