They had entered the water close to four miles upstream from the outflow to the ocean. The current would pick up quite a bit once they came to the channel, but Dante figured it would take a full hour before they were out into the ocean. He settled against a bench, meaning to let his body rest for a while.
Something jarred sharply into the bottom of the boat. Dante sat up, inhaling through his nose. He'd fallen asleep and now felt drunk or hungover or both. "What was that? Did we hit a rock?"
"It cannot be." Gladdic hung tight to the gunwale. "We should be passing through fully navigable—"
With a great hollow thud, the dinghy jarred hard again, knocking Gladdic into a bench. He grimaced, clutching his ribs.
Blays moved toward the bow, reaching for an oar. "They must be just under the surface. I'll pole us off them."
"That strike, it is not of a rock." Winden's voice was full of dread. "I have felt it on the canoe. It is the strike of the hunter."
"The lich's sharks," Dante said. "They'll batter us to pieces. Head in for shore!"
Blays grabbed the oars and rowed as fast as he could. With a crack of wood, the left-hand oar was ripped from his hand. A massive pale head swirled below the surface.
Blays cursed and brought in the other oar. "Unless one of you can start mass-harvesting oars, and would rather do that than just kill the damn thing, I'd say we're stuck out here."
The boat jolted a third time, jumping upwards; now that Dante knew what to feel for, it was obviously not a rock, but an intentional attack. Once more, he reached out to the nether, both in the world around him and in the world inside him. He expected to find one last reserve, some untapped and previously unknown core of strength. Instead, he found nothing.
The shark rammed them again. Gladdic gestured forcefully but precisely. Dante could feel him groping about for shadows and stilling himself for light.
"It is useless," Gladdic said. "And thus so am I."
Blays moved from the gunwale and swished his hands about in the watery bottom of the boat.
"What are you doing?" Dante said incredulously. "Think you'll find a harpoon down there?"
Blays didn't look up. "Or a sorcerer who can actually sorce!"
"Here's an idea: you jump in and do your best impression of bait while we row back to shore."
The shark hit them again, this time on the port side rather than the center, trying to capsize them. The dinghy slopped about, compelling them to flatten themselves against its bottom.
"There's no way for us to get at it as long as it stays under the water." Blays sat up, grabbing at the gunwale. "Do you think it's acting under the lich's control?"
"That seems unlikely," Dante said. "I'm sure it's just a common wild undead river-shark."
"I mean do you think he's guiding its actions right now?"
"No. No, I doubt it." The shark rammed them yet again, causing one of the boat's planks to creak. "I expect he's still wrapped up in the Blighting of the captives."
"When you reanimate something—" The last word came out in a hard blurt, ejected from Blays by another blow from the shark. "It still has some of the same instincts it had when it was alive, right?"
"Yes. Unless I'm specifically ordering them to suppress those instincts. Why?"
Blays had a bandage wrapped around his left forearm, where he'd taken several scratches and bites. He peeled off the cloth and pried open the wounds, eyes tightening against the pain. Deep red blood slid from the gouges. Dante's mouth fell open. Was Blays about to summon a bolt of nether? How long had he been hiding this power?
"All right, you son of a bitch," Blays said. "Come and get it!"
He leaned over the side of the boat and thrust his arm into the water, thrashing about like he was trying to paddle them toward shore. He kept his other hand tucked at his hip. His eyes were fastened on the water. Dante wanted to yell and scream at him with as many synonyms for "idiot" as he could remember, but he knew that if he distracted Blays for even an instant, Blays was dead—and so were the rest of them.
Winden, sitting up as alertly as a prairie dog on its mound, called out in what sounded like Kandean. A whitish shape stirred beneath the surface. Before Dante would have been able to react, the shark surged upward, its eyes black marbles in its dead head, its jaws gaping open, teeth arrayed like the tombstones of the dead after a great and fruitless war.
"Hahh!" Blays yelled.
