The Cycle of Arawn: The Complete Epic Fantasy Trilogy

by Edward W. Robertson

  "Well, someone had to tip them off!" Dante's jaw dropped. "The hair."

  "Thuhare? Who the hell is that?"

  "A few nights back, Julen had a hair laid across his letters. I thought nothing of it. That it had landed there on its own. When I didn't put it back in place, he knew we were reading his correspondence."

  Kasee's jaw worked. "And so he fed us bad intel? Tricked us into walking into a setup?"

  "None of my people have any reason to betray you," Dante said. "If it wasn't one of your own, this is the only thing that makes sense."

  She lowered her swords, then narrowed her eyes. "Your fault either way, isn't it?"

  Cee laughed. "You have no idea how careful we've been. If it was the hair, this would have happened to anyone."

  "But it didn't. It happened to you."

  Dante bit down on his cheek hard enough to draw blood. The nether rushed to meet him. Kasee and her men watched him with unwavering stares. He shaped the nether into a killing point.

  Behind them, one of the downed men groaned, leg kicking spasmodically. Two of Kasee's people ran to help, pulling the scarves from his face. It was Horace.

  "Let me see to him," Dante said. "I'm a healer."

  "A thief and a healer?" Kasee said. "There anything you can't do? Oh, I got it: tell the truth."

  Dante shrugged. "Let him die if you prefer."

  A muscle in her jaw twitched. She spat and stood aside. Dante got down beside Horace. His hard leather breastplate had been punctured. Lung, probably. Dante sent the nether inside him and confirmed it. He sent the shadows to work. Horace responded with a gasp, but his eyes stayed shut.

  "Check their pockets," Kasee said. Her men moved to the two fallen enemy and searched their clothes.

  Dante moved the nether up Horace's lung in a black line, sealing it together. The man wheezed, then breathed steadily. Dante turned to the two-inch puncture between his ribs. In a moment, it was gone.

  He pulled back Horace's shirt and wiped away the blood, revealing smooth skin. "He'll be fine."

  Kasee had gone still. "What are you? What have you been hiding from me?"

  "Nothing." Dante stood. "I've done everything you've asked."

  "Bullshit. If I'd known you could sling the darkness around, I would have asked for a whole lot more than letters." She rolled her lips together. "You and me, we're done."

  "Fine. Good luck with your war."

  Kasee turned and stalked a couple steps away, breathing hard. Dante began to move back to the others, but someone grabbed his arm.

  "Wait," Horace said, throat catching. "You brought me back."

  "You weren't gone yet." Dante knelt back down. "How do you feel?"

  "Like I've just finished a long run." The man's eyes darted to Kasee. He lowered his voice to a murmur. "She hasn't told you everything. I don't have time to explain. If you want the truth, you'll find it in Morrive."

  "Morrive? This is a city?"

  "Once. Bring the Speech of the Lost. Anything that can translate the stones."

  "Translate the—?"

  "Enough standing around," Kasee said, audibly calmer. "Let's flap our soles before the watch gets here. Last thing we need is to take the blame for sparking hostilities." She met Dante's eyes. "You and yours? I see you again, and I'll bury you in the Echoes."

  Dante was much too interested in prying tidbits from Horace to bother exchanging threats with her, but her troops were already helping Horace to his feet. They led him away, glancing over their shoulders at Dante.

  "Do we have any reason to stay here?" Cee said. "Then I suggest we take a hint from our former allies and move it."

  Dante saw no reason to stick around the streets, either. He turned and headed for the inn, thoughts racing.

  "What just happened?" Lew said. "What did Horace say to you?"

  "That it's time to leave town. Have you heard of a place called Morrive?"

  "No, but I have the feeling I'm about to be tasked with becoming its expert."

  "Nak?" Dante said into the loon. "Tell Somburr to get out of the Echoes and get back to the inn. If he sees Kasee, avoid her at all costs."

  "It sounds like you're about to have Olivander pacing a rut in the floor," Nak said. "Just a second." He was quiet for a bit. "Somburr says that won't be a problem. What's going on over there?"

  "For once, it's not worth worrying about. I'll catch you up as soon as I can."

