The broken shaft pushed free from his chest and rolled to the side, landing on the hide of the dead beast. The arrowhead was a cruel wedge of shaved bone. Dante sat back. While the nether was something you guided and channeled, he now saw that the ether was a process that unfolded on its own, like the blooming of a flower. Or better yet, like a magical book where, if you opened it to the page you wanted, it would begin to read itself.
Carefully, he pointed the ball of ether down toward the arrowhead in Blays' stomach. The light sank toward the wound, entering it. Though Dante didn't need to guide the healing process, while it was ongoing, he did have to continue to maintain the ether itself.
This maintenance was demanding—almost frighteningly so. Fresh sweat beaded his temples and chest. His hands quivered. He could feel the core of his being wearing out, ready to collapse on itself. Already, he was nearly done for, the ball of light evaporating down to a hazelnut, then to a delicate firefly.
Dante was shaking like a leaf in a storm. But with a calm mind, he rode the winds. And hung on to the light.
With a fleshy pop, the second arrowhead extruded from Blays' gut.
A pall of silence rolled across the swamp. It was the silence of the space between breaths, the silence of the moment after creation, the silence of a mind gone still in the wake of exhaustion.
Blays coughed himself upright. He spat blood, looking impressed at the volume of mess he'd created, then grinned at Dante. "That was just a joke? 'Oh yeah, sorry about you bleeding to death, but I'm totally out of nether.' You asshole!"
Dante tried to smile, but he couldn't seem to feel his face. The world was tilting. As he fell, his last thought was the hope that he wouldn't roll into the water.
~
A bird was screeching like it had just been robbed in the street. He woke piece by piece: first his ears to the cry of the bird; then his nose to the smell of mud and flowers and decay; then the sweet ache of his muscles and the jabbing pain in his legs.
He was lying in a hammock suspended a hand's span above the ground on an island barely twenty feet across. He didn't see the canoe anywhere. The other hammocks were strung between the voluminous trees, but there was no sign of Blays or Volo. His shredded jabat had been replaced with an older and shabbier one.
He made a tentative gesture toward the nether. It responded cheerfully. Still feeling thoroughly banged up, Dante made a second pass at the worst pains in his chest and legs. There were a few shallow grooves in his left leg, but he no longer looked like a grub-riddled log.
He stilled his mind. Nothing came. Refusing to let any annoyance or emotion of any kind disturb the pond-like placidity of his thoughts, he stared into his palm. A light glowed within it.
Focusing on a single divot on his leg, he envisioned how it had once looked. And willed the ether to make reality match his memory. His skin tingled. The divot began to fill, but stopped short of disappearing entirely. Yet he felt like he still had a hold on the ether. Why couldn't he finish the healing? Because he lacked the skill? Or because the further removed in time an object got from its ideal state, the less the ether could do to restore it? Maybe it was—
Something crashed down from the tall blue-leafed tree in the middle of the island. Dante shot to his feet and reached for his sword, but it was no longer hanging from his hip. Blays dangled from a branch, swinging back and forth before letting go and landing in a crouch.
"You're awake," Blays said.
"You're stating the obvious."
"In that case, you smell bad and you're as pale as a fish's ass. You all right? There was enough blood on top of that lizard to fill a keg of really bad beer."
Dante took a few steps around, bending his arms and legs. "I appear to be remarkably well, considering I was partially devoured twice."
"As nice as it is to have anti-insect paste, what these people really need is something to ward off the enormous lizards."
"Where is Volo, anyway?"
"Taking a peek ahead. We're starting to run low on a few little things. Like food."
"We're low on rations? How long was I asleep?"
"Hmm." Blays did some counting on his fingers. "Well, first there was the first day. Then there was the second day. I was never much for schooling, but I'd say that makes two days."
After the chaos of the encounter, Dante found the loss of time wasn't particularly disturbing. "What was that thing? The lizard?"
"Volo called it a swamp dragon."
"Interesting. The only problem with that is that dragons aren't real."
