The Silver Thief

by Edward W. Robertson

  "Den has already stated the crime before us." The man looked like a slab of beef brisket, but his voice was as sonorous as the tropical doves they'd seen in the Plagued Islands. "My name is Bond, and it's my task to prove these crimes are real. I'll let you in on a secret: it's going to be the easiest job I've ever had."

  The ad hoc jury tittered. Bond considered them a moment before continuing. "The first matter needs no explanation. This man, Andrew Welborn, is clearly Mallish." He gestured to Dante; Welborn was the name Dante had provided them to preserve his identity. Too late, it occurred to Dante that he'd taken on the most Mallish name possible. Bond gave the crowd a moment to inspect Dante for themselves, then went on. "The hair. The eyes. The nose and skin and the angle of the cheeks. These are all the same things we see when the armies march forth from Bressel. How do you answer this, Mr. Welborn?"

  "I was born in Mallon," Dante said. "But I renounced my loyalty to it over a decade ago."

  "So you don't deny you're Mallish." Some of the crowd chuckled. The justice tucked his hands behind his back and strolled closer to the accused. "This isn't a crime in itself. But you came here mere days after a significant arrival of Mallish troops. And when you came to Collen, what was the first thing you did?"

  "Stumbled into a group of Colleners being attacked by Mallish soldiers. When I saw one of your citizens was mortally wounded, I went to help him."

  "You're speaking of Ked Danzer." The justice gestured to the witnesses. Ked stepped forward, nodding to the crowd. The justice folded his hands in front of him. "Who was Ked wounded by? As you've said: Mallish soldiers. Hence, you took his deathright away. An act of ignorance? Perhaps. Or perhaps it was a deliberate insult. Only the Mallish would be so cruel as to steal a man's deathright."

  This provoked a great deal of dark looks and muttered oaths from the expansive jury. Bond gave them time to settle down before continuing on, pacing between the two streams of water, careful not to step in either.

  "Hodd of the Reborn Shrine," he called.

  The young monk stepped forward from the cluster of witnesses. "Yes, Justice Bond?"

  "You told Den that Mr. Welborn came to the Reborn Shrine in search of information. Precisely what was he looking for?"

  "Well." Hodd stared fixedly past the justice's ear. "He was looking for books."

  "Books concerning which subjects?"

  The young monk's olive cheeks flushed red. "Concerning…demons. Arawn. Nethermancy. When I told him the shrine contained no such blasphemy, he continued to look for it in other works. Legends and histories."

  Dante's blood ran cool. The earlier charges struck him as ridiculous, but to an outsider, his interest in reading material would sound troubling, if not outright dangerous. To most people, an interest in dark topics was profound proof of a dark mind.

  The justice nodded slowly, as if absorbing Hodd's answer. "Do you know why he had such interest in banned works?"

  "He said he was a Galladese monk devoted to Carvahal." Hodd lowered his head. "But I thought that was strange. If he wanted to know more about Arawn's workings, why not go to Narashtovik? Why travel all the way to Collen?"

  "A fair question. Do you have an alternate theory for why Mr. Welborn came to your shrine?"

  "I, ah. I thought it might be a trap. A way to find out if our order was still harboring heresy."

  "That would be a cunning way for Mallon to justify further arrests—or occupation." The justice raised his eyebrows to the crowd. "Even so, you might be inclined to dismiss it as the occult interests of an eccentric monk. Except that the men before you have spent the last week parlaying with Mallish troops."

  This provoked a score of angry curses. Dante uttered one of his own and took a step forward. "If we were Mallish spies, you'd think we'd be a little more careful to cover up our meetings with our contacts. The real explanation of our activities is more complicated, but it has the virtue of being true. Your bevy of accusations are nothing but circumstantial—which may be why you have to rely on so many of them to convince your jury."

  "Circumstantial?" Justice Bond smiled grimly. "I don't disagree. I was merely laying the foundation for this." He reached into his vest and produced several sheets of folded parchment. He unfolded them, completely unhurried. "This is a letter we intercepted three days ago. It's signed by Gladdic, Ordon of Bressel. It's addressed to Baldren, Spalder of Bressel, commander of the incursion that's made camp many miles to our northeast."