  Nak did some grumbling, then shut down his loon. They got to the inn without further problems. Dante sat in the common room, watching the door for Somburr. Just as he was ready to get ahold of Nak and ask, Somburr slipped inside, eyes roving across the minimal crowd.

  Upstairs, Dante told him everything that had happened, including Horace's advice to travel to Morrive.

  "You trust this?" Somburr said.

  "I'd just saved his life," Dante said. "He seemed sincere."

  Cee looked around the low table they were seated at. "Do we have anything left here? Stealing letters is out. Kasee wants to pick her teeth with our bones. Dante hasn't turned anything up at the temples. Sounds like there's nothing to lose by going to Morrive."

  "Except our lives," Somburr said.

  But even he didn't seem to believe it. In the morning, they all went to work. Dante headed straight to the Stoll of the Winds to ask for the Speech of the Lost. Mikkel had a copy, but there was a snag: he only had one, and transcribing it would take days. He knew a collector, however, and sent Dante with a letter of introduction. The collector wound up parting with the book, but it cost Dante everything he had. He hoped it was a wise purchase.

  He got back around sunset. Cee had put together provisions. Lew and Ast had procured maps and information. Morrive lay in a desert to the southeast. No one had lived there for as long as anyone could remember.

  That did zero to dissuade Dante. The others scraped together the last of their coins to pay the stable fees, then plodded out with the mules at dusk. With the city fading behind them, the wind carried the smell of the grass.

  With the worst of the winter behind them, and their purses as dry and flat as their destination, they camped the nights in the open prairie, burning shrubs for warmth and roasting pigeons and rabbits Dante brought down with the nether. A small mountain range lay between them and Morrive and it looked as if they'd have to detour to a pass, but accounting for that, he thought they'd reach the ruins within a week.

  As they traveled, he read through the Speech of the Lost. It was a Weslean guide to translating the written language of the Morrives. His Weslean had become quite good, but the book's dialect was older. He and Ast muddled through it.

  Somburr continued to work on cracking the letters. Dante supposed they might yet turn up something useful about Cellen, but he suspected Somburr felt compelled by the challenge.

  He was right about the former and dead wrong about the latter. Three days out of Ellan, with the grass going brown and patchy, Somburr stopped in his tracks, letter in hand.

  "This could be unfortunate," he said.

  "What is it?" Dante said. "Did you finally crack the code?"

  "Days ago. I've been working through them ever since we left the city." Somburr bit his lip, uncertain how to proceed. That in itself was troubling; Somburr trusted no one, but he always believed in himself. He blurted, "The Minister's not planning to attack Ellan. He's going to invade Narashtovik."

  24

  "That's where Tallivand's been staying," Blays said. "It has to be the place."

  Minn shook her head. "It doesn't feel right."

  Dennie shifted behind the cover of the shrubs. "We're going to need a little more than that."

  "Wait." Blays tapped his forehead. "It doesn't feel right up here?"

  "Exactly," Minn said. "But I think he's close."

  "Can you tell where?"

  She turned away from the home in a slow circle, eyes squeezed shut. When her back was to the house, she pointed across the path toward a dark manor surrounded by trees and law
ns.

  "You're sure?" Blays said.

  "That's where the pressure's strongest."

  Dennie glanced downhill toward the first house. "But if she's not holding Cal here, why is it patrolled?"

  "Heck if I know," Blays said. "Maybe they've had problems with her, too. Whatever the case, blood doesn't lie. Let's move."

  A trail branched from the ridge down to the second house. They followed it into a thin field of trees. These stopped a hundred yards from the house. Nothing but open grass stood between them and it.

  "Well," Blays said. "Ready to do your thing?"

  "I'm about to disappear," Minn said. When no one batted an eyelash, she laughed. "I mean literally. Try not to scream."

  She gave them a moment to brace themselves, then wrapped herself in shadows and blinked away. Several of Dennie's bodyguards flinched, but to their credit, no one cried out. Blays tried to find her among the shadows, but could detect no trace.

  With this phase of operations dependent on her, there was little to do but sit in the trees and wait. The men shifted about, checking their weapons. At times Blays thought he heard feet rustling the grass, but it might have been nothing more than the irregular breeze blowing down from the hills.

