The Cycle of Arawn: The Complete Epic Fantasy Trilogy

by Edward W. Robertson

  "I suppose he could. He tends not to intervene directly." Dante smiled wryly. "I think he laughs hardest when a man's folly is his own."

  "To put it another way, would we be speaking now if Moddegan's ancestors hadn't annexed the Norren Territories three hundred years ago?"

  "I don't know. I doubt it."

  "So our king, it can be said, is playing out the story written for him by his ancestors."

  "That would mean you and I are, too."

  The man's muttonchops lifted in a smile. "We're all at the mercy of ghosts."

  The merchant gave a slight bow of his head and turned to rejoin his compatriots. That was more or less the end of the dialogues. One other youngish man approached him with questions about Narashtovik and was interrupted by a servant, who informed Dante he should stay until after the quorum dissolved. This took the better part of three hours. That evening, Jocubs beckoned Dante and Blays into the enclosed balcony, leaving the servants to fetch tea and sweep up the dining hall.

  "Well." Jocubs eased himself onto a bench, glancing at the sunset on the lake. "I hope you had a good time."

  Blays jerked his chin in the direction of the hall. "The fish were so good it's a wonder you don't live in the lake with them."

  "I'm glad." He folded his hands on his stomach and gave Dante a sideways look. "I hope it wasn't too imposing?"

  Dante shrugged lightly. "Not at all. Although I'm confused about what we accomplished."

  "With exceptions, the Association sympathizes with you. We have a few peripheral details we'd like to work out with you—I don't think most of us knew how large Narashtovik had gotten—but I think you can count on a positive vote at the assembly two weeks from now."

  "Is that a joke?" Blays said.

  Jocubs blinked, lower lip outthrust. "If so, please tell me what struck you as funny. I've always wished myself wittier."

  "Two weeks?"

  "Yes, I think so."

  Blays laughed, glancing at Dante in disbelief. "And then you'll reach a decision? Then what the hell was this party for?"

  A frown gathered on the merchant's face. "To see if your proposal was worth pursuing. The next two weeks will be about working out the specifics. Some of the estates represented by the men you met are the size of small kingdoms."

  Dante's head buzzed. "I don't suppose this can be hurried along."

  "Not in any significant way." The man leaned forward and patted Dante's knee. "It will be fine in time. If it takes this long for Gallador to shift course, just think how long it would take the entire kingdom to come to grips with something weighty as a war!"

  Dante expressed his thanks, turned down a final glass of port, and walked down to Jocubs' pier. "Well, so much for our schedule."

  "So much for our youth," Blays said.

  "Maybe we should just give up. Run off to be pirates."

  "Wait, is that an option? Why didn't you tell me that years ago?"

  Dante nodded at the skiff tied along the dock. "There's our flagship. Let's go. Lake-pirates are a thing, right?"

  "If not, we can make them a thing." Blays stepped over the side of the hull. Down the pier, two men dislodged from the boathouse and hurried down the planks. "We'll blaze watery new trails for highwaymen everywhere."

  The boatman paddled them back to Lolligan's, where the old man asked Dante for a detailed recap of the quorum. While Dante spoke, Lolligan cocked his head, frowned at spots on the wall, and muttered to himself, petting his pointed mustache with a single finger.

  "Choker," he said once Dante finished.

  "What?"

  "Lord Choker. The elderly man with the muttonchops who spoke about ghosts and strings? He's the only part I can't figure out."

  "Well, that's good," Dante said. "Because I don't understand any part."

  "It's straightforward enough."

  "And so is an ant's nest—if you're an ant. If the TAGVOG already knows they want to send a delegation to the king on our behalf, why do they need another two weeks to finalize that decision?"

  Lolligan waved a sun-browned hand. "This assembly wasn't about deciding whether they should try to talk down the war-hawks. Other than those who dabble in arms and armsmen, none of the TAGVOG is keen on a fight. Today, they were judging you. How much Narashtovik wants their help, and how far you will bend to provide it. They've bought themselves two weeks to suss that out and maneuver to leverage you to the hilt."

