The Cycle of Arawn: The Complete Epic Fantasy Trilogy

by Edward W. Robertson

The ground rolled along a hundred feet beneath him. Dante's heart leapt. Involuntarily, he sent the bird flapping higher, then got a hold of himself and let it do its thing. The hillsides were a mess of mud and torn-up sward. Sediment flowed around boulders. In places, the floods had swept rocks onto washed-out paths, piling them up at the bottom of slopes. He made the crow bank and glimpsed the top of Cee and Lew's heads far below. He circled around, getting a sense for how people looked from that high up in the sky, then turned it loose to scan the hills and valleys.

  Now and then, he registered Cee and Lew murmuring something to each other, but they knew enough to leave him to his hunt. When he felt himself get chilly, he got up to pace around, but still kept his sight tied to the crow's. At first he had no real plan to the search, letting the crow follow the winds, which were still quite stiff, but he soon found himself wandering over ground he'd already covered. He directed the crow to soar through an ever-expanding spiral.

  It continued to see a whole lot of nothing. Now and then an odd spot of brown or white drew his eye, but whenever he sent the bird closer, it turned out to be a piece of rock or a patch of clay exposed by the storm. Sometimes he homed in on motion, but it was always revealed to be the rush of wind through the plants, or very rarely, a vole or sparrow emerging from cover to see if it was safe.

  He was growing weary, losing his focus. He let the crow land on a boulder, then withdrew his sight, stood up, and rubbed his eyes.

  "That's not the posture of a man who's found what he's looking for," Cee said.

  "No," Dante said. "It's the posture of a man who's spent the last twenty minutes staring through the eyes of a dead bird."

  "Light's getting late."

  He glanced at the clouds. This whole time, his vision had been pointed groundward. He was surprised to see that much more than twenty minutes had passed: at least an hour, maybe two. Yet between battling the winds and swooping up and down to get a better glimpse of suspicious colors or shapes, he'd barely investigated a fraction of the terrain.

  "Get some firewood," Dante said. "We're going to have to spend the night."

  "That idea is so bad I want to take it behind the barn and club it."

  "We don't have a choice. Even if we headed downhill right now, we wouldn't be back to the temple before dark. There's no way we can navigate this mud after nightfall."

  "But you could create a light for us," Cee said. "I've seen you."

  He clenched his teeth. "I'll search until sunset. We'll camp here tonight and head back tomorrow morning. The slopes will be drier then."

  "You're the boss."

  She turned and walked out from the cave. Lew wandered off to lend her a hand. Dante reseated himself and returned to the crow. After a couple false starts, the undead creature was able to take off on its own power, launching from a branch. It soared on the winds, passing over a tight valley of swaying grass.

  Dante frowned. Only parts of the grass were swaying. And it wasn't grass—it was shedwind.

  The crow ceased flapping and banked, bleeding altitude. Through a gap in the shedwind, a man in a soaked robe tugged at the green stalks, lashing them together into a crude shelter.

  Dante's eyes flew open. He let the crow circle a few more times, then had it climb higher and higher to take in vast stretches of mountain.

  "I've found them," he said. "They're close."

  But Lew and Cee weren't; they were downhill, lugging up damp branches, sour looks on their faces. Dante jogged to them and repeated himself.

  "They're settling in," he said. "If we hurry, we can catch them before dark."

  "And then what?" Cee said.

  "We sit down and converse. Like normal, everyday people who aren't chasing each other across the mountains during a potentially lethal storm."

  She looked skeptical. He didn't care. They hiked through the hills, following a crow-scouted path over solid rock that had suffered little during the downpour. A half hour later, with the light weakening, they crept over a ridge and looked down on the shedwind-choked valley.

  "Let me handle them," Dante murmured. "If they threaten us, don't hurt them unless you're in imminent fear for your safety."

  "I don't want to hurt anybody," Lew said.

  Cee smiled. "Then stay behind me."