  "Where did she learn to do that?" Dennie said.

  "I'm not sure I'm allowed to say," Blays said.

  "Is it a safe place, at least?"

  He laughed. "Probably the safest place on earth."

  "That's good to hear. I haven't seen her in years."

  "Why did she leave?"

  "I'm not sure I'm allowed to say," Dennie said.

  "Well, given that she doesn't want anything to do with him, I'm guessing it's something her dad did."

  "I don't know whether this is the time for this." He looked at Blays, frown deepening. "How well do you know her?"

  "As a student. She's teaching me her disappearing act. Trying to, anyway."

  "I can see how that might be a handy thing to learn."

  The conversation died off, as it probably should have. They crouched beneath the trees among the smell of dew on grass and the fresh water of the lake. Minn was gone for a long time, but neither light nor sound troubled the house.

  And then she was standing in front of them. This time, two of the men shrieked.

  "Quiet!" she hissed. "Can anyone here pick a lock?"

  "Sure," Blays said.

  "I should have guessed. I haven't found Cal, but I think I came close. There's a door in the way."

  Blays had little in the way of tools, but a quick survey of Dennie's men turned up an array of needles, pipecleaners, and beard-clips.

  "What's the situation in there?" he said.

  "It's quiet," Minn said. "I saw two watchmen on the ground floor. I think Cal is downstairs."

  "You expect me to sneak past them?"

  "Use your shadows. And if those fail you, are those swords for decoration?"

  He stared at the house. He had to think for a moment before he remembered the last time he'd killed someone: the bandits south of Setteven. Three, four months ago. He'd certainly gone longer between deaths, but it was one of the better stretches he'd encountered since beginning his adult life as a hired armsman in Bressel. He'd hoped that, in the seclusion of Pocket Cove, it would have lasted much longer. That he wouldn't always be a tool drawn from the sheath whenever others needed their enemies dispatched to Arawn.

  But perhaps that was what he was. There was no denying he was good at it. Nor could he deny that, when Minn had first told him that her cousin was missing, some part of him had known it would come to this.

  "We can get to him no problem," he said. "But he may be hurt. Sick. It'll be much tougher to get him out."

  "Once you're inside, I'll give you ten minutes," Dennie said. "Then I'll move my people up to the house. If you need us, we'll be right there."

  Jinsen nodded. "We don't need to fight them all. We just need to keep them off you long enough to get Cal outside."

  Blays thought this sounded a little thin. He was used to that, but in these situations, he was also used to traveling in the partnership of quite possibly the generation's most powerful nethermancer—and a man who was almost as adept at grabbing disaster by the horns as he was at wielding the shadows. Then again, Blays had survived three years without his potent sidekick. And who wanted to live forever, anyway?

  "Sounds good," he said. "If they spot us, we can pretend to be drunk lovers who wandered into the wrong house."

  "Armed with swords?" Minn said.

  "We'll say we stole them from someone even drunker."

  Minn rolled her eyes, then faded until he could only make out hints of her fingernails, hair, and the buttons on her clothes. Just enough for him to follow. They crawled through the grass toward the house. Dew soaked Blays' doublet and trousers. A lone candle burned upstairs. Minn led him around the side of the house to a wooden door in the stone wall. It opened to a dark room, slices of moonlight cutting through the shutters. A sun room, perhaps. Minn grew more opaquely visible, beckoned him down, then faded again. They crawled on hands and knees across a strip of rug down a hallway. This brought them to an expansive room with a snapping fireplace, a dual staircase, a plenitude of chairs, and a silent guard seated on the landing. It smelled like wood smoke and people.

  The fire threw stark, elongated shadows across the room. His own movements would be much too regular. Blays had left his kellevurt back at Dennie's home, but he reached for the nether anyway, suddenly certain that he could expand it into whipping, spastic expansions exactly like the shadows created by a fire.

  To his surprise and delight, they did just that. One of Minn's buttons gleamed, moving behind the wide stone column containing the fireplace. Blays followed, disguised by flickering nether. They moved to the darkness of the far side of the column. Minn rematerialized and gently opened the door set in its back.

