"What's that?"
"Pray that we are making the right decision."
Blays clapped his hands and dashed into the other room to gather up his things. He was getting his pack laced up before he understood what he was feeling: gratitude. Toward Gladdic.
Giving a hard boot to such unwelcome thoughts, he walked over to the old bastard, who was searching about for a second sandal.
Blays jerked his thumb toward the other room. "Have you given any thought to Volo? I'm not sure if she's well enough to travel. Think we're better off leaving her here?"
A fleeting look of pity crossed Gladdic's face. "You still fail to see the consequences of your course. If you leave young Volo here, she will die along with all of the others at the lich's hand."
Blays rocked back on his heels, swearing loudly. "Then she's coming with us."
"And if she is still unable to care for herself when we reach the Hills? For the sake of our own lives, we cannot allow ourselves to be slowed down."
Blays met the old man's eyes. "I know what you're trying to do. Do you think I'm a newcomer to hard decisions?"
Gladdic watched him a moment, then smiled and returned to his search.
Consulting with Bek, they decided the knight was sound enough to travel with them and would also be better off stashed away at the Silent Spires. While they saw to their arrangements, Naran dashed off to the docks to warn Jona and the Sword of the South to be ready to flee the city at the first sign of invasion.
All told, they were ready to go in less than an hour. Knowing that it would only touch off a ruckus, Blays almost left the tower without telling a single Tanarian soul. At the end, though, he wrote a simple note and left it in their quarters. He included the suggestion that the Arisians might flee the city and scatter in all directions. He doubted they'd take his advice.
The five of them assembled on the shore. Volo could walk on her own, as long as you sort of prodded her along as you went, but she needed help getting into the canoe, and was obviously not going to provide any help navigating, obliging Blays to take the seat in the fore. He took them west toward the hole Dante had opened in the wall the day before. It was early enough in the morning that the laborers were just now showing up to patch it up with boards.
Blays smiled and waved politely as they passed through the gap. "This isn't the first time I've said this, but this time really isn't our proudest moment."
Naran lifted an eyebrow. "They're probably all about to die, and you're joking about it?"
Blays tightened his grip on the paddle.
"If it is any consolation," Gladdic said, "most of them will not die. They will become Blighted."
Blays frowned. "I think you may have discovered a new form of anti-consoling."
As they neared the end of the clear water, the forest rising before them, he turned around for a last glimpse of Aris Osis.
Gladdic leaned forward and touched him on the shoulder. "Do not look back at it. It is already gone."
~
The pleasant thing about the swamp was that if you wanted to put a city behind you, all it took was a few minutes of boating into the trees.
The unpleasant thing about the swamp was that as soon as you got away from the city, you were faced with nothing but a lot of fetid muck, swarms upon swarms of flies, and long squiggly things that seemed personally invested in killing you.
Nobody said much for the first two miles. Blays had noticed that was very common at the start of trips: initial silence, as though no one wanted to disturb the extremely sensitive business of repeatedly shoving a paddle in the water or letting your horse trot along or what have you, followed by the realization of just how long you were going to be out there, and that if you didn't fill some of the time with talking, you would probably soon be murdering each other instead.
After a bit of discussing directions with Bek, Gladdic lifted his head. "Where is the object that contains Galand's blood?"
Naran unclipped his loon from his ear and handed it over. "It lies within this."
Gladdic turned the hunk of bone jewelry in his hand. "One of his foolish ear rings? Why would he bleed on it?"
"He bleeds on everything," Blays said. "Haven't you noticed I don't like to stand within three feet of him?"
"I had assumed that was because he had noticed your odor, and ordered you to keep your distance."
Despite himself, Blays snorted.
"My blood is on it as well," Naran said. "In case that's relevant."
Gladdic eyed them as if he found them unspeakably barbaric. "This is a nethereal object, yes? And not merely a piece of shadow-worshipping degenerate iconography?"
"It doesn't matter," Blays said. "Now get your face into that blood and get to work."
He could feel Gladdic bringing the nether to him, manipulating it in a cold way that was practical yet elegant. Sometimes the old man whispered to himself, as if he'd forgotten where he was, or was too mad and senile to care.
After twenty minutes of this, and entirely without warning, Gladdic shot halfway to his feet, crying out in pain.
Blays ducked lower to stop the boat from rolling back and forth. "What are you doing, you crazy idiot? Looking to feed the ziki oko?"
Gladdic rubbed his forehead with his palm. "I believe I have discovered how this process works. With its aid, I have successfully located Captain Naran."
Blays chuckled, swooping his paddle through the water. "Then you possess the eldritch power of 'sight'? At last I understand why Dante was so eager to team up with you."
The priest returned to his whispers. In less than a minute, he snapped his fingers. "I have found the correct signal. Dante lives."
Relief warmed Blays' veins like a good stout. "How far away?"
"As my prior experience is limited to locating a man seated immediately before me, I cannot say. The signal is not terribly strong, but it points somewhere to our northeast."
"Keep an eye on it, figuratively speaking. We'll want to know if the lich sends him off somewhere else."
"Such as after us."
That thought hadn't occurred to Blays. He didn't like it.
