The Cycle of Galand Box Set

by Edward W. Robertson

"Shit. Kill the rat."

  "What? Why?"

  "Kill it now!"

  She slashed the connection to her rat. A flash of darkness filled her eyes, then blanked out. Beside her, Sorrowen jerked. He squinted, then turned to her, young face bent in confusion.

  She pointed. "See the priest?"

  "You think he would have sensed us?"

  Raxa nodded. "And now I'm wondering what they're doing that requires the skills of an ethermancer."

  The priest fussed with his robes a moment longer, then moved to stand alone, slowly swiveling his head to watch the grounds. Servants milled about, coagulating into small groups. As minutes crept past, Raxa shifted position against the hard shingles.

  A soldier pointed upstream, calling out an order. Servants drifted toward the docks. Raxa followed their gaze up the river. White squares cohered from the gloom. Sails. The hulls were patches of blackness against the starlight shimmering on the river. A small armada came to bear, sidling up to the docks and tying fast. The ships were long and slender, riding low in the water.

  A woman debarked and made her way to land, long loose hair flapping down her back. Walpole moved before her. They clasped hands. She talked for a while as Walpole nodded gravely. Sailors came to shore, gathering to the side. In time, the woman gestured to the pier she'd walked down. She and Walpole made their way to one of the ships, climbed aboard, and disappeared belowdecks.

  They were gone for several minutes. When Walpole emerged, he gestured to a cluster of soldiers waiting at the foot of the docks. They fanned out, going from boat to boat. Walpole moved on to a second ship, pacing its top deck before descending to the hold.

  Once the inspections were done, Walpole and the woman from the ships met on dry land. Teams of servants lifted the heavy boxes and brought them before the two officials. Walpole flipped open a lid. Heaped silver shined in the night.

  The woman clapped, calling to her sailors. They loaded the chests into two of the ships. The woman talked with Walpole a while longer, then returned to her crew. The pair of ships they'd taken the cash into cast off and started rowing upstream, leaving the many other boats behind at the docks.

  A few of Walpole's people went into the warehouses. Most returned to the carriages, which exited the gates at the rear, hoofbeats fading into the night. Within minutes, the piers were quiet again, patrolled only by a trio of sentries.

  "Need to find out what's in the boats." Raxa propped herself on her elbows. "Ready to knife some watchmen?"

  "You want to kill them?"

  "That's typically what knives do." She let him twist a moment, then grinned. "No knives. Not unless something goes very wrong. I'll sneak onto the boats while you keep watch."

  They climbed down the back of the warehouse and walked two piers north of Keller's. Raxa ran Sorrowen through the plan, which was as simple as they got: she'd shadowalk onto the docks and check out the ships while he made sure nothing came up on her while she was belowdecks. They edged south along the river bank, stopping one pier away.

  Sorrowen hunkered down in the shadow of the dock. Raxa stepped into the shadows. The river and its reflected stars were already silver and black; in the netherworld, they glowed with the intensity of a black sun. She ran forward, stepping lightly over the mud at the edge of the shore. The iron fence ran all the way to the water. She crossed the shallows, the water feeling as thick as sand beneath her feet, then jumped up the side of the closest dock, grabbing the edge of its decking and swinging herself lightly up top.

  The three sentries remained in the yard, mostly watching the fence while casting occasional glances at the dark piers. Raxa hurried past the nearest pair of boats berthed at either side of the dock, putting a little more distance between herself and the guards, then jumped aboard the next ship she came to.

  The deck was clean and bare. She found the ladder belowdecks, dropping to the bottom and landing in a crouch. After a glance to all sides, she fell out from the shadows. She stood in a square of starlight. The rest of the hold was as dark as death. It smelled bilgey, but also strongly of pinewood and pitch.

  She let her eyes adjust. The hold was mostly empty, a few barrels and crates secured against the walls. Raxa moved from the ladder, got out her flint, and lit a candle. She pried open the lid of a barrel, releasing the odor of potent beer. The one next to it held salted fish. Several others were empty. She checked from stem to stern, even knocking on the bulkheads near the front and back to search for hidden compartments.