  "Excellent," Dante said. "While they're off counting coins, the king is counting troops. And unless his abacus is bent, he'll soon discover he has far more than the norren."

  "When in doubt, look to the path of the crowd." Lolligan gestured across the water toward Jocubs' home. "If those old bastards thought time were running short, do you think they'd wait two more weeks? Remember, to these men, ignorance is the water between them and gold. Information is the boat they use to cross it."

  Dante nodded, comforted. Most of these men had built their fortunes through shrewdness, caution, and prudence. Even the lure of squeezing Narashtovik for every ounce of its excess silver would only push them to tempt fate so far.

  They were all wrong, of course. The king would hand down his proclamation the next day. It reached Gallador just two days after that. In the style of all great ultimatums, it brooked just two outcomes.

  The norren would rebel, or never be able to again.

  12

  On hearing the king's proclamation, Blays had one of his own.

  "Horseshit." He replaced his tea cup on its saucer. "A sixty-pound sack of horseshit."

  Dante felt sick. "Horseshit isn't nearly offensive enough. This is...apeshit. At least."

  He switched on his loon. On hearing the news, Cally was silent for a full ten seconds. "Well, that's no good."

  "Not unless you're a mortician," Dante said. "Or a vendor of rebel banners."

  "Unless you feel like defecting—and at this point I wouldn't blame you—there's no reason to stay in Wending when the king's decision has already been made. See what there is to see at the cove. Come back through the lakes on your way home and see if the merchants can talk Moddegan down, but don't waste a lot of time if they're waffling." Cally hmm'd. "Leave Fann behind to grease whatever wheels he can reach. He won't serve any use at Pocket Cove. Except as breakfast."

  The orders cleared Dante's head. Fann accepted his charge with a silent nod; he was used to being dispatched to courtly settings as soon as the road turned rough. Blays clapped his hands. Mourn turned to gather his things. Lira smiled strangely and reached for her hip for a sword that wasn't there.

  Lolligan was equal parts apologetic and eager for them to stay. "We don't know how the path may fork from here. Moddegan could be being deliberately outrageous in order to appear benevolent when he scales back his demands."

  Dante gazed at the sparkling lake. "I won't bank on that."

  "Then talk the TAGVOG into talking him down. There's still time."

  "I don't understand how this city works, Lolligan, and I no longer have the time to learn. The king has made his decision. It's time for your friends to make theirs."

  "They're not my friends," Lolligan muttered.

  Dante wanted no more of it. For what little good it would do, he composed a brief letter to Jocubs, then took a rowboat into the city to pick up provisions while the stables prepped the horses. Waiting at the bakery, he realized he had no desire to go to Pocket Cove.

  But it wasn't a choice. They were ready to move by late afternoon. The sun was already within a hand's height of the western peaks, but the roads in Gallador were the best Dante had ever seen (besides the sheer mastery of those in Cling, anyway). Riding by night would be no danger. He squeezed his knees against his horse's flanks, urging it forward.

  As soon as the city shifted from rowhouses to farmland, he sped to a trot, swerving around an oxen team. This was no time to rest the horses. Everything would be moving faster now. By the king's order, the Territories were to be parceled out in four-mile squares. Ea
ch clan was to be registered with one of a score of new baronetcies and would remain restricted to their new territory by force of law. In addition, every four years each clan was required to provide one fit male slave in tribute; if no males fit the bill, a female would suffice. If a single clan denounced or defied these new conditions, King Moddegan claimed express authority to pass through any and all lands on his way to quell them; if the rebellious clan could not be found, its neighbors would be held accountable until it was located.

  That last bit was the poison pill. Disinclined as they may be to accept the heavy hand of human rule, a majority of norren, particularly those in the cities, would rather accept it than face invasion. But there were at least two hundred clans. Probably several times that many. Dante couldn't believe the Nine Pines would accept this treaty. No doubt they'd be just one among dozens of rebel clans. War was no longer a question of if, but when.

