"I thought you didn't believe in oaths."
"I believe in them too much, fool. That's why I never make them."
"Your people found a way to make the desert blossom. I won't let Gladdic take that away from you."
She chuckled, wagging her head. "No wonder you're never home. You make more promises than most of us make shit!"
With no response to that, and no desire to think about it, Dante returned to the table. "Boggs, you said the entire basin's running dry? Where can we find a map of the canal system?"
"Same place we plan all our wars," he said. "In the nearest shrine."
Boggs stalked out into the plaza and led them to the shrine where they'd met with the town's Small Senate. They'd barely made it two steps inside when a trio of monks emerged to intercept them.
"Pardon," said the foremost of them, a man whose bald head was pointed on top and broad in the jaw; combined with his heavy freckles, his face resembled a brown chicken egg. "What's your business in our home?"
"Savin' your soft ass," Boggs said. "Now kindly haul it out of my way."
The monk's face became severe. "Such language has no place here." He glanced Dante up and down. "And neither do the Mallish. I must ask you to depart before you profane this shrine any worse."
"You dumb bastard." Boggs pressed his face close to the monk's and pointed to Dante. "If that man wanted, he could kill you by blinking. He's here to turn that power on the Mallish. Kick him out, and I'll water the inn's greet-bowl with your blood."
The holy man blanched, then flushed, then clamped down on his emotions with the skill beaten into all monks. "How can we help you put your talents to use?"
After Boggs explained, the monk led them to the third floor of the shrine. Sunlight poured through the southern-facing windows and skylights carved into the rock. One whole wall was painted with a map of the Collen Basin, bordered by Mallon to the west, the mountains running diagonal from the north to the east, and the cracked wastelands to the southeast, which stood between the basin and Parth.
The six senate-bearing towns and a number of villages were scattered around the city of Collen, which sat roughly in the map's middle. Everything large enough to be worthy of noting sat within spitting distance of a canal. As the canals crossed to the western fringe of Collen, they spread like the thin upper branches of a tree, but they all shared a common trunk, which tapped into the river that skirted Collen to the northeast and vanished somewhere in Parth.
Dante stood beneath the sprawling map. "You're sure the entire basin's drying out?"
"Don't believe me?" Boggs said. "Go on and lick it."
Dante tapped the map where the trunk of the canal departed from the river, tracing it down to its first fork. "Then the blockage has to be somewhere between here and here. How far away is that?"
"Eighty to a hundred miles. And not much in the way of roads."
"We'll need horses. Even so, without roads, it'll take three days. Keeper, maybe you should stay in Dog's Paw."
The Keeper curled her lip. "You think I'll slow you down."
"We have to get out there as fast as we can. Once the canals go dry, your crops start dying."
"And who do you think blocked the canals? Men with shovels?"
Blays put his hand alongside his mouth and stage-whispered, "I think she thinks it was priests."
The Keeper smirked. "Leave me here, if you're sure you can fight them on your own. If not, how much time will you waste coming back for me?"
A lengthy argument ensued regarding logistics and timelines. One side, comprised of Dante, Cord, and Boggs, wanted to get horses as fast as possible and ride off hell bent for leather. The other position, held by the Keeper and Blays, argued in favor of finding a wagon to go with the horses. It might slow them by a day or two, but it would allow them all to make the journey to the area where the blockage must be.
It soon became apparent no one was going to budge. With time of the essence—and both sides busy squandering it—the argument rapidly expanded in volume.
"Boggs," Naran's voice was all but drowned in the storm of squabbling. "Boggs." Naran drew his sword and whacked its flat against the table with an ear-splitting crack. "Boggs gods-damned Twill!"
Boggs blinked. "Uh, yeah?"
"Excuse me." Naran smoothed his shirt. "Mr. Twill. At present, how deep is the water in the canals?"
Boggs shrugged. "Six, eight feet. For now."
