The Cycle of Arawn: The Complete Epic Fantasy Trilogy

by Edward W. Robertson

  But it didn't have to come so soon.

  The stars had shifted by degrees by the time they struck camp. Fog dripped from the pines, pattering the tarp strung above their heads. Dante had a look at Lira's leg. The healing wound was scarring nicely, but the skin around was swollen and pink. He soothed the ache with a flood of cool nether, then did the same for her sprained ankle.

  No one had even bothered to suggest striking a fire. Blays passed around hard sausage and harder bread, crumbs falling from his lips. He thunked down in front of a tree and leaned against its mossy trunk.

  "I don't see why we're bothering to run," he said. "Not when Cally's just going to glare off our heads the moment we step foot in the city."

  "He knew the risks." Dante gestured in the direction of the Norren Territories. "This whole enterprise was his idea."

  "And I think it was also his idea that we not take a torch to one of our enemy's bluest bloods."

  "Then he probably shouldn't have sent us."

  Blays grinned. "You know, he might actually buy that."

  "Who is this Cally?" Lira said. "Another enemy?"

  The pair laughed. Blays rubbed his mouth. "I don't know. Do you think a dog considers its worms the enemy?"

  Dante tipped his head. "I'd say he's more like a bull who can't tell the difference between the flies and his own hooves."

  "I don't follow your path," Lira frowned.

  "Cally is the lord of the Sealed Citadel and head of Arawn's Council at Narashtovik," Dante said. "I know him from our homeland. He taught me most of what I know. About the nether, anyway. I wouldn't even want to know what he thinks about art or women. He's an extremely clever and capable leader who runs things in a way that would probably look outright blasphemous to the attendees of his weekly masses. In short, he's cunning, demanding, and unpredictable—but I know him well enough to guess he'll be madder than he's ever been."

  "But you were pursuing a just cause. Freeing the people you want to protect. Won't that count for anything?"

  "If anything, it'll make him madder."

  Blays laughed again. "Anyway, we weren't blazing the trails of righteousness. We were chasing a fairy story."

  Dante fought the flush down from his face. "Which won't help."

  Lira's face slowly went blank. "Might he try to harm you?"

  "He's no Vartigan. He won't stuff our intestines with pork." Dante took a bite of cold sausage. "But to redeem ourselves, he'll probably expect us to do a series of very dangerous things."

  Blays scuffed his boot across the dirt, kicking away stray stones. "Then again, that's what makes it so much fun."

  Lira nodded, but the lines on her brow and lip suggested what she left unsaid. Dante gazed into the dark woods. Mice crept through the leaves. Every few minutes, an owl screeched like it was calling from another world. He hadn't heard the dogs in a couple of hours. They were miles east of the manor. He wondered if Blays would accept first watch. His use of the nether back at the tower had frayed his nerves; he might pass out soon.

  "Do you really think this will lead to war?" Mourn said.

  Dante looked up. The norren hadn't said a word in more than an hour. "How closely do you monitor the political sentiment in Setteven?"

  "I follow my clan." His beard twitched unreadably. "We keep to ourselves."

  "Well, the king's not dumb. Setteven knows what's going on. They can see the norren are gearing up for independence. But we've been very careful to deny them any explosive proof. Tonight, with the assistance of a contingent of humans from Narashtovik, an outlaw clan broke into a nobleman's manor deep in Gaskan lands, made off with his property, and killed any number of human citizens in the process."

  "Which other human citizens will take offense to."

  "Popular opinion is a form of currency," Dante said. "Tonight, we dropped a gold brick in their laps."

  The norren nodded. Through their talk, he hadn't quite met Dante's eyes. His gaze began to drift toward the center of their camp, where they might have built a fire if they weren't eluding pursuit.

  "So what's the plan tomorrow?" Blays clapped. "Some light robbery? Fatten our purses enough for three horses and an elephant for that one?" He jerked his thumb at Mourn.

  "I thought we'd go downriver," Dante said.

  "Northwest."

  "That's the way the river goes."