  Meanwhile, should the clans defy their nature and acquiesce—either through threat of invasion or forced to by battle—Moddegan had set himself up to feast on the loyalty of all the powerful men vying for those new baronetcies and the lands, status, and titles that came with them. No doubt several of Gallador's tea growers and salt miners would not only jump ship from the TAGVOG's desire for peace, but would dig extra deep to help fund the war. It was a masterstroke, the overbearing play of a man fully confident he couldn't lose. And Moddegan was right. Soon, the norren would be forever quelled, penned and farmed like cattle, unable to trouble him ever again.

  Unless.

  And a dwindling "unless" at that. The ultimatum gave the tribes three weeks to register and two months to volunteer their first slaves. With so little time to spare, Dante couldn't see spending more than three days at Pocket Cove. It wouldn't be enough to win the favor of the People of the Pocket. His only hope for discovering the cove's secret—whatever had kept them from being conquered, ever—lay in the observations he drew for himself.

  Observations which must run deeper than the land itself. The Pocket Cove was supposedly surrounded by sheer cliffs on all sides, but that would do nothing to prevent a naval invasion. Which Gask had attempted, many years ago. Their fleet had disappeared as if it had sailed off the edge of the earth. The king at the time announced victory anyway, adding the cove to the mounting list of imperial acquisitions, but the People had never, so far as Dante knew, paid taxes, tribute, or homage to Setteven, and to this day remained independent in all but name. If Dante could ferret out whatever secret saved their sovereignty, perhaps he could employ it to do the same for the Norren Territories.

  The far side of the mountains took them through a thick forest of bamboo. They rode hard, switching horses and pace to keep their mounts fresh. Budding trees blanketed the hills. For three days they saw nothing but wind-washed grassland. Lightning streaked between mounded black clouds. Hailstones popped from the grass, salting the road and stinging Dante's hands. The towns were small things, a few dozen houses at the crossroads, the green fields speckled with white sheep, gray goats, and black crows.

  For a morning and an afternoon, they passed nothing at all. Yellow grasses and graying stone. The road stopped as if erased. To the west, a black line lay along the horizon, thick and unbroken.

  "What the hell is that?" Blays said. "Looks like Taim took a great big quill and tried to scratch out the end of the world."

  "So the legends say," Dante said.

  "Wait, he did?"

  "Yeah. Right after he beat Gashen in a mountain-throwing contest and then baked a potato so hot even he couldn't eat it."

  Blays scowled. "This is why no one takes priests seriously. The stories you make up as jokes aren't any crazier than the ones you worship in your books."

  "They're cliffs," Lira said.

  Dante turned in the saddle. "Cliffs?"

  She nodded, looking him in the eye. "Tall, rocky slopes. Typically vertical."

  "What are cliffs?"

  "Tall, rocky slopes—"

  "That!" Blays pointed at the thick black line. "We're here!"

  "So can we finally know what brings us here?" Mourn said. "Besides our horses?"

  Dante quickly explained Gask's history of failed invasions. "The People of the Pocket have been protected by more than cliffs. We're trying to figure out why no one can get in or out."

  "They get out when they want," Lira said. "But few recognize the People when they see them."

  "What makes you so sure?"

  "They sail south sometimes. We saw them in the Carlon Islands every few years."

  The black cliffs rose three hundred feet from the plain, perfectly sheer, unclimbable. A shallow scree of broken stones rested at their base. Dante halted to consult the maps copied from Cally's library. The originals were poorly scaled and very old, but they indicated a pass through the cliffs not far to the south. Some five miles later, dusk forced them to encamp. There had been no breaks in the rock nor any gentling of the slope. The vertical black stone was striated like gills, blocking off the heavens.

  "Question," Blays said around their fire. "If no one can get in, why do we think there is a way in?"

  "Because the maps say so," Dante said.

  "Those things are older than Cally's balls."

  "I'm pretty sure those aren't any older than Cally himself."

  "Then thank Arawn you've never seen them."

  Dante blinked. "When did you—?"

  "Anyway," Blays went on, "if they came from the kind of books Cally reads, they're automatically suspect."

