The Cycle of Arawn: The Complete Epic Fantasy Trilogy

by Edward W. Robertson

  "Fear away," Dante said. "That doesn't change the fact you're not the master of this council and it's not your decision to make."

  "I never claimed I was," Kav said peevishly. "And yet I will not follow a path that ensures Cally is the last to ever rule the Council. We cannot disgrace him and this institution by committing strategic suicide in lieu of facing the facts."

  Most of the Council looked pained, resigned. Merria was the only one who appeared outright defiant. Somburr looked disturbed, blinking repeatedly, his mouth tightly pursed.

  "In any event," Kav continued, "it is not my intent to enforce a decision here and now. Only to broach the option and give us ample time to prepare in case events unfold as Somburr's source foresees."

  Dante clamped down his anger. They would not surrender. Not if he had to kill Kav himself and lead the troops from the very front. With no intention of tipping his hand, he left as soon as the meeting dissolved and returned to his room. He frowned. Had he left his chair pulled away from his desk? He'd hidden Kav's letters in his copy of The Cycle of Arawn. He pocketed them and headed to Somburr's room. After he knocked, Somburr cracked the door an inch, eye gleaming whitely from the dimness of his room.

  "Yes, Dante?"

  "Can we speak?"

  "We are speaking as we speak."

  "Inside," Dante said. "Alone."

  Somburr's mouth turned down at the corners. "Are you going to knife me?"

  "I'm not going to knife you."

  "Good. Just be aware I will know before you try and will have no qualms about knifing you first."

  Dante agreed. Somburr let him inside. Three sets of heavy drapes blocked the windows, reducing the sunlight to nothing and leaving the room as hot as summer cobbles. Two candles shed a little yellow light around the spartan room.

  "Who do you think killed Cally?" Dante said.

  Somburr cocked his head. "A professional. Hired."

  "By who?"

  "The list is heavy enough to break your foot, isn't it?"

  Dante examined Somburr's middle-aged face. He didn't know whether he could trust the former spy, but he ultimately had no choice: he couldn't prove the identity of the killer on his own. "I think Kav may have had something to do with this."

  "He exploited the situation very quickly," Somburr said. "Highly suspicious."

  "You've thought about this?"

  "Who hasn't?"

  "Anyone who's inclined to not accuse their leader of treason?" Dante said.

  "Contemplating whether someone could be guilty isn't the same as accusing them of being guilty." Somburr narrowed his eyes at Dante. "You, for instance, are highly ambitious. Perhaps you were tired of waiting for Cally to die. Also, you have been prosecuting this war with great ferocity, haven't you? Maybe Cally agreed with Kav and wanted to end it. Maybe you couldn't let that happen."

  "You think I did it?"

  "I doubt it," Somburr said. "But unless a thing is impossible, I don't like to rule it out."

  "I think it was Kav," Dante said. "He stepped in like he'd been expecting it. I found these, too." He took out the three letters he'd taken from Kav and handed them to Somburr, whose face took on the eager gleam of a child in the bakery. "Why would he write them in code?"

  Somburr clawed the letters from Dante's hand so smoothly he hardly felt them go. "He's been sending an extraordinary amount of letters ever since you burned down Cassinder's house. They've all been in code."

  Dante's blood went cold. "I need you to tell me everything you know about Kav."

  "Born in 867 P.C., the second son of Ronnimore and Allyria, Baron and Baroness of Landry. Showed first signs of nethereal talent at 13 and took to the priesthood at 17. His older brother died in mysterious circumstances two years later, leaving Kav with a clear path to the barony, which he took only to leave in the hands of a steward in 897, when he returned to the priesthood with a clear path to the Council of Narashtovik. To the best of our knowledge, the family barrister had wrangled a way for him to retain ownership of his lands and title even though priestly bylaws require—"

  Dante cut him off. "You know all this off the top of your head?"

  "Of course," Somburr said. "Would you like to know what I know about you?"

  "Are his ties to the capital still as strong as they look?"