  Blays could only see the top step of the staircase leading down, but he could feel the tickle of cold air arising from the depths. Minn tugged on his sleeve. She stepped down and the tread of the step creaked. She stopped and looked up. Blays heard nothing more but the pop of burning wood.

  She moved down. He eased the door shut. Its latch clicked, but the sound was muffled by the snap of the fire. They felt their way down step by step. Once they were at the bottom, Minn summoned a faint white light. A banded door barred their path.

  Blays got the handful of metal pins from his pocket, careful not to jab himself on the needles. Most locks were dumber than a boiled frog and this one was no different. He sprung it in seconds. The door opened, presenting them with harsh cold and the smell of feces.

  Minn's expression hardened. Doors stood on both sides of the corridor. Most were unlocked, the rooms beyond filled with bottles, casks, sacks, chests, and old furniture concealed under dusty sheets. Much of the storage seemed devoted to cobwebs and rat turds. They checked room to room until they came to a door that wouldn't budge.

  "He's in there," Minn whispered.

  "How do you know?"

  "Because it feels like my brain is about to spray out both ears like flame from a dragon's nostrils."

  He set to work on the door. Its lock was stickier than the first, and he had to scrabble around at it for so long that he began to doubt anyone was behind it, certain the noise would have woken them.

  At last, the lock clicked. And he saw why there had been no response from within.

  The man huddled in a blanket, his pale shins projecting from its end. He smelled as bad as he looked. Sores glared from his face. His left hand clutched the end of the blanket. It was heavily bandaged and crusted with old blood.

  "Cal!" Minn rushed to him, sweeping him up in her arms.

  He jarred awake and scrabbled back. His eyes locked on hers. Fear melted to confusion, then disbelief. "Minn?"

  "Don't move. You'll feel better in a moment."

  She got out a knife and nicked the back of her wrist. Shadows swarmed from her to him. His e
yelids fluttered. The sores on his face skinned over. The hitch in his breathing soothed. He shook his bandaged hand, then scratched at it. When Minn fell back, he still looked like a man who'd spent too long at sea, but he was able to stand, keeping his blanket around his bare skin.

  "How did you do that?" He glanced at Blays. "And who is he?"

  "A man of many talents." Minn grinned so wide it was a wonder her teeth didn't fall out. "Your dad's outside. Take my cloak. Can you walk?"

  Something scraped upstairs. It was faint, yet Blays pegged it at once: the unmistakable sound of someone moving less quietly than they believed. Something twitched from the corner of the room. There, a rat stood on its hind legs. One of its eyes was missing. The other was glassy, but fixed firmly on him.

  "We've been seen," he breathed.

  "By who?" Minn said. "Ourselves?"

  "Tallivand is a nethermancer." He drew one of his swords. "And we're in deep shit."

  He closed on the rat. Before it had a chance to react, he hacked it in half, then cut its head in two for good measure. "Come on."

  They followed him into the hall. Two doors down, he ducked into one of the storage rooms and made to get behind a barrel.

  "What are you doing?" Minn said. "We can't hide. If she knows the nether, I'm the only one who can stand against her."

  She was right. This pissed him off beyond measure. "At the risk of sounding like a coward, do you think you can sneak up on her?"

  "Could be. I doubt she'll be expecting one of her own."

  He moved back to the corridor, wishing they'd left the doors open. "Shadowalk up to the door and open it as softly as you can. If anyone comes down, I'll deal with them. If not, have a look around and let us know if it's clear. Sound good?"

  "Good enough," she said. She hugged Cal again. "If anything happens to me, follow Blays. He'll get you out of here."

  Cal nodded, fighting down his confusion. Minn smiled wanly and vanished. Cal gasped and staggered back into Blays.

  "She's pretty talented, right?" Blays whispered.

  He moved back into the darkness of the storage room. Minn's feet whispered up the steps. The door creaked. Blays' heart thundered. After fifteen beats, boots rasped on the steps. The tip of a sword moved past the doorway. As soon as he saw the man's elbow, Blays burst forward, driving his sword into where he gauged the neck would be. His aim was true. The man dropped, gargling blood to the bare stone floor. Blays followed him down and severed his spine. The man went silent.