The Cycle of Arawn: The Complete Epic Fantasy Trilogy

by Edward W. Robertson

  The rock before Ro melted inward, flowing away in a potent, heatless rush. Two women stood beside her, casting nethereal light into the growing space, though Dante doubted Ro needed the illumination. He expected she could operate entirely by feel. The cavern was soon wide enough to walk into. As Ro continued to expand it straight back, others moved in to open its sides.

  "We're sure the whole mountain's not about to fall down?" Blays said.

  "They know what they're doing," Dante said. "They'll feel it if it starts to get...collapsey."

  "Well, just a friendly reminder that I'll be sleeping in there. I have a secret vulnerability to being crushed by thousands of tons of rock."

  "At least it would be over fast."

  Dante walked into the cave and let his mind move into the rock. As the open space grew and grew, he felt the faintest tremor in the nether. After discussing it with Ro, they decided to amend the chamber to include a number of pillars. Just in case. Dante handled these, fighting the urge to make every curve and surface smooth. It didn't have to be perfect. It just had to keep the snow (and the mountain) off their heads.

  He went outside for a break and saw that many of the soldiers were watching the cave in awe. Pale lights flashed between the pillars as strange women reshaped the Woduns with mere thought. Dante stopped to watch, too.

  Their guesses as to how big the cavern would need to be were just that—guesses—and as they neared completion, they brought in a few dozen of the troops and mounts to see whether the space was sufficient. Men lugged in firewood and supplies while some of the women of the Pocket installed fire pits, chimneys, ventilation shafts, and downward-sloping latrines in the outer wall.

  With so many people, the process moved at incredible speed. The cavern was complete by mid-afternoon. The People of the Pocket moved their efforts to the tunnel itself, boring an eight-foot-wide passage into the inner wall, working two at a time while two more followed with compasses and plumbs to ensure the passage was kept reasonably straight and level. Dante volunteered to help and was added to the queue of women. Their talent varied wildly: some were only able to carve out a hundred feet of tunnel before tiring, while others walked for a quarter mile, rock dissolving before them the whole way, until at last they smiled faintly and stepped back, allowing the next to take their place. It was impossible to tell exactly how far they progressed, but Dante thought they'd made it at least five miles through the mountains before their strength was spent.

  By the time he got back to the main chamber, many of the women and some of the troops were asleep. Fires burned in the pits, heating and lighting the front of the cave. There was a bit of smoke, but most of it channeled up the flues built into the wall.

  Ro was among the last to return from the tunnel. Dante went to greet her. "This is incredible. We're moving much faster than I expected."

  "It will slow as we get deeper." Her voice creaked with exhaustion. "But thank you. Now where's dinner?"

  The last thing they did before nightfall was shrink the outside entrance to the exact size where a man could get through it but a kapper couldn't. Thus protected, they screened it with tarps to keep out the cold.

  Dante found Blays and Minn eating dinner. "Exciting, isn't it?"

  "I've lived with these people for years," Minn said, "and I've never seen anything like it."

  Blays rolled his eyes. "Let's not pat ourselves on the back so hard that we're too worn out to drill our magical tunnel."

  "Thank you for bringing them." Dante smiled and went to bed.

  When he woke, his first sensation was the smell: the cavern was rank with the dung and urine of horses and mules. The sweat of men, too. He peeked through the entrance. The troops and beasts had trampled the snow, but the kapper tracks were unmistakable. He went for his sword, widened the opening, and stood vigil with the other members of the Council while the soldiers went to stretch their legs and exercise the animals.

  The women were already at work on the tunnel; he heard the first of them had risen at midnight. As the tunnel lengthened, he understood why Ro had thought their progress would slow down. It was a long ways for them to walk and growing longer by the moment. But while the tunnel was much warmer than outside, it was still chillier than the main cavern. Not to mention cramped and featureless. He thought about suggesting they create two additional great halls along the way instead of one, but the People worked on, tireless, uncomplaining. When his turn neared, he started down the tunnel. Walking by the light of his torchstone, then the nether, with his breathing and footsteps echoing off the close walls, it took him three hours to reach its end.