  Finding nothing of interest, she ascended to the deck. A breeze tousled her hair. The grounds between the docks and the warehouses remained quiet. Dropping into the shadows just to cover her advance to the next ship felt like a waste. She crossed to the dock, crawling on her belly to the boat across from her. Its hold was every bit as uninteresting as the first one had been.

  A sense of unease dripped into her stomach like sour liquor. She moved on to the next pair of ships at the end of the long dock. Their cargo was yet more salted fish and bitter-smelling beer whose odor was surprisingly similar to the planks of the hull. Bare essentials of sustaining a crew during a voyage. Nothing to justify the expense in Walpole's order.

  Had they already carted the goods inside? Raxa ran the scene back through her mind: Walpole and a few of his people had gone onto the boats; Walpole had paid the woman; she'd left with her people; Walpole and all but a few soldiers had left. No stevedores had entered the ships. Either the goods had been small enough for Walpole and his soldiers to remove themselves, and they'd brought down a whole fleet to protect those goods from pirates, or the cargo was still onboard.

  She climbed back up to the deck. Not wanting to take any chances, she hopped into the shadows, ran down the pier as fast as she could, hit land, and moved on to the next dock. She jumped aboard the closest ship and down the hatch to the hold. As soon as her feet hit the boards, she bounced back to the real world.

  She lit her candle, grabbed the iron crow from its pegs on the wall, and slid its flat end under the lid of a crate. The nails held fast. Raxa bore down on the bar, grunting with effort. With a wrenching squeak, the lid flew open. She stumbled back, the iron crow flying from her grasp. Before it could clang to the floor, she threw herself forward, catching it and landing with a thump.

  Heart beating harder, she leaned over the top of the crate. It was filled with dried apples. She swore, the words echoing closely in the damp, piney hold. She sniffed the air, then frowned down at the foodstuffs. She lifted her eyes to the ceiling. What if she wasn't finding anything because there wasn't anything to find? What if the order—

  Shouts sounded from outside. One was a man with a deep voice. The other was Sorrowen.

  She clambered up the ladder and peered over the gunwale. The gray-robed priest stood on the dock halfway toward the boat, back turned to her. Sorrowen moved toward the foot of the dock. A spark of ether shimmered in the priest's hand.

  "Get out!" Sorrowen's command quaked with nerves. He gestured as if to ward the man off, but his eyes were pointing down the dock. Toward Raxa.

  He wanted her to run. To get out so that someone could tell Galand what they'd found. Sorrowen was clearly scared—as the ether grew in the priest's hand, the boy's widening eyes mirrored its size and brightness—but he was still walking forward, commanding the priest's attention. He was young enough that he probably thought his death would make any difference.

  Light seared from the priest's hand, trailing an incandescent stream. Sorrowen's arm squiggled forward spasmodically, shadows spraying everywhere in an undisciplined spurt. Raxa glanced at the dark waters. A quick dive into the shadows and the river, and she could be out of Keller's Pier without anyone having known she'd been there.

  Yet something held her back. Maybe it was that Sorrowen was young, no longer a child but not yet an adult, and she'd never been able to let the young get ground up in the gears of the world.

  Or maybe it was the latent urge to push her new powers. And learn what she could reall
y do.

  Couldn't shadowalk up on the priest. He'd feel her coming, boot her out. Probably when she was so close that he'd rip her apart before she had time to defend herself. She bit open her lip and ran forward, the dock's boards bouncing under her feet. She spread her hands wide to scoop up every shadow she could find. Nether streamed to the warm blood sliding down her chin.

  She bent it into a big black scythe and hurled it at the priest. He continued to hammer at Sorrowen, straight rays of light blasting into the younger man's whorl of shadows. Her blade sped toward the priest's back in perfect silence. She held her breath, waiting for it to pass through him and for his body to slide in half.

  He whipped his head around, pushing his right palm forward. A tight line of whiteness glared from his hand. It struck the scythe in the center, shattering the shadows. A few quick pokes of ether took care of the few shards of nether still coming his way.