He jerked his hand back from its maw. Yet the shark was still coming, driving over the gunwale, its mouth following Blays as if it meant to swallow him whole—or bite him in half. Blays threw himself onto his back. His right hand flicked out his sword. The blade sputtered but remained dull, a few silver and purple motes flashing from it like sparks cast onto firewood that refused to light.
As the shark fell toward Blays, the sword erupted with nether.
Blays stabbed past the shark's teeth with all the strength of his arm. The blade ripped into the roof of the beast's mouth, piercing effortlessly, aided by both the nether infusing the steel and by the shark's own weight. The undead crashed down upon Blays, its body halfway inside the boat, tail thrashing in agony at the water.
The shark shuddered and went still. Beneath it, Blays lay just as motionless.
"Get it off of him!" Dante had pressed himself against the other side of the boat and now scrabbled forward. The hilt of the sword jutted from the shark's fetid mouth. Dante pulled it out, the blade sputtering fitfully, and cast it aside with a clink.
The shark was weighing down the dinghy so much that the gunwale bobbed beneath the surface, cool water rushing inside. If not for the tilt of the boat, it would already have submerged Blays' face; as it was, it was up to his hips and rising. Dante planted his palms against the side of the shark's head. Its skin was pliable but as rough as sand.
He pushed with everything he had. The shark slid an inch backward. "Help me! Before the whole boat sinks!"
Winden braced her feet against the starboard side of the boat, set her back against the shark, and pushed hard. Dante flipped around to do the same. The shark slipped back another inch, then two more. Then the whole thing gave way, falling out of the boat with a heavy splash, rocking the dinghy so much it nearly threw Dante overboard.
Blays floated face-up in the water inside the boat. Dante pulled him upright and leaned him against a gunwale. His eyes were closed and his blond hair was matted to his face. In the bottom of the flooded dinghy, his sword was still blinking with black and purple light.
Dante snatched it up and returned it to Blays' sheath. "Blays! Blays!"
"If you wish to save him," Gladdic said, "you will first want to stop us from sinking."
Dante had thought the boat was stabilized, but whenever it rocked on a larger wave, more water spilled over the sides. Another minute or two and they would come to the point where one of the gunwales dipped below the surface and stayed there, dragging the boat to the bottom.
"Well start bailing!" Dante cupped his hands and tossed water from the boat.
The others did the same. He couldn't tell if they were expelling the water faster than it was coming in, but he did know that he didn't have any other ideas, and that until he came up with a good plan, he should probably go with the one that was better than nothing.
Yet every idea that sprung to mind involved the nether. While in one sense it was obvious, until that moment, he had never quite understood just how deeply he depended on it to achieve his ends. Most times, this was simply wise—it was both the strongest tool available and the one he was most skilled at using—but now that he was without it, he felt hideously weak and exposed.
He kept bailing.
After a few minutes, water was no longer spilling in over the gunwales. He scooped for another minute, then turned to Blays. Blays was still unconscious, pale and waterlogged. Dante snapped his fingers in Blays' face, then gave him a slap.
"What is wrong?" Winden said. "Did he take the bite?"
"It scraped his arm, but nothi
ng serious." A cold stone lay in Dante's belly. "It would be better if he had been bitten. But it was his own sword that hurt him. I think it drained away the last of his trace. If that's true…"
His throat closed.
Gladdic's hand fell on his shoulder. "It could not have taken the last of him. For the blade was still sparking when you put it away. With rest, he will recover."
"Then I suppose we'd better stick to the plan. And get to somewhere that we can rest."
Saying this out loud made him realize how little they could do. They couldn't put in to shore; far too many Blighted, and they'd have to carry Blays, which Dante didn't think he was capable of at that point. If they remained in the boat, though, they would surely be destroyed if a second shark showed up to sink them.
But it was the only way that had a chance. So he continued to bail. And he tipped back his head and he prayed.
