The Cycle of Galand Box Set

by Edward W. Robertson

  He took the lead up the dank stairwell. Pale, chubby lizards clung to the walls. Dante exited on the penultimate floor. Behind one of the doors, a man sang softly to himself, voice dimming to nothing, as if the man had forgotten where he was, before resuming with the next line.

  Naran's cell was clasped shut. Dante struck the lock with a blade of nether and stepped inside. The singing stopped—it had been Naran, singing a song of the sea, a sea he'd feared he'd never see again.

  "Oh no," Naran said. "I've finally gone insane."

  Blays strolled forward. "If we're the best your fevered brain can come up with, you really need to meet some more interesting women. Unless they don't interest you at all, in which case I'm flattered."

  Naran grinned and tried to stand, but he couldn't get his feet beneath him.

  "No, sit there all night." Blays extended a hand. "It's not like we're in the middle of a jailbreak."

  Naran clasped Blays' wrist. The captain pulled himself halfway up, then fell back. Gritting his teeth, he strained his legs, neck bowing with effort. He rose.

  Naran gave them a severe look. "Took you long enough."

  Blays laughed and wrapped him in a hug. Naran burst into laughter, too, deep gasps of it that veered toward anguish before resolving into relief. Dante hesitated a moment, then hugged the captain as well. Naran smelled ghastly, but Dante only felt anger. The sailor's once-strong body had been reduced to a dry stalk.

  Naran withdrew and placed a hand on each of their shoulders. "I don't know what I've done to deserve such friendship. But I will work to earn it."

  "My life has always depended on my friends," Dante said. "And they can always depend on me."

  "Anyway, don't thank us yet," Blays said. "Not until you see what you're going to have to do to get out of here."

  Naran quirked a brow. "After the last few weeks, I wouldn't care if we have to walk across hot coals."

  "Let's make this a little easier on us." Dante called to the shadows and sent them over the captain, healing his cuts and erasing his aches.

  Naran cocked back his elbows, nodding once. "Ready when you are."

  They left the cell. Dante thought about using the ether to restore the broken lock, then thought it might create more confusion among the jailers to suspect Naran might have had help from one of the Bastion's own guards. As they descended the stairs, Dante found himself having to slow down to avoid outpacing Naran.

  "So what are you going to do first?" Blays said. "Eat? Drink? Or eat and drink and eat?"

  "I think," Naran mused, "that I will take a bath."

  At the doorway Dante had opened in the base of the tower, he surveyed the Bastion and the distant rampart, then stepped outside. "Can you help him across?"

  Blays rubbed his palms against the side of his tunic. "We'd better hope so. If his life depends on your arm strength, he's got a better chance trying to jump across."

  Naran didn't have a belt and they hadn't thought to bring another. Blays looped the thinner cord over the rope spanning the shores, passed it around Naran's waist, and tied it off. Naran gave him a disgusted look, untied the knot, then redid it with a sailor's aplomb.

  Blays secured himself to the rope and took the lead. Naran followed shortly behind him. Initially, it looked like it would be an uneventful crossing, but Naran soon slowed. A quarter of the way across, he stopped altogether, breathing hard as he let the cord around his waist support most of his weight. His breathing slowed. He advanced after Blays, but only made it a few more feet before exhaustion forced him to stop again.

  Pressed against the tower, Dante frowned. If the rope pulled loose, or one of them fell, what could he do? Try to slaughter every fish in the moat? Raise an island under Naran and elevate him above the feeding frenzy? Wait, there was a better route: rather than worrying about saving them from disaster after it happened, he should worry about preventing that disaster in the first place. He could simply refresh Naran's muscles, allowing the captain to advance without getting tired out.

  As he was about to execute this plan, Blays flipped around, grabbed Naran's collar, and pulled him along toward the other side. Dante laughed silently. He'd been out-clevering himself. Sometimes, the mundane solution was all you needed.

