The Cycle of Galand Box Set

by Edward W. Robertson

  The group they'd skirmished with reached the hillock and ran up it. Blays swept his rain-dampened blond hair back from his brow. "Whatever we're going to do, we better do it before they come hunting for us."

  The knights ascended the mound and kneeled before a man in a green and white tunic that hung to his knees. They spoke, the knights gesturing in the general direction where Dante and the others lay in hiding.

  "Huh," Blays said. "Suppose that's the ol' Drakebane?"

  "Or one of his relatives." Dante wished he'd had a rat on hand to send to listen to the conversation. Then again, in this lifeless land, the appearance of a rat wouldn't draw any less attention than if he were to walk up to the hillock himself.

  The two knights stood, backing off. The man in the long green jabat called out an order; Dante couldn't hear a word of it, but there was no missing the way the exercise of command straightened the man's body. Eight Odo Sein and another eight people in less distinguishable dress gathered around the man giving the orders.

  The group moved out from the mound. Dante had assumed they were mustering to deal with the threat reported by the two knights, but rather than striking west toward Dante and the others, the royal contingent headed northeast.

  Gladdic turned away from his work, watching the contingent depart. They were much too far away for Dante to read his face.

  "Well that makes things a little easier," Blays said. "Now we're only outnumbered six times over."

  "Still too many knights."

  "We don't have to fight all of them. We could walk up to arrow range, lob some insults at Gladdic to distract him, then have Naran hit him with the last flaming star."

  "And then run like hell?"

  "Unless you've decided to start a vendetta against all of his friends, too."

  Dante turned to Naran. "How close will we have to be? How's your bow string feeling in this rain?"

  "It's well-waxed," Naran said. "I don't think this is the first time Tanarian archers have had to deal with a little moisture."

  They spent the next few minutes sketching out their approach, including ways to try to force Gladdic from cover. As they finalized their plans, Dante glanced over at the cylinder, where Gladdic had been motionless for some time. Two Odo Sein ordered six people in plain white jabats to stand shoulder to shoulder. The knights moved down the line and the people dropped, bleeding. Gladdic kneeled over the bodies, arms extended to his sides.

  As Dante watched, a looming black figure unfurled from nowhere to stand beside the priest. It spread its clawed hands wide and tipped back its head, rain falling into its star-bright mouth.

  "Bastard sons of bastard gods," Dante said. "He's got an Andrac."

  The others all looked over. Naran's face hardened in its newly distant way. Volo looked uncertain but defiant, as if her turning back of the Odo Sein had rebuilt the resolve she'd lost after the battle in the pool.

  "Right," Blays said. "Shit."

  Dante smacked his fist against the ground. "We can't go at them now. The ether's locked down, too—there's no way to hurt the demon."

  "That's not the only way to hurt them, is it? I can cut them from within the shadows."

  "Which we can't get to, either. We'll have to wait until they make camp. Or see if we can draw Gladdic away somehow."

  "Why would we do that? He's just made our job easier."

  "Is it our job to die as fast as we can? Because that's the only thing that's going to happen if we go up against the Odo Sein, an Andrac, Gladdic, and whatever else they have over there."

  "Think, no-brains. What are the Andrac made out of?"

  "Nether," Dante said. "Traces."

  "And what are our blades powered by?"

  "Also traces." Dante could feel his mind struggling to raise and hold on to the implications of what Blays was saying. Before the logic could slip away, he retreated to the same quiet, impersonal distance he used when working with the ether. A state where things seemed to unfold on their own. He looked up. "It should work. But we'd be banking our lives on a theory."

  "Yes, but at least if I'm wrong, then you'll get the chance to tell me all about it in the Mists."

  "If we wind up in the Mists' version of Tanar Atain, I think I'll skip straight to the Worldsea."

  "This idea," Naran said. "It necessitates being engaged by the Andrac before any of their other fighters? Is it safe to assume that will happen? If I have learned anything, it is that the captain who thinks he can predict a battle had better tell his first mate where he'd like to be buried."

  "Gladdic will send the Andrac," Dante said. "They're his life's work. An extension of himself. There will be nothing more satisfying to him than to use them to destroy us."

  Blays wiped rain from his eyebrows. "Anyway, this is our backup plan. Our main plan is for you to use the last flaming star to blast Gladdic into pious stew."

  Plan in hand, Dante remained kneeling behind the screen of bone-like limbs, trying to pick out their best approach to the center of the valley. A minute later, after some fussing about by Gladdic, a second Star-Eater unfolded from nowhere, stretching its broad arms like a man readying to split wood.

  Dante swore. Most times, waiting and watching made you better prepared for what was to come. Sometimes, though, it merely allowed you to believe you were preparing when in fact all you were doing was delaying. And a situation that could have been solved slipped beyond your control.

  In a low crouch, Dante moved to the next grove of waist-high growths. The others followed behind him, their sandals barely making a sound on the wet rock. For all their stealth, they weren't a third of the way toward the hillock before one of the Odo Sein pointed at them, his voice booming over the hiss of the rain.

