The Cycle of Galand Box Set

by Edward W. Robertson

  Dante only had to travel one floor down to find him. Naran sat alone against the back wall of his cell. He looked as gaunt as a desiccated lemon, his eyes open but unmoving. Cuts scattered his face, arms, chest, and the soles of his feet. They had been precisely drawn.

  "Found him," Dante said in a low rasp. "They've been hurting him."

  Blays' jaw tightened. "Bad?"

  "Nothing that can't be healed."

  "Ah, good. Can I kill them anyway?"

  "No more incidents. If we can't talk or bribe him out, we're grabbing him and getting the hell out of here."

  "That sounds so reasonable," Blays said. "And yet I have the uncontrollable urge to dull my swords on jailers' skulls."

  Dante flapped the beetle back and forth in front of Naran's face, but the captain didn't so much as glance at it. Or blink. Suddenly afraid he was sitting up dead, Dante landed the beetle and confirmed Naran's chest was rising and falling. This accomplished, Dante turned the beetle in a circle, searching for anything small he could pick up, but the cell was swept clean.

  Dante trundled under the door and into a neighboring cell. Those with three or four people inside were scattered with dried reeds to soak up any fluids the cellmates might find objectionable enough to start screaming about. Dante grabbed a shred of reed in the beetle's jaws, laboriously dragging it under the door and back to Naran's cell.

  Naran still hadn't looked over, but Dante was already planning to go so far as to spell out his entire message, then bite Naran's foot with the beetle. He sent the bug out for a second mouthful of reed, then a third. He had almost finished spelling Naran's name when footsteps whispered in the hallway.

  A key chittered in the lock. The door swung outward. A tall man stepped inside, a plain gray robe swirling around his long limbs.

  Gladdic cranked his cadaverous face into a smile and turned it on Naran.

  22

  Less than two miles away, Dante choked on his own spit. "He's right here."

  Blays made a show of looking around the guest room. "Thoughtful of Naran to save us from—"

  "Gladdic! Gladdic!"

  In the cell, Gladdic tucked his hands into his sleeves and gazed down at Naran. "Are you aware that the Ban Naden considers it an offense to keep every promise that one makes?"

  Naran said nothing. Gladdic took a step toward him, lips slightly parted to show the tips of his teeth. "You are receiving spiritual wisdom, sirrah. It is polite to not interrupt. But it is rude to not listen."

  Naran's eyes shifted toward the priest.

  Gladdic waited a moment, then nodded. "Taim grants the measures. Among these is time, and it is a property of time to change things. When one makes a promise to do something, that promise is specific to the context in which it is made. Yet later, when it comes time to fulfill that promise, time will have changed the context in which it is now to be fulfilled.

  "Sometimes, it no longer makes any sense to honor that promise—but men will do so anyway, mistakenly believing that this serves their own sense of honor. The Ban Naden states that this is a falsehood, for time has changed things. Since Taim has purposely allotted time to enact these changes, when you defy time, you defy Taim."

  Gladdic allowed Naran to absorb this, then went on. "Thus, to honor Taim, I do not keep all of my promises. In fact, I scorn those who do. But I kept this promise: I have returned."

  "Nothing has changed." Naran's voice grated like an iron plate dragged over cobbles. "If you wish to get from here to the Isle of Fanshain, that I can tell you how to do. But I can't tell you how they destroyed your demons."

  "You believe this is about me, don't you? You pox-cocked sailor. This is about the world."

  "And your wish to control it."

  Gladdic went still for five long seconds. "How strong is your friendship with them?"

  Naran snorted, eyes flashing. "Do you even understand friendship?"

  "Answer my question or answer to the knives."

  "I consider them my friends. I hope they think the same of me."

  "Then I think we will test this. We shall see that they know where you are, and then see whether they care to come get you. What do you think of this?"

  "I think—"

  As Naran spoke, Gladdic glanced directly at the beetle. Dante severed his connection to it, senses returning to the room in Riza's manor.

  "Gladdic's in the cell with Naran," he said. "They've been torturing him. Trying to get him to tell them how we fought the Andrac. Either Naran doesn't know, or he's got a spine of steel—but he looks broken."