  The justice cleared his throat and read, his sweet voice carrying through the outdoor court like a traveling bard earning his keep in an inn. The letter alerted Baldren to be on the lookout for three men who had been dispatched there to assist him in restoring order to the "rebellious province." Though Gladdic used no names, he described Dante, Blays, and Naran in meticulous detail.

  Finished, the justice lowered the letter. He gazed sadly across the mob/jury. "Tell me the men described in this letter are not the men you see before you. I beg you. Else every one of us will end the day with blood on our hands."

  There was a brief silence. The intake of breath before a shout. The crowd erupted.

  "Hang them!"

  "Boot them from the cliff!"

  "Kill the traitors!"

  Blays leaned close to Dante. "We may be new to this place, but I know a bloodthirsty mob when I see one. Got a way out of this?"

  "Yes and no." Dante peered down the edge of the butte. They were two hundred feet above the plains below, separated from it by sheer cliffs and murderously steep piles of broken rock. "I can get us down from here. But if they pursue us on horseback, I don't know how we'll get away."

  "If you don't get us down there, I suspect these people will lend us a hand in doing so. Or more accurately, a boot in the ass."

  Dante nodded. He had no knives, so he was forced to bite the inside of his cheek to draw blood. While they'd been speaking, Den had resumed oversight of the trial.

  "—find them innocent?" Den called to the crowd.

  No one made a peep. Dante sucked the nether to him and plunged it into the earth beneath his feet.

  "And who among you say they are guilty?" Den said.

  "Aye!" the mass jury roared as one.

  "Then let the gods hear what their people have decided."

  Den motioned to the contingent of warriors who'd been observing from behind him. They advanced through the standing stones, gripping their wheels near the weighted base, spear tips held before them. Dante began to shape a long, smooth ramp down the cliff face, its outer edges curled up to prevent them from flying over the side as they slid down it.

  "Stop!" Despite the imperative, the voice delivering it was hesitant. Hodd wandered into the clearing of stone, arms held stiffly to his sides, as if he were stepping out onto a ledge and terrified he'd lose his balance.

  Den jogged toward him, his tan face going red. "Clear out! Before you get hurt!"

  "But I know who these men are!" Hodd shrank on himself as three hundred pairs of eyes locked on him. Throat working, he forced himself to stand taller. "They're not Mallish spies."

  "What are you blathering about?" Den said. "Haven't you been listening to the justice?"

  "Very closely. When he read the ordon's letter, it jogged something loose in my mind. I've heard two of these men described elsewhere." He turned his back on the crowd and brushed past the halted warriors, coming to stand across from Dante, eyes darting nervously. "You're him, aren't you?"

  Dante licked his dry lips. To keep his city clear of any conflict brewing between Mallon and Collen, he'd done his damnedest to preserve the secret of his identity. Exposing himself now might save his life.

  And expose his city to war.

  He shook his head. "My name is Andrew Welborn. Once of Mallon, now of Gallador."

  Hodd lifted an accusatory finger, eyes sparking with the first anger Dante had seen in him. "You lie. You're Dante Galand! High Priest of Narashtovik!"

  The gathered people, including the stalwart warriors,
burst into confused babble. A few sounded like they were choking. Others laughed in disbelief.

  Den's face was now so red it resembled a freshly laundered Gaskan military uniform. "Is this true?"

  "No sense denying it," Blays said. "If you do, rumor will spread the story twice as fast as the truth."

  "Hodd's right." Dante lifted his voice and gazed across the crowds. "My name is Dante Galand. I was born in Mallon, but if you think I'd help my former country subjugate your people, then you don't know a gods damn thing about me."

  "Dante Galand." Den chuckled, sobering rapidly. "If that's true, then what in the twelve hells are you doing in Collen?"

  Justice Bond began to recover his former confidence, striding about the bare stone. "And why are you here in disguise? Infiltrating our city under a false name? Just what are you hiding, sir?"

