The Cycle of Arawn: The Complete Epic Fantasy Trilogy

by Edward W. Robertson

  Minn laughed twice, a quick ha-ha that sounded rusty from disuse. "I'll get you started."

  She turned back toward the blank cliffs. On reaching their base, she drew a razor from her belt and touched it to the back of the first knuckle of the third finger of her left hand. Shadows bloomed in her hands. As Blays watched, a wall of rock six feet long and three feet high emerged from the sand.

  "You can handle the rest," she said.

  "How about dinner?" he said. "Or am I catching my own fish, too?"

  "Can you?"

  "With this?" He smacked the sword on his hip. "On a calm lake on a clear day. In churned-up waves approaching dark, I think I'll wind up eating sand cakes."

  She pointed to the mist-fed falls a couple hundred yards upshore. "There's your water. Tonight, I'll bring you food. After that, your needs are your own to meet."

  "I regret this immediately," he said.

  Without another word, she returned to the caves. He took a deep breath and walked down to the tideline to gather driftwood and carry it back to the stone wall Minn had conjured up. But there wasn't enough for a roof, let alone walls, and night was coming on fast. He propped a loose rafter system between the wall and the cliffs, then jogged back to the water to gather dried kelp. Tiny black flies swarmed in protest, and it was crackly and foul-smelling, but it was either that or shiver in the breeze all night. He layered it over the rafters. He had a half-decent roof by the time Minn showed up.

  She'd lied: not only did she bring him a wooden bowl of soup (fish and green onions), but she'd brought a blanket, too. She said her goodnight and returned to the cave. Blays ate, tucked the bowl inside his hovel, and walled both sides up with kelp and driftwood. By the time he finished, it was dark and the wind had calmed to flickers. Inside the hut, which smelled like salt and sea-stink, he found the blanket was just warm enough for him to drowse off. The coastal weather was a touch warmer than it had been inland, but unless he could build himself a firepit (and find both fuel and flint), he figured he had about a month to endear himself to the People of the Pocket. If he still wasn't inside by then, he'd have to run away to someplace that had actual shelter.

  Yet he went to bed unworried, feeling as light as the mist floating above the sands. It wasn't just that there had been no sign of Dante. It was the lightness of a new beginning. The purity of that allowed him, for the moment, to forget the rest.

  He beat the sun to rise. There was plenty of moon, so he took the opportunity to comb the beach in search of anything useful. A mile downshore, a spur of rock extended into the water. Dark oblong shapes crusted the boulders: mussels. He wasn't hungry enough to eat them raw, but it was always good to know you had a ready source of individually-wrapped snot-like ocean creatures at hand.

  He found a frayed length of rigging and slung it over his shoulders. Thatches of broad-leafed grass sprouted from the sand. He pulled up an armload and carried it back to his hovel. As light filtered in behind the eastern cliffs, he stripped away the kelp and clumsily wove himself a new (and much better smelling) roof.

  Minn walked out as he was sitting in the sand rubbing his stomach and thinking about walking back down to the rocky spur.

  "You're still here," she said.

  "Despite your best efforts."

  She eyed his shelter. "It looks like you'll be staying."

  He laughed. "That depends on whether my stomach agrees to hold down raw mussels."

  "The stems of the grass you used for your roof are quite nourishing."

  "Is that so? Do I have time to go fetch some, or is it time for my first lesson?"

  "You have time," she said. "When the stomach is angry, the memory's lazy."

  He watched her a moment, expecting her to crack a smile, but had no such luck. He winked at her and padded up the beach. This time, he tore the grass out at the base, gnawing on the thick white stems. It was salty, but there was a sweetness to it, too. And it filled his belly, so he couldn't complain. Except about it being grass. Once he'd had enough, he walked back to Minn, who'd remained on the shore across from his shelter.

  "So far, my role appears to be that of a new dog," he said. "I'm not allowed inside the home. You're my master. Fortunately for you, I'm housebroken. Sound about right?"

  "That's the gist," she said. "To them, you're a mongrel. You should be thrown out. But I respect what you want. Enough to show you how to get it."