  "We are talking about the same Narashtovik, right? The same one that's thoroughly northeast?"

  "Hundreds of miles northeast. The distance between which may be thick with people looking for our faces."

  "Take the river to the port's at its mouth, then sail back to Narashtovik." Blays narrowed one eye at Lira. "What do you say?"

  "Yallen's a busy port," Lira said. "Whatever you think is best."

  Mourn didn't glance away from his imaginary fire at camp's center. "I've never been this far north. Unless my parents took me here while I was very small. But even if they did, I don't remember anything that would make my input worthwhile."

  Blays shrugged. "I like ports. No one stays there too long for you to get sick of them. And if they do, you can just ship yourself off instead."

  Whether or not the rest of the group agreed, that ended the conversation. Dante found his head snapping upright; he'd nodded off.

  "I'll take first watch," Mourn said, meeting his eyes for a moment. "For now my brain would rather think than sleep."

  Dante didn't pretend to protest. Sleep rolled over him as sudden and unstoppable as a landslide.

  * * *

  He spent most of the next day's walk to the river thinking about what he'd say to Cally. Maybe that was part of his motivation for wanting to sail home rather than taking the overland route: on a boat, you were much more likely to be wracked on a reef or enslaved by pirates or stranded on an island beyond sight or hope of shore. Some ships just disappeared completely, like they'd sailed beyond the rim of the world. If he got lucky, maybe the same thing would happen to him.

  Ultimately, there wasn't much to say. He could play up the idea they were primarily involved to help the two clans and thus earn their loyalty, but he'd still have to explain about the Quivering Bow. Cally would find out somewhere else anyway. For him, ears sprouted like mushrooms. Dante and Blays weren't the only ones he had gallivanting around the Norren Territories. Somburr was out there as well, and he had an entire network of scouts, spies, and informants. Anyway, Cally would have planned for the contingency of sudden war. It was not in his nature to assume all would follow his most ideal plan.

  Still, Dante did not look forward to bearing the bad news.

  The river was wide and gray and cold. Smooth rocks clattered along its muddy banks. Fishing villages poked from the mist every few miles. At dusk, the lanterns of a modest town glimmered over the black water. Their group encamped a quarter mile from the road with the intention of enlisting passage downriver in the morning. Given their combined coinage could be held in a single palm without spilling, Dante wasn't certain how they'd hire their way, but there was always violence.

  Though they'd seen no sign of pursuit during the day, Dante once again ruled out a fire, no matter how badly his feet and legs ached from the walk. The others were quiet and heavy-lidded, lost in their own thoughts of future days. Dante conjured up a small figure of light and shadow, sculpted its hair into Blays' tight crop, and shaped a tiny scabbard on its back and hip. For the next several minutes, he sent the figure bumbling over leaves, pawing through the grass, and scrabbling up trunks and limbs, each quest ending with an abrupt fall, be it of the figure to the ground or a spectral boulder on top of the figure, until Dante sensed his audience growing tired. With a flourish, the figure drew its swords, one white and one black, cocked its head in confusion, then drove both blades through its own ribs. It disappeared with a pop and a wisp of shadow.

  "I think you're in the wrong line of work," Blays said. "You should be touring taverns."

  "I thought it was funny," Lira said.

  "Thanks."
Dante was surprised at himself; he wasn't normally the type to care about morale. The task itself should be important enough to command the focus of whoever pursued it. Perhaps he was trying to distract himself, too. He and Blays had been playing this shadowy business for years. Getting weapons to the scattered clans. Forging relationships and alliances. Traveling in disguise as merchants and field workers and Mallish pilgrims, all the while looking to subvert the Gaskan lords who claimed the norren hills. In its way, it had very much been a game, like children dressing up as pirates and bygone heroes, or concealing themselves with branches and cloaks while their parents pretended not to see them.

  All this was about to change. There would be no denying the realness of their actions once wheatfields burned and smoke rose from the ashes of ten thousand homes. Dante had seen plenty of skirmishes. One time he'd even fought in a proper battle with a few hundred to a side. They'd piled the dead in pyres and choked on the greasy clouds. What would the Norren Territories look like a month from now? A year?