  "One of Kav's first cousins is 16 steps from the throne. 15? No, it's 16, forgot the Duchess of Derriden. Kav's younger sister is married to the third son of the Earl of Prater. The other blood ties are more complicated unless you understand Nollen Theory. Do you? No? No matter. Moving on, Kav visits his homestead west of Dollendun one to three times each year. He's spoken with Moddegan in person more than once. To summarize, he has many long-standing connections to the king, the capital in Setteven, and any number of noblemen across Gask."

  "Do you think you can decode those letters?" Dante said.

  "I have before. I haven't tried to break his latest codes. He changes them yearly, not that it helps. What he ought to do is hire me to create his codes for him, but if I were to suggest that, he'd know I'd broken his old ones, wouldn't he?"

  "We have to act fast," Dante said. "Try to decipher the letters. I can get more if you crack the code. I'm going to have a look at Cally's body and see if Kav's assassin left any clues on it." He touched Somburr's elbow. Somburr flinched. "Can I trust you, Somburr? This isn't just about the Council. All Narashtovik depends on this."

  Somburr grinned like a ferret. "Why wouldn't you trust me?"

  "Because for all I know, you did it."

  The other man giggled. "That makes me wish I had. It would mean I've done a wonderful job misleading you to Kav."

  Dante smiled and left him with the letters. He walked out of Somburr's room and into a forest of arned guards. Several monks were there, too. Competent nether-users. Shadows roiled in their hands. They were backed by two members of the Council on top of that: silent old Joseff, and Kav.

  "Dante Galand," Kav said. "I will keep this simple. You are hereby charged with the murder of Callimandicus, High Priest of Arawn, Viceroy of Narashtovik, and one of my oldest friends."

  26

  Laughter burst from Dante's throat. "On what grounds? That you're completely insane?"

  Kav held out a knife, brown with dried blood. "This was found in your room while we were at council."

  "For one thing, that's not mine. For another, all my knives have blood on them. Have you seen my arms? I cut myself more often than most men have breakfast."

  "This was the just the gust that cracked the limb," Kav said. "I feared this was your work from the very start."

  "Cally was my first teacher," Dante said. "I wouldn't be alive without him. I would never have come to Narashtovik. He was my friend. Lyle's bruised balls, why would I kill him?"

  "Because he was going to ask for a ceasefire."

  "No he wasn't!"

  "I spoke with him myself," Kav glowered.

  "Sounds like he was making a joke you didn't get," Dante said.

  "He was extremely uneasy about the prospects of a direct war with the king. He was ready to begin negotiations." Kav laid the heavy knife along his palm. "Besides, I tasted this blood with the nether. It's Cally's."

  Dante's world went red. "Someone put that in my room. Or you've had it all along and are using it to get me out of the way. I was three hundred miles away when he was killed!"

  "As if you couldn't have paid someone to do it?" Kav favored him with a tight and furious smile. "In fact, isn't that exactly what you endeavor to do in this letter?"

  He produced a piece of bleached parchment. Dante didn't bother to look at it. "I didn't write that."

  "I wished to deny it myself, but when we compared it to the other letters in your room, the writing matched." The nobleman's face grew pained. "My denial starved, withered, died."

  Dante snatched the paper from his hand. His head filled with stars. The handwriting was his—the same tilt to the f's and t's, the e's drawn in a single outward-spiralin
g loop—but the words weren't anything he had ever put to paper. And the words spelled out death.

  "This isn't mine," he said.

  Kav bared his teeth. "Is that not your writing?"

  "It's a forgery. A fake. I didn't order Cally's death! Are you doing this, Kav? Are you implicating me to sweep away your tracks?"

  "Enough!" Kav thundered in the tones of a patrician who's spent decades in the pulpit. "I've told no lies and done no wrongs. We found what we have found. You will have time enough to rehearse your defense from the cells beneath the Citadel."

  Nether condensed around Dante's whole body, fog-like. The guards drew back, swords wavering. Dante forced the shadows to dissolve away. The act was as hard as drinking boiling water.

  "I'll find your lies," he said. "And then I'll kill you."

  Kav snorted and gestured at the guards. "Bind his hands."