  "I can answer all these questions," Dante said. "But I'll need two things." He beckoned to Hodd. "I need a book from the Reborn Shrine. An Account of the Third War with Almers. By—"

  "Flinders" Hodd finished. "Ah, yes. Yes of course."

  "Next, we have to go down to the plains. What I have to show you can't be found up here."

  Den threw his hands in the air. "We can't leave Justice Falls in the middle of a trial. This ain't how it's done!"

  "Are you that intent on punishing us? Or do you want to learn why we're really here—and why Mallon first declared war on you a thousand years ago?"

  "We know that front and back. During the blights, our ancestors fed nether to the crops. But rather than growing the plants tall, it killed them dead. When our people turned to taking from Mallish lands in order to survive, the Mallish declared war."

  "Wrong," Dante said. "But if that's what you prefer to believe, then you can go on dishonoring your ancestors for another thousand years."

  The justice's eyebrows jumped up his scarred forehead. "Den, the gods know there's a time for tradition and a time to break it. This here? This is one of the latter times."

  Den looked like he didn't know whether to sigh, spit, or swear. He fixed Dante with an exasperated look. "Where are you intending to take us, milord?"

  Dante didn't let the sarcasm embedded in the last word register. "Right outside the lower city. Anywhere that hasn't been farmed recently should do."

  "Right then. The sooner we get there, the sooner this day will start to make sense again."

  Den hollered orders to all sides. The warriors formed a loose ring around Dante, Naran, and Blays, escorting them from the so-called Justice Falls. The mob followed after them at a safe distance. Hodd scampered off to the shrine in search of the book.

  As they crossed the city, Cord made her way to Blays. "If he's Dante Galand, does that make you Blays Buckler?"

  "That's right," Blays said. "Heard of me, have you?"

  "The Blays Buckler I've heard of has never lost a fight." She beamed. "So it sounds like it's time for the bards to start singing the chronicles of Cord Wheeler!"

  "Don't get ahead of yourself," Dante said. "Blays has lost dozens of fights."

  Blays brushed dust from his shoulder. "And I'm still here, aren't I? That's far more impressive than never having lost."

  A steady stream of civilians came out to ask the mob what was happening. Most of the newcomers wound up joining the proceedings. Den barked various commands, which Dante followed without defiance. They descended the switchbacks, crossed through the lower settlement, and walked into the open yellow plain.

  A few hundred feet away from the last of the flat-roofed houses, Den called for a halt. The warriors backed away from Dante but maintained the ring around the outsiders.

  "Will this place work for you, milord?" Den said.

  "I expect so." Dante kneeled in the dust. "I'm going to summon the nether. No tricks. I swear on my life and my city."

  Den gestured subtly to his warriors, who held their weapons in hand, including throwing spears and nocked bows. Dante bit his cheek again, wincing, and called to the shadows. He sank them into the ground. The crumbly gray dirt leveled, becoming as flat as a summer lake, then began to drain away.

  People gasped. He heard his name whispered among the crowd as doubters became believers. As a teenager, Dante had yearned for such recognition—dreamed of it—but that need had begun to fade as soon as he'd joined the Council. His work had soon become all the accomplishment he needed.

  Even so, he twisted the nether in the earth, making it swirl away in pretty patterns that served no purpose other than to bewitch the crowd.

  The hole lowered further, revealing branches. Matted grass. Flattened shrubs. The long-dead foliage was as gray as the soil around it.

  Dante stood. "Do you see this?"

  "The tolts?" Den's voice squeaked with incredulity. "They're everywhere. Created during the blights. Since those black days, nothing's grown what hasn't been right next to a canal."

  "That's what your histories say." Dante pointed into the distance. "The mountains to your northeast. What are they called?"

  "The Horned Mountains. What of it?"

  "How high would you say they are?"

  "How would I know that? Should I asked the ravens?"

  "Take a guess. One mile? Two?"

  Den shrugged broadly. An old man with a scraggly white beard and sun-creased skin stepped from the jury-mob. "Sone Pass is three thousand feet. The big peaks like Huck and Franken? Ten thousand."

  Den turned on him. "How do you know that?"

  The man folded his arms proudly. "Took my measures up there thirty years back. The mercury grows the closer you bring it to the ether. Tells you right how tall's the piece of earth you're standing on."