  "Excellent. So is there a potion or something I can take to get my friend off the smell of my blood? Or are you simply masters of disguise?"

  "We use the nether."

  He threw up his hands. "Oh, shit!"

  She drew back her head and the years accumulated in her face. "That's a problem?"

  "It's ten or twenty problems. All of which boil down to the fact I'm not a nethermancer."

  "We all have the nether inside us."

  "We've all got a brain in our skulls, too," he said. "But it turns out very few of us are capable of using it."

  She turned to face the wind blowing off the sea. "Anyone can be taught to use the nether."

  "Is that why its practitioners are valued more highly than the king's semen?"

  Minn laughed a real laugh. "You're right about this place. We bring people in from outside. But a recruit's natural talent is only one factor in our decision."

  He bit his lip. "You have ways of developing it."

  "To degrees the king would kill for. Can I make you as potent as your friend? No. But if you're willing to work, I can teach you to disappear."

  "Just like that?" Blays said.

  "No," she said. "Not like that at all."

  "Then it sounds like we'd better get to it."

  She turned to give the water a long, meaningful look. "We begin with the Four Seasons. The first is Fall."

  "Not on any calendar I've ever seen."

  "You're in a place you've never been," Minn said. "Expect different. In the autumn, the mist clears from the water, and the islands reveal themselves. That is why Fall comes first—because first, you must see."

  "Right," Blays said. "See what?"

  "The nether."

  "And I do that how?"

  Minn shrugged. "That's up to you."

  "This doesn't feel like you're doing much teaching."

  "It's best to try to see for yourself."

  "And if I can't?"

  "Then we'll see."

  Blays rolled his eyes. "Can you at least tell me where it is?"

  "Everywhere," she said.

  "Well, then this should be a breeze."

  He closed his eyes, because that's what the supplicants of Urt did when they got serious about seeking out the truth. Flecks of color drifted against a field of black. After a few moments, Minn's feet crunched away through the sand.

  He stood like that for a long time. The sun rose, touching his skin. He put the light to his back and faced the sea. The breakers sighed up the beach. Birds called so sadly you'd think someone had stolen their lunch. Soon, he got stuck on his breathing. Breath was a vital part of being good at waving a sword around, and he had trained himself to become well acquainted with the tidal influx of air into his lungs, but this felt different. For the first time, he was spine-deep aware that it wasn't an inevitable process. One day, it would stop. And now that he was focused on it, what if he suddenly took that focus away? Would his breath stop? What if he didn't notice, would he pass out? If so, would his body remember to do what his brain had forgotten?

  Probably not a productive area of thought. He was getting off track. And "close your eyes so that you might see" was the kind of stupid crap Cally would have yelled at Dante. Blays opened his eyes, blinking against the harsh yellow glare. For a moment, he thought he saw shadows waving at the edge of his vision, but it was just his eyes adjusting.

  He sat on the shore and gazed over the ocean, relaxing his focus so it didn't settle on any one particular thing. That felt like a good way to go about it: don't miss the forest for the trees and all that. He tried to
ignore his breathing. The sea was still gray. Gulls banked in the steady wind. He tried to let the corners of his mind sort of...reach out there and wave to the nether, entice it to show itself, but by the time the sun climbed up to its noontime throne, all he had to show for himself was an empty belly and swollen impatience.

  At that moment, Minn showed up behind him. "How does it go?"

  "I'm not seeing anything," he said. "Besides all the usual stuff."

  She nodded. "Are you hungry?"

  "Would it matter?"

  "Those who work hard eat free."

  "Then bring on lunch. All this sitting has been grueling."

  She left him to it. Whatever "it" was. He had the suspicion he was wasting time. Not that he minded idling about. Or sprawling, lounging, loitering, or snoozing. But when there was a thing that needed doing but which wasn't being done, he got restless. Terribly so. To the point where he was apt to do something stupid just for the sake of doing something. He didn't know how he could get in trouble on an empty beach, but he had the feeling he might find a way.

