The Cycle of Arawn: The Complete Epic Fantasy Trilogy

by Edward W. Robertson

  "He's in the carneterium." Amwell started down the street toward the hilltop cemetery.

  "Oh goody," Blays said. "Think we'll have to fight any wights?"

  "Do you know where, exactly?" Dante said. "That place is huge."

  Amwell nodded. "I work there, sir. And it's the most curious thing—since Kav brought his body to us, no one else has seen it. We've actually been ordered to keep the room sealed."

  Blays snorted. "Well, that is the standard procedure for investigating a murder, isn't it? Lock up all the evidence, then accuse someone at random?"

  "There's only one reason Kav wouldn't look at the body," Dante said. "And that's if he were already perfectly aware who killed him."

  "How will the body help, anyway?" Blays said. "You're not going to...do anything funny, are you?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You know. Make him sit up and tell you what happened."

  "Are you crazy?" Dante said. "Why make him sit up when I can make him dance? Just wait till you hear what I've got in store for your corpse."

  "Oh no. No, that's not happening. If I'm ever about to die, I'm going to kill you first."

  "Then I'll have to preempt your preemptive strike." Dante wiped sweat from his hairline. After the stagnant must of the dungeons, the air tasted salty and fresh. It was still blood-warm even in the dead of night, however, humid and horrible. They strode through the grassy field surrounding the hill. "Just so you know, I'm totally out of ideas if this doesn't work."

  Blays nodded sagely. "Well, there's always suicide."

  Amwell led them to the hole in the base of the hill. Above the entrance, a stone plaque showed Arawn's millstone, the North Star perched upon the tip of its pole. Amwell unlocked the door and lit a lantern in the foyer.

  "Please follow me, lords." He turned and smiled. The lamplight gave his black hair a brown halo. The man led them through the mazelike catacombs. Within minutes, Dante was hopelessly lost; if Amwell were to drop dead, Dante would stand a better chance of tunneling back out than of finding his way back to the entrance. The passages smelled of death old and new. It was managable stench, however; the carneterium workers used balms and the nether to slow the decay, dousing the tunnels and rooms with perfumes. In spots, the scent of wildflowers drove the smell of rot away completely.

  At last, Amwell stopped in front of a closed door no different from the two score they'd already passed. He slipped the key into the lock and turned to Dante. "He is inside, my lord."

  Inside, a stained shroud covered the body on the stone platform in the middle of the room. A withered foot projected from the shroud's edge. Dante found a lantern on the wall and lit it with a thought. A hooked chain hung above the table. Dante affixed the lantern to it, ran his hands through his hair, and peeled the shroud from the body.

  It was easy to pretend it was just another corpse. He'd seen hundreds in his young life. When he'd helped establish the carneterium, he examined dozens just like this. The neck wound on his current subject appeared to have been the lethal strike. It stretched across the man's throat, black with crusted blood. It was a wonder Cally'd been able to talk at all. The skin on the man's left hip, knee, and shoulder was white, marbled with reddish lines, but the areas around the blanched skin were brown-black and bruised.

  "Was he found resting on his left side?" Dante said.

  Amwell tipped back his head and considered the ceiling. "I believe so. How can you tell?"

  "That bruising there. Seen it on a lot of bodies. It looks identical to a beating, but I believe it's just where the blood comes to rest inside them once they die—it always shows up around the parts of the body that have rested on the ground." Dante made his way down the corpse. There were no other obvious wounds. That fit with what he'd heard through the loon. He went to Cally's fingernails, hoping the old man had fought back and scraped the man; if he found any foreign blood, he could follow it to the killer. But Cally's hands had been scrubbed and cleaned. Fingernails, too. Except a crease of blood along the thumbnail. Dante's heart leapt. He touched the nether within it, but there was no accompanying pressure to point him toward the man who'd done it. It was Cally's, remnants of his futile efforts to quench the gash cut into his throat.

  "Was anything removed from the room?"

  Amwell gazed at the ceiling again. "A small rug. Soiled. His clothes, of course." He frowned. "Oh. And this." He went to a desk at the side of the room and returned with a white handkerchief spotted with blood. "This was fresh when we found it. Strange, isn't it? If Lord Callimandicus had used this to stanch the bleeding, you would expect it to be drenched, wouldn't you? But there are just these little spots."