  "I could tell a story." Mourn stared into the empty center of the camp. "If you are people who find stories entertaining."

  Blays gave him a skeptical look. "I prefer to be entertained by boredom. Stories and music just bores me. Which then entertains me. Which then bores me and—hold on, my head's about to burst."

  "Is that a no?"

  Dante smiled with half his mouth and gestured at the bare earth beneath their dewy tarp. "Does it look like you'd be interrupting our great works? Out with it."

  Mourn's watery brown eyes flicked between the group. "Okay. But promise you'll tell me if it gets too long."

  Blays mock-scowled. "Please, Mourn. There's a lady present."

  "This is from a very long time ago. From before the animals forgot how to talk." He pursed his lips. "Or maybe we just forgot how to talk to them. That seems equally likely, doesn't it? How come it's always their fault? Pretty arrogant of us talking creatures, if you ask me."

  "Getting long," Blays warned.

  "Back then, crows lived in big flocks. Fifty, even two hundred at once. They sang to each other because they thought it was fun. Their voices were different then, too. Not all nasty and mad. Instead, some had voices like thick blankets after a night in the snow. Others had voices like fast streams after a run through summer hills. For a long time, the flocks lived alone in the pines, singing to each other. Talking.

  "One day, a lost traveler wandered into their woods. He heard the crows singing. Talking. He tipped back his head, more lost than ever in their music, transfixed until that night when they roosted in the boughs. The traveler found his way home to the lowlands, and he told the others what he'd heard.

  "Soon, all kinds of travelers climbed to the high forests. They listened to the crow's song, too. After a few weeks of watching his fellow villagers climbing up and down the mountains, a clever man decided to catch some crows and bring them back to town so he could charge people to hear them sing. At first, he couldn't catch any of them. The crows knew the forests so well they could have escaped even with a broken wing. But the man came back with his nets every day, and finally, he caught two crows. He brought them home and opened a little theater, and all the other villagers came to hear the crows sing. To hear them talk.

  "But that didn't stop the people from hiking up the hills. Other men wanted to open little theaters of their own. Soon, everyone in the village wanted a pair of crows for their own home. For pets. To ease the hours on their farms and mills. More and more crows left in cages.

  "The old birds in the flocks didn't know what to do. The people kept coming, more and more of them, and they had cunning nets and snares. They were patient, too. They hid in the trees until the crows landed for the night, then snatched them up in bags and carried them off to distant lands."

  Mourn paused, running his hands through his thick hair. All the while, he'd stared into the imaginary fire, even squinting as he spoke, as if warding away the glare of flames that weren't there. He let out a long breath.

  "But a young crow named Nonn was getting angry. Like all crows, he knew they weren't born with their sweet voices. Their soothing songs. Berries grew among vines that lived in the crowns of the pines, and if you ate the berries, the roughest voice grew as smooth as glass. Nonn wanted to tell the people about the berries. If they grew them for themselves, they could eat them and sing to each other instead of coming to steal the crows away from their homes.

  "The elders exchanged one look, then locked Nonn up in a cage of their own. They refused to let him out until he promised not to tell. The people kept coming. Stealing crows. Sometimes whole flocks. The old crows accepted this, because most escaped to have more fledglings and keep their flocks alive. When Nonn crew sick of his cage, he made his vow to the elders. He was released. He kept his vow. Perhaps it could have lasted this way forever, a few crows lost here and there to greedy hands while the luckier ones lived on. But one night on a hike up the mountain, a man dropped his lantern. Flaming oil boiled up the trunks. The whole forest burned to the ground.

  "The crows had wings, so the flocks flew together to a new forest. But this forest had none of the vine-berries. Soon, the crows lost their cool song, their warm words. They croaked and squawked. To their ears, the sound was so hard and ugly they couldn't stand to hear each other speak. The flocks broke apart. They stayed apart.

  "Now crows live alone. They glare at people from the branches. And when a man grows too close, crows curse and spit until he goes away."

