"Slightly."
"When you spend nether, it tries to return to wherever you called it from. It just takes a little time. I'm betting the traces are no different."
Blays ran his palms down his face. "It's immensely comforting to know that my soul will probably come back to me eventually. You couldn't have waited until tomorrow to confirm this on yourself?"
"Always better to confirm a phenomenon's existence by using a second subject." Dante picked up the blade. As the nether began to whirl about its edges, he sheathed it, then pointed to the hilt. "The stored traces aren't getting used up. They're circling back and forth around the blade, providing its cutting power. But what powers them? In the legends Volo told us, when the Odo Sein needed to, they were able to draw nether from within themselves and channel it into their swords."
"But we looked for this exact thing earlier and couldn't see it."
"We thought that proved it couldn't be the traces, but we fell victim to our own egos. We couldn't see the traces in action, but that isn't hard proof they aren't part of the process. All that proves is we might be morons. Here's what we know for sure: the sword isn't consuming its own nether. Meanwhile, it's draining something from us. And there's a historical record of it doing the same to others."
Blays burped in discomfort, then winced. "Then you can only use it for so long each day before it starts to kill you?"
"Seems like. Although it's possible it doesn't have to be powered by the wielder's trace. Maybe when you kill someone with it, it can use their trace instead."
"Er. You suppose that's where the traces in the lizard's horn came from? The people it's killed?"
"That's possible."
"So what happens if you run through your own trace? Does the sword break?"
"Could be," Dante said. "Either that, or you do."
~
Logically, the next step was to locate his own trace within himself. However, given that his trace had already been depleted to the point of illness, Dante thought it best to carry on with that line of exploration after he'd recovered. Instead, he studied his sketches, searching for anything that could help him understand how to guide or align the traces trapped in the swamp dragon's horn.
Throughout the day, the pressure in his head inched steadily upward. By the afternoon, it was increasing rapidly. Some time later, the enemy began to move northeast again, but the Monsoon was still gaining ground. Or water, as it were.
Dante made sure that Riza knew this. Which made it all the more surprising when Commander Barain called for the flotilla to stop and make camp shortly after four that afternoon.
Blays frowned. "We're stopping already? There's still nearly two hours of daylight."
Volo made a murmuring noise. "We're about to enter the Deep Swamp. Bet they want to spend as few nights there as possible."
"What's in the Deep Swamp?"
"Things that make you want to stay out of it."
Dante helped make camp, then got back to his sketches. He'd made around fifty. Flipping through his parchment, the images seemed to be suggesting something—but if so, the message was too subtle, or he was too dim to understand it. That night, little green lights bobbed over the waters. He thought they might be fireflies, but sometimes the lights faded, darkening away to nothing. Other times they held perfectly still, as if watching the soldiers sleep.
He awoke to rain falling on his face. He hadn't had time to stop being angry about that before Riza called him over to the nobleman's island. Servants scurried about packing up tents and rolling up down-stuffed mattresses made from a Tanarian fabric woven so tightly that the feathers' quills couldn't stick through.
"Sorcerer." The Do's eyes skipped from tree to tree, occasionally dipping to the water, which was swirled with rainbow-colored oil. "Be on watch today."
"For what?" Dante said. "The enemy's at least twenty miles ahead of us."
"The Deep Swamps lie ahead. The creatures there are rarely disturbed."
"Duly noted."
Riza shifted, glancing at Dante and then back to the trees. "Yet even these reaches aren't uninhabited. If you see anyone traveling without a boat, warn me at once."
"How would they get around without a boat? Are there no ziki oko?"
"They're much rarer here."
"Is the water that shallow? Or do the people swim around?"
Riza cranked his head around to meet Dante's eyes. "Do you doubt my words?"
"The better I understand what we're getting into, the better I can protect us."
"Protecting us is my duty. Your duty is to abide my orders. Am I understood?"
Dante nodded and returned to his island.