Along the eastern shore, Blighted hooted to each other. The three of them got down in the rowboat until the cries were behind them. The rain beat the surface of the river, making it impossible to watch for the disturbance of a fin. They were well past the palace now and Dante could just make out the perfectly flat horizon of the sea beyond the southern walls. The current picked up and the river narrowed; they were entering his channel. The walls at the mouth of the river loomed close.
Spindly figures stood from the wall, no more than silhouettes. Dante flattened himself into the two inches of water still lying in the boat. They slowed as the channel widened back out and the river delivered them through the two wings of the wall. The Blighted atop the battlements trotted back and forth in agitation, as if they couldn't see the dinghy but could somehow sense that it was there.
The boat moved past the Blighted. Out into the open sea. The current slowed markedly, then entered a chaotic state of countercurrents that seemed to sweep them in a different direction every few seconds. Dante watched the sentries on the wall for a minute, then got out the oar, taking two or three strokes on a side before switching over to the other. They were still floating to the south, away from the city, so he concentrated on rowing to the west.
A beam of ether stabbed out from the wall. It started as a tight focus, but expanded as it went so that its end was a broad circle, thirty feet across. Dante stared at it in shock, temporarily frozen, then pulled in his oar and squeezed down inside the boat.
The beam cut overhead, reaching out to sea. It didn't seem to be doing any damage to the water or air, but was rather there to light it. To search. It swept quickly to the west, then reversed course and cut east, advancing with each sweep, repeating this pattern until it was hundreds of feet out to sea.
The light snapped off. Dante got out the oar, rowing west with what little strength he had left in his arms. The beam returned, forcing him back down. This time it passed right over the boat, a flash as bright as lightning, but it carried on, zigzagging out to sea. He rowed on. When it returned for a third time, he was already too far to the west for it to reach.
Miles of shoreline lay between them and the border of the city. Dante rowed until he couldn't, then was spelled by Winden. Gladdic watched over Blays and for any trouble from Bressel. When Winden got too tired to continue, Dante took back over, soon becoming so numb and tired that he rowed without any thoughts at all, head bent, soaked from the water in the bottom of the boat and the rain that continued to fall from above.
"There," Gladdic said. "It is behind us."
Dante looked up. He felt like he'd been rowing in his sleep; he couldn't recall where he was or exactly what they were doing. He was about to ask Gladdic what he was talking about when he saw for himself. Ahead of them lay nothing but trees. Behind them, Bressel was no more than a jagged silhouette against the night sky.
It was over.
23
Light.
Light and silence. No screams; no slap of bare, unholy feet charging at their prey; no crackle and boom of towers full of people shattering down to earth. No sounds of war and death and ruin. Just the chirp of the cardinals who always showed up when it rained and the whisper of the droplets in the leaves.
He opened his eyes. Branches spread above him, leafy and damp. It was the prettiest thing he'd ever seen. He reached for the nether and it galloped toward him as eagerly as a puppy. It was the best thing he'd ever felt.
This was at stark odds with his body, which felt as if he'd spent three straight days being used to quarry stone—not as a worker, but as the maul, or possibly the wedge. He began to clear the aches from his limbs, his back, and his head. It felt like it had been an eternity since he'd last been able to command the shadows, and he paid special attention to every little twist and flow, happier to be using the nether once more than for the results it achieved.
Blays stirred; Dante hadn't noticed, but he was already sitting up, arms draped over his knees. He was pale and gaunt, his stubble lining the creases of his face like dirt.
"Well," he said. "Let's never do that again."
"You've got my vote. But I'm not so sure the lich will share our position. We might have to petition one of his ministers, or even take to a protest in the streets." He scratched his arm with his knife and gathered more nether, sending it into Blays, whose wrinkles visibly decreased along with the swelling around his eyes.
Blays stood, stretching his arms. "There, that's somewhat less hellish. I suppose you'll want to run straight for the Mists?"
