"Good effort," Dante said. "We'll try again tomorrow."
He forced a smile and went to warm himself on the other side of the campfire.
Blays plunked down beside him. "Want some unsolicited advice?"
"The question answers itself."
"Right." Blays stood back up. "Continue to enjoy your failure, then. I know it's your favorite thing."
Dante exhaled raggedly. "Let's get this over with."
"You know why you can't teach them? Because you're too good at this."
"Of course. Just like how I can't run, because I'm too fast. Or breathe, because I'm too breathe-y."
"You definitely don't have to worry about being too thinky. How long did it take you to learn to throw the shadows around?"
Dante shrugged. "A few weeks."
"And that was before you met Cally. You were self-taught. You weren't even using blood yet. And you were still better than these two, who are using blood, and who've both had formal instruction in the past. You know how I had to learn? By practicing on a beach for months on end. And acquiring the help of a magic sea snail. Even then, I'm still terrible at everything but shadowalking. Learning the nether was so easy for you that you don't understand how hard it is for everyone else."
"So what should I be doing? Going back to the basics?"
"Beats me. You're the all-powerful sorcerer. I'm merely the guy who can throw just enough nether over your eyes for you to think a sunny day is overcast."
Dante spent the morning ride ruminating on this. By sundown, he'd come to the conclusion that he couldn't possibly do any worse by his students than he currently was, so what did it matter if he wasted a day or three exploring the fundamentals? Following dinner, he took Sorrowen and Raxa around to the other side of the fire, allowing them a small measure of privacy from the rangers.
"Tonight," Dante said, "I want to see how you summon the nether."
Raxa gave him a blank look. "You've seen us do that dozens of times."
"So tonight will make that dozens and one. The sooner you do as I say, the sooner we can move on to something more interesting."
Doing nothing to disguise her annoyance, she jabbed her shoulder, then brought the nether to her. Dante had her repeat this process three times, then made Sorrowen do the same.
Dante folded his arms. "If someone were to chop you two up and sew the best pieces into one person, you might make a decent nethermancer. Raxa, you rip the nether to you like you're tearing up weeds. When it hits you, it's raging like a flood. It's no wonder you have such a hard time controlling it, and that you use so much of it. As for you, Sorrowen, you're standing about like a helpless father waiting for his nine children to calm themselves down. You barely touch the shadows before putting them to use."
Sorrowen blinked. "But Brother Borrowen told us to let it flow like water."
"Then Brother Borrowen needs a dunce cap and a long sit in the corner. The nether may flow like water, but as a nethermancer, you're supposed to channel it. Like a funnel, or a canal."
Following his criticism, they were both staring at him like he'd passed out with his pants down.
"This is good," Dante said. "Because it means there's something to fix."
He cut his arm—on a whim, this time he chose his right one—and called to the nether, focusing it like water through a sluice or light through a lens.
"Not too fast," he said. "But not too slow. It might help to think of it as something alive. A dog of war, maybe. It has to be ready to obey you—but it also has to be hungry."
He released the nether, then brought it back, repeating the cycle until his students looked eager to try it for themselves.
Dante smiled. "Show me what you've got."
Sorrowen stepped forward before Raxa could move, face hardened with concentration. He held his hand aloft, fingers bent like winter-stripped branches. Shadows dripped from the nearby trees. At first they came slowly, as was his style, but then he bared his teeth, the cords in his neck flexing as he wrenched the nether to his hand. The shadows lurched forward, flinging themselves to his curled fingers.
"A little rough," Dante said.
Blays nodded, adopting a sage expression. "Then again, in a long relationship with the nether, it's good to keep things interesting."
Sorrowen repeated the drill time and again. The shadows started out reluctant to flow quickly, shuddering in resistance, but got a little smoother with each attempt. The practice was as basic as it got, yet Sorrowen was heartened by his obvious progress. When his strength gave out and the shadows refused to budge, he swore, kicking at the snow.