  Raxa had sent a whale of a strike at him, and he'd deflected and destroyed it with a few precise counter-thrusts. Because he was more skilled? Or because that was simply the way the nether and ether worked? Galand had talked about this stuff, but she couldn't remember what he'd said.

  She lobbed a needle of shadows at the priest. Harried on both sides, he barely had time to shape his counter. A finger-sized rod of light lanced toward her needle, obliterating them both. So it was a game of quickness and subtlety. Rather than broadswords, they were dueling with thin, twitchy blades.

  She smiled. Sorrowen locked eyes with her, grinning back. A blast of ether illuminated his face, yanking his attention back to the priest. Raxa jabbed at the enemy from her side, obliging him to turn to her before he could set up a killing sequence against Sorrowen.

  Face reddened with wrath, the priest came at her with a flurry of attacks. It was too fast for her mind to follow, but somehow, her hands spun out one answer after another, taking on a rhythm like fencing—or no, more like music, like listening to it or like inventing a song as you played, the notes and nether bending in ways you could never have predicted, but which always sounded right in hindsight.

  She became lost in it. Like the nether was wielding her. Everything in front of her grew sharper and brighter while everything around her dimmed out. Time slowed. And then it was something deeper than music. Deeper than thought. Like she imagined the animals felt, the wolf out on the hunt or the owl in flight.

  She'd never felt much for religion, no more than a light stirring or the occasional yearning toward something more. Yet as she wielded the shadows, she knew what it was to believe: and better, to speak with powers greater than herself.

  They'd only been dueling for a matter of seconds, but already, the nether was getting sticky, slower to arrive at her hands. Across from her, Sorrowen's face was taut with effort. The priest looked tasked, too, but there was no telling how much juice he had left in the squeeze.

  She couldn't seem to get past his defenses. But she could still disrupt them. She flicked a needle at his head and followed this with a denser wedge of shadows. As he gestured to parry the first strike, she sent the wedge driving downward, hammering into the planks a few feet from him. The boards splintered apart and upended beneath his feet, dropping him half a foot. He yelled in surprise.

  Sorrowen jerked his hand forward, as if swatting at a spider. Darkness zipped into the priest's back. He cried out, jerking forward, still caught in the broken boards. Raxa drove a black spike into his forehead.

  Sorrowen grinned, then grimaced in horror at the sight of the slack body. No time for feelings. Soldiers were already streaking from the warehouse toward the docks. Raxa flicked bolts of nether from her hand like throwing darts. They converged on the lead soldier, cartwheeling him to the dirt. She grabbed Sorrowen's sleeve—he was still staring at the dead priest—and pulled him along the pier toward the river.

  An arrow hissed past them, splashing down in the water. Raxa skidded to a stop at the end of the pier. There, a rowboat bobbed in the current—Raxa had spotted it while checking out the boats, noting it in the space in her mind dedicated to making sure she always had another way out, if not two or three. She shoved Sorrowen inside and untied the rowboat's rope from the cleat. They shoved off, Raxa rowing hard, the current sweeping them downstream from Keller's Pier.

  "His body was just…" Sorrowen said. "He was gone. Like a shank of beef."

  Raxa dug her oars into the water. "Yep."

  "But how can that be right?"

  "He shouldn't have gotten in a fight with us. You okay?"

  "Yeah. Yes. I think. Are you?"

  She nodded, gazing back at the pier. The soldiers were swarming into one of the smaller warships. Within moments, they were free of the docks, oars punishing the water. They'd be on the rowboat in another minute.

  "Got much juice left?" she said.

  "Juice?"

  "Nether."

  "Uh. Some." He glanced back at the advancing ship. "Not enough to fight an army!"

  "We only need a little. In a few seconds, I need you to put a shadowsphere on the rowboat. Extend it past the gunwales, but don't cover the whole boat—leave the stern uncovered."

  "You want me to hide us so they can still see us?"

  "Just do it, okay?" Behind them, a man called out, spotting them. Raxa rowed on, giving them a few more seconds to catch up. "Now!"

  They were swallowed in darkness. For an instant, she was afraid she'd been shot in the head with an arrow and was now dead, but she could still smell the river, feel the water tugging at the oars, hear the soldiers calling out in suspicion. She pulled in the oars.