  Dante crept down the ridge, crawling through the mangled brush until he got down to where his silhouette wouldn't show on the horizon. His clothes were soaked. His boots were so laden with mud they were three times as heavy. Mud had crept up his shins, too. The smears just below his knees had gone lighter as they'd dried.

  Voices drifted from the valley bottom. The rustle of leaves. Dante's crow alighted in a fir and eyeballed the camp. A dozen monks sat in a loose circle, holding their hands above a large rock as if to warm them, but there was no visible flame.

  Dante paused within bowshot, hidden behind a screen of leaves. The Hanassans were renowned for their wisdom, their knowledge and lore, but some were sorcerers, too. If they perceived him as an enemy and lashed out at him—particularly the ethermancers—he might regret being so sneaky. He already had a few nicks on his knuckles, but he cut his forearm and kept the nether close.

  "Please tell me there's been a misunderstanding." He stepped from behind a tree. "If you really ran all this way to avoid me, I'm afraid of what I've come to ask."

  As he spoke, three monks drew nether to their hands, where it swirled darkly like blood dropped in sluggish water. Motes of ether danced on the fingers of a fourth man. The Hanassans stared as one.

  Dante moved further from cover. "I'm not here to hurt you."

  Since sorcerers needed no weapons to do harm, and actually had a habit of splaying palms and swooping their arms about when they meant to do business, the typical displays of peaceful intentions—hands open, raised, or held before you—tended to evoke hostility from fellow practitioners. Instead, the Gaskan custom among sorcerers was to press your palms together in front of your navel where they could be clearly seen, and any motions of the elbows or wrists would be obvious. Dante wasn't certain whether the display was the same in the Houkkallis (which, like so many other places, was a part of Gask, but hadn't always been), yet he attempted it anyway.

  "And neither are my friends," he finished. Behind him, Lew and Cee slipped from the brush.

  "That's good." A monk took a step forward. Furry leggings showed beneath his cloak, thick with mud. "Would hate for our holiday to be spoiled by violence."

  "What is it you're trying so hard to hide?"

  "What is it you came all this way to find?"

  "The Black Star." Dante moved forward. "Cellen."

  "Oh." The monk lowered his gaze to the leaf-strewn ground. "That."

  "How do I find it?"

  A second monk stared Dante down. This man was much older, a hood draped over his bald head. "What do you want with it?"

  "I don't know," Dante said.

  "Bullshit."

  "That depends on what it can do, doesn't it?"

  The old monk smiled thinly. "What do you think?"

  "One story says it was used to end a drought," Dante said. "Is it an amplifier? Or a pure source?"

  "Does it matter?"

  "I suppose it would mean the same thing in the end." He looked across the monks' faces and failed to find a clue to their mood. He wasn't going to be able to trick or buy the answers from them. His only chance to get the truth was to give them the same. "I believe that good comes from inside us, sparks arising in the hearts of individual men and women. But the most good comes from institutions. From collectives of individuals dedicated to nourishing, growing, and spreading that good beyond themselves. In this way, you can build something to outlast your brief life."

  "Get to the point," the second monk said.

  "A good institution is built over the course of generations. Each leader stands on the shoulders of the last, drawing on the strength of his people to climb a little higher." He paused. "But like Arawn's mill, all it takes is one crack to send
it tumbling down. If a single leader has bad balance—poor judgment—he will fall. And his empire falls with him. Isn't that what's happening in Gask now? Eight hundred years to build, and over the course of a single year, the decisions of Moddegan and Cassinder broke it apart. Now Cassinder's dead and Moddegan clings to the splinters."

  The monk's impatience had vanished, replaced by wary curiosity. Dante took a long breath and went on. "Given enough time, every well-meaning order will be brought down by an unbalanced leader. Good can never last; chaos always wins. It's inevitable." Dante drew a breath, then forced himself to finish. "Unless its leader never has to die."

  In the silence, the only noises were the splash of falling drops and the hiss of wind in the trees.

  "Everything must die," the old monk said. "It's the mandate of Arawn."

  "Arawn doesn't," Dante said.

  "Do you think it's good for a man to aspire to be as deathless as Arawn?"