  The two of them reached the other side and climbed up to solid ground. Dante hurried across the rope, giving the silver fish following beneath him a disapproving look. He got to the rampart, checked that the other two were okay, then moved to the outer retaining wall, draping his arms over the edge and waving slowly back and forth.

  A canoe materialized from the darkness. Dante and Blays helped lower Naran down, then joined him in the boat. Volo shoved off from the wall.

  "You should know something," Naran said. "Gladdic is here."

  Dante grunted. "I saw him threatening you. Do you want to leave Dara Bode right now? Or do we stash you with our ally and go back for Gladdic?"

  A shadow passed over Naran's face. "I can't ask you to do that."

  "But you want us to."

  "I do. But I also believe that if you leave him be, he'll come for you. He is obsessed with learning how to strengthen his demons. I believe he thinks that if he can cure them of whatever weakness you exposed, he would become unstoppable."

  "Better to hit him before he knows what's coming than to wait for him to hit at us. Blays?"

  "We already had a personal and a moral reason to go after him," Blays said. "At this point, he's practically begging for us to detach his head from his body."

  Dante had a number of questions for Naran, but there would be time to ask them when he was back. Or after they were all dead. They continued in silence to the dock at Riza's manor. Above, the house was quiet.

  "Best if you two stay here," Dante said. "We can get ourselves back to the Bastion. Volo, if we're not back by three o'clock, take Captain Naran to Aris Osis. Naran, wait for the arrival of our friend from House Osedo. She'll take you wherever you need to go."

  "I've seen too many storms to share your full faith in the gods," Naran said. "But if they care for this world at all, they'll be with you tonight."

  Aware they might find themselves on the run and in desperate straits, they took their packs with them, carrying a small amount of food and necessities. Riza kept two small canoes at the dock, unadorned vessels meant for servants' errands. Dante and Blays climbed into one and headed north. Though it was now after midnight, lanterns burned in the windows of several island manors.

  They came to the brick retaining wall, securing their boat and climbing up to the top of the dirt. Dante heard paddles churning somewhere in the distance, but the moat itself was silent. They crossed their rope over to the Blue Tower and entered its base. Dante had left his skeletal rats there as lookouts. He scooped all but two into his pillowcase, leaving one inside the bottom floor of the tower and sending the other scampering up the steps to scout.

  The tower remained as silent as a blown-out candle. They came to the top and exited through a hatch. A soft breeze coursed through the night. Exposed on top of the tower, with no trees above them and no water within eighty vertical feet, Dante took a deep breath. Ever since leaving Aris Osis, he'd been trapped beneath the trees, confined to a boat, and surrounded by water filled with creatures that wanted to drink his blood, eat his flesh, and lay their eggs in his bones. This was the first time in days he hadn't felt claustrophobic and on edge.

  Blays was clubbing him with a look that roughly translated to "Quit sightseeing and go murder our worst enemy." Dante glanced between the fortress and the city. In the brief time since they'd left Riza's estate, nearly all the lights on the other islands had been put out. The Bastion was just as dark.

  Dante moved to the edge of the roof and faced the crane-like structure on the tower across from him. He'd spent a good deal of the previous day studying it—along with other aspects of the Bastion of Last Acts, such as the location of Gladdic's quarters. He removed one of the rats from the pillowcase, wound up, and hurled it across the g
ap in a high arc. It came down in the middle of the crane, claws snagging on a twist of rope.

  The undead vermin got its bearings and climbed down to the crane's controls. In truth, it was more of a trebuchet than a crane, albeit a very low-powered one. The rat found the appropriate rope and started gnawing for all it was worth. A minute later, the last strand popped. A counterweight fell on one side, swinging a long wooden platform down toward the top of the Blue Tower.

  Dante and Blays moved to see if they could cushion the racket of its impact without getting crushed. It came down on their uplifted hands with an uncanny lack of weight, as if it was made from a wood of cork-like lightness. They lowered it to a depression in the rim of stone hemming in the rooftop.

  Blays climbed up on the platform, extending his right foot beyond the roof and pushing down on the lightweight wood. It neither snapped nor creaked. Blays made an expression so dour that he might as well have been walking into his own grave—remembering Blays' fear of heights, Dante bit his teeth together to stop himself from laughing.