  "Then it's only fair that we break something of Gladdic's. Should we start with his face and work our way down?"

  "The good news is he has no idea we're here. He wants to use Naran to lure us down here, then get the answers out of us."

  "So he can fix up his demons and take a second run at obliterating every native citizen of Collen?"

  "Presumably. We're going to have to think of a way to off him without ruining our efforts to petition the rulership."

  Blays gave him a level look. "The petition's out the window. Gladdic's paranoid enough that if he hears foreigners are speaking to the Drakebane, he'll pop by for a look. When he sees us, he'll bring the throne room down on our heads."

  "So we grab Naran, then take a run at Gladdic?"

  "Or just grab Naran. Either way, we can't tell Riza to call off the petition. It wouldn't make any sense. That means we need to get this done before we get invited in to see the officials."

  "Then it's a good thing it takes less time to grow a new orchard than it does to schedule a meeting with high officials." Dante paced around the room, head tilted up at the ceiling. "So how do we get to Naran?"

  "Well, you can start by telling me anything at all about the place we're breaking into."

  Dante described the general layout of the Bastion of Last Acts. "The Blue Tower shouldn't be that hard to get into. This isn't the High Tower of the Tauren. It's just your ordinary pile of stone. It's surrounded by water, but we could always swim out to it."

  "Swim?"

  "When you're in the water and you move your arms and legs because you suspect drowning might be unpleasant?"

  "Do you suppose a ruler who builds a giant castle surrounded by an even gianter moat isn't going to fill that moat with the plentiful water-horrors these swamps are literally swimming with?"

  "Right. So how do we figure that out? Other than dipping a toe in the water and seeing if we pull back a stump?"

  Blays shrugged. "Rat?"

  "Rat?"

  "Rat."

  "Ah," Dante said. "Rat."

  He called for Ki and received permission to go take the air in one of the island's many courtyards. While he pretended to admire a topiary of pink flowers trimmed in the shape of a thick serpent, he surreptitiously murdered a rodent digging at the base of the house. Once he'd revived it, he sent it scampering to the north end of the island, where it jumped into the water and continued swimming until it reached the ring of earth enclosing the Bastion.

  Dante lowered its head close to the moat. The water was cloudy from all the rain, but he could make out the outlines of several placid, carp-shaped creatures lurking around and not causing any particular trouble. He backed the rodent up a few steps, then ran forward and leaped into the water with a rat-sized splash.

  Through its beady little eyes, the Blue Tower looked as tall as a mountain and as distant as the moon. It churned its paws, holding its nose above the water out of habit.

  Something tugged at it from below. Dante sighed and instructed it to keep going. A few seconds later, another tug jerked it to the side. The water frothed madly. If the rat had been capable of feeling pain, it would be squealing loud enough to make the dead wake up and tell it to shut up.

  Within a minute, its bones were sinking to the bottom, taking Dante's spirits with them. His link to the creature fizzled away.

  "Ziki oko," he muttered. "Swimming's out."

  "Unless you want to try
scaring Gladdic to death with our spooky skeletons." Blays thumbed his chin. "What about the skeletons?"

  "Seeing as our flesh and guts require those skeletons to move around, I think it would be unwise to separate ourselves from them."

  "Not ours. The rat's. Do the fish eat the bones?"

  "They might. It wouldn't surprise me if they'd eat a steak, the bone inside it, and the plate beneath it."

  "Would it be too much trouble to find out?" Blays said. "I mean, if you're not too busy petting the flowers over here."

  It took him a few minutes to locate another rat. Blays kept watch while Dante flensed it. Once it was down to bloody bones, Dante reanimated them and lobbed them into the water. They sank into a dark, burbly confusion. Once it touched bottom, Dante sent it dawdling forward, stumbling over roots and unseen debris.

  An hour later, it nosed up onto the banks of the rampart enclosing the moat and looked around. Seeing no nearby observers, it ran across the dirt and jumped into the ziki oko-filled waters. A few silvery fish darted up to it and took exploratory nips at its flanks and limbs, then drifted away, uninterested.