  "If Arawn wants me, he can take me."

  The monks exchanged looks. The first one said something Dante couldn't catch. The older monk nodded and turned to Dante. "We don't know if it's an amplifier or a pure source. Either way, in your hands, it could likely do what you wish."

  "Why does it manifest?" Dante said.

  "We don't know that."

  "Then how can I find it?"

  The old man shrugged his shoulders high. "If we knew, perhaps we would be seeking it ourselves."

  Dante pinched the bridge of his nose. "At least answer me this. If you ran away to hide this from me, why tell me now?"

  "Because you're not the only one who'll be chasing it—and at least your motives aren't greed and hegemony."

  "Thanks for the vote of confidence."

  "Besides, we respect those who'll go through hell to attain the knowledge they seek."

  "So Cellen is real," Dante said. "It has the power to do things no person could do on their own. Yet no one in the world knows a single thing about it?"

  "Wrong," the old monk said. "No one in this world knows about it."

  Dante laughed. "'This' world? Am I to travel to the underworld, then?"

  "The underworld would be much easier to get to. Sadly for you, your path lies to the east."

  "The Woduns?" Dante said. "We've already been there."

  The monk shook his head. "Beyond the mountains—and into the forbidden lands on the other side."

  12

  "The answer came to me when I realized I was lousy at this," Blays said. "More accurately, it came to me when I cut myself and bled everywhere. The morbid ol' nether just loves blood, doesn't it? That's when I saw it—and understood that I was seeing it all along."

  Minn frowned. "That might be too profound for me to understand."

  "It's like when we ate the nat-root. At first I could only see it in life, where it was strongest, but after a while, I realized I could see it in the water, too. Turns out I can see it everywhere, root or no root. It's just so subtle I didn't know what I was looking at."

  "You're right, you are lousy at this. And you're even worse at explaining it."

  "You're not supposed to agree with me." Blays leaned an arm against the outside of the cave. "So what season's next? Winter? Or are the People of the Pocket unconstrained by our earthly perspective on the year's cycle?"

  A smile dented the corners of her mouth. "Winter comes next here, too. But first I think it's time you came in from the cold."

  As he puzzled over the apparent metaphor, she pulled back the curtain to the cave. Lukewarm air wafted forth, smelling of incense and cooked seafood.

  Blays met her eyes. "You're sure your friends won't gaff me and throw me out to sea?"

  "It's already been settled. No one wants to see you freeze to death."

  "Now that you mention it, it would be nice to feel my fingers and toes again."

  He stepped inside. A torchstone glowed from the wall, casting its unblinking light down a bare tunnel. Minn made an immediate right into a short passage that led to a single doorway. Thick drapes revealed a square room ten feet to a side.

  She drew her finger across the air, creating a soft nethereal light. Blays squinted at it, trying to pick apart the energy within it.

  "It's all yours," she said. "Just don't go any deeper into the tunnels."

  A few shelves were sculpted into the walls. A thin mattress lay in the corner. Next to it was a low end table and a rack of candles. Glancing up, he could just make out a hole in the ceiling to vent smoke.

  And there wasn't a speck of dust anywhere. "Did you make this just for me?"

  "Don't let it go to your head. It took five minutes." She moved back to the entry. "Wait here. I'll get you some dinner."

  "Is it soup time already? You know, just because you live next to saltwater doesn't mean you need to eat it for every meal."

  She lit a candle and walked into the hall. While she was out, Blays moved around the room, eyeballing it. Not that there was anything to see; other than the mattress, the table, and the candles, there was nothing else there. He had no possessions besides his clothes, a sword, a knife, and the sundries in his pockets. And it felt good. Except for the "one sword" bit. He'd need to find a new one somewhere. Walking around with a single sword was like trying to get by with one shoe.

  Minn returned with soup and a bowl of greenish mush—mulched grass stems. Seasoned by kelp shavings and green onions, judging by the taste. It was warm, though, and the room was an agreeable temperature. Other than fleeting moments in the afternoon when the sun was up and the wind was down, it was the first time he hadn't been chilly since fleeing from Setteven.