  Mumbling curses the way some men might pray, Blays hitched up his pack and walked onto the platform. The boards jogged under his weight. He altered his gait so his feet swept a fraction of an inch above the platform. The good news was this stopped the platform from jogging up and down. The bad news was it made him look like an idiot, and took twice as long as walking like a normal person would have.

  Eventually, Blays reached the other side. He hopped down next to the contraption and folded his arms impatiently.

  Dante rolled his eyes and started out. The platform was a full three feet across. If he'd been walking down a forest lane three feet wide, it never would have crossed his mind to worry about falling down, but now it was all he could think about. Ironic that after his days-long bout of low-key claustrophobia, he was now hampered by some rather serious agoraphobia. He really needed to teach himself how to fly.

  He came to the other tower and stepped down beside Blays, who was happy to turn his back on the bridge across the sky. Dante pulled on a rope handle, lifting a trap door set into the roof. He motioned his rat ahead. It hopped down from step to step.

  Dante nodded to Blays and started down. They reached the bottom of the tower without incident, emerging into the lawn between the outer curtain wall and the inner. After a quick glance around, they walked to the inner wall. Blays shadowalked through it. Dante opened a narrow passage for himself. Guards overlooked the bailey and the keep's front doors, so they moved to the rear of the keep instead. There wasn't a door, but they didn't need one.

  They found themselves in a dark room that smelled like books. Odd. Dante hadn't seen a book or so much as a quill since coming to Tanar Atain. Interesting though this was, it had nothing to do with the heinous blasphemy he was about to commit against Taim. He'd already mapped his route out for himself and had no trouble finding the servant's stairs. They ascended to the sixth story and crept out into the hall.

  They were halfway to Gladdic's room when the shouts sounded from outside the keep.

  Dante pressed himself to the wall, straining his ears. "Tell me that's not about us."

  "Someone could have seen the bridge was down to the Blue Tower."

  The shouts were growing louder by the moment. They'd passed an intersection a moment before. Dante backtracked and moved to the southern window, which had a view of the walls, the moat, and the city beyond.

  Torches flapped from the entrance to the moat. Canoes were streaming into the water. Dozens more waited to follow them. Flames bloomed in two of the leading boats; flaming arrows darted forward, lodging inside a lone canoe speeding out to meet the disturbance.

  "Strange," Blays said. "If I didn't know better, I'd say that was a revolution."

  Dante wanted to deny this out of hand, but guards were racing along the outer walls, shooting bows down at the water. Lanterns flared to life in the towers. Dante had a clear view of the gates through the inner curtain wall. Against all reason, these were currently cranking open. Guards rushed in from the sides to push them closed, only to be fired on from the top of the wall.

  Dante pressed his knuckles against his forehead. "Couldn't the people have waited to liberate themselves until tomorrow?"

  "On the other hand, it makes for great cover for an assassination. We have to hit him right now. Before someone comes to bring him to the fight."

  They hurried away from the window and toward Gladdic's room. As they neared his door, Dante bit the inside of his lips and surrounded himself in great clouds of nether. He ripped the door open and charged inside, flooding the room with pale light. The room was as sparely furnished as everything else in Tanar Atain had been. It took no more than a glance to know that Gladdic wasn't there.

  "Ah." Blays' voice was thick with disappointment. "Back to Riza's with us, then."

  Dante nodded numbly, hating the taste of the idea, but knowing that he had no choice but to swallow it. Just in case Gladdic was using sorcery to hide himself, he sent probes of nether to every corner of the room, but he felt nothing.

  He closed the door and headed for the servants' stairs. "The Blue Tower's away from the fighting. If we hurry, we can get out the same way we came in."

  Blays opened his mouth to reply. A door banged open. Sandals clapped down the hallway. Before Dante could tell which way they were going, four men spilled into the corridor across from him.