  "Bones work," Dante said. "So what? How do we get Naran out of there with a measly rat skeleton?"

  Blays plucked a black flower and sniffed its center. "That depends on whether Volo can get us a rope."

  Dante made an inquiry with Ki, who informed him that Volo was currently out on business, but that he would see she got Dante's message. As the clouds dimmed, they were summoned to eat in a wood-paneled dining chamber. Pink and white fish were served on plates of powder blue glass. They were also brought frogs' legs, which Dante privately designated as tasting of the worst parts of both chicken and fish.

  "I've made my initial inquiry," Riza informed them. "It wasn't rebuffed. Assuming everything proceeds smoothly, I expect to attain an audience within two weeks."

  "Two weeks?" Blays said. "You Tanarians move with the swiftness of stallions. In Bressel, I'm still waiting to hear back on some inquiries I made three pairs of boots ago."

  Preoccupied though Dante was, the meal was a highly pleasant one, with Do Riza asking any number of penetrating questions about Mallish politics and commerce. Through a combination of vagueness, fabrication, and the odd fact, Dante and Blays skated their way through the discussion. When the ice they treaded grew thin, Blays pushed the conversation onto Tanar Atain, and what Riza might be able to offer a trade partner. Riza waxed at length about Dara Bode's glass industry and the multiple workshops he operated.

  "The wealthy are always happy to throw silver at exotic new baubles," Blays said after Riza had claimed Tanarian glassblowers were the best on the continent. "But while their fickleness can be a virtue when it allows us to conjure up new trends from thin air, it also makes them apt to flee en masse when something spooks them. Your country is fascinating, but I've detected an undercurrent of…" He gestured searchingly. "Conflict."

  Riza smiled. "Then you're not blind. There is dissatisfaction among some of my countrymen. They believe the Vanguard of the Drakebane enforces ways of life that haven't been necessary in generations. They argue that years of peace and plenty have proven that the old strictures are outdated. But does this necessarily follow? What if we have peace because of these strictures, and this proves the Drakebane in fact does his duty very well?"

  "Fine questions all around, but here's the one my superiors will be concerned about. Are these divisions serious enough to disrupt trade?"

  The lord made a rolling motion with his shoulders. "If the Drakebane misreads the current, his opponents could become disruptive. But the swamps are deeper than anyone knows. In hidden waters, there are always other paths."

  They moved on to other matters. When dinner concluded, Ki informed Dante that Volo had arrived. She was waiting for him in a courtyard that seemed to serve as a foyer for those who weren't good enough to enter the manor itself.

  "We need a rope," Dante told her. "Of highest-quality Tanarian fiber."

  She gave him a dubious look. "The best rope comes from the Hana Oso family. And it goes for an ounce of silver per foot."

  "Correction: we need a rope of second-highest-quality Tanarian fiber." He handed her a small sack of silver. "Just make sure it's light and strong."

  "Those are the only qualities good rope has."

  "If you're such an expert on ropes, then I'm sure you'll get me a great one. I need it by tomorrow night. Then we're also going to need a ride to the Bastion—and out of Dara Bode. Can you do that?"

  "If this is what I think it is, I can do anything you need."

  She jogged off into the darkness. Dante spent the next day surveilling both the Bastion of Last Acts and the Blue Tower. Right after dawn and shortly before sunset, the crane-like contraption on the nearby turret was lowered, creating a bridge between it and the Blue Tower. During these times, guards and servants arrived to serve food, swap buckets, and clean out cells and the occasional corpse. Otherwise, the prison tower was left to itself.

  That night, Riza provided them a Tanarian spirit called adda yin. It was made from adda, the plants they grew in the paddies. The liquor was a cloudy purple and tasted mildly sweet. Dante drank as sparingly as he could, but by the time the house went quiet, and he and Blays stole down to the dock to find Volo, his head was still a little loose on his neck.

  Volo waited in her canoe. They nodded to each other and embarked. She paddled away with the stealth of someone who'd spent her life on the water. The night smelled like rain and mud and snails frying in nut oil. It was raining again and they only passed one other canoe on their way to the Bastion.