  Minn sat on her heels and watched the candle flicker. "You're from Narashtovik, aren't you? What's it like these days?"

  "Are you from there?"

  "No, but I'd heard it's in something of a renaissance. I don't get to hear much of what goes on beyond the cliffs."

  "I guess it is doing well," he said. "It was pretty grim when I showed up several years ago. Now, not so grim. Coincidence?"

  "Wasn't there a war? Didn't that have any impact?"

  "Oh, that thing?" Blays laughed. "I still can't believe we got duped into starting it. An all-powerful norren bow! The oldest trick in the book."

  She regarded him. "You started it?"

  "Well, I'd argue they started it. We weren't enslaving norren for decades. But in a very technical, wholly unintentional sense—yeah, it was totally our fault."

  "Tell me about it. And the man who chased you here."

  "Why?"

  "Because you're my student," she said. "And I have the right to know who I'm teaching."

  He couldn't argue with that. Well, he could, but it would be a churlish thing to do. Instead, he talked. About the mission that first brought them to Narashtovik to assassinate Samarand. About the refugees of her truncated war revitalizing the city. Of the long sequence of events leading to the Chainbreakers' War. About Dante and Lira, too.

  Strangely, it had the feel of a confession. Stranger yet was the fact that, in hindsight, he wouldn't have changed a thing. Not entirely true: he would have gone outside and warned Lira to step to the side of the gaping chasm that had claimed her. Aside from that, and the myriad minor fumbles he'd made but which ultimately didn't matter, the outcome had been great. Grand. Norren freedom. Independence for Narashtovik. You couldn't ask for more.

  But it had come at a cost.

  He skipped quickly through his recent stint in Setteven, telling her nothing of his schemes against the king. For all he knew, Taya and Lolligan were still executing a revised version of the plan, and while it seemed highly unlikely Minn would care, let alone tell someone (who?) about it, he saw no need to expose their operation to any risk, however slight.

  "It all sounds so busy," she said once he'd finished.

  "I guess it was."

  "Do you miss it?"

  "Not yet." He grinned. "I told you my story. Now why don't you tell me how the People of the Pocket are so good at hiding.
"

  "Not yet," she smiled back. "No need to clutter your head with what might be until you've learned to do more than see a few shadows."

  "Then let's get cracking."

  "Tomorrow." She stood, shaking one foot to work the blood back into it. "See you then."

  With nothing else to do, he ran through a few sword-and-dagger forms, then set aside his blades and practiced seeing the nether. Even after his revelation, it was hard to spot it unless he looked at something alive, such as his hand or the shiny black beetle that had trundled in during his recitation to Minn. He tried to see it in the shelves, but in the dimness of the room, he couldn't tell whether the shadows were nethereal, physical, or the spawn of his imagination. Once his irritation began to show up, he blew out the candle and went to bed. No use getting angry over something that was supposed to be fun.

  What with the lack of windows or daylight, he stayed asleep until Minn came for him. After breakfast, they went outside. The sea winds were sharp enough to cut off the tips of his ears. One night inside and he was already spoiled.

  "Winter's here," she said, padding southward in the direction of the tide pools. "What do you suppose that means?"

  "That the weather is intolerably cold?"

  "Do you find flippant questions help you to learn?"

  "Sure. They drive away the gadflies. Those who stick around must really want to teach me."

  "You're right. Asking you about Winter was an unfair question, one you couldn't possibly answer." Minn walked on, gazing out to sea. "If fall is the season of clarity, winter is the season is difficulty. Everything becomes harder, from the ground to survival. Animals go into hiding. Trees hide their wealth inside nuts. To make it, you have to learn to reach into the cold, dark places."

  "Meaning what, in practice?"

  "It's time to learn to touch the nether."

  "Sounds easy," he said. "I know right where it is."

  She tipped her head to the side, neither conceding nor disagreeing. "Most find it the harshest season. Learning to touch it means learning to forge a connection with it."

  "Okay, then how do I do that?"

  "Why don't you try for yourself?"