The flotilla advanced into the bog. The color of the waters shifted from a rich brown to an ocher laced with metallic ribbons that gleamed dully beneath the overcast light. With this change in water, the trees changed too, the singular boles replaced by irregularly braided orange trunks, as if several plants had congregated together for safety. Rather than willowy, draping branches, their boughs were angular and jagged, sporting slender black leaves. Some wore clumps of a dark matter that looked like sticky fur.
Nearly a third of the craft were deployed as scouts, keeping close to the fleet and within sight of each other. Dante slew a few dragonflies and beetles and dispatched them a mile or two ahead. As he paged through the sketches, warming up his mind, one of the dragonflies blanked out. A minute later, motion attracted him to the eyes of a beetle. A bat with the jaws of a tiny wolf swooped toward it. Its mouth opened wide. An instant of darkness was followed by a glimpse from between rows of needly teeth. The connection was roughly severed.
Dante considered making some fish or bats to do his bidding, but he couldn't spare the nether. Not until the sword was forged. If they had to fight their way through the Odo Sein with a single blade and no shadows to call on, they'd never get to Gladdic.
Suddenly glum, he turned back to his sketches. And stopped in the middle of flipping over one of the sheets. Hurriedly, as if the idea might escape him if he didn't jot it down, he unstoppered his ink pot of blood and, guided by the patterns in the sketches, distilled them into an arrangement of seven red dots, roughly t-shaped.
He blew on the markings, drying them, then shoved the parchment in front of Blays. "What does this look like to you?"
"A sword." Blays traced his finger from point to point. "Blade, cross-guard, hilt."
"It looks like a sword. But it isn't, is it?"
"No," Blays said slowly, "it's your own blood dabbed on a square of cow skin. Are you being pedantic on purpose? Don't tell me you've bought into norren philosophy."
"I think it's more like a constellation."
"All right, it looks like a constellation. What does this have to do with anything?"
"The Odo Sein blade has seven traces in its horn. When you watch the nether move around the blade, it appears to flow chaotically, but it always flows through the same seven points. I think this is the underlying structure of the sword. Like its skeleton. Or its soul."
Blays was looking at him like Dante was trying to sell him a block of wood painted like beef. Rather than fighting to explain something he wasn't sure he understood himself, Dante set his sword-in-progress on a rowing bench and sent his mind into its hilt. His horn only held six traces, not seven, and as he lured them out with a few dabs of blood, he dearly hoped that the precise number wasn't vital to the operation of the sword.
Working partly on the example of the Odo Sein sword, and partly on intuition, he dabbed his blood along his sword, spacing it out in six points. The six traces stopped their slow circulation, each one settling on a different blot of blood. But by channeling them between dots manually, they flowed in a manner almost identical to the Odo Sein weapon.
As he paused to think, he glanced out the side of the canoe and locked eyes with a pair of yellow cat-eyes floating on the surface. These were attached to a scaly lizard as big as a fully-grown man. Unlike the swamp dragons, its snout was as
long and narrow as a sight hound's. It watched him pass by, then sank below the surface.
He returned to the sword. He thought he'd found its underlying structure, its bones or its soul. Yet it was still missing its blood, so to speak. He instructed Blays to wield the Odo Sein sword again, watching every speck of nether as closely as he could. Just like before, he couldn't discern which of the shadows powering it were coming from Blays: it was too stirred up, as cloudy as the orange waters they were paddling through.
Volo's story of the swordsman had specifically mentioned him delving into his spine. Dante closed his eyes and turned his focus inward, finding his spine and the nether within it. If there was a trace there, he couldn't see it. Even so, he mixed it together, withdrew a fraction—if he was fooling with his trace, the last thing he wanted to do was pull the whole thing out of his body—and sent it into his sword.
His sword sat there, pointedly doing absolutely nothing.
Blays scratched his temple. "Shouldn't that have worked?"
"Unless I'm not getting any of my trace," Dante said. "Or if the common nether it's mixed with is nullifying it somehow."