  "We're going over the side," she said. "Keep your head low and the sphere up. Follow me toward the closest dock. Us aweigh!"

  She rolled over the side, plunging into the water. It was cold enough her whole body went tight. She swam underwater toward the west, pulling free of the dark sphere, then surfaced, keeping no more than her nose and eyes above water. Sorrowen surfaced right in front of her, making her flinch back. They were almost parallel with a dock fifty yards back toward shore. Avoiding any splashing, Raxa paddled for it.

  The rowboat drifted downstream. The warship cut past them, oars bubbling through the water. Archers stood in the prow, bows bent. Men yelled out to the rowboat. Getting no response, the sergeant gave the order to loose arrows. They thunked into the rowboat's hull.

  Raxa came level with the dock, pulling herself along it. Nearing the shore, loose flaps wrapped around her ankles. She kicked at the weeds and pulled herself dripping onto the firm mud. Sorrowen was right behind her, looking like a half-drowned cat.

  She pointed toward the streets. They took off at a run, stiff from the cold swim. Water squished from their boots.

  "Dry clothes first," she said. "Then we need to go to the loon."

  "You found the cargo? What was it?"

  "Nothing."

  "Nothing? Okay, you get to tell Dante that one."

  "They weren't delivering goods," she said. "They were delivering the ships."

  Sorrowen stared at her like a cow. After a moment, his eyes popped wide. "Dante cut off overland routes into the Collen Basin. So Mallon built a fleet to invade instead."

  "Did you see their hulls? Flat-bottomed. They can land anywhere. If we don't warn Collen, they'll never see the invasion until it's already behind their defenses."

  25

  The claws of the rats gouged his skin as they climbed up his body. Some stopped on his torso, pawing to his organs like a dog digging into sand. One continued up his neck and came to his face. Compelled, Gladdic opened his mouth. The rat reached inside his mouth with intelligent delicateness, took hold of his tongue, and tugged.

  The tongue pulled away as easily as dough with too little water.

  He awoke from the dream sheathed in sweat. He lay in the bottom of a war canoe. Stars and clouds fought to be seen through the wicked branches of the trees. Before the dream could fade, he held it in his mind, remembering the pain of his mutilation and the feelings that had
arrived with each hurt.

  He did so in part to punish himself, but also to tease out the dream's meaning. There were some who believed that dreams could hold visions sent by the gods. Pagans thought they were the dreams of dead spirits passing through you—or worse, that they weren't the spirits' dreams, but their experience in the afterlife. Others yet held that dreams were utter nonsense.

  Gladdic thought none of these things. He believed that dreams were missives from the soul.

  The rats had been Galand's. It would be simple enough to conclude that he was simply afraid of the sorcerer hunting him down again, but the primary emotion he'd felt on being eviscerated by the rats hadn't actually been fear. Not of physical violence and pain, at least. Rather, he'd felt as though he was being judged—and he'd feared that he deserved it.

  Drifting on the waters of the swamp among the splash of the oars and the scent of the night, he let his mind drift as well. Galand dogged him everywhere he went. The man's pursuit extended beyond all reason. What if that was because he was beyond reason? Perhaps he wasn't in command of his own faculties. He might have been possessed by the gods to punish Gladdic. How else to explain his willingness to leave the land he ruled and risk his life so many times?

  Not long ago, Gladdic would have considered these thoughts of his persecution first with self-pity, and then with rage. But he had changed, hadn't he? Yes. He had. He knew guilt. In truth, it had always been there. Yet his calling in Collen had been so righteous that he'd locked away his guilt like a filthy criminal.

  Now, it rushed through him like the Celeset. It was strong enough to have compelled him to roll out the side of the canoe into the waters and their vicious fish, or to blast a beam of ether between his ears.

  But he was now on a quest of far greater gravity than what he'd failed to do in Collen. The thought struck him like a thunderbolt: likely, the gods had cursed him in Collen in order to return him to Tanar Atain. And that was the truth within the dream of the rats. For rather than fearing them, he had accepted their terror, knowing his path was just.