  Two were dressed in the green of Tanarian soldiers. Another wore a long white shirt and white trousers, both of which were baggy and flowing. And the fourth was a tall figure in a gray robe with the sunken eyes of a man who saw evil wherever he looked.

  Dante's heart took a flying leap from his chest. Before anyone could say a word—before any sense of recognition had entered Gladdic's eyes—Dante hurled a swarm of black blades at the Mallish priest.

  Beside him, steel flashed as Blays drew swords. Gladdic's head jerked back. He lifted his right hand. Piercing white light blazed down the hallway. The shadowy blades slammed into the priest's ether, obscuring the hallway in black sparks, white shards, and gray dust.

  The maelstrom of thwarted energy winked away. The floor and walls were blasted with grayscale streaks. Gladdic stood with his feet together, left hand at his waist, his right hand lifted in benediction.

  "Galand and Buckler," he said. "Why are you here? Is that which is foul so obsessed with spoiling that which is pure?"

  Blays spun his sword in a circle. "You're pure now? Is that as in, 'I'd like to purify the Collen Basin of everyone who lives there'?"

  "I would have brought peace. You, however, are true servants of the nether. You bring nothing but death and war. Just as you have brought it to this place."

  Dante locked eyes with the man in white, who he suspected was a local priest. "Do you know what he is? This man you work with?"

  Gladdic scoffed. "You are the font of lies. The decay that rots not only flesh, but souls."

  "He likes to be seen as the sword of the faith. The storm that will wash the heresy from the world. But when he thinks no one's watching, he uses the nether to create monsters—and commit acts that would sicken the gods. He is the heresy he fears."

  Gladdic's face tightened like a fist. A transparent cube of light shimmered beneath his right hand.

  "It's true, isn't it?" The priest in white turned a doleful eye on Gladdic, then smiled. "And that is precisely why we need you."

  "These men are working with the rebels." Gladdic narrowed his eyes. "Every second we waste talking is another second their comrades spend slaughtering the innocent. For the heart!"

  He splayed out his hand as if he was releasing a dove. Radiant lines shot down the hallway. Dante slung bolts of nether to intercept them, showering the ceiling with dark and fast-fading stars.

  Blays charged forward, dropping into the netherworld. Gladdic lifted his palm and crushed his fingers together as if he were squeezing an orange. Blays stumbled bodily out of the shadows, crashing into the wall and sliding to the
floor. Seeing him exposed, one of the soldiers lunged, jabbing toward Blays' ribs with a thin, quick sword. Still on the floor, Blays shoved off from the wall and rolled to the side, hacking across the back of the soldier's ankle. The man spasmed and dropped. Blays thrust his sword into the man's heart and popped to his feet.

  The second soldier turned and ran down the hall. The priest in white dropped into a low stance. Ether lanced from his right hand, nether flowing from his left. Gladdic followed this with a blast of crystalline light that glinted with rainbow facets. Blays scrambled back, diving past Dante as Dante met the assault with a brute wall of nether. The energies collided with a thunderous whoomp, scorching the floor and sending everyone staggering back.

  So far, the battle had been little more than a raw back-and-forth of power. The Tanarian priest was only moderately skilled, but Gladdic could turn back Dante's efforts with finessed doses of ether, while Dante was forced to club down Gladdic's attacks with awkward torrents of shadows. In a war of attrition, he'd be on the losing side.

  He reached into the stone beneath Gladdic's feet, meaning to wrench it open and drop Gladdic to the story below. Gladdic snapped forth with snake-like speed, ripping the nether apart. The priest in white smiled and strolled forward, harrying Dante with a flurry of low-strength but constant attacks.

  After two exchanges, Dante had picked up the man's pattern. He waited for the third flurry, then counterattacked with an arc of darkness that split apart as it neared its target. Blays, poised for an opportunity, speared forward, ready to gut the priest while the man was distracted by the nether.

  Gladdic thrust needles of ether directly at Blays. Blays swore and dropped into the shadows, the light shredding into the wall behind him.

  Blays reappeared beside Dante. "I'm no use here. I'm going for help!"