Dante jerked his chin at Raxa. "You're up."
She shook her hands as if to flick mud from them, then bent her knees, lifted her chin, and called to the darkness. The nether poured into her like an avalanche. Eyebrows flickering in irritating, she dismissed it, then tried again. Again, the shadows threatened to overwhelm her.
Blays scratched his jaw. "When we duked it out in the shadows, you came at me with a knife. Is that what you normally use?"
"You carry a sword when you want people to know you've got a sword," she said. "But a knife cuts just as deep—and no one knows you've got one until it's too late."
"Oh, I love all blades. But knives aren't about power, are they? They're about exerting the right pressure at the right moment."
She stared at him a moment, then held up both hands, palms out. A hazy cylinder of shadows swirled around her. This time, she seemed to be holding them back, damming the nether up through strength of her will. Arms trembling, she continued to hold it at bay, huffing steam as she sought some unseen sign. At last, finding what she was looking for, she nodded to the fringes of the light. A stream of blackness flowed toward her, forming a ball between her hands.
When she released it, Dante clapped his hands in triumph. "Do that every time, and you'll be a sorcerer before the year's out."
She tried again. A little shaky this time, but her third effort was better. Each time she repeated the summoning, she got a little faster and a little smoother. When at last the nether failed her, she grinned and stalked around the snow, walking it off like a tournament contestant who's just performed a great feat of strength.
"Now we're getting somewhere," Dante said. "Too bad we don't have anything to celebrate with."
"Yes," Blays said. "Too bad."
"Don't tell me you brought rum!"
"Okay, I won't tell you. The substance I'll be drinking with Raxa and Sorrowen is just…brown water. That makes us laugh too much and talk too loud. Must have come from a magical spring, this stuff."
He went to his saddlebags and fetched a leather skin that proved to be almost but not quite full of one of the Citadel's better batches. They sat by the fire and passed it around, sharing it with the rangers, who couldn't have been happier if Blays had discovered a pot of gold.
An hour later, Sorrowen poked at some embers with a stick, the brightening fire making his face look as stark as the canyons of the Collen Basin. "Is it true what they say?"
"Knowing 'they,'" Blays said, "whatever it is, it's a bloody lie."
"Then you didn't see the afterworld?"
"Oh, that? Yeah, we visited. Nice place."
Raxa had been staring into the fire. Hearing this, she swung her head about with drunken commitment. "You mean it's real? The hills and the stars and all that shit?"
Blays waved a hand about. "Oh, there's something beyond this. But as usual, the priests were completely wrong about everything."
Dante lifted his eyebrows at Raxa. "You don't believe in the afterworld?"
Raxa snorted. "Why would I? Everything the priests and kings have ever told us is a lie."
"Do you believe in the gods?"
"Have you seen any of them for yourself?"
"I might have."
She put her hand on her knee, pushing herself straighter. "You serious? Blays, pass that bag over here. I can't deal with this."
Blays complied. She swigge
d. Dante had always assumed there were nonbelievers out there somewhere. People were too different and too many for them all to believe the same thing; if you searched long enough, you could probably find someone who insisted the sun rose in the west. Even so, he couldn't recall ever having met a denier in person.
Then again, at that moment, he'd had enough rum that he couldn't recall much of anything.
Sorrowen licked his lips. "So what's it…like?"
"At first, you don't even know you're there," Dante said. "Then you get to live as you please for as long as you like. And after that…well, nobody knows."
Blays pointed at the boy. "Except all those dead people."
Sorrowen frowned, giving Dante a sidelong glance. "If that's what it's really like, then why does the priesthood tell us it's something completely different?"
"We didn't know," Dante said. "We've just been teaching what we were taught. What the Cycle tells us."
"Now that you know the truth, are you going to tell people about it?"
Blays laughed. "Can the High Priest of Arawn be a heretic to his own church?"
