~
They had arranged to meet at the same tree as before, but Dante decided to save time by going right up to the clan. The Walking Fish were arrayed in a thorny grove of trees that had sprung up around an L-shaped pond. Many were working on wooden carvings or birch bark drawings. Others were smoking fish, weaving matting for their yurts, or flaking arrowheads from obsidian.
Noticing the riders, they went still. Kadda strolled forth to meet them. As before, she was flanked by two enormous warriors.
"Back already?" She looked Dante up and down. "Did your god tell you he's changed his mind?"
"No," Dante said. "But yours told me he missed you."
Blays lowered a battered leather sack to the ground, grunting at its weight. He untied its thong and yanked it open. A blue face stared up at Kadda, its skin and beard marbled with white. Though the coloration was phantasmagoric, the muscles, wrinkles, and hair chiseled into the stone looked so lifelike Dante was certain it was about to blink.
"The Face of Dozudo," Dante said. "Unless you lost some other blue marble relic bust you didn't think to tell us about."
She reached out to touch its face, hesitating at the last moment, as if it might sting her. She composed herself and caressed its brow. "Where did you find it?"
"Behind several tons of rock."
"I'm not sure you can trust that wiseman of yours," Blays said. "We found it in a dirty old cave. If he was telling you all that was a 'shrine,' he needs to raise his standards."
"It was buried in a cave?" She eyed Dante. "Then how did you find it?"
He shrugged. "I told you, I'm a prophet. So you should heed my words when I tell you it's time to leave the valley."
"Our agreement. Yes, I'd like to honor it. But I don't have the authority to make these people leave."
"You're the chieftain. Where you go, they'll follow."
Kadda shook her head sadly. "But I'm not the chief. Not anymore."
"Since when?"
"Since you brought back the Face of Dozundo. That means the clan of the Walking Fish has entered a new era. One I'm not worthy enough to guide us through."
Dante clenched his jaw. "I can't say I disagree with your decision to step down. Who'll be replacing you?"
"Everyone knows it's bad luck to choose a new chieftain before spring. You should probably wait to come back until then."
"You can't be serious."
"It's regretful, but there's nothing any of us can do." She took a long breath through her nose. "Ahh, and yet it feels so freeing."
Heat crept up the back of Dante's neck. "You think you're putting one over on me. But when I leave here, the disaster doesn't leave with me. You're only hurting your own people."
"We've seen human kingdoms come and go. We're still here. I think we'll be fine."
Blays exhaled raggedly. "I'd try to shame your honor, but it appears you haven't got any. Maybe it's lost in a shrine somewhere."
"We have to leave," Dante said. "Before I start killing them."
Blays snorted, then caught the look on his face and grew sober. "Okay, we do have to leave. Keep an eye on the valley, ex-chief Kadda. If it starts to do anything strange, such as rip in half, you might want to run."
Nether flickered around Dante's hands, drawn by the overwhelming urge to lash out at their smug, stupid, stubborn faces. That, however, would defeat the purpose of trying to save their lives, so he strode back to his horse instead. As he mounted up, he was tempted to reach into the blue stone statue and melt it into a hard blue puddle. Kadda hadn't held up her end of the deal. She didn't deserve to profit from it.
But a part of him knew that not all of his anger was caused by the norren—much of what he felt was still the fault of the Keeper. Besides which, if he destroyed the Face, he wouldn't only be taking it from her. He'd be taking it from the clan. And future generations lasting for countless years. Ever since the cracking of Arawn's Mill, people had been mortal. Born in order to die. But art could still be eternal. Whatever talent had carved the Face of Dozundo was immortal. The idea of destroying the statue disturbed him worse than the thought of annihilating the clan.
In most circumstances, Blays would have derided him for getting fooled by the norren yet again. But Blays rode in silence. Naran, too, although he was often so stiff and silent he could be mistaken for the masthead of his own ship.