  Dante gazed at the blue blur of the range. "So we'd all agree they're mountains. Big ones."

  "Is this how you win arguments in Narashtovik?" Bond said. "State the obvious until no one can stand to listen any longer? I think the northern snows have frozen your skulls solid."

  "Where is Hodd?"

  "Here, sir." Hodd waved his hand from within the crowd. "I mean, milord."

  "I'm not your lord," Dante said. "Did you find the book?"

  "Excuse me," Hodd said to those around him. "Excuse me?" A path opened. He wedged through it, approaching Dante and holding out the book.

  Dante flipped through the pages of Flinders' chronicle of the wars between the early Collen Basin and the long-dead kingdom of Almers. His eyes snagged on a paragraph in the middle of a section describing the terms of the alliance between Collen and Kolody, an independent city that had once existed to the east.

  He passed the book to Hodd, tapping the relevant paragraph. "This section, if you would."

  "Ahem." Hodd supported the tome in both hands and read aloud. "'Kolody sat almost three hundred miles from Collen on the other side of the Horned Hills. The distance was far, but it was made lesser by that of the River Common, which had long united the two lands through trade. For Kolody's aid in the war, Collen promised it a colony in Almers, and so Kolody was convinced to trade its fine armors. The first Kolodians made for Collen, entering the hills with their great wains. But the Almerians awaited them in the valley of the River Common, and rushed from the forest beside the road, destroying them.'"

  Dante nodded, retaking the book. "Horned Hills. I imagine the scholars dismiss this as a slip by Flinders, or the fault of whichever monk copied the original text. But he also describes the Kolodians as passing through the hills via a valley that no longer exists. And that the two lands shared a river that also no longer exists. Scholars might dismiss this as a mistake on Flinders' part. After all, he was writing two centuries after these wars were over. Perhaps he simply got it wrong."

  Dante turned his head slowly, meeting the attentive gazes of the crowd. "Or perhaps he's referring to facts that have long been forgotten."

  "This have a point?" Den said. "What's the war with Almers have to do with Mallon?"

  "I'm getting to that. But first, I have to divert to Narashtovik. A thousand years ago, the an
cestors of my people had been pushed to the brink of destruction by their mortal enemies. In desperation, my people sought to raise a range of mountains between them and their enemies.

  "But they were far more successful than they intended. The mountains they summoned were colossal. In Narashtovik, the existing mountains became the Woduns, the largest range I've ever seen. And I believe they extended much further than the north. From what I've discovered, they reached all the way to Collen—and transformed the Horned Hills into the Horned Mountains."

  "Oh bullshit. Mountains don't just sprout from the ground like a forest!"

  Dante gestured to the hole he'd sunk into the ground. "You've seen with your own eyes what I'm capable of. Now imagine a full order of nethermancers bent to the same task—and in possession of an artifact of divine power."

  Den's expression softened slightly. "Even if the hills became mountains—so what?"

  "This land was once verdant. There were even forests. The evidence is right under your feet. It wasn't your greedy nethermancers who ruined the land. It was the mountains that took away your rains."

  The silence that ensued was as stark as the desert around them. Den looked like a child seeing the sea for the first time. Most of the warriors appeared guarded, but some of the citizens' faces had gone stormy. Naran looked almost as gobsmacked as the locals.

  The battle-scarred justice was the first to recover. "How could our people have forgotten such a drastic change?"

  "It was a thousand years ago," Blays said. "I can't even remember what I had for breakfast this morning."

  Dante gazed at the desiccated branches and grass exposed in the pit. "My best guess? You forgot because the Mallish wanted you to. During the first wars with Collen, back in Bressel, the ethermancers of Taim threw out the nethermancers of Arawn. Here, they saw the opportunity to net two fish with one swoop: blame the nether for the disaster that befell Collen, and blame the Colleners for using it."

  "And hence the war that followed," Bond mused.

  "When Mallon invaded, they burned your histories. And killed everyone who denied their version of the story. The truth isn't like the stars, burning forever beyond our grasp. It's as mortal as the people who carry it."