A slow smile spread across Naran's often-stony face. "There's no need for horses. Or to leave anyone behind. We'll use the sailboat Captain Twill built at the Twill residence." He sketched a northeasterly path from Dog's Paw along the canals toward the main trunk. "The winds blow out of the south and southwest. With the canals drying out, and no current to fight us, we can reach our destination within a day."
"One small problem," Blays said. "The Twill residence is built on ground. Which is dry. And hence so is the boat."
Naran's face sank. "The canal's close. With a few logs, we might roll the ship there. But it'll take time."
"Sure, if you want to do things the hard way," Dante said. "Or I can bring the canal to the ship."
* * *
On the day, Dante had expended almost all of his ether beating up on the Andrac. Yet he had hardly touched the nether.
The canal gleamed in the sun, sluggish and low. Blood dribbling down his forearm, shadows swirling around him like the dust devils that spun about the plains of Collen, he lowered his finger to the earth. A crack opened perpendicular to the canal. It widened swiftly, plunging to a depth of six feet: just enough to let a foot and a half of water pour out of the canal and into the new capillary. Dante expanded the capillary six feet wide, then walked toward the Twill estate, lengthening the new canal branch with every step.
Despite starting with all of his power, and engineering the auxiliary canal to require the least possible displacement of earth, by the time he came in sight of the sailboat's mast—which was easily the highest vegetation in the area, and currently the site of a ringing argument between Naran, Blays, and Boggs—Dante's hands were shaking. But having to move the boat more than a few feet would take hours. If the main canal system dropped too far in that time, the entire expedition might be rendered obsolete. Breathing hard, he brought the shallow canal right up to the nose of the boat, then staggered back, panting.
Within the rigging, Naran glanced down. "Have you ever thought of dredging canals across your land? You'd encourage trade and discourage invaders in one fell swoop."
"It's a good idea," Dante said. "But before I can do that, I'll have to quit sticking my nose into the business of every country I travel through."
Within minutes, they finished rigging the single-masted ship. With some shimming and jimmying, they stuck round wooden rods beneath the ship's flat bottom, then eased it into the water with an impressive splash. It was almost the exact width of Dante's canal, making it an easy matter for Naran to help the Keeper aboard. As the others climbed on, Boggs passed them poles. Blays dug one into the side of the canal, rocking the boat.
Naran gazed down at Boggs, who was remaining in Dog's Paw. "Did Captain Twill ever give the vessel a name?"
Boggs shaded his eyes against the mid-afternoon sun. "Sure did. The Promise of the Desert."
"The crew isn't up to her normal standards." Naran winked at them. "Yet I think she'd be proud to see the Promise's maiden voyage."
Boggs held up his hand in salute. The Keeper seated herself on a bench. The other four took up poles. Each push against the banks sent the boat skimming along—and, typically, grinding into the opposite edge of the canal. This sounded much more damaging than it was, however, and they soon had the sailboat out into the much wider main canal.
It smelled like drying muck. The current, not quite dead yet, attempted to push them away from their destination. But even without making use of the sails, a pair of polers could propel the boat along at the speed of a slow jog. In straight stretches of canal, Naran trimmed the sa
ils to the wind, allowing them to conserve strength while using the poles whenever the boat drifted too near to one side.
Dante took his turns with the pole, but had to set it down whenever they passed one of the canal network's prolific forks to check it off on his map, which he'd copied from the shrine. For if the canals had been flowing at normal levels, with the water's surface two or three feet below the top of the banks around them, the chance of getting lost would have been slim to none. Landmarks would have been constantly visible on all sides.
But with the water so low, the banks hung eight to ten feet above them, blocking sight of everything except the closest hills. The only way to get a look at their surroundings was to climb up the mast. Given how light the boat was, and the flatness of its hull, this wasn't a brilliant idea. This made it vital to track their progress along the map—a wrong turn could send them many miles off course. If they were delayed too long, the canal might dry up to the point of becoming unnavigable. The Keeper might well have been capable of presiding over the map, but her eyesight wasn't always reliable. Dante wasn't positive her memory was, either.