  Volo guided them up to the mound encircling the fortress. A brick retaining wall rose to a height of four feet. Carefully, Blays stood, got a hold on the top of the wall, and pulled himself up. Dante followed. They flattened themselves to the dirt as Volo pushed off, heading for the lee of a nearby island.

  The moat was two hundred feet across to the front dock of the Bastion, but the distance to the Blue Tower was half that. Dante had brought a pillowcase with him. He upended it, spilling a cohort of skeletal rats to the dirt. They looked up expectantly.

  He set up a coil of rope and nicked his left arm. Moving his mind into the inner retaining wall, he opened a narrow hole in one of the bricks, burrowed half a foot into the hard-packed dirt beyond, then turned and ran parallel to the wall's surface. After two feet, he looped back toward the wall, emerging through a second hole two feet from the first one.

  He nodded to one of the rats. It took one end of the rope in its teeth and lowered itself down the wall, reaching one of the holes. It scampered inside, dragging the rope behind it. A few moments later, it emerged from the second hole. As Blays leaned over the side and tied the rope fast, Dante sealed the dirt and bricks tight around it.

  With one end secured, he motioned to the team of rats. They bit down on the free end of the rope, pulled it to the edge, and plopped into the water. On the bank, the rope uncoiled inch by inch as the submerged rats dragged it forward.

  A nerve-rackingly long time later, dim white shapes appeared at the base of the Blue Tower. Dante coaxed a finger of stone from the side of the building. Using the rats' eyes for guidance, concentrating with everything he had, he wrapped the prehensile stone around the end of the rope. Barely able to feel what he was doing, he slid the rocky finger—now a loop—up the blue granite. Once it was eight feet up the side of the tower, he pulled the rope into the thick wall, embedding it firmly before clamping the rock down as hard as he could.

  "Well," Blays said. "Now to find out if you should have sprung for that Hana Oso rope."

  He unpocketed a short length of finger-thick cordage, looping it over the main rope and through the belt of his jabat. Once it was knotted tight, Blays spit on his hands and shimmied out on the rope, hanging beneath it. As he advanced, the rope sagged, lowering him closer to the black moat. Dante's attention darted back and forth between the two sections of brick and dirt anchoring the rope, seeking any
sign they were about to crumble.

  Hand over hand, Blays crossed to the other side, hunkering down on the narrow lip of earth surrounding the base of the Blue Tower. Dante had sobered to the exact wrong point where his head was still muddled, but not so much that it gave him any extra courage. He tied himself to the rope, grabbed on, and swung out over the moat.

  Cool air floated from the water. The rope was neither rough enough to hurt his hands or smooth enough to make him lose his grip. It was light and strong, too, without too much give to it. Really, it was remarkably woven. As he climbed forward, he had the rather absurd thought that he should try to import some to Narashtovik.

  A third of the way across, he glanced down. Flecks of silver moved on the surface. At first, he attributed this to the moonlight, but he'd never seen moonlight swim in expectant circles. He cursed and continued on. Halfway across, with the rope sagging him within two feet of the water, something splashed beneath him. Looking down, he glimpsed a fish spring into the air, tail flapping, jaws snapping. He would have sworn he could count every one of its arrowhead-shaped teeth.

  He hurried on, gaining a few inches in elevation as he came closer to the tower. Another minute, and he swung his feet down to solid ground. He made doubly sure that his footing was solid before he untied himself from the rope.

  Blays flashed a grin that looked a little too close to one of the ziki oko, then vanished. Dante listened to the frogs. Moments later, Blays reappeared a quarter turn around the outside of the tower, beckoning Dante over. Dante joined him, flicking the scab off his arm to feed the nether anew. He nearly squeezed a drop of blood into the water to taunt the fish; imagining the sound of the entire moat boiling, he thought better of it, and proceeded with the business of creating an opening through the wall of the tower.

  The smell of sewage wafted from inside. They entered a room of barrels and boxes, pausing to let their eyes adjust to the near-total darkness. The skybridge to the Blue Tower had been pulled up hours ago and Dante was virtually certain the interior was unguarded, but he sent one of his skeletal rats bounding up the stairwell, placing a second to stand guard in the portal he'd opened to the outside.