  Dante snatched it up and reached for the nether in the dried brown spots. Pressure bloomed near the middle of his forehead. "Which way am I facing right now?"

  "South. South-southwest, I think. Isn't that about the direction of the Citadel?"

  "It is."

  The man's mouth parted halfway. He stepped under the lamplight, gazing down at Cally. "Does that mean the man who did this..?"

  Dante stared at him. Beneath the light of the lamp, Amwell's hair had that same two-toned appearance Dante had noticed when they entered the carneterium. While most of it was black, a few patches were a rich brown, including a solid stripe that ran back from the left side of his head.

  "Do you dye your hair?" Dante said.

  Amwell didn't look up. Instead, he went still. Too still. "Can't say that I do. Why do you ask such an odd question?"

  Dante caught Blays' eye, then nodded at Amwell, making a small gesture they'd worked out years ago for times such as these. Blays darted in behind the man, locking his arms behind his back.

  "What are you doing?" Amwell shouted.

  Dante closed on him, running his fingers through the hair on the man's scalp. His black hair was indeed black from root to tip, but his brown hair showed three shades: deep brown with a tinge of gray at the tips, where it was exposed to the sunlight; then black down to just above the roots. There, in a layer as thin as a cotton undershirt, the hair was stark white.

  Dante's skin prickled. "You skunk."

  "Let me go!" Amwell twisted to his left, trying to free his arms, but Blays bore down, cranking his wrist to the edge of breakage. Amwell gasped and went slack.

  "That's what Cally said as he was dying," Dante said. "'Skunk.' I thought he meant the killer was foul-smelling. But he was talking about hair. The stripe on your head that's white like a skunk's."

  "This is madness! I am a tender to the dead, not an assassin!"

  "You were too eager to lead me along. How long have you been spying on me? To learn what would set me at Kav's throat?" Dante waved the blood-spotted handkerchief. "This is Kav's blood, isn't it? Where did you get this? Did he toss it out after shaving?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about!"

  "He's not the only one," Blays said. "Why am I on the verge of breaking this guy's arms over here?"

  "Tell him," Dante said. Amwell wriggled again. Blays bent his wrist. Amwell went white as bleached parchment. Dante beckoned the nether to him, cupping it in his hands, spending some of its own strength to make it blackly visible to common eyes. Theatrically, he grabbed it in both hands and bent it into a wicked crescent. He extended his right hand, palm-up. As smoothly as a patrolling pike, the blade honed in on Amwell's throat. Dante smiled without humor. "Talk before this sorcerous sword bites through your throat."

  Behind Amwell, Blays grinned at Dante's show. Amwell jerked away from the nethereal blade. Blays shifted his hips to take the man's weight and rotated his arm. Something popped in Amwell's wrist.

  "Stop!" he shrieked. "I was sent by Cassinder of Beckonridge. I've been working with Wint for months."

  "Wint? From-the-Council Wint?" Dante goggled. "To do what?"

  "I don't know," Amwell said. Dante touched the nether to his neck and let him feel the chill. Amwell gasped out half a curse. "I think we were meant to undermine the Council. I just did
as I was told. That's all I know!"

  "Undermind it by cutting off its head?" Dante said. Amwell shuddered, ashen. Dante fought down the fury surging through his blood. "Now you're going to repeat this to the rest of the Council."

  "What happens then?"

  "That's not for me to decide."

  The man's face twisted into a fearful sneer. "I want your assurance I won't be killed. My confession must be worth something."

  Dante returned his gaze. "I'll do all I can."

  Dante took down the lantern from the chain. Amwell led on. Blays relaxed his grip on Amwell's wrists. The circle of lantern light receded from the room. The body of Cally fell into darkness.

  They emerged into the humid night. Amwell made no effort to resist or escape. The front gates to the Citadel would be closed, as they always were, so Dante guided them back to his tunnel to the dungeons, continued through his cell, and took the steps up to the ground floor, where he encountered three very surprised guards.