Besides, unlike the forks of a tree, which never rejoined after branching away, some of the canals had smaller channels between them, like alleys connecting main streets, which only made navigation more confusing. Consulting with Naran, Dante drew up a course that ought to shave several miles off their journey. In less than three hours, they had already crossed a quarter of the distance to their destination.
After his turn pushing them along with a pole, Naran swapped out, replaced by Cord. As Naran reviewed the map with Dante, the boat jarred hard, wood grinding on sand. The Keeper sprawled from her bench. Dante fell to the deck. Blays tumbled over the front rail, landing with a shallow splash. Dante picked himself up, elbows stinging, and made his way to the prow.
Blays sat in a few inches of water running over a sandbar. "Oops. Missed that."
"I wouldn't say we'd 'missed' it." Dante shaded his eyes. "This section's silted in. The boat's too heavy to portage. We'll have to try to find a path to pole through."
Everyone except the Keeper took up a pole. Between the four of them, they muscled the boat to slightly deeper water, feeling their way forward with their staves. Soon, the silt fell away beneath them, leaving them free to speed along once more.
Night fell. Naran hung a lantern from the prow so Dante could make note of any forks, then struck the sails to ensure they wouldn't plow into any rocks at too high a speed. Now that they were advancing by muscle-power alone, Dante split map duties with Naran so that he could spell the others at the pole. Even with each of them taking turns, by midnight, they were all exhausted. Blays hopped out to tie the boat to a clump of sage up on the bank.
The few hours of sleep they got wasn't nearly enough for their aching muscles, but it was enough to restore Dante's hold on the shadows, allowing him to take care of their pains with the nether. They resumed poling along. When dawn broke, Naran drew the sail tight. It looked like the water had fallen another foot or two since they'd started out the day before. It wouldn't be long before it got too low to sail.
They hit two more submerged sandbars, but between the poles and a bit of earth-moving, they made great time toward the river. Around noon, with less than ten miles between them and their target, Dante slew a dragonfly sunning itself an an exposed, mossy stone, then sent it flying ahead.
They were now deep in the desert, with nothing man-made to interrupt the steppe except for the occasional homestead of a hermit-farmer. Viewing the expanse from above, Dante couldn't help wonder why the Colleners hadn't relocated to the river. Had they believe the drought would end in time, as every other drought did? Had some force, such as the horrors of the Spiderfields, kept them away? Had they simply been too stubborn to leave their homes? Or had the old ones built the canals before the lack of rain forced the residents out?
Or was the land here so flat that they never would have been able to defend themselves against the Mallish?
The river gleamed ahead, a blue ribbon against the plains. The canal that extended from it was muddy and brown. Through the eyes of the dragonfly, the cause of the lowering of the waters was obvious: a dam of stone and earth was even now being extended across the mouth of the canal.
And a small army of Mallish soldiers guarded the work.
24
"The Mallish are damming the canal," Dante said. "A hundred and fifty of them at least."
Cord stood, rocking the boat. "Those scum. We have to go back for more soldiers!"
"Let me take a closer look. We'll want as much intelligence as possible."
He flew the dragonfly over the works. The canal split from the river at roughly a 45 degree angle, quickly curving southwest toward the interior of the basin. Just upstream from where the canal branched off, a moat-like circle had been inscribed into the river's bank, carving out an island roughly forty feet across. A narrow earthen causeway connected this island to the bank. A run-down camp sprawled across the little island, scraps of canvas propped up by old sticks. Across the causeway, a second camp of identical tents was arranged in orderly rows. A large shack or small house stood on its far side.
Of the laborers, only half were in blue uniforms. The others were mostly dressed in rags and chains. Even if they'd been wearing doublets and trousers, their blond hair would have identified them as Collenese slaves.