After several miles, Dante slowed his horse to a walk. "We weren't trying to rob them. We weren't trying to hurt them in any way. All we were trying to do was help—and all they did was take advantage of us."
Blays glanced behind them. "How does that make them any different than the Colleners? Or the Kandeans?"
"Is it that hopeless? Trying to make things better? What else are we supposed to do?"
"I suppose we could tend to our own lands. Failing that, there's always rum."
Dante lapsed into silence. Riding along the rim of the valley, his options slowly clarified. He could get lost in his rage, letting it pull him off his path. Or he could forge forward with his work. Do what he could. And pray it was enough.
At the end of the valley, he stopped, gazing northeast. "For now, we'll leave the norren be. There's plenty of other land for me to deal with. Naran, would you mind heading back to Collen?"
The captain smiled. "Am I that useless to you?"
"Just the opposite. We can no longer trust the Keeper. I'd like to have a pair of smart eyes on her."
Naran touched his loon. "I'll let you know if I see anything out of order."
He struck northeast toward the distant city, dust pluming from the hooves of his astie.
"Well," Blays said. "Ready to smash the gods' hard work?"
Dante smiled. "If it offends them, then they shouldn't have left the world unattended for so long."
Having already surveyed his course, he wasted no time riding up the hill to their west. A little past its crown, he dismounted and drew his knife across the back of his arm. Shadows fell on him like rain. He sent them worming into the slope below him.
Rock cracked like thunder. Dust shot into the sky. With a rumble, the western face of the hill slipped loose, shaking the earth as it tumbled downhill.
Dante grinned at the devastation. "Now that was satisfying."
Stones broke, smacking against each other as they sought new resting places. When the dust settled, Dante moved to the edge, inspecting the twenty-foot cliff he'd chiseled into the hill. Troops could still climb it, assuming they had ropes, but wagons wouldn't have any hope. And the Colleners could defend it with a handful of soldiers.
He moved north, raising a spine of naked rock, then ripping open a fault between two massive slabs, creating a ravine as bad as the ones they'd seen in the glacier fields of the Woduns. Though the changes to the landscape were vast, they were slow to deplete his supply of nether. He wasn't building anything. He wasn't doing any fine shaping or meaningful building.
He was destroying. And it was always far easier to destroy than to create.
They slept under the stars. Dante woke angry, but he turned his wrath on the blankness of the land, cracking open cliffs and chasms, lifting ridges and spikes. As soon as Naran was back in Collen, Dante requested a delivery of shaden. A rider delivered the heavy snails to him the following morning. Drawing on the nether collected within the shells, he was able to extend himself five times as far, covering miles per day, leaving a wandering trail of ruin behind him.
He lost himself so deeply in the work that he wouldn't have noticed if a Mallish army had marched up and made camp around him. Blays kept watch, moving from hill to hill as Dante chewed his way north. They didn't talk much and they didn't need to. Sometimes, when Dante paused between assaults on the earth, he'd catch a look on Blays' face that was somewhere between thoughtful and troubled.
Naran reported in via the loon each night. The Keeper didn't seem to be up to any new tricks—either that, or her skullduggery was too subtle for Naran to spot—but a group of Collenese soldiers had run across
a party of Mallish scouts investigating the torn-up king's road. They'd skirmished, but the Mallish had escaped.
Naran had word from Bressel, too. According to his crew stationed there, King Charles had announced that the Collen Basin had once again rebelled against its Mallish lords.
And this time, the Colleners had raised demons from the shadows.
It was, the king said, a staggering heresy. But it would not be allowed to stand. A cohort of ethermancers would be sent to purify the realm—along with a second, larger army. Collen would be back in Mallon's hands before the end of the year.
Hearing this, Dante's jaw dropped. "That's disgusting. I can't believe it."
"That a king would lie to his subjects?" Blays said. "If you find that disillusioning, then I have terrible news about the Falmac's Eve fairies."
"Gladdic's behind this lie. I'm sure of it. Knowing his hunger for glory, he'll insist on leading the new army into Collen. He'll deliver himself right to us."