He tapped his front teeth. Traces left by dead people tended to stay put unless you used blood to goad them into action. What if he removed all of the normal nether from his body? Would the trace be exposed? He did this excessively slowly, wary for any sign of the sickness overtaking his body and indicating he'd accidentally stripped himself of his trace, too. After a few minutes, with his body entirely void of nether, he couldn't feel any aches or nausea, but he couldn't see the trace, either.
He was getting nowhere. He squeezed his eyes shut and leaned against the gunwale, trailing his fingers in the water. Almost instantly, he thought better of it, jerking them out and wiping them dry.
"This is ridiculous," he said. "Narashtovik has fielded dozens of generations of priests and nethermancers across hundreds of years of travel and study. Not a single one of them could have figured this out for me?"
Blays settled his elbows on his knees. "If they'd done that, you'd be complaining about how there was nothing left to discover."
"Couldn't they have at least left me a hint?"
"They didn't need to." A note of impishness had entered Blays' voice. "You already know how to access the trace."
"Interesting," Dante said. "Because no, I don't."
"No? Then what's happening when you wield the Odo Sein blade?"
"But I don't know how it's drawing on our traces."
"Who cares? Cheat!"
Dante lowered his chin, gazing at the stolen sword. "It will draw out the trace for me. If I divert that into my sword, it might be enough to power it."
He set the blades beside each other on the rowing bench, keeping one hand on each hilt, the Odo Sein blade black and wreathed in what might have been purple lightning, his sword shabby plain steel in comparison. Streams of nether rippled around the black blade. He activated the traces within the pommel of the steel one, sending them coursing along the stars of their bloody constellation.
The river of traces didn't want to leave the Odo Sein weapon. But water's strength—its adaptability, its willingness to carve new channels, its relentless need to move forward—was also the key to controlling it. Working carefully, Dante guided a finger of nether away from the purple-black flow and channeled it into the traces calmly circulating the steel sword.
Blackness welled from the guard, unreeling up the blade like spilled ink. Dante's heart galloped. The inky substance spread upward, reaching the tip and enclosing the blade.
Blays leaned forward. "Did you—?"
Dante shushed him. Nerves thrumming, he withdrew the trickle of nether from the Odo Sein blade. His own sword remained black. He sheathed the knight's sword.
Blays looked at him, eyebrows lifted.
"I think it's drawing from me," Dante said. "But something's still missing. The nether isn't crackling along the edge like it should be. It's like I've built a body, but I still haven't given it life."
"Okay, then what does life need?"
"Air. Water. Food."
"I don't think you need to feed your sword a rasher of bacon to get it going."
"Nether doesn't eat," Dante said. "But it does need sustenance."
He lifted the sword and drew its edge along his left arm. A red line appeared along his skin as if by magic—and purple-black light erupted from his sword like a bruise of fire. Still touching his skin, the madly whirling nether ripped into his arm.
He yelled out and jumped to his feet, flinging down the sword. His motion rocked the canoe. Volo swore; Dante stumbled against the gunwale. Naran, jolting from sleep, grabbed Dante's right arm and pulled him down into the bottom of the boat.
The sea captain scowled, rubbing his puffy eyes. "Are you aware you're bleeding?"
Blood coursed down Dante's arm. Around him, strange trees twisted together like muscly orange snakes while bulbous flies drifted about with scorpion-like claws dangling from their upper bodies. He was traveling into a nightmare, yet he felt as free as a hawk on the wind.
~
It was one thing to create a weapon. It was another to learn how to use it.
While the swords wouldn't simply chew through whatever you touched them to, the nether along the blade exaggerated the force of a strike many times over. Even a relatively gentle swipe would cut deeply and harshly into its target. Dante had some experience with this property from wielding the bone sword, but the bone sword was a heavier weapon.
And to Blays, the blade's ability was largely foreign. He spent much of the day performing a number of subtle exercises with his sword, practicing for a minute or two, then sheathing the weapon for as long as half an hour before attempting another set of maneuvers.
That evening, as soon as they made camp, Blays motioned Dante to a clear spot on the edge of the little island and drew his sword. Black light glowed in the gloom.
