"Where 'detour' means 'trick him into running off to slaughter someone else instead.'"
"We warned them to evacuate. From the rumors I've heard, a lot of them have already done so. Think about everything the lich will have to go through just to take one town."
"Find or make a path up from the cliffs. Order the Blighted out—not just a few of them, but all of them, because if they're going to make an attack, they're going to want to feed. The lich will want to Blight the new captives, too. Then he'll need to recover from that, regroup, and get everybody back down into the sea."
"Which sounds like it might not take all that long. But when it comes to time, his numbers are working against him. I bet it would take him three or four days just to sack a single town. It could even take a full week. Military operations always drag out like you wouldn't believe."
There were some murmurs of agreement from the generals of both Mallon and Tanar Atain.
Dante tapped the table in thought. "An extra week would make a big difference. Two weeks would be even better. But what happens if the lich discovers he likes stomping Alebolgians so much that he decides to take the entire Strip?"
"I suppose we'll have to dupe him into coming back to attack us instead."
Dante looked around the table. "Are there any objections to this?"
Yoto shrugged one shoulder, gesturing with his palm up. "What other choice do we have?"
"It's very easy to sacrifice a people when they aren't your own." Fidditch held the emperor's gaze. "Isn't it?"
"Should I repeat my question?"
"If this is what it takes to save Bressel, may the gods forgive us."
"We'll send out a team at once." Dante turned to the city's lords and generals. "Now, as to when they get here. The same factors that make the Blighted hard to delay on the march will make them hard to fight in the city. They're fearless and relentless. They'll keep coming at you no matter how hard you hit them. The sorcerers will do the best they can to help you hold the lines against them, but we'll probably have to throw everything we've got at the lich. You'll need to hold each wall as long as you can, retreating to the next layer only when it gets hopeless. Discipline will be essential. You'll need to train your men to deal with what's coming for them."
Lord Pressings, an esteemed commander with victories in both Collen and the border with the Western Kingdoms, considered Dante with open skepticism. "You wish me to train them to do battle against fearless monsters? How do you suggest that might be done?"
"I'm not sure. The Tanarians will probably have a better idea of that than I do."
Pressings gave the Drakebane a sidelong look. "Is that so."
"There's no more time for mistrust, general. If we can't stand together for the next few weeks, we'll be forced to spend the afterlife together instead."
The lord watched him, then gave a single sharp nod. The council ended. They got to work.
~
The next few days were the sort where each minute crawled by, yet the day itself seemed to vanish a snap after it had begun. With Gladdic taking over the harvesting duties, Dante split his attention between the river and the walls. By narrowing the river just behind its mouth, he'd increased the current there well past three miles per hour, and was now nearing four, but it was starting to function as a dam, backing up onto the banks. City folk were put to work piling up levees at the more vulnerable points, freeing Dante to spend his nether on the fortifications.
These proceeded, for the moment, without setbacks: the Tanarians completed the second layer of defense and moved on to the third. As Dante extended more ramparts and excavated more ditches, Lord Pressings brought his men to the second layer, drilling them for hours to hold position against a determined foe, then to cover each other as they fell back to the next position.
In practice, they looked quite good at it. But any soldier who'd seen combat could tell you there was a world of difference between your performance while drilling and how you acted once the blood began to flow.
His spies at the swamps reported that the entirety of the lich's army had entered the sea to begin the long march north. The spies had to keep their distance, making it hard to get a good count, but they believed the lich had between forty and sixty thousand Blighted. Dante had never seen such numbers in the field, not even during the Gaskan siege of Narashtovik at the end of the Chainbreakers' War.
But the Blighted weren't the only thing on the move. Dante's team of saboteurs had left the city, sailing southeast with all speed. They weren't yet certain they would beat the enemy to the cliffs of Alebolgia.
The outcome was still up in the air when a runner came in from the port. The Sword of the South had returned from the Plagued Islands. They had brought Winden with them: and she had brought tropical flowers, their petals a bright and vibrant orange under the unfamiliar northern sun.
Dreamflowers.
12
When the news came in, Dante was measuring the river in preparation to make another adjustment. He dropped his project like a hot coal and ran down to the docks—not so much for the joy of seeing Naran and Winden again, but to make sure that no harm came to the dreamflowers.
Naran was still on board, directing the unloading of the cargo they'd brought back with them from the tropics. Winden stood on the dock, mouth agape as she gazed across Bressel. Her hard blue eyes looked quite Mallish—hardly a surprise, given that her people were descended from Mallish settlers—but her skin was deeply tanned, much more so than the desert-dwelling Colleners or the Alebolgians of the sunny southern shores.
When he'd met her on the islands, her curved sword and her bone-and-steel bracers had looked quite sophisticated compared to her countrymen, who tended to arm and armor themselves in bone, wood, and lacquer. Now, standing among the tall-masted ocean-plying vessels of Bressel, with both the majesty of the Odeleon and the palace overlooking the city, she looked distinctly barbaric.
Lost in wonder, she didn't see Dante until he was upon her. She beamed in surprise and they embraced. He'd been anticipating seeing her again, but now that she was in Mallon in the flesh, he found himself unexpectedly happy. Perhaps it was because they'd shared a time in his life that had been personally tumultuous, yet which now felt quite simple, almost innocent by comparison.