"I thought he was down in Tanar Atain."
"What if that was a ruse to stop us from looking for him in Bressel?"
Blays frowned. "Then it was an awfully cunning ruse, depending as it did on you raiding a fort while disguised as Gladdic, bumping into one of his underlings who happened to have that piece of intelligence, and then being fed that intelligence despite the underling not having any idea who you really were or why you needed to be fed it. If Gladdic's that clever, we should start sewing our white flags right now."
Gladdic's involvement was speculation. But Mallon's intentions were clear. Dante pushed himself to the brink, gouging trenches, tossing up walls of jagged rock. The effort made him stand tall. The catharsis of devastation had him eager to rise each morning. Hard and clear, the desert sunlight seemed to be trying to show him something. But all it shined on was more wasteland.
Somehow, the wasteland seemed to be enough. Everything fell away except the brightness of the sky, the crispness of the nights, the flaming wall of orange and pink that erupted at the end of each day when the sunset struck the dust in the air.
The land was as empty as a bowl that had never been used. And that seemed to be the point: Dante had nothing except himself, a trusted friend to watch his back, and the job. All of his other troubles were petty nothings. Soon, he would walk away, and his work here would remain in testament to what he had done.
Mile by mile and day by day, they forged north. The Green Mountains sharped on the horizon. Blays stopped to stare, then turned around, taking in the trail they'd left behind them. Parts of it looked like a god had stabbed at the earth. In others, it looked like a dragon was burrowing beneath the soil, with only its horns and spine breaking the surface.
"Know what's funny?" Blays said. "No one's here to see this being created. But the Colleners will see the results. They'll come up with stories to explain it. Some will be true, or close to it, but others will be exaggerated, or just plain made-up."
"Let me guess. You're going to spread stories of your own. Like this was all your work, and while you were slaving to save the realm, I was busy wandering around eating berries and crapping my pants."
"That wasn't my idea. But it might be now." Blays's smile faded. "People who didn't see it happen will tell other people all about it. Kids will grow up with the stories, and they'll only remember the craziest parts, which they'll tell to their kids, who will only remember the craziest parts of that, and so on. A few hundred years from now, the Colleners will all swear to the story of Don Tay the Stone-Shaper, who waved a hand and summoned a thousand-foot wall between Collen and Mallon, booting out the oppressors for all time."
"I really must learn how to live for another few hundred years."
"What if it's always been like that? What if our holy books are just stories of powerful people who did something great long ago? People who got turned into gods by the passage of time—and by us wishing that there was something more for us to follow?"
Dante blinked. "It's a good thing we're in the middle of nowhere, because that might be the most heretical thing I've ever heard."
Blays squinted at the sky. "I suppose we'll never know. So we might as well believe so we don't accidentally piss any of them off."
The next day brought them within five miles of the Green Mountains. The day after that, Dante's loon twinged in the middle of the morning. It was Naran.
Mallon's army was on the march. It would arrive in Collen within three days.
8
Dante ran his hand down his face. "Three days until the Mallish are here? Why couldn't they have waited just one more day?"
"I don't know," Blays said. "But it's probably best to spend our remaining time complaining about it."
"You're right. We've got work to do." He jogged north toward the Green Mountains, leading his horse beside him.
Blays matched pace. "Do you realize you're going the wrong way? Or are we deserting?"
"If we leave this route open, they can use it to strike straight at Collen. We'll be trapped in a siege. It could be months before we're able to make it out."
"We'll be fine. I can shadowalk away at any time. And you can do your little mole act. It's just the entire Collen Basin that'll be trapped."
"At least my nightmares would have plenty of screaming faces to choose from. I'm finishing the barrier. If we ride back as fast as we can, using the nether's help, we'll beat the Mallish to the fort."
"Assuming the Mallish don't pull any forced marches. They probably won't, though. After all, the first thing they taught me in warring school was that it's always safe to make assumptions about the enemy's capabilities."