"Then apparently you got your ass kicked by your own imagination. I understand the act of getting swallowed can cloud your thinking, but did it ever occur to you to try killing it?"
"I did. It was resistant to nether."
"Like the kappers?"
"The kappers seemed impervious. This was more like I had to hit it with ten times the force to do one-tenth the damage. I've never run into anything like it."
"This reminds me." Blays' pack was hanging from a branch of a tree. He opened it and retrieved a cloth-wrapped item a foot long and two inches in diameter. "Volo said you should have this."
"What's this?"
"Swamp dragon penis."
Dante dropped it on the ground, skipping back a step. He swore. "Is it actually a penis?"
"It's a horn. Volo said that anyone who kills one of them should take it and carry it around. Sign of courage and all that. Supposed to protect you from evil, too. So be careful not to burn yourself with it."
Dante bent to pick it up. The horn was black and slightly tapered, coming to a point at one end. "Someday when I'm looking up at this mounted on my wall, I'll smile and remember the day we finally left this awful place."
He sat in his hammock, turning the horn in his hands. He brought a tendril of nether to him and probed the horn's surface, meaning to see if he could determine how it had shrugged off his attacks—and, with any luck, discover how to nullify its defenses on the chance they ran into another lizard.
The probe sank a fraction of an inch into the surface before coming up against an unyielding screen. Blank. Smooth. Matte. But undeniably nether, coating the horn from one end to the other.
The shadows were stuck fast. Like they were frozen. He could neither withdraw them from the horn nor add to them. That appeared to explain the animal's toughness: this embedded nether was deflecting anything that came at it. You could wear it away if you struck the same spot hard and often enough, but the amount of force required would exhaust most nethermancers before they broke through.
He was still examining the horn when Blays croaked like a frog, indicating a boat was inbound. Dante moved to the north end of the island. Volo paddled toward them, bringing the canoe up onto a muddy landing.
She hopped out the front and gawked at Dante. "You're a sorcerer!"
"You're deluded," he told her. "You must have hit your head during the fighting and mistaken the stars you saw for magic."
"I know what I saw. You blew a hole right through their ship!"
"They hit a rock."
"When Mr. Pendelles swam to you, he had two arrows sticking out of him. When I helped him get you into the canoe, he was fine. And so were you—but there was blood everywhere." Her young face twisted with anger and hurt. "I'm not stupid. If you wanted me to not see, you should have blinded me with your sorcerer's tricks. And if you can't let me know the truth, you should kill me right now."
She stood across from him, feet apart, empty-handed. Dante grimaced. "I need you to swear that this secret stays with you."
"What right do you have to tell me what to do with my own knowledge?"
"I attained that right when I entrusted you with our safety—and our ability to complete our mission. If you have any honor in you, swear you'll keep this secret."
"A smart person once told me honor is just something that powerful people use to stop you from acting in your own interests."
"In that case, we part ways here. Since you
were paid to get us to Dara Bode, we'll take the canoe." He squelched through the muck toward the boat.
"Fine!" Volo said. "I swear to keep it secret. Bloody scales, do all sorcerers talk like you?"
"Like what?"
"Like you rule the world."
"Pretty much," Blays said. "Although he makes something of an art of it."
Volo gave Dante a quizzical look. "How many people can you kill at a time?"
Dante rolled his eyes. "That depends on how many stupid questions they ask."
"It's a lot, isn't it? Why would an investor send someone like you to chase down some dirty old sea captain? Aren't you worth much more than he is?"
Dante glanced at Blays. Blays said, "You're right. That wouldn't make sense." He lifted a finger into the air. "But if we're not soldiers, what makes you think the sea captain is really a sea captain? There are mysteries at work here, Volo. Mysteries within mysteries. All shall be revealed when the time is right."
She regarded him solemnly. "Is this a test sent to stretch my understanding? To remind me that what I'm told—even what I see—isn't always the truth?"
"Could be. That's all part of the mystery, isn't it?"
"What say we discuss this on the way to the village?" Dante said. "I'm starving."
Blays tilted his head. "We're still doing this?"