"Others have done it," Dante said. "It didn't go so well for Lyle." He reached for the skin full of rum. "Some day, I'll tell the people what we saw in the beyond. But they have to be made ready for it first. Their belief is who these people are. Challenge their identity with a new truth, and they'll hang you for it."
The following morning, Dante declared that it was time for Raxa to learn as much Mallish as she could. As they traveled, he, Blays, and Sorrowen spent hours pointing things out and naming them. Raxa didn't look thrilled, but she repeated the words dutifully. Seeing her dedication, Dante was almost but not quite convinced that she intended to hold up her end of the bargain, and that it wasn't just a ruse to find the right opportunity to murder him and Blays and skip back to Narashtovik. When they broke to eat lunch and swap horses, he started to teach her to read Mallish, too.
As night came, and they finished making camp, Sorrowen and Raxa resumed their training with an eagerness they hadn't shown since the first night. Dante spent a few minutes having them summon, dismiss, and resummon the nether. They still needed plenty of refinement, but each night of instruction was as precious as a gem. If they practiced their channeling as they practiced putting the nether to use, they could build two skills at once.
He got them started on intercepting bolts of nether again, but they were as clumsy as before. Even with their improved channeling, they were going to run out of strength before they'd had much chance to make any progress. He needed to teach them control, and then come back to interception.
"New plan," he said. "It's time for you two to learn to raise the undead. And do it right this time." He fished a few dead mice from his outer pocket.
Sorrowen gawked. "You…carry them with you?"
"It's easier than killing new ones every time I need them. Besides, in cold like this, they don't even smell."
He stamped down a patch of snow and laid out the bodies. Rather than having them squander their limited shadows trying and failing to raise the mice, Dante brought them to their feet with a wave of his hand. The rodents stared up at him, eyes as dark as the mouths of fish.
"Sorrowen. Bring the nether close. Be ready to use it."
Feeling the boy summon the shadows, Dante reached into the nearest mouse, locating the nether within it. To this, he attached a cord—or perhaps a pipe—of fresh nether, extending it outside the mouse.
"Connect yourself to it," Dante said. "You'll be taking it from me. Slow and easy. No need to rush."
Sorrowen nodded once. Extending a thread-thin tendril of nether, he attached it to the hanging cord, tested the link, then thickened it. As its diameter matched that of the cord, it winked out.
"I got it!" Sorrowen beamed, thrusting up a fist. "I—"
He staggered, collapsing on his side in the snow.
Dante ran to him, dropping into a slide. "Sorrowen? Are you all right?"
"Ohh." Sorrowen rocked on his back, pressing a palm to his forehead. Dante drove the nether into his body, but at a glance, there didn't seem to be anything wrong. Sorrowen sat up, laughing, and pointed at the mouse. "I can see through its eyes! Does it always make you this dizzy?"
Dante grinned. "Before you push yourself too far, try to—"
The acolyte jumped to his feet. Eyes flying wide, he spun and vomited into the snow.
Blays shook his head at Dante. "Why is there always so much barfing when you're around?"
While Sorrowen was recovering, Dante prepared a second mouse. Transferring it to Raxa took a few tries, but learning from Sorrowen's experience, she'd seated herself, and only needed a short rest to acclimate herself to seeing through the dead creature's eyes.
Sorrowen, still a little green-looking, lowered his chin, bent his brows, and ordered his mouse forward. The creature dragged itself ahead, veering badly to the left, a single paw gripping into the snow while the others spasmed and kicked at nothing. A second paw found its way, followed by the remaining pair. Dante offered snippets of advice as Raxa manipulated her mouse, whispering to herself as she learned the basics of its command.
Within an hour, the two of them were able to make the mice run in whatever direction they liked. At a moment when the both of them had taken a step back to regard their little charges, Dante called them over to him.
"When people think of sorcery, they imagine raging fireballs. Hammers of force smashing down castle walls. A sorcerer striding into an enemy army and striking down soldiers by the thousands until their blood flows around his ankles.