Dante knew it was a gamble. If the Mallish beat him to the fort he'd set up near the king's road, the Colleners would only have a single sorcerer to their name: the Keeper. The Mallish ethermancers would rip straight through their lines.
But it would be just as much of a gamble to leave a gaping hole in their line of defense. A hole for which they had no backup plan.
All in all, finishing the barrier took nearly a day and a half, along with all the remaining shaden in his possession. As he turned around to gallop south, he reached for the nether, but it was sluggish, reluctant. Of course. He'd been counting on being able to use it to refresh the horses' muscles, allowing them to make as much haste as possible, but somehow, it hadn't occurred to him that he'd use most of it up reshaping the earth.
They pushed their mounts as hard as they dared. By nightfall, they were within a day's ride of the fort where the Colleners intended to make their stand, but the Mallish had advanced within twelve miles. They could be upon the site by the next afternoon.
Cord's scouts had placed the enemy's numbers at five thousand men, including eight hundred cavalry. In sheer numbers, the Colleners were their equal. But the priests alone could tip a battle in favor of the Mallish. If Gladdic was among them, and he summoned his Andrac, it would turn into a slaughter.
Dante made himself awaken by four in the morning. Lighting the way with his torchstone, and then a small ball of ether, he galloped onwards, Blays right beside him. Their haste was for nothing. After sunrise, Naran informed him the Mallish were turning south. Bypassing the fortifications and making for the road along the coast—the road that remained open.
"Is Cord ready?" Dante said.
"She's preparing to march as we speak," Naran said. "Though it remains to be seen whether this is a ruse."
"After last time, the Mallish won't want to rush into another pitched battle. They'll try to slip past our guard and capture Collen while it's undefended."
"And we're sure we can stop them?"
"I think we've traveled together long enough for you to know we're never sure of anything."
Naran made a sound that was almost but not quite a chuckle. "In that case, I look forward to finding out what we're about to do."
~
Dante hunched behind the pale green sagebrush, certain that one pair of eyes among the five thousand passing below would be shar
p enough to spot him. He was perched on a hill on the west end of the Valley of Northern Spirits. Behind and to his right, gray seas churned under slate skies.
A Mallish cavalry vanguard had already claimed the eastern rim of the valley, holding it against the several hundred Colleners who had made a desperate march to cut the enemy off before they could penetrate deep into the basin. The remainder of the Mallish army was on the verge of catching up. Thousands of men in blue shirts gathered on the western rim.
A strip of land directly along the coast was raised thirty feet above the ocean, as well as the valley it sloped down to on the other side. It was here that the coastal road ran. No more than a hundred feet wide, the rise would have made a natural chokepoint, but the Mallish had beaten them there. Already, the infantry was starting to cross, forming two well-ordered columns.
Blays shifted beside him. "Any sign of Gladdic?"
"A few priests. But none that look like a shambling corpse."
"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"
Dante hesitated. "I don't know. But it's what we've got."
The blueshirts marched onward, the stamp of their boots carrying on the damp, cool air. The smell of rotting kelp drifted up from rocky, crab-pocked beaches. Dante waited until the army was strung out along the entire length of the elevated road, then drew his knife and slipped it along his arm.
Blood trickled down his wrist. He dived into the dirt, rushing forward along the strip of land the road lay on. The earth there wasn't a solid mass of rock; rather, it was a mixed jumble of boulders and hard-packed silt and sand. Like the mouth of a river gone dry, then disguised by the deposits left by a few hundred years of oceanic waves.
He found a soft spot near the western bank and shook it loose. The outer wall collapsed into the ocean. Gray-green water rushed forward, sluicing inward. Dante softened the soil in front of it and the water surged on, churning and brown, pummeling all the way through the dirt and into the valley on the other side.
The ocean roared through the gap, ripping it wider. Men were screaming, running for the eastern edge of the strip. Dante opened a second channel there, cutting them off.
The Cycle of Galand Box Set Page 99