It was a good-sized work crew. But Boggs had said the canal had started dropping overnight. Dante lowered the dragonfly to the dam. An earthen prong jutted from each bank. Workers moved atop it, dumping wheelbarrows of earth and rock into the narrow gap of water that was still flowing into the canal. The base of each prong was buttressed by squared-off boulders far too large to have been moved by wheelbarrows.
At the side of the works, a man in gray robes watched the Colleners sweat. Two other gray-clad men were talking to each other outside the shack.
"Good news and bad," Dante said. "The good news is that at least half the laborers are Colleners. The bad news is there are Mallish priests here. Looks like they used the ether to carve out the sides of the canal and jam it up with big rocks. The slaves are filling in the rest."
Naran poled the boat to the side of the canal. Once Blays hopped out to tie them up, Dante described the layout of the dig: the slaves held on the island; the soldiers camped across from them on the riverbank; the command shack.
"I can undo the dam in a few minutes," Dante concluded. "But not while I'm being assaulted by a small army."
Blays rubbed his upper arms. "Think the five of us are mean enough to remove that army by ourselves?"
"That depends on how mighty our brains are."
"We're contemplating attacking an army with five people. I'd say our brains are our biggest liability." Blays sighed through his teeth. "Well, there's no way around it. We'll have to kill the priests."
Naran grunted. "I don't follow why that's necessary."
"It's almost impossible to take a sorcerer captive," Dante said. "You can take the swords from a warrior, but you can't take the nether from a warlock. It takes three of your sorcerers for every one of the enemy you want to keep locked down. Even then, if one of your people lets down their guard for an instant, they're all dead."
Cord brayed with laughter. "This is good. I'll grab any chance to cut down one of those sniveling Mallish hypocrites. We slay them first, yes? With no magic to protect the soldiers, the rest will fall like wheat."
"The priests are occupying the shack. If we bust in on them tonight, maybe we kill them instantaneously. But more likely, they hold out long enough to raise the alarm. Then we've got eighty soldiers on our backs while we're still finishing off the priests."
Naran contemplated the sluggish brown waters. "Why not send Blays to walk through their wall and deal with them in his way?"
"No can do," Blays said. "My little trick only lets me stroll through stone."
"How odd. Why is that?"
"Beats me. Apparen
tly my mentors were too lazy to figure out how it works on wood."
Dante drew back his head. "Harvesting allows a nethermancer to manipulate living vegetation. I wonder if it could somehow be applied to shadowalking through wood."
"Interesting thought," Blays said. "But it took me months to learn how to shadowalk. Unless you're okay with sitting in this ditch until next spring, we're going to have to come up with something else."
Naran held his palms a few inches away from each other and moved them back and forth, as if he was rolling out an invisible length of clay. "You can flash in and out of the shadows, can't you? What's to stop you from sneaking through the nether, emerging beside each soldier in turn, and putting them to rest?"
"Another great idea crushed by cruel reality. Moving in and out of the shadows is harder work than staying in them. I'd be lucky to take out fifteen or twenty of them before my juice ran out."
"We need to be thinking about the slaves, too," Dante said. "If one of them calls out while we're skulking around slitting throats, we might as well take a dive onto our own swords."
"Then we need to think like a quartermaster." Naran spoke slowly as he thought it through, each word standing on its own. "And turn liabilities into assets."
Blays cracked his knuckles. "You want to weaponize the slaves."
"Now that's wise," Cord said. "If it was me in that camp, I'd be begging you for my wheel."
"You think the Mallish could capture and enslave you? I think they'd have an easier time fitting chains on a lake."
Dante took another look through the dragonfly's eyes. "I've got an idea or two. But we're not going to be able to draw my plans in ink until we see how the Mallish arrange themselves tonight."
The soldiers were running patrols up to a mile away from the site. The five of them poled the boat to a kink in the canal two miles south of the enemy and pulled into the cover of the small trees lining the ditch. Unless a soldier walked right up on top of them, they'd be impossible to spot.
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