  "I need the Council assembled at once," Dante said. "Don't try to stop me. If I am in the wrong, let my fellow priests destroy me."

  Two of the guards wavered. The third, an older man who'd often seen to Cally personally whenever the old man had business in the city, nodded deeply. "Where shall we tell the Council to meet?"

  "In our chambers," Dante said. "Wait to bring Wint until the end if you can. If you care for your own life, for Arawn's sake don't tell him why we're meeting."

  The three men followed him into the Citadel proper. The entry was scantly lit by slow-burning candles. One of the guards plucked one up to take into the unlit stairwell. Once they reached the upper floors, the guards peeled away to roust the councilmen from sleep. Dante headed straight to the main chambers, where he instructed Amwell to sit in a chair in the corner on the right side of the doorway, out of sight until one had stepped inside the room.

  "What happens if Wint goes batty?" Blays said. "Putting him in an armlock won't stop him from killing everyone with magic flying shadow-daggers."

  "I thought you had strategies to fight people like us," Dante said.

  "Yeah, and I bet a lot of them end with me dying horribly."

  "I can handle him," Dante said. "He won't attack anyone. It would only prove his own guilt."

  "Fine," Blays said. "Guess I'll just sit back and enjoy the drama."

  Tarkon was the first to arrive. The old man gave Dante an amused smile. "Is my memory that bad? When did we move the prisons all the way up here?"

  Dante grinned back. His cheer was short-lived. Somburr came next, examining the scene with the quiet intensity of a bird of prey. He perched near the back of the room, watching. Joseff came next. He was as silent as always, but his long-faced stare spoke volumes of wary suspicion.

  Then came Kav. His eyes glimmered with anger above his aquiline nose. "What are you doing out of your cell?"

  Dante made sure the nether was close. "I decided lying alone in the dark was less productive than figuring out who really killed Cally."

  "You killed your former leader and now you defy your new one?" Kav summoned the nether to his hands in a black blur. "If you won't abide by the process of law, then it's time to enforce an older form of justice."

  "Stop it!" Dante said. "Tricking us into tearing out each other's throats is all part of their plan!"

  Shadows tumbled around Kav's hands like mad moths. "What are these vagaries of yours? Is it your plan to confuse us until we no longer know true from false?"

  "Just wait until Wint is here." Dante held up his empty hands, letting the nether dissolve away. "If you're not satisfied by what I tell you then, I won't fight back."

  Kav hesitated, lips pressed together so tight they went bloodless.

  Tarkon cleared his throat. "Let him talk, Kav. Whatever he's got to say, you know it's going to be a hell of a lot of fun to hear."

  "I don't consider that a sound basis for letting a known assassin walk free." Kav's frown turned thoughtful. "How did you get out of the dungeon in the first place?"

  "I walked through the wall," Dante said.

  A few of the priests chuckled. Kav's frown found its former depths. "You're not helping your case any."

  "I'll show you the hole once I've acquitted myself."

  "Is there no boundary to your arrogance? Your—"

  Kav broke off, distracted by the arrival of Wint. Wint kept his smart, sharp features carefully composed, but when he saw Amwell sitting in the corner, he flinched. It was just a hint of movement, a flickering retraction of his neck, and Wint composed himself an instant later, but Dante had been watching him as unblinkingly as the full moon. With that flinch, the last of his doubts dissolved on the wind.

  "Hi, Wint," Dante said. "Want to tell them how you had Cally killed?"

  Wint laughed in disbelief. "Was this your scheme to be released from prison? To shift the blame from yourself by casting it on others as carelessly as you'd throw a sheet over an old chair?"

  "I was speaking with Cally on my loon as he was dying. He identified this man." Dante pointed to Amwell, who gave Wint a sickly stare. "Please tell them what you told me, Amwell."

  Amwell dropped his gaze and spoke in a swift monotone. "I was sent by Lord Cassinder to work in conjunction with Wint. Our express purpose was the neutralization of this council."

  "Stars of Arawn," Tarkon whispered.

  Kav's nostrils flared. "Including the assassination of Callimandicus?"

  Amwell's lips curled from his teeth. "Including that."