She drew back and gestured widely. "Your city. It is as big as our island!"
Dante laughed. "How are the islands? Any more troubles?"
"No trouble. The islands, they are at peace. This confuses us very much, but in time, we will live to learn with it."
"What about the Dresh?"
"The Dresh live well. There is some exchange. They teach us old ways and we show them what we have learned for ourselves. And when we visit the Mists, their resentful dead have moved on."
He nodded. A burden he hadn't known was there lifted from his shoulders; what they'd helped accomplished in the Plagued Islands had been a miracle, but it had felt fragile, too. He was glad to hear that it had lasted.
"Thank you for making the journey here. Your help might make all the difference."
"The threat the sailors speak of, is it as great as they say?"
"Are they saying that it could kill us all terribly and mean the end of everything we know forever?"
"Yes."
"Then it's as they say."
She examined his face. "You do not joke."
"The power that's coming has ended the world before. So long ago that no trace or memory of it remains, and the only way to see it is through sorcery that'd been forgotten as well."
"This end of everything—how is it that you are at the center of stopping it?"
"I'm not sure. But that fact should stand as evidence that the world is a very shoddy and incompetent place."
At that moment, Naran appeared on a gangplank. He scowled at a team of stevedores, beckoning them onward as they wheeled a cart bearing two large barrels toward the docks. The cart swerved toward the edge of the plank, threatening to topple into the water
, and Naran let loose with a stream of invective so blue it could have dyed the sky. The stevedores wrestled the cart back and came to a stop on the dock.
Naran, now grinning, beckoned Dante over. "I have delivered what you asked of me—and I have also brought you a gift."
He lifted a crowbar and inserted it under the lid of a barrel with a deft jab. With three swift cranks of his arms and a squall of nails, he prised it open.
Dante leaned over the barrel. It was too dark to see inside, but the smell of salt was unmistakable. "Gallons of sea water? Naran, you shouldn't have! I hope your men didn't put themselves at too much risk to collect an object of such rarity!"
Naran snorted. He rolled up his sleeve and plunged his arm into the barrel. Smiling, he withdrew a black conical shell that filled his hand.
"Shaden?" Dante swooped down for a closer look. "How many did you bring?"
"Three score. I thought you might find them useful."
"I can't believe I didn't think of this myself. We should send you back to gather up as many as you can."
"Don't bother," Winden said. "These shaden, they are all we can spare. There are not as many lately. No one knows why."
"Probably because Gladdic drove them halfway to extinction," Dante muttered. "Let's get them to the palace. The dreamflowers, too. I'll escort you myself."
He summoned a wagon. Once it was loaded, they made way for the palace. He and Winden sat in the back to keep watch on the dreamflower, which she'd brought in a red clay pot, but it turned out that Dante did nearly all the watching, as Winden was lost in the sights of the city. He was bemused for a minute, then understood that the sickness of the ronone had prevented her from ever leaving her homeland, and she'd never seen any settlement bigger than the Tauren city of Deladi, nor any building bigger than their High Tower. There in Bressel, everyone living in the Plagued Islands could fit into a single one of the city's many districts, and the High Tower would have been just one of dozens of such structures.
Word of their coming beat them to the palace. Blays, Gladdic, and Yoto were waiting for them in the courtyard as they stepped down from the wagon.
Blays swept Winden up in a hug. "Should I be happy to see you? Or sorry to have dragged you away from paradise?"
"When you call, I answer," she said. "Without you, there would be no paradise left."
Dante introduced Drakebane Yoto, who offered her a bow of his head, and Gladdic, who bent at the waist.
"Gladdic." Her eyes seemed to light with flame. "That name—that is the name of the man who brought the war to our islands!"
"Yes," he said simply.
Her face reddened beneath her tan. "Well? This 'yes,' this is all you have to say?"
"Should I apologize? What apology can I make to undo what was done?"
Winden's jaw bulged. "Try one and we can find out."
"I am sorry, my lady. There: has the slightest difference been made?" Gladdic waited, then made a "thus it is demonstrated" gesture with his left hand. "I do not seek your forgiveness for a simple reason: I know that there can be no forgiveness. You should not want an apology from me. For at its heart, to accept an apology for an act of evil is to accept the existence of that evil, to tolerate and indulge it. Yet you did not accept what I brought to the Plagued Islands, did you? No. You fought it."
"Yes. We fought you. And we would fight again against anything like it."
"As you must. For I am no longer certain that the gods believe in justice." Gladdic lifted his face to the sky. "Either they test us, or they have abandoned us."
Winden frowned, her eyes shifting between his. "You are a strange man."
"That's an exceedingly polite way to put it," Blays said. "Anyway, should we go say hello to the dead?"
Yoto tilted his head. "You intend to go right now?"
"Why not? It's much too hot here. It'll be a lot cooler in the Mists."
"I was under the impression such trips could take a day or more. We don't yet know if the saboteurs will have the chance to distract the Eiden Rane—or whether he'll fall for it. If they fail to slow him down, how can you afford to sacrifice so much of what little time we have left to prepare?"