  The day after that, it took him half a day to reach its terminus. There would be no going back to the great hall that night. At multiple points along the walk, he'd heard the trickle of water and felt drafts of cold, fresh air; the People, noticing the staleness, had driven ventilation shafts up to the surface.

  They finished shaping the second sleeping hall and continued on. That night was his most miserable: the chamber had no fireplaces, poor lighting, and little company besides the women, who very well might have been on orders to minimize their contact with him, given their standoffishness. He spent the night tired and alone.

  He felt better as soon as he got back to work on the tunnel. With no sunlight or any other markers of the passage of time, the day entered a compressed, trance-like state. As soon as his hold on the nether grew weak, the annoyance and dissatisfaction of non-work swelled inside him. He looned Nak to send word to Somburr and the troops. It was time for them to move.

  To stave off his moodiness, Dante hung around the ever-advancing end of the tunnel. The women were deathly serious at times, appearing as incapable of joking as they would be of pulling a stump out with their teeth, but when they were alone together, they made fun like anyone else.

  That night, he stayed with them in one of the sub-chambers they'd built along the tunnel. He put in his work, then backtracked all the way to the second hall, where the troops had arrived the night before. Some of them looked a little rattled, and the norren appeared less than pleased to be stuck underground in tunnels that felt even smaller to them, but there were no signs of panic. Dante let them know that they should be on the move by the next morning.

  Not that he knew when "morning" was. He hadn't seen sunlight in days. Even his sleep schedule had become haphazard. To refresh the nether faster, and to pass the time, he was getting much more of it, curling up in his blankets whenever he thought he might be able to nod off.

  His lack of time-sense was why it came as such a surprise when, many hours later, as he stood at the end of the tunnel waiting his turn, a blade of sunshine slashed through the curtain of stone. A wave of frozen air came with it. He looked out on Weslee.

  38

  Everything about it felt different. The air. The temperature. The light. Even the ground somehow felt like a foreign country. He couldn't explain how, exactly. But for the first time since crossing from Mallon into Gask, he was looking on someplace new. Even if that newness was a barren, rocky snowfield, it was pretty damned exciting.

  A scout came to spell him on the ridge, informing him the People were readying to depart. Blays jogged back across the hills. The flat spot outside the tunnel was filled with a melange of men, norren, mules, and horses. The People of the Pocket were gathered in a loose cluster by the passage's entrance. Dante was there, too. On seeing Blays, he smiled and went to confer with Ro.

  "I know you said this wasn't about debts," Dante said. "But if there is ever anything that I, the Council, or the city of Narashtovik can do for you or your people, we're yours to command."

  Ro gazed to the east. "Just remember why you're here."

  That sounded a tad ominous, but also like one of those things Blays wasn't privy to because he was no longer the hammer hanging from the Great Dante's belt. He decided to let the important people worry about it.

  Instead, he found Minn and grinned. "Been out for a walk yet? It's like another country.
"

  "Not yet." She smiled wanly. "And I don't think I'll get to."

  "Why..?" His grin fell to earth like a pigeon with a heart attack. "You're going back with them."

  "I'm not sure what use I'd be here. They're still my people. I think it's time to rejoin them."

  "Well."

  "Is there a reason for me to stay?"

  He gazed up at the western peaks. He could have fabricated any number of excuses to keep her around, including a few that might be halfway true. But the fact was they didn't need her, not really; for her talents, Dante surpassed her at jerking rocks around, and while she was a superior shadowalker to Blays, he could handle himself well enough. True, it never hurt to have another nethermancer around, but she was outclassed by the members of the Council who were present, and they'd brought a dozen monks besides.

  All that was here for her was unnecessary risk for a city she had no ties to. That was it.