  Dante unrolled one of his parchments and held it to the firelight. "Look, the road ended here. Just north." He tapped the map, then another spot below that. "One of the passages is supposed to be here, right before this Blackcairn place. That should be less than a day's ride."

  "Sure, we've already wasted four. What's one more?"

  "We're not wasting anything. We're not the only ones working on this, you know. Cally's got a squad of diplomats in Setteven. He and Olivander are probably working out how to levy an army for Narashtovik right now. Scores of different clans are plotting how to fight back on their own." Dante paused to accept a hot heel of bread from Mourn; the crust was lightly charred, the white steaming and fluffy, gooey with butter and speckled with fresh-picked lowleaf. "All those people are making the normal preparations for war. We're out here to bring back something strange."

  They kept the fire lit that night. The light and smoke would carry far across the grassland, but they were at the edge of the world, a step beyond the map. There were dogs to keep at bay, too, wild things with howls like sobbing mothers. Despite their yips, Dante slept well, the fire's warmth easing the stiffness from his legs and back. In the morning, he brewed tea as the others woke. They rose easy, as if revitalized by more than the tea: but by the knowledge they were in a nowhere-place, a realm where nothing could help them but themselves. That knowledge was bracing, a kick to the heart that could last the whole day.

  They rode out with the light, skimming the face of the cliff. Small black birds burst from the brush. The sun surged across the grass and died on the black rock wall. At noon, they stopped to eat dried beef and bread. Dante's border-world energy had left him. The cliffs were featureless, unchanging, as if the gods had hacked them into a rough idea in the early days of creation and forgotten to ever return and finish the fine details.

  With the sun sliding down the sky, a black mound rose from the grass. Broken stones sat in a forty-foot mound. Time-tarnished bones poked between the rubble.

  "Well, I see a black cairn," Blays said. "Now where's the way up?"

  Lira frowned at the cliffs. "Maybe we haven't gone far enough."

  Dante reached for his pack. "There's another map, too. It agrees with the first. The passage is north of Blackcairn."

  "Perhaps they were once right and are now wrong."

  "Then there should be something. A cave-in. A rockslide that buried the trail. I haven't seen anything but blank walls."

  Mourn scratched his
beard. "Maybe we don't know what to look for."

  To mollify his doubts, Dante headed south past Blackcairn, riding with Lira at a distance of two hundred feet from the cliffs while Blays and Mourn rode right beside the looming stone. After two hours and ten miles, Dante turned around and headed north again, passing Blackcairn. Cally had advised him to expect missteps, to do what he could and move on without allowing the weight of failure to sap his resolve. Yet Dante couldn't help the bitterness he felt, the inward-pointing knives, the hard knowledge he might have done more, and better. The trip started with such promise. After their success in Tantonnen, every day since felt squandered, a drunken chase after things beyond his understanding. How large was the world that so much of it felt like a foreign place?

  "Here's something," Mourn called from beside the rubble of loose rocks footing the cliffs. "I mean, here are a lot of things. But here is something new to us."

  Dante drove his horse through the grass and jumped to the ground. Mourn knelt, pointing at a clear print in the dirt, its edges rising from the hardened mud as steeply as the cliffs.

  "You're sure that's not us?" Dante said.

  "Not unless one of us snuck out here while the rest of us were on the road. This track is at least three days old."

  "Can you say where it leads?"

  Mourn shrugged at the slumped stones skirting the sheer face. "Not without lying to you."

  Blays swung down from his horse. "Here's a question. We're what, twenty miles from the road? What kind of idiot would come that far for nothing?"

  "A very clever one." Dante slid into the shadows of second sight. Nether gleamed on the underside of leaves, winked from the gaps in the splay of broken rocks. Slowly as a flower follows the sun, he scanned the cliffside, feeling its silent face. Southward toward Blackcairn, at the edge of his vision, a deeper blackness rippled from the slaty rock.

  "What?" Blays said. "You've got that look."

  "What look?"

  "Like you just heard Lady Swellchest has been widowed."

  Lira turned from the cliffs. "Lady Swellchest?"