"Whipping motions," Blays said. When Dante shrugged, Blays spun to the side and snapped his wrist, swinging his sword at the braided trunk of a sapling. The blade clicked right through, sending the tree-collective to the ground in a whisper of long leaves. "You see?"
"What did that tree ever do to you?"
"You don't have to spend much strength to cause a lot of damage. That means you can be quicker, less committed. A snap of the wrist is all it takes."
He motioned for Dante to draw his sword, then began to fence with him, leading him through a few techniques at quarter speed. The techniques were subtle but uncomplicated: engage the enemy's weapon, flick it aside, then whip the point of your blade at your foe.
Too soon, they began to feel sickly. Blays stepped back and put away his sword. "When we're in the thick of things, don't overthink it. Thinking makes you slow and we don't have enough time to train these skills into our bodies. But these aren't normal swords. If you can fight with them like they're meant to be fought with, you'll be the one left standing at the end." He tipped back his head, thoughtful. "Although the downside of that is you'll be the one who has to mop up the mess."
In the waning light, Dante practiced for a little longer, keeping the sword sheathed as he repeated the simple forms Blays had shown him. With his footwork taking him near the edge of the island, he took a fleeting glance at the water, then gasped.
A pale face had lifted itself clear of the surface to stare at him, its eyes blank wells of darkness. Dante did a double-take, but by the time he looked again, the face was gone. The water wasn't troubled by so much as a ripple. Shaken, he sent a tendril of nether into the depths, questing after whatever he'd seen—a person? Some bizarre fish?—but found nothing.
The night was a quiet one. When he woke, the pressure in his head indicated their quarry had returned to a northerly course. Riza accepted this information indifferently enough, yet when they started out, the commander barked out a pace that left the oarsmen huffing and straining. Until that day, Volo had done almost all the paddling—she insisted, as if i
t were a point of pride—but the fleet was now moving so fast that Dante and Blays had to spell her regularly.
At noon, they broke to eat and rest. Dante boarded Riza's war canoe and nodded to the Do. "We've been gaining on them all morning. At this rate, we'll be on them by tomorrow."
Riza made an approving noise. "Encouraging news. We might have reclaimed the capital from the Drakebane's dynasty, but I won't trust that our nation is safe until his flame has been snuffed."
"Then why haven't we been traveling this fast all along?"
"To preserve our strength for the coming battle."
"Has something changed? Things suddenly feel…urgent."
"This isn't a part of the swamp we wish to delay in," Riza said. "Speaking of which, I believe we've rested long enough."
The fleet got underway. Within half an hour of Riza's cryptic warning, men shouted ahead. Scouts paddled back through the trees, faces taut with the strain of their haste.
"Boko mai!" The trooper's voice was nearly a scream.
Three canoes darted forward. Archers stood up on the decks propped atop the twin hulls, nocking arrows to their short but strong Tanarian bows. Beyond, scores of dark, slender shapes raced through the branches of the trees. They moved so fast Dante initially thought they were flying. Rather, they leaped from bough to bough with frightening agility.
"Loose!" a sergeant bawled.
Arrows slashed into the trees, but it didn't so much as slow the boko mai. As the swarm closed on the lead boats, the archers released a staggered volley. Their arrows crashed into the branches and exploded in shocking bursts of fire. The air thundered with the noise of the blasts.
Smoking bodies fell from the racked branches, the beasts squealing as they plunged into the water. A few of the survivors scattered, but the others were undeterred, dropping onto the decks of the canoes. They ripped at the soldiers with scything claws, carving away chunks of meat and dashing away with their prizes.
Men stabbed at them with spears and loosed arrows at the marauding creatures, but the boko mai twisted their lithe bodies, dodging nearly everything that came their way. Dante's instinct was to unleash a hellstorm of nether at the attacking vermin, but he held back. This wasn't his fight. If he exposed his abilities now, they'd expect him to use them whenever they ran into trouble. Worse, they'd look to reel him into their conflict against the Drakebane.
The Cycle of Galand Box Set Page 136