  "You're right," he said. "You should go back with them. When this is over, I'll drop by the cove to tell you how it played out."

  She touched his arm. "I'd like that."

  As if Ro had been waiting for them to conclude, she nodded to the People of the Pocket. They filed inside the tunnel. Within a couple minutes, they were gone.

  Dante crunched through the snow beside him. "Ready to go?"

  "Ready to fling myself at a hateful madman in possession of the world's most powerful object? Let's ride."

  The plan, as he understood it, was loose but sound. Move everyone to a safe, out of the way spot near the borders of the Spirish forest, then keep the body of the troops there while a few heavy hitters snuck into Corl and skulked around to figure out where Cellen was. Once that was established, they'd send in a lean, stealthy strike to try to liberate it while simultaneously moving the troops close enough to respond should the strike result in disaster. Then, with Cellen in hand, they'd rush to the tunnel, close it behind them, and abscond back to Narashtovik.

  It remained to be seen whether actual events would resemble that plan in the slightest.

  The army marched across the snowfields. Human and norren scouts moved ahead. According to their guide Ast, they were several days from the nearest real settlements, but if a single traveler spotted them and spread the word, the whole thing could be stillborn.

  They didn't see a soul for the first four days, however, and as far as they knew, they managed to elude detection all the way to their base camp, a pine-filled valley in sight of the first lorens towering above the lesser trees. As troops went to gather lorbells and replenish their dwindling provisions, Dante called together those bound for the infiltration of Corl: Somburr, Cee, Ast, Mourn, Blays, and a handful of scouts. They gathered under the pines, out of earshot of the others.

  Dante gazed between them. "In one way, this will be easier than it sounds. The Minister will have it on him at all times. I guarantee it."

  "Difficult to get to him in his compound," Somburr said. "But if he leaves, we'll have a real opportunity."

  "Is he arrogant?" Blays said. "Stupid?"

  Dante shrugged. "Probably the former. Definitely not the latter. Why?"

  "Because his people have waited a thousand years to get their hands on Cellen. Unless he's unbelievably arrogant, dumb, or some combination of the two, there's no way he leaves his little treetop castle."

  "Until it's time to smash Narashtovik." They all thought about that a moment. Dante bit his lip. "We should count on that coming sooner than later. His army must be close to assembled. Once it's ready, he'll be shuffling thousands of troops in. It'll be impossible for us to miss. I think the conservative approach is best: watch carefully and wait for opportunity."

  Dante passed out funny-looking clothes with loose sleeves and legs, along with cinches for the wrists and ankles. He promised they were Spirish, but as Blays dressed, he suspected it was a prank of some kind.

  They moved east into the forest. From a distance, the lorens looked pretty tall, but Blays soon found that was a trick of perspective: in fact, they were gigantic. Bizarre roots, too. Like a tangle of horrifically enormous worms holding a race to see who could get out of the ground fastest. Dante warned them that many of the trees were inhabited, some with entire towns. He'd explained this before, but now that Blays was seeing the trees in person, he understood it on a whole new level.

  They marched for a couple of days, following the roads like the innocent travelers they weren't. Dante, as per his habit, had killed a couple of genuinely innocent forest mammals, sending them ahead down the path to ensure there was no sign of soldiers. Just as Blays was beginning to wonder if they were leaving their own troops too far behind, Dante, Ast, and Cee stopped to confer, pointing off into the never-ending woods.

  "Corl's just a couple miles from here," Dante said. "We'll find an unoccupied tree, then get to work.

  They did just that, locating a loren that was on the small side, relatively speaking, and climbing up its roots to shelter in the hollows circling its trunk. There, "work" turned out to be everyone sitting around while Dante ordered a dead mouse to climb piggyback on a dead squirrel, then sent the squirrel bounding into the brush.

  "I think," Blays said after ten minutes of near silence, "we may have brought too many people."

  Dante waved a hand, distracted. "If the only 'people' at risk are a couple of dead animals, we should consider ourselves lucky."