"Think it's a bad idea?"
"Some might say that being attacked by a dragon, a squadron of soldiers, and a swarm of carnivorous fish might be the gods' way of telling you it's a good time to turn back."
"We're alive. And we're not holding back anymore. We can do this."
They packed up their things and shoved off from the island. Dante killed a dragonfly and sent it whirring ahead of them. Compared to the moths and beetles he was used to dealing with, it was as nimble as a falcon.
"The fish that attacked you," Volo said. "Ziki oko. World-eaters. That's why you stay out of the water. Well, that's one of the reasons."
Dante gazed down into the brown murk. "Are they common?"
"Wherever blood is shed. So you might be seeing a lot of them."
His airborne scout spotted a number of canoes and rafts, but nothing that resembled a patrol. Within three miles, sleepiness draped itself over Dante like a soaked cloak. He sat up straight, arching his back to ward it off, but his body was still recovering.
"Dante." Time had passed; someone was shoving his shoulder. "We could be in trouble."
He swung upright. They were emerging from the shadow of the trees into a sunny clearing. In its center, dozens of rafts were lashed together. Green crops grew from the water. Four earthen mounds had been raised up, one of them supporting a formidable stone tower.
It had the look of a thriving little community. Yet the only sounds on the air were those of the swamp: the frogs, the bugs, and the birds.
Dante brought the nether to him; it came easily, sheathing his fingers. Two concentric rings of wooden posts encircled the village, extending two feet from the water. As Volo approached them, Dante made out a mesh net stretched between each pair of posts. Volo came to a gate, opened it, and paddled inside. An inner set of posts and nets still separated them from the settlement.
"What's this?" Blays leaned over to close the gate behind them. "Keep the fish out?"
"The outer net keeps the bad fish out. The inner keeps the good fish in. And the space between is filled with tigerfish."
Dante caught a glimpse of something orange and whiskery drifting away from the boat. Volo came to the second gate and ferried them inside. To left and right, low dirt walls enclosed paddies of green stalks sporting a handful of oversized, teardrop-shaped leaves. The earthen walls were flat on top and wide enough to walk down, running to a wooden dock fronting the collection of rafts.
A few trees provided shade from the sun, which was otherwise plentiful, making the settlement smell less miasmic than the swamp around it. Volo brought them to the dock and tied up the canoe. They got out, sandals thumping on the boards.
On the other side of the dock, bodies bobbed gently in the water.
Others were sprawled on rafts, limbs trailing over the sides. Two hundred at a glance. Dante ran across the dock to the nearest of them, grabbing the woman's jabat and heaving her up onto the boards. Water streamed from her pale face. Her eyes weren't blinking and her skin was the same temperature as the water. A deep gash across her stomach threatened to spill her cooling organs across the dock.
Volo slapped her hand to her forehead. "I was just here!"
Dante scanned the wide clearing. "How long ago? Did you see anything out of the ordinary?"
"Such as a massacre taking place? It was fine! They were working! Fishing!"
Blays put a hand on her shoulder. "Did you know any of them?"
"I knew all of them." Her reddened face crumpled. "I knew…"
She broke into tears, sinking to the dock. Dante watched for a moment. Aware there was nothing he could do for her, he went to the bodies instead. He'd seen enough massacres to know that there were often a few survivors, but most of these people had been dumped into the water. Even if they hadn't bled to death, they would have drowned.
After he'd been investigating the bodies for a few minutes, Volo recovered enough to help the search. They went from raft to raft. Nothing but corpses. The front of the stone tower hung open. Dante sent a dragonfly inside. Blood spattered the first and second floor. On the top floor, bodies lay in a heap against the back wall.
Dante went up to check them in person while the others kept watch on the grounds. The corpses were women and children. No survivors.
He returned to the sunshine of the late morning, wiping his nose and eyes, as if that would cleanse them of the sight and smell of the blood.
"Whole village," he said.
Blays nodded. "Soldiers?"
"Animals would have chewed them up. Dragged them off. Had to have been people."