  They locked him in chains and marched him to the disused dungeons beneath the keep. It smelled of must and old urine. As far as the scant torchlight showed, he was the only one there. The guards brought him to a room walled with stone and closed the iron door with a clang.

  "You will be allowed to speak on your own behalf at the appropriate time," Kav said through the grille. "Despite your treachery, you are still one of Arawn's children."

  "Then let me speak to Blays," Dante said.

  "This reminds me. If you make any attempt to escape, your friends will be killed."

  Dante pressed his face against the metal bars slitting the window. "Don't."

  "Then don't do anything stupid," Kav said.

  "Send Blays."

  Kav disappeared from sight. A torch in the hallway shed the barest light into his cell. He wondered if it was the same one Larrimore had locked him in long ago when he'd bluffed his way into the Citadel with the intent of assassinating the woman who'd ruled it. He walked the corners of the room, fingers trailing the cool stone walls. There was nether in them. Faint, but present. Was there anything in the world beyond the shadows' touch?

  He allowed himself to be angry for a while. He needed to let it boil away, leaving him with a clear head capable of establishing Kav's guilt and exonerating himself. Somburr's decryption of the letters might accomplish that, but he couldn't depend on it. His life—Narashtovik, norren freedom, everything—hung on proving Kav was the one who belonged in this cell.

  So he sat, reached out for the nether, breathed. Soon, he calmed. There could be something that would help him on the knife. There could be something on Cally's body. What about Cally's last words? Skunks and whispers—had he been attacked by someone who smelled foul? A fishmonger? A dung-shoveler? Unlikely to help just now, that. Yet if he could find the killer, he was certain he could make the man talk. If he could make the man talk, he could out Kav's treachery to the world.

  At least it was cool in the dungeons. He lay on the stones, hands clasped behind his head. He must have slept; footsteps woke him some time later. Blays' face appeared in the grille.

  "Man, what have you done now?"

  "Oh, nothing much," Dante said. "Just murdered Cally."

  "Very talented of you," Blays said. "Weren't we two hundred miles away at the time?"

  "You know how these things go. I must have hired an assassin in my sleep and forgotten all about it in the morning."

  "Oh, I assassinated five people that way just last year."

  Dante laughed lightly. "So."

  "How long you got before they post your head on the city gates?"

  "Three weeks at most. They may want to save me as a gift to the Gaskans. Executing me in front of the generals would send a strong message that Kav's ready to bring Narashtovik back in line."

  Blays nodded in the gloom. "And just to be clear, you'd rather not be drawn and quartered in front of the cathedral?"

  "Ideally, no." Dante explained Somburr's involvement with the letters, and his own thoughts about where to go next. "I could be one clue away from exoneration. But I can't do much from inside these walls."

  "If I can get you out, we'll have to find the evidence in a hurry," Blays said. "If Kav sees you strolling around the streets, he's not going to wave hello. Unless it's with a butcher knife."

  Dante smacked the stone wall. "Don't worry about breaking me out. Worry about finding something to tie Kav to Cally's death."

  "Got it." Blays pressed his eye up to the bars in the window. "You're taking this pretty well."

  "A prison is only a prison if you let it imprison you."

  "Nevermind. I see the madness has already set in." Blays disappeared.

  Dante faced the wall and sat and thought. He had no way to gauge the time. Trays of food were brought in. A bucket was brought out. Three days passed. Or was it four? Blays dropped by to let him know he hadn't been able to find where Cally's body was being kept, but that Wint and Ulev had made it back safely to Narashtovik. There had been another clash between the Gaskan army and the union of the clans. Both sides had been bloodied, but the norren had fallen back once more. The clans had splintered, dispersing into the woods beyond Dollendun.

  When Dante wasn't sleeping, he worked with the nether, letting his thoughts come as they may. The food came twice more. The bucket went away twice more. Blays returned.

  "I think I found something," he said.

  Dante rose. "Oh?"

  "You. It turns out you're in prison!"

  "Very good. Now please tell me you found a reason for me to leave."

  "Well." Blays paced beyond the iron door. "I can't find the body. But I did find someone who knows where it is."