He paddled until he'd sweated off his hangover, then passed the tool over to Naran and took a nap. It was a muggy day with little wind and Blays was happy when it came to an end. They found a nice little island, where Blays helped lift Volo from the canoe. He thought he saw a glimmer of light in her eye, but it was gone so fast he couldn't be sure.
~
The trees fell away. The Hell-Painted Hills lifted before them, threatening and stark. The swamps, for once, had been perfectly uneventful. Over the last two and a half days, Dante seemed to have been traveling slowly northwest, but Gladdic had no way to know how far or for what purpose.
After taking a long look around to get his bearings, Blays headed north, meaning to find the exact spot where they'd crossed the border before. He found the location a mile later, but his self-congratulations on bringing them to it were short-lived. The goat-like lan haba where nowhere to be seen.
He beached the canoe on a grassy shore connected to the barren hills, silently cursing Dante for not having thought to give Ara a loon. Then again, Dante would have still been in possession of that loon, leaving them stuck in the exact same position.
He jerked his chin at Gladdic. "I don't suppose you have any neat tricks to get ahold of Ara and ask her to please send out the giant goats?"
Gladdic's eyes shifted back and forth as he surveyed the slagged countryside. "None that would work."
"You can't send a dead pigeon with a note tied around its neck?"
"It would not be delivered. When Dante sent his minions toward the Spires, they ceased to function as soon as they crossed the borders, felled by the Odo Sein."
"You could send pigeon after pigeon until someone sees one falling and wanders over to check on what's going on with all the suicidal pigeons."
"Even if successful, it would take longer than we would on our own. There is also th
e matter that none of the people at the Spires can read."
"I never thought illiteracy would come back to bite anyone in the ass." Blays planted his hands on the small of his back. "Bek, are you any help here?"
The knight shook his head. "I've only traveled through the Hell-Painted Hills twice: once to begin my training, and once to end it."
"Then it sounds like we're traveling by foot-wagon." Blays clucked his tongue. "Volo? How's that sound, hey?" She didn't so much as look his way. He sighed. "Guess we'll have to carry her."
"We shall do no such thing," Gladdic said.
"What? You think we're better off trying to roll her? In the state she's in, she can hardly walk down a paved road by herself. She could never make it through the Hills."
"Then she is a burden we cannot allow to slow us down. You sacrificed the city of Aris Osis for this, Blays Buckler. You may have sacrificed everything for it. I will not endanger our mission for the sake of a single soul."
The two men stared at each other. Blays had that feeling where you really wanted to pick something up and hit something else with it, which was never a great indicator of the rightness of one's position. Even with help from Naran and the still-recovering Bek, would he really be able to carry Volo all that way? Up the slopes? Over the crags? All without slowing them down and risking being Blighted themselves?
"We could leave her here for now," he said, hating the words and himself. "I don't think she's in any danger of wandering off."
Naran gaped. "Are you mad? She may not wander off, but she won't feed herself, either. Nor defend herself from attacks by people or animals."
"We can hide her. If we send someone back with lan habas the instant we get to the Spires, she won't be alone more than three days."
"She won't be alone at all. Because I will stay with her."
"We should have sent her with the Sword of the South," Blays muttered. "But I kept thinking she'd get better."
"There is no hand waiting to pull us from the depths of our troubles," Gladdic said. "No guarantee of progress, nor better days. The Eiden Rane may be the only one of us whose fate is not the slow disintegration of the body and mind."
"With inspirational sermons like that, I can see how you went so far in the priesthood." Blays shook Naran's hand. "We'll send someone for you as soon as we get there. If you haven't heard from us in a week, you should probably assume Bel Ara got fed up with our endless problems and fed us to the goats."
"I will find my way," Naran said. "Good luck on yours."
Without ceremony, Blays, Gladdic, and Bek hiked up into the hills. The heat of the day glowed from the rocks. If not for the steady wind blowing off them, it would have been unbearable. At the top of the first ridge, Blays stopped to look back the way they'd come in, shielding his eyes. Naran and Volo were seated beneath a tree. Blays had a sudden pang that he wouldn't see them again.
He turned around and hiked on.
~
He soon learned that Bek wasn't much for talking. Gladdic certainly was, but Blays was not especially interested in hearing what he had to say, as Gladdic seemed afflicted with such an exuberance of bile that he couldn't open his mouth without disgorging a stream of it.
This was unfortunate, as it left Blays alone with his thoughts. Such as the idea that Ara might not know how to reverse Dante's condition. Or that she would claim there was no way to reverse it. In that case, where could they go to find that knowledge? Bressel, Narashtovik, or the Houkkalli Islands would be the usual bets. All were centers of scholasticism, and he knew exactly where they were.
But these were also places where lich-craft was, as far as he knew, unknown, and hence would be unlikely to know fuck-all about it. What was the alternative? Race off in a random direction in the hopes that whoever they ran into over there would know what to do? How much time would they have to search for answers before the White Lich just sort of consumed everything?
Blays had a strong tan going, but he'd have been burned into cinders if not for Gladdic's regular applications of ether, which restored their skin to its previous state. Night fell and they marched on, aided by a floating ball of light and the nether that kept their muscles fresh.