"I suppose you're asking if you'll be able to eat breakfast first. Good news: before we go under, I need to talk to Nak." Dante had intended to do so the night before, after they'd found a safe spot in the trees and made camp, but Nak hadn't answered and then Dante had fallen asleep.
This time, however, Nak answered immediately. "Dante? Are you alive?"
"Somehow. We had a…very long night." He gave Nak the rundown, condensing most of it, but relaying in detail the bits about Adaine and the portals.
Nak sucked air through his teeth. "Can he do this again? Use the portals to ambush us here without warning?"
"I don't see why not. Which is why I'm about to head into the Mists and try to stop him. Otherwise, I suspect we'll all soon be dead."
"How long do you suppose we've got before he comes for us?"
"That depends on how many more people he has left to Blight, how long it'll take him to recover, and how close he needs to get to you to before he can open a new doorway on top of you. I don't think you can count on more than a day and a half—and it could be as little as twelve hours. You should continue to move north. Buy me as much time as possible."
"I don't think anyone here would be opposed to putting a little more distance between ourselves and the lich."
"And suggest to Lord Pressings that he should split up the refugees and send his soldiers ahead to warn the other villages and towns. If they haven't fled yet, they need to be ready to."
"As much as I'd hate to see what happened in Bressel revisited on others, if we divide our forces trying to warn everyone in the land, it seems to me we'll make ourselves easy pickings."
"Quite frankly, if the lich comes for you now, you're dead even if you've got your full army at hand."
"Ah," Nak said. "Not really the news I was looking for, but I suppose it's still nice to know exactly where things stand."
"Put eyes high above the city. Don't get anywhere close to him. But if you see any evidence of a new portal forming, contact me immediately."
"But you'll be in the Mists, yes? Will the loon be able to reach you there?"
"We're about to find out," Dante said.
"It will be an exciting opportunity to learn new things, then. Good luck, Dante. I have the feeling you might need it."
Winden and Gladdic were already up, watching the forest. They all ate a cold breakfast, then Winden got out the orange dreamflowers. The plants had been tossed around quite a bit during their lengthy escape, and Blays had lost his entirely, but the others were alive, and after some ministrations from Winden, she declared
them healthy and fit for use.
Dante expected her to argue that she needed to go along with them, and almost looked forward to hearing Blays and Gladdic bicker about who was most useless and thus needed to stay behind, but Winden volunteered on the grounds that she knew the dreamflowers best and was the only one who would know what to do if something went wrong in the process of using them.
After a quick look about with a pair of moth scouts to confirm they weren't about to be ambushed by an army of creeping Blighted, they ate the bitter, poison-tasting dreamflowers and stretched out on the ground. Dante felt himself sinking, as if everything in the world was ascending but him, leaving him behind and lost in an unknown darkness.
A dream much deeper than any sleep took his mind.
~
He sat at the bottom of the sea. Most of it was still drained, but some had returned, leaving a spotty landscape of salt lakes and short, muck-covered hills. A few birds hopped about, pecking at the dead marine life scattered everywhere, but he was otherwise alone.
For a moment, he was frightened: then he remembered that he was in the Pastlands, just as he'd seen them when they'd tricked him into believing that the others had died defending the city, and he and Gladdic had set off on their endless quest to find Cal Avin.
The staircase waited on a slimy island a quarter of a mile away. He climbed into his rowboat, skimming across a shallow pond until he made landfall. He came to the steps and began the long climb. In time, a light appeared at the top, coalescing into a bright doorway. He entered.
He emerged into the Mists next to Gladdic. Blays was nowhere to be seen.
The old man raised an eyebrow. "Much swifter than the last time."
"This time, I knew where I was," Dante said. "It didn't try to recapture me into its spell. I wonder if the Pastlands can't deceive you if you visit them often enough—although something tells me that traveling through them too commonly might not do great things to your mind."
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