  He was right. Even so, it wasn't a whole lot of fun to sit around in a damp tree with a bunch of smelly people while Dante gazed blankly into space.

  A couple hours later, Dante shifted position. "He's there. In his palace."

  "Better news than if he weren't," Blays said. "Unless he were off in a temple renouncing his wicked ways. What's he doing?"

  "Writing. Quit bothering me."

  Blays sighed thinly. A half hour later, he got up to go stroll around. Somburr followed him out of the entry of the round. "Where are you going?"

  "Anywhere," Blays said.

  "Now's not the time to wander."

  "You realize I'm not—and haven't been for years—Narashtovik's servant?"

  "I do," Somburr said. "And I believe you're smart enough to know better than to jeopardize our mission because you're bored."

  Blays chuckled. "Keen one, aren't you? I'll be good."

  He returned inside the round. A whole lot of nothing transpired. Just after sunset, Dante let out a breath and his eyes lit up the way they always did when he withdrew from the mind of a dead thing and came back to the here and now.

  "The Minister's been in his chambers all day. Had his food brought to him. Held a couple of meetings, also in his chambers. One was about logistics. Very tedious. Because they've been very thorough. Nothing there for us, although it will be useful to Olivander."

  Dante glanced around, rubbing the corners of his eyes. "The other was a civil issue. Apparently the citizens assigned to do all the extra lorbell-gathering have grown resentful of their new responsibilities. Today, a team of them refused to work until their pay was increased. The Minister ordered them to be executed—and for wages to be increased for everyone else."

  "How is that relevant?" Somburr said.

  "I'm not sure. There may be a domestic angle we can exploit."

  "Like poisoning the lorbells," Blays said.

  Dante gave him a look. "We're not poisoning the lorbells."

  "Why not? Like it's so much more righteous to kill his soldiers on the battlefield where we can die too?"

  "It's at least ten percent more righteous."

  "All right, agreed, but given the circumstances of our cause, I think everything we do is extra righteous." Blays stood and paced, stretching his legs. "Anyway, I wasn't serious."

  "This is the Minister in a nutshell," Dante said. "Brutal and highly effective at getting the most from each act of that brutality. He kills the dissidents, discouraging others, then cuts the legs out beneath their resentment by raising wages."

  "What a jerk. Sounds like we sh
ould kill him or something."

  "If he keeps refusing to leave his palace, it's not going to be easy."

  "What about Cellen?" Somburr said.

  "I didn't see it directly," Dante said. "But he kept touching the front pocket of his shirt. Either he's got a rash, or that's where he's keeping it."

  That was the end of the first day. On the second day, Blays let himself sleep in until well after sunrise, and it was excellent. He ate some lorbell and went to pee. In the upper branches, scouts ruffled the leaves, but Mourn appeared to have gone off somewhere. Back in the round, Dante was deep in one of his dead-animal trances.

  Blays sat near the others. "As long as we're sitting around, we may as well put our heads together. Seems to me there are two general routes here: either we go to the Minister, or we do as planned and grab him up as soon as he steps into the open."

  "Wrong," Cee said. "There's a hundred different things we could do. Like tricking him into giving it up."

  "How are we going to do that? Tell him this was all a big mistake, and what he thinks is Cellen is actually the egg of a giant raven? One that is growing increasingly angry at being separated from its young?"

  "I don't know how we would. I'm just saying we could."

  "Fair enough. And good thinking, too. It's no wonder the bossman keeps you around."

  "Is anything off the table?" Somburr asked.

  Blays scrunched his eyebrows together. "Why would it be?"

  "Because for most people, the means can get too mean to justify the ends."

  "Why do I feel like that comment is directed at me?"

  "Vanity, I would imagine."

  Blays burst out laughing. "For the purpose of this discussion, nothing is off the table. I'll keep my judgment of your character to myself."

  Somburr leaned forward. "If we could somehow kill everyone in the Minister's tree, you would have no objection?"