  "This entire conversation is a disgrace to this room," Wint said, casting about for support. "There's no evidence here. Just the fabulous claims of the real killer and some drunk he hired from the street."

  "And that assassin who tried to kill me when I returned during Thaws?" Dante said. "Did I hire him too?"

  "I can't keep track of all your enemies for you."

  Dante pulled the handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Kav. "This is your blood. They planted it to make me come for you. Just like they must have planted the knife in my room."

  Kav turned his head to Wint as levelly as if it were on a swivel. "Is this true, Wint?"

  "This is nonsense," Wint said. "Absurdity. Maniacal slander. Nothing this child has said would last two seconds at formal trial, yet—"

  "That's my blood on that rag!" Kav said. Even his snarls had a regal tone. "Don't disgrace this room with any more lies!"

  Wint's righteous smile tightened until Dante feared it might break. Nether flickered throughout the room. Wint gazed out the black windows overlooking the bay on the far side of a room.

  "I have a story for you," he said. "Once upon a time, there was a young man born to a poor family. The son of a fisherman and his wife. The boy studied diligently—perhaps obsessively—discovering a facility with the nether and a knack for theology. Despite the fetters of his lowly station, he was allowed to enter the priesthood. As a monk, his station no longer mattered. These people didn't care who he was born to. All that mattered was what he was born to do."

  Wint circled around the long table, still watching the windows. The priests and guards tracked each one of his movements. He ran his hand over his mouth. "This order was so egalitarian, in fact, that when opportunities opened in the highest order of its ranks, the boy (who had, in truth, since become a man, though not that long ago) was allowed to apply and test for one of those positions. Miracle of Arawn! He was accepted.

  "Yet short years after the ascendance of this son of a fish-gutter to the highest ranks of the land's holiest order, stormclouds appeared on the horizon of that order's future." He opened the windowed doors to the balcony, revealing low, black clouds that hugged the night's humidity close to the city. "What would be the right metaphor for the decision this group had reached? It was as if a bear cub, on seeing its mother feasting on a stream full of salmon, suddenly decided it had more in common with the fish, and decided to scheme with the salmon against its own mother. Madness. Hubris. A decision that
could only result in the destruction of the cub by the very jaws and claws that had raised and fed it.

  "Let us back away from poetry. This priest, then, on seeing that the body to which he belonged had opted to betray its mother, decided he would do whatever he could to save his institution's life. No matter the cost. No matter if it meant being branded a traitor himself—exiled, hated, scorned and besmirched centuries after his name should have faded into history's great haze. So he spoke to those his institution would betray. They suggested a solution.

  "The solution was extreme. Vile. Even worse than this son of a fisherman had imagined. Yet bitter as it was, it wasn't half so bitter as the poison pill of witnessing the destruction of the order that had allowed this son of no one to taste the fullness of the world. So he accepted. Knowing it would likely mean his own death, too—of his physical body, as well as no more and no less than his soul—he took up the dagger, for all its weight."

  Wint stepped onto the balcony. He turned to face the priests. Nether whipped around his face and hands. "I was instructed to kill Dante. Dante, the one pushing us to betray the motherland that would surely maul us. When that didn't work, I killed Cally, who was no less enthusiastic, and attempted to destroy Dante again by blaming him for Cally's death. On learning Dante was on the verge of escape, I sought to reensnare him, and in the process lead him to kill Kav, whose will was too weak to trust he would sue for peace after all. All for the sake of my city, Narashtovik, and its Council I love so well."

  Beneath the black clouds, Wint tipped back his head. "I can't see Arawn nor his mill. The skies are too dark. Will they ever clear?"

  He took a step back, hit the balcony railing, and flung himself over its edge. He disappeared without a sound.

  Kav cried out. Dante rushed to the railings. So did the others. Cloth flapped in the wind. Far below, something heavy and wet met the ground with a spatter.

  "Arawn's sweet wheat," Kav whispered. Dante turned to ask him what next. Amwell rose from his seat in the corner and wandered to the door, glancing about to see if anyone was watching. Dante reached out, clawlike, for the nether in Amwell's heart. He squeezed.