  Minn returned with more stew. This time it had lemongrass in it. Probably to conceal the fact it was the same stew from last night. Blays was too hungry to complain. Anyway, a little digestive trouble only toughened your guts against further troubles. While he was mid-slurp, Minn turned and walked away.

  He finished eating and rinsed his bowl in the surf. Since the previous hours had seen no results, he decided to apply a more active approach. Anyway, his legs were stiff. He got up and crept down the tideline, hovering over pebbles and shells, then snatching them up to try to catch the nether by surprise. Nothing. Except a few sand crabs and some horrible red worms as thin as thread. He made a note never to go barefoot again.

  He continued down the beach, yanking up shells and rocks to catch the shadows off guard. Soon enough, he forgot what he was doing. On realizing his mind was a blank, he waited for enlightenment, but it refused to manifest.

  He kept at it until late afternoon, when the sun once more glowed from the waters like a furnace made out of the whole earth. He was hungry again, and the fact Minn was having to feed him was doing something to his pride. Not stinging it, exactly, but giving it a poke. She seemed to appreciate his effort, though. Perhaps a display of such would convince her to make more of one toward his education. With the hopes of killing two birds with one stone, he headed back north to the tide pools he'd passed on his southern rambling. There, he bashed up a couple palm-sized crabs and used his knife to pry a bushel of mussels from the rocks. He was forced to pocket the salty bunch. On the way back to his hut, he gathered up some driftwood that looked reasonably dry, along with several handfuls of yellow grass.

  Back home, he pulled broad strands of grass from his wall and laid his catch on them. He scooped out sand and arranged the pit with the wood and grass. He was squinting at it trying to think of a way to make it combust when Minn exited the cave. She glanced at his tinder, extended one finger, and set it aflame. Blays scrambled to find flat rocks. Once the fire burned down, he layered them over the smoldering wood and set down the crabs and mussels to bake.

  He spent the next day staring. At sand, stones, shrubs, birds, the cliffs. As directly and pointedly as he could, as if trying to see right through it. Minn and Dante always talked about the nether being inside things, after all. But his powers rudely refused to present themselves.

  On the third day, he meditated. And napped, which seemed to be the inevitable outcome of any prolonged meditation. He refused to feel guilty about this. Minn had said it was best to discover sight through your own means, and his process had always involved scads of napping.

  But this too failed to do anything except leave him exceptionally well-rested.

  On the dawn of the fourth day, Minn came to stand with him at the shore. "Well?"

  "I'm nowhere," he said. "Well, as the norren would point out, I'm undeniably somewhere. But it's not the where I want to be."

  "Do you feel there's been any progress?"

  "I haven't glimpsed so much as a single speck of the stuff."

  "Can you see this?" She turned to a bedraggled bunch of kelp. Bug-like shadows flocked from it, hanging in the air between them.

  "What, you mean the cloud of terrifying darkness?"

  "Can you see it emerge?" She dispersed the cloud and refocused on the kelp. As Blays watched, shadows oozed from the fronds and bulbs.

  "I see it, yeah."

  She stepped back. "Now look for yourself."

  He squatted and peered at the kelp, trying to see past it, to the shadows lurking in its shadows. He saw plenty of the mundane kind. Something twitched in the shade.

  "Hey!" Blays exclaimed. He leaned forward and a black fly crawled from the darkness and rubbed its legs together. "Nevermind."

  "Try again," Minn said.

  They repeated this business a second time, then a third. After the sixth, Blays flopped on his back in the sand and barred his arm over his eyes. "I can see it when you do it. But when I look by myself, all I see is a pile of rotting kelp."

  "The rot is where it's strongest."

  "And why are we so eager to deal with such a substance?"

  "The Four Seasons has more than one meaning," she said. "It commonly takes a full season of time to advance to the next season of nether."

  "I'm no math-a-mancer," Blays said, "but it sounds like you're saying it could be a year before I learn to do anything."

  "Are you in a rush?"

  "Is it bad to want to be good at what you do?"

  "If it causes you to learn badly? It's better to know nothing than to have to unlearn false wisdom."