"The nether can make you look like an avatar of the gods come to deal out wrath and ruin. But don't let yourself get so drunk on the vision of crushing and smiting that you forget the range of your power. Skilled nethermancers are more than a sledgehammer. They're also a scalpel. The nether can be used to solve any trouble you fall into—as long as you have the wit and imagination to put it to use."
He crouched down and held out his palm. Sorrowen's mouse scurried into it. Dante lifted the undead rodent up to eye level. "When you're alone in Bressel, and the enemy's closing in on you, remember that it doesn't always take lightning and hellfire to save your life. Sometimes, all it takes is a mouse."
The two students nodded. Dante set them back to their practice. They wandered into the edge of the firelight, following their mice.
"Smart advice," Blays said. "Who'd you steal it from?"
Dante laughed, but a flicker of doubt stirred in his chest. It was a thin line between wisdom and idiocy. Had Cally always been as confident as he sounded? Or had he been exploring as he went along, unsure of the truth of his statements until he'd seen his apprentices prove him right?
The next day, as they crossed a ridge, a band of norren hunters watched them pass, but made no effort to approach. After Raxa's lunchtime reading lesson, which was progressing slowly, Dante took a look at his collection of mice and decided that they were starting to look a little haggard and gruesome. He used the nether as a fine blade, flensing the creatures down to their bones.
That night, Dante instructed Sorrowen to use his mouse to build a block of snow, and for Raxa to have hers try to climb a shrub.
"Too easy," Sorrowen declared as his skeletal mouse packed a final paw-load onto the foot-wide cube of snow it had been raising and brushed the surface smooth. "That's barely any harder than making them walk."
Easy as the boy thought it was, Dante asked him to repeat the task until he ran out of strength. Smiling smugly, Sorrowen complied. Raxa had some initial difficulty getting the mouse's tiny claws to wrap around twigs, but by night's end, she had it ascending and descending the shrub with the grace of…well, certainly not a squirrel, but possibly a confused cat or a young child.
They entered a snowy plain broken up by boulders of dark rock. The steady wind kept the snow shallow, allowing them to increase their pace. Night came, bringing a sudden snowstorm. They huddled in the lee of a boulder.
"
Last night, you proved you could build a block," Dante told Sorrowen. "Tonight, I want you to build a model of the Sealed Citadel. Including the outer wall."
Sorrowen's eyes darted from side to side. "Are you kidding? Sir?"
"What could possibly be funny about using a mouse skeleton to build a mouse-sized snow fort? Besides, you said your last task was too easy. I'd hate for you to get bored."
Grumbling, Sorrowen motioned his mouse to start gathering snow. Raxa got a good chuckle at this.
"Can't forget you," Dante said to her. "As for your task, you get to write out the first page of the Cycle. In Mallish. Using your mouse."
Her mirth died on her face. He provided her with a quill, an inkpot, and a palimpsest, then spread open the Cycle. The mouse hoisted the quill over its shoulder and began to write in shaky, uneven letters.
Dante watched until he got bored, then went to check on Sorrowen. The boy was having the mouse use a spoon to shovel snow faster. The Citadel's keep was already in place, though Sorrowen was neglecting its finer details. Dante watched the mouse pile up the foundation for the outer walls.
He returned to Raxa and leaned over the mouse scratching at the parchment with a quill big enough to be its pike. "How's it going?"
"I spilled the ink twice," she said flatly. "Then I thought, Maybe I should pack the inkpot down into the snow. So I did that. I haven't spilled it since."
"Excellent. Sounds like you're making real progress. And what about your alphabet?"
Raxa gestured to her pages. She'd written it down several times, in increasingly smaller and neater script. It still looked like children's writing, but considering she was copying a foreign language through the medium of a deceased mouse, her effort was deceptively skilled.
He kneeled next to her. "Are you enjoying yourself?"
Raxa squinted at him. "Would you be? I get why we're doing this, but that doesn't make it any less tedious."
The Cycle of Galand Box Set Page 114