  Mourn didn't move, but he seemed to shrink in the silence that followed his story. Lira nodded, eyes downcast. Blays' brows knit together and stayed tied, unusually serious.

  Dante watched Mourn. "I haven't heard that one before."

  The norren didn't look up. "What did you think?"

  "I liked it. Very much."

  "I mean about Nonn. Do you think he should have told the humans about the berries? Or should he have kept quiet like his flock wanted him to?"

  "The whole damn forest burned down," Blays said. "Of course he should have told them."

  "But he vowed not to," Lira said. "Could you betray your people like that? I'd rather hang myself."

  Blays cocked his head. "Can crows get hanged? They seem awful light."

  "It can't be done." She rose and paced the cleared ground, head rumpling the underside of the sagging tarp. "Your loyalty is all you have. If you forfeit that, you burn the forest of your soul."

  Mourn watched her, expressionless, then slowly turned to meet Dante's eyes. "What do you think?"

  Dante held up his palms. "I can't say. Yeah, the forest burned down, but Nonn didn't know that would happen. Judging from hindsight is like betting after the fight is won."

  "What would you have done?"

  "If I thought it was the right thing to do?" Dante shook his head. "I would have brought the berries down myself and broken the wing of anyone who tried to stop me."

  Mourn laughed through his nose, mouth maintaining its blank straight line. "If I had to bet, which I don't, I bet you would." Cavernous sorrow opened across his face, then disappeared. He smoothed his beard. "Josun Joh doesn't speak to us."

  "That doesn't mean he frowns on what we're doing," Dante said.

  "Anyway, gods can't speak to you every second of the day," Blays said. "He's probably off doing godly things. Screwing a goose or whatever."

  "I don't just mean us," Mourn gestured across the small camp. "He doesn't speak to anyone. Well, I can't state that as fact. Maybe he really does speak to some people. We probably think they're crazy, though. But he certainly doesn't speak to me. Or to Orlen or to Vee."

  Dante glanced between the others. "What are you talking about?"

  "I said we don't speak to Josun Joh." Mourn reached for his silver and bone earring, carefully unclasping it from the rim of his coin-sized ear. He extended it to Dante, gaze level. "We speak to each other."

  Understanding hit Dante as quickly as the memory of a chore you were supposed to hav
e handled the day before. Acceptance took significantly longer. Such a thing couldn't exist. It was just as imaginary as the Quivering Bow. And possibly just as powerful.

  "What the hell does that mean?" Blays scowled at Dante. "You look like you're about to kiss him with your eyes. And find out whether those eyes have tongues."

  "Um," Dante said. Mourn just gazed back. Dante hesitated, mouth half-open. Mourn couldn't really be saying that. If Dante said what he thought Mourn meant, he'd look like a fool. A child. The kind of simpleton who believes every story he hears about fairies, dragons, and the sexual prowess of men from the Golden Coast. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

  Mourn nodded.

  At last, Dante shook his head. "I don't know what you'd call it."

  "We call them loons," Mourn said.

  "Of course you do," Blays said. "Now tell me what they are before I embed you in this tree."

  "If I understand correctly," Dante said slowly, "loons are a way of speaking..." He glanced at Mourn, who nodded. "...across great distances."

  "Correct," Mourn said.

  Blays rolled his eyes and flung up his hands. "So? Battlefield trumpets can do the same thing."

  "Is there any limit to how far they can talk?" Dante asked Mourn.

  "Not that I know of," the norren shrugged. "But I don't know much about loons besides they exist."

  Dante turned to Blays. "If you're capable of anything besides flapping around like a salmon, think for a moment. If we had a set of these, we could tell Cally what happened right now. As soon as he got done shouting at us, he could then tell us what to do next." He gestured at the dark woods. "If we had loon-equipped scouts across Gask, they could report the moment some lord levies his troops. If we posted them along the river, they could tell us the instant Gask's armies cross into the Norren Territories. We would know every step of their advance as they took it. Meanwhile, their reports would lag behind—by hours, days, weeks."