  "I dunno. I've found that acting like a fool can teach you all kinds of interesting things." He sighed through his teeth. "If it's best to be in no hurry, then I'll be in no hurry."

  "Keep trying what we've done today," she said. "If there's no fruit on that tree, we'll plant another."

  He didn't think much of the prospect of gazing into the inner recesses of the beached kelp's soul, but Minn's talk had recalibrated his expectations. He tried. Perhaps not with enthusiasm, but with undeniable effort. When he got tired of kelp, he went to examine grass. Then mussels. Then he got hungry and ate a few of them. He thought their death might convince the bloodthirsty nether to pay him a visit, but no dice.

  After a day of this, he tried talking to the darkness. First chatting, then cajoling, then insulting. But apparently he was beneath the nether, because this too failed. In the afternoon, Minn came by to check in and he asked her to summon it some more. She repeated and he watched until sundown. Yet when she left and he looked by himself, he still couldn't find it.

  He persisted. Just looking for shadows. Tedious as hell, but Minn seemed convinced it would pay off. He had doubts, but he starved them best he could.

  After a few more days—he wasn't bothering to keep track—Minn watched him watching a pile of shells, then folded her arms. "Care to try something less conventional?"

  Blays swung up his head, shielding his eyes from the sun. "More than anything."

  "We'll talk over lunch." She wandered into the caves and returned with two bowls of off-white paste. "Eat up. You'll need your strength."

  "This sounds ominous." He spooned up the paste. It was thick and warm and had been sweetened with ground-up nuts, but that still couldn't cover the bitter, brackish taste. "For your next recruit, you should consider a chef."

  She smiled to herself and ate a great gob of mush. When they finished up, she sat back in the sand and faced the ocean.

  Blays did the same. "So what's the big deal?"

  "Just wait."

  "That sounds like what I've been doing ever since I got here."

  She shrugged, perfectly content to sit there until the end of time. Out of amused spite, he resolved to beat her.

  A half hour later, his bladder forced him to forfeit. He got up to amble down the beach, but on his first step, his foot missed the ground. He plunged facedown into t
he sand.

  "Oh," he said. "Strange."

  "You look like you're ready," she laughed.

  "For what?" With difficulty, he pushed himself up on his elbows and blinked at her owlishly. "You drugged me!"

  "You said you were ready for unconventional methods."

  "I thought you meant whacking ourselves on the heads with a board or something. Why is the sun all shimmery? And the air all...airy? What did you feed me?"

  "Nat-root."

  "Death root?"

  "Don't worry, it's perfectly safe." She stood, extending her arms for balance. "I took it, too."

  He was unable to stop himself from repeating her. "You took it, too!"

  "How could we communicate unless our minds share the same journey?"

  For some reason this struck him as tremendously funny. He tried to get up from where he'd fallen in the sand, but he was laughing too hard to find his footing. On the third attempt, Minn squatted down, secured her stance, and offered him a hand.

  He leapt up, clinging to her for support. "It feels like I'm walking on a boat. In the middle of a sea. That is bound and determined to prove to me I'm not a fish. Hey, do you think we could be fish if we tried?"

  "You're experiencing loss of balance. Perfectly common with nat-root. Come on."

  Hanging onto his arm, as much for herself as for his sake, she led the way downshore to the tide pool. The walk was less than half a mile, but by the time they reached the pools' fragrant edges, Blays felt as if he'd been running for a month. Or possibly two months. His time-sense felt as off-kilter as his balance. His mouth felt unusually large, too, as if it belonged to another, bigger Blays. One who really needed a drink of something wet. The sunlight on the water lent everything a golden halo. He reached out for a yellow beam and discovered it wasn't tangible.

  "Watch," she said.

  He watched. Inches below the surface, a red-limbed starfish glided over the rocks. Behind it, a trail of black tendrils waved in the water.

  "What!" Blays grabbed at Minn's sleeve. "Is that stuff real?"

  "What?" she laughed.

  "That black gunk. Is it black gunk?"

  With extreme focus, she stood up straight and looked him in the eye. "It is."