  Dante ran to the door. "Who?"

  "I don't know, some servant who heard I was looking for it. Sounds none too happy with the way Kav's handling things. Guy's name is Amwell. Know him?"

  "No, but there must be three hundred employees of some kind or another inside the Citadel's walls. And in case you've forgotten, we've spent most of the last three years crapping in the woods. I don't recognize half the faces here anymore."

  Blays clapped. "All right. So here's the plan. Tonight, I come down and pick the lock. They've only got three or four guards up top, so it should be no problem for you to put them to sleep or kill them if we have to. I could try to drug them, too, if you know something I can get ahold of by tonight. Meanwhile, me and Lira will have a little wagon parked up top. I put you in a sack, I carry you outside in the sack, sling you in the wagon, and roll you out the front gates. Once we're past the walls, we'll meet up with Amwell and head off to see the body. If anything goes wrong, we'll have a grappling hook with a team of horses—"

  "Sounds complicated," Dante said. "How about I just walk out through the tunnel I dug?"

  "What?"

  "I dug a tunnel."

  "Let me see your hands," Blays said. Dante stuck them through the window grille and Blays turned them this way and that. "Funny, your fingernails still seem to exst."

  "I used the nether," Dante said. "I moved the earth until I was past the outer walls, then plugged it on either side so no one would see the holes. I can open it back up in seconds."

  "Well fine, if you want to be boring about it. How's 1 AM sound, then?"

  "When is that? I don't have any idea what time it is down here."

  Blays tapped his teeth. He smacked the wall between himself and Dante. "Can you open this up, too?"

  "Sure."

  "Then I'll come down at one, you let me inside the cell, and we'll both walk out the tunnel."

  "You want me to break you in to prison?" Dante said.

  "Just for a few minutes! It's perfectly sane in this context."

  "See you at one," Dante grinned.

  He napped immediately afterward—in the timeless darkness, sleep came whenever he wanted. When he woke, he felt the contours of the wall, the nether waiting there. Blays jogged down the steps a couple hours later.

  "Guards didn't want to let me down again," he said. "But since you're their master and all, I feel I should warn you they're susceptible to
bribes."

  "Sounds like I owe them a promotion." Dante pushed his palms together, then spread them apart. The wall between them curled inward, stone flowing like cool syrup.

  "That was disturbingly vaginal," Blays said.

  "If that's what you think, Lira may need to see a physician," Dante said. "Come on."

  He parted the thin layer of rock papering the hole at the back of his cell, revealing a smooth-walled tunnel just wide enough to walk down without turning his shoulders. He lit a white light on his fingertip and strode down the passage.

  "So there's basically nothing that can keep you imprisoned anymore, is there?" Blays said.

  "They could make the walls out of wood or metal," Dante said.

  "Which you could then smash through."

  "Well, it depends how thick it is."

  Blays tapped the side of the wall. "Or they could stick you in a big glass box and put the box underwater so if you broke the box you'd drown."

  "For the sake of global sanity, I'm glad you're not a fan of torture."

  Over the span of a few steps, the tunnel changed from stone to dirt, sloping up beneath them. After another hundred yards, a set of hard-packed dirt steps appeared, terminating in a blank wall and ceiling.

  Dante waved Blays away from the steps. "This probably won't collapse all over me, but you might want to back off."

  "I'm just going to head back to your cell. Better yet, back to my room."

  Dante took hold of the nether webbed through the dirt atop the staircase and pushed. A black hole opened above his head, spilling dirt and warm, moist air into the tunnel. Stars dotted the gap through the ground. Dante jogged up into the grass just outside the walls ringing the Citadel.

  Blays glanced up at the walls and gestured him forward. A slight and black-haired man waited for them in an alley two blocks from the Citadel. Blays nodded. "Dante, meet Amwell."

  Dante shook hands. "Thank you for meeting us."

  Amwell bobbed his head. "Thank you for meeting me. I never met Callimandicus—I've only served the Citadel a few months—but I admired him for years. I don't believe for a second that you killed him."

  "Well, we may be about to find out who did. Lead on."