"Easy," Dante said. "Because if they can't buy us more time, then we won't have enough time to prepare, and the lich will murder us—unless, say, we happen to learn the location of the magic weapon that can murder him."
Yoto tightened his mouth. "You're pinning everything on little more than a dream."
"A dream with a small chance of coming true is a hell of a lot better than a rational plan that's fully hopeless. Winden, are you coming with us?"
"It is best if I keep watch on you," she said. "The afterworlds, we have only traveled to them from our land. It could be different here."
"Different how?"
She motioned around them to take in the sprawl of the city. "If the land of your living is this mad, what might the land of your dead be like?"
The Drakebane told them the dead sorcerer they'd be looking for was named Palo and that he was about forty years old and missing one eye. Blays grew quite curious about this, but Yoto explained the eye hadn't been lost while defending the empire from rebels, or while questing about for the Realm of Nine Kings, but rather because Palo had once slipped in the bath and bashed his eye socket.
With the knowledge of their quarry in hand, they headed up to the room in the tower they'd been using for private meetings, with Blays carrying the potted dreamflower. Dante had the Book of What Lies Beyond the Land of Cal Avin with him, meaning to bring it into the afterworld so that he could compare notes with Palo.
Servants hurried up with three bed rolls, which they spread over the floor.
"We'll only need two," Dante said. "Winden's staying here."
"Two?" Gladdic said. "Are you under the impression that I am not going with you?"
"That's not a great idea. If an emergency happens and all three of us are under, we won't be able to help the Drakebane deal with it."
"Then you may stay behind."
"That makes no sense. I know my way around the Mists. I've already been there."
"That is precisely why I should be the one to go."
"Just so you can see what's there for yourself? You can do that later, Gladdic. Right now, our priority is the salvation of the city." Dante folded his arms. "But if you'd rather screw this up for us, the lich should be quite happy to send you on a permanent trip to the Mists."
Gladdic's mouth contorted. He was a tall man, but he seemed to loom even taller, face falling into shadow. "I have dedicated my life to the truth of the gods—and I have discovered that much of that life has been wasted on falsehoods. I will see what lies beyond, and you will not stop me."
His voice carried such force Dante would have been certain he was using the ether to project it. But Dante didn't see a single wink of light in the air.
Blays plopped down on one of the bedrolls. "Oh, let him come along, will you? If the Golden Hammer goes and ruins the city while we're under, just think of the I-told-you-so you'll be able to hit him with."
"Fine." Dante seated himself on a bedroll, which exuded a musty smell into the air. "But when we get there, the only thing we're going to do is find Palo. No messing around and no exploring."
"I only wish to witness it with my own eyes." Gladdic took the third bedroll. "I shall see you on the other side."
Winden plucked three dreamflowers from the plant, handing them each one. "The taste, it will not be good. But you must swallow it all."
Dante took the flower and placed it in his mouth. The texture was nice, silky yet a bit crisp, but the taste was so vile and bitter his throat clamped shut while his mouth flooded with saliva. After several attempts, he swallowed.
Blays sat up and stuck out his tongue. "Gods, I'd almost forgotten how bad these things taste. Winden, can't you Harvesters breed new plants over time? Why don't you grow a dreamflower that doesn't taste like the inside of my own rectum?"
"The taste, i
t is meant to be foul," she said. "That way, the flower will never be taken by accident. Or by animals."
Warmth spread from Dante's stomach. The others' speech had a tinny quality to it, like a fainter version of the metallic ringing of the voice of the lich. He swallowed at a lump in his throat. For a time, nothing seemed to be happening, but then he realized he couldn't feel the bedroll beneath him.
The ceiling rose away from him, darkening as it climbed beyond the sunlight spearing through the windows. He gasped. He was falling and he tried to reach for the floor but his arms wouldn't move. The ceiling was now too far away to see and he was falling down a hole and the circle of light above him shrank smaller and smaller until it vanished to nothing.
He Dreamed.
~
He was in bed. It was barely morning and he didn't want to get up, but he knew that if he didn't, someone would come round and yell at him. With a grumble, he sat up. He was in a small, plain room. For a moment, it felt like he'd been here before.
But that made no sense: of course he'd been here before, this was where he was staying while his father was out searching for his mother, who'd gone lost. This was the monk's house—Tod, that was the monk's name, and he was much friendlier than any other monk Dante had met, and Dante liked him very much.
He walked out of his room past the low-burning hearth and onto the porch. Tod was sitting there, as Dante knew he would be. The full moon hung like an ornament against the washed-out blue of early morning.
Tod glanced up from his book. "Finally awake, are you?"
"Finally? But it's barely light out."
"Bright enough to see, bright enough to study. And you have a lot of studying ahead of you if you want to grow wise before your father returns."
The monk handed him a cup of smallbeer. It was yeasty but it was good. Dante gazed out into the woods beyond the small clearing around the cabin.
Tod chuckled. "Woke up with wanderlust? You can spend the morning exploring if you like. But be back by noon—and be ready to begin the Compleat History of the Kingdom of Eritropolis."
The Spear of Stars Page 18