"Injuries almost look animal, though. All the puncture wounds."
"Spears," Dante said. "They don't have a lot of iron here. Even their soldiers were using bone-tipped arrows."
"And what about the ripped-up guts?"
"That I don't know. Maybe we should ask—"
"Over here!" Volo shouted. "Help!"
They ran toward her, jumping from raft to raft. She kneeled inside a shack, hand on the back of a young boy, his eyes staring blankly. He looked to be about twelve, but every Tanarian looked younger to Dante.
The boy said nothing as Dante checked him over. He showed a few scrapes and bruises, but nothing to be concerned about. Volo spoke with him in soft, quick words, mixing Mallish with a local dialect. Within a minute, he was making shy eye contact with the three of them.
"His name is Tap," Volo said. "I knew his family."
Dante gazed down at the boy. "Do you know who did this?"
The boy glanced up quickly, then spoke in a soft, worn-out voice. "The soldiers. They came in their boats and they told us to gather on the dock. They wanted to know, they asked, Who killed the others? But nobody knew what they meant. The soldiers, they kept asking who did it. And the people kept telling them they didn't know. Then one of the soldiers said…" He lowered his eyes, thinking. "He said, 'This is punishment for your treason.' That's when they started to…"
Tap choked up. Dante gave him a few moments to recover. "How did you escape?"
"I hid under the water. I breathed through a reed we use when we're spearing fish."
"Was there anyone else with you?"
The boy shook his head.
"Let's get him out of here," Dante said. "There's nothing more to see here."
Volo swung her head to the side. "You want to leave?"
"No, I want to get the food we came for, and then leave."
"They butchered these people. We have to find them! You can kill them!"
"And then what? Another group of soldiers is sent to slaughter another village in retaliation?"
"This isn't fair. These people
did nothing." She advanced on him, jabbing her finger at his chest. "They died because of what we did!"
Dante squeezed his eyes shut. At that moment, he would have rather taken a swim in a tub full of ziki oko than get roped into another internecine bloodbath, but he had no idea how to express that without sounding like a complete asshole.
"He's right," Blays said. "We've seen this a hundred times. If we go after the culprits, the crown will fall on you like a drunken mountain. These people are dead—and we're going to honor their deaths by not doing anything to get more innocents killed in the name of vengeance."
"But justice is only what we make of it," she said. "If we sail away, what does that make us?"
Dante could only shake his head. Years ago, he'd harbored the same burning wrath she was feeling right now. If he'd been ten years younger, he probably would have gone ripping off into the swamps to track down the killers and chum the waters with their guts.
He told himself that path led only to more ruin. But did he reject it because he was wiser? Or because after he'd risked everything to help the Collen Basin, only for them to turn on him the moment it was convenient, he no longer cared about anyone's troubles but his own?
A tear slipped down Volo's face. "It makes us cowards."
But she went with them nonetheless, gathering food from the village and stashing it in the canoe. As they padded away, the sun shined warmly on the waters and the dead alike.
~
They moved onward with cold purpose, and the grim knowledge that even if they found Naran, and executed Gladdic, they would walk away from Tanar Atain leaving some crimes unavenged.
Dante scouted the way ahead with a small armada of dragonflies and water striders. Following the sinking of the war canoe and the massacre at the village, soldiers prowled the swamps constantly, forcing Volo to backtrack and detour down obscure paths barely wide enough to permit their canoe. As they squeezed through the shrubs, ticks gathered on the tips of the branches and flung themselves at the warm human bodies.
Sometimes when a patrol neared, there were no alternate routes for Volo to flee through, requiring Dante to harvest a solid wall of brambles around the canoe, hiding them until the threat had passed. They kept Tap with them—Volo had a friend in the capital who she wanted to hear the boy's story—but the boy made no trouble. If anything, he was so quiet and pliable Dante worried that the things he'd seen in the village had cored what was vital inside him, leaving behind a shell of flesh that could only sometimes remember that it had once been something more.
The Cycle of Galand Box Set Page 126