They slept through the deepest part of the night, only allowing themselves a few hours before continuing on. A summer storm blew in around noon. The hiss of the rain on the rocks was a welcome break from the heat, but it was not so welcome that the rocks were now all slick and wet, happy to fling the three occupiers down their skin-removingly hostile slopes. Steam rose like a pot of boiling water.
In a way, the wet landscape reminded him of the Fingers of Pocket Cove, except the Hell-Painted Hills didn't even have moss and shrubs to break up the monotony of blank rock. It was odd that his memory of the Fingers made him smile, considering the time in question had involved dodging three-foot-long centipedes while he'd been completely naked as part of a bizarre nether-training exercise. Yet it seemed as though the addition of time transformed many of the bitter periods of his life into his better memories.
Such as when he and Dante had first fled Bressel while being chased by lunatic Arawnites. Not so much fun when it had been taking place, but in hindsight, they'd mostly just caught and eaten a lot of fish and nothing particularly bad had come of it. Or when the two of them had tried to convince the maddeningly obstinate norren to quit fighting each other only for those same norren to trick them into that ridiculous quest for the Quivering Bow, manipulating him and Dante into freeing their enslaved friends. The ruse had infuriated Blays at the time, but he now found it hilarious, and related the story wherever he went to gales of laughter. He was already beginning to regard the deceit that had brought them to the Plagued Islands in the same way.
Easy times were pleasant in the moment, but left little dent on the memory. It was the times when you struggled that seemed most vibrant in retrospect, the most important toward the telling of the story of your life.
Yet they could only be good if you came out the other side intact and well. Blays wasn't sure that this time would be the same.
Late that day, the seven towers of the Silent Spires speared toward the pregnant clouds. And none too soon; all three of them were drenched, nauseous from their time in the Hills, and eagerly anticipating the moment when they could collapse. Someone from the towers must have been watching them—Blays supposed they had damn little else to do—because their trio was met at the border of grass and trees by a host of soldiers bearing long spears.
The soldiers parted, Bel Ara striding past them, the hem of her robes dampened by the rainy grass. Normally, she carried a solid dose of smugness around with her, which was probably why Dante liked her. And Blays might have as well, except that being married seemed to clear your vision toward those who were no longer potential partners, allowing you to see in great detail the foibles you would otherwise blind yourself to as you pursued them for romantic or sexual ends.
But on that afternoon, Ara didn't look smug at all. She looked like she was trying not to look scared.
She stopped across from Bek. "Bek? I never thought I'd see you again."
The knight bowed at the waist. "As always, Bel Ara, I can't tell if you would consider that a good thing or a bad thing."
"Let's just leave it as a thing." She turned her fetching face to Gladdic, then Blays. "Where's the other warlock? The one who's so fond of demanding answers he doesn't deserve?"
"We should get out of the rain," Blays said. "We have a lot to talk about."
"Are you afraid of the sun getting sun on you? The wind getting wind on you? What makes you afraid of a little wetness?"
"Dante was taken by the Eiden Rane. Who turned him into a lesser lich."
Ara's gaze drifted down and to the left, then snapped back to Blays. "You saw this yourself? You didn't, did you? Otherwise, you wouldn't be alive."
"We weren't there, but Dante has ways of communicating with us across distances. Warlock things, you know how it is. He told us what was happening. We
haven't heard from him since. That was four days ago."
She reached out to the side, but there was nothing for her to hold on to. "Locked into slavery at the hands of the tyrant you were trying to cast down. And made to love every second of it. The Eiden Rane is a sadist."
Seeing her aggrievement, Blays felt mildly bad for hitting her with it so bluntly. Then again, she'd asked for it. "The good news is Gladdic can tell that Dante's still alive. Again, warlock things."
Ara was already composing herself. "How did Dante let himself be taken?"
"I was meaning to ask the White Lich the same thing next time I saw him, but we haven't bumped into each other yet. For all I know, the lich snuck into Aris Osis, and knowing that Dante can't stand to lose anything, promptly challenged him to a getting-kidnapped contest."
"You speak nonsense like it tastes good on your tongue. But you were right about one thing. Let's get out of the rain."
She brought Blays and Gladdic to the tower they'd been staying in before. For reasons Blays didn't understand, which probably meant they were arbitrary customs, Bek had to go to a different tower. Servants brought them dry jabats. They changed, then met Ara on the balcony. She insisted on hearing everything that had happened since their return to the swamps, which Blays found somewhat hypocritical. He didn't say this out loud, what with depending on her help and all, but he made a mental note to say as much to Gladdic later, if only so that bit of cleverness wouldn't be lost to the world.
After a few minutes, they finished their story. Ara clasped her hands in front of her waist. "Is that everything?"
"I think it's too much as it is," Blays said.
She scooped a small glass flowerpot from the balcony and hurled it at him. He tucked his chin and covered his ear, the pot bouncing from the top of his shoulder and shattering against the wall.
As she bent to pick up another pot, Blays closed on her, threading his right arm through hers and bending it behind her back. "Hey! What is wrong with you?"
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