  Most of the remaining knights gathered to watch them, with a few remaining on the periphery to ward against a sneak attack from another direction. Gladdic turned from his work and stared across the bowl. There was no sense trying to hide; it was only slowing them down. Dante stood and walked toward the raised lump of land, keeping his hand close to his sword. Rain pattered on the flat pockets of iron with a metallic beat.

  The walk felt much longer than it was. They started up the hillock. Its sides were half covered in irregular flows of iron, as if the metal had been heated to a liquid and then poured down the slopes to harden.

  Dante came to a stop halfway up the incline. Now that they were closer to the cylinder, he could see that the iron monument at the middle of the land wasn't round, but a hexagon, its sides inscribed with foreign runes. It stood fifteen feet high and twenty across, but its solidity was marred by river-like cracks in its surface, their depths weeping bloody rust.

  Gladdic stood above them, flanked by his two Andrac, whose wide alien mouths were drawn back in hideous grins. A pair of knights were with him as well, seemingly untroubled by the demons mere feet away. The other knights waited on the flanks, mailed fists resting on the horn-pommeled handles of their swords. A few archers stood twenty feet back from the front line, leaning over their nocked arrows to shield their fletching from the rain.

  "Dante Galand." Gladdic's voice was a melodious mix of amusement and scorn. "Do you find your own land so unbearable that you would rather abandon it to follow me into the depths of this one?"

  "I'd like nothing more to be home," Dante answered. "But you keep trying to destroy the homelands of others—first in the Plagued Islands, then in Collen, now here."

  As he spoke, Naran and Volo spread to either side of him, kneeling down behind small outcroppings of white rock. It wasn't perfect cover, but it was better than nothing. Blays remained two steps behind him and to his right.

  Gladdic sneered down at them, his wet gray hair plastered to his head. "Your righteousness sickens me."

  Dante laughed. "My righteousness? You use the nether—a substance you kill others for touching—to make abominations I would never dream of! And then you claim to be the holiest man in Bressel!"

  "I use tools the gods forbid in order to achiev
e things men can't dream. When at last all heresy is quenched, I will quench it from myself as well."

  "That's a very convenient excuse. It would justify you to do anything you want."

  "You mean like murder thousands of innocent people?" Blays said.

  "You mean in Collen?" Dante said. "Or Tanar Atain? You'll have to forgive me, he's racked up so many massacres that—"

  Gladdic took two strides forward. "My purpose here is not to destroy. As that is all you do, that is all you can see in others. I am here for salvation."

  Blays motioned to the demons. "And what are they here for? The free lunch?"

  "They are here to undo a threat that could undo us all. So I beg you, slander me with your petty notions of hypocrisy. How much will you care for following your own rules when everything stands at its end?"

  "Has it ever occurred to you that you're a raving lunatic?"

  "Look around you!" Gladdic thrust his arms apart to take in the twisted landscape of red, white, and black. He laughed, a dry and raven-like caw. "Does this look like a land fit for humans? Here, you face total enslavement. One that will come at the hands of the same darkness you worship."

  Dante had meant to engage Gladdic in order to buy plenty of time for Naran to position and ready himself to take his shot—the only one he'd get—but instead, Dante's anger had sucked him into an argument with a madman.

  "I know who you are," he said. "And you are a liar."

  Gladdic waved a long-fingered hand at the air. "Your words sicken my ears. You must have noticed your nether is powerless here. You will surrender. Or my servants will devour you."

  "You're right," Dante said. "I can't reach the nether. But do you really think I'd be here if I didn't know exactly how to kill you?"

  He lifted his arm and swung it down. To his left, Naran's bow twanged. The arrow sped uphill. Gladdic's eyes widened. Despite his age, he was nimble, his long thin legs coiling to dodge the attack.

  But it would be too late to escape the weapon's blast.

  Beside him, an Odo Sein launched himself forward. The arrow struck him in the chest. For the blink of an eye, nothing happened—had the arrow gotten too sodden to work?—and then came the lightning and the thunder.

  Dante whirled, shielding his face. Heat whooshed past him. The shock of the explosion rattled his guts. He turned, squinting through the smoke. The knight lay in pieces. Gladdic had been knocked backward onto the rocky surface. Steam whorled from his soaked robes, but he was already stirring, swaying to his hands and knees.

  Half his face was pinkened. He twisted his features into a snarl, shouting words Dante didn't recognize, and thrust his finger downhill. The two Andrac spread their jaws wide, throats glowing, and loped toward Dante. The Knights of Odo Sein advanced behind the demons in two loose groups, spreading themselves out to avoid losing more than one at a time to any more flaming stars. One group looked to be headed toward Naran, the other veering toward Volo.

  Blays drew his twin blades, making them dance. The rain seemed to sizzle in the purple-black light. Dante drew his weapon, angling the blade toward the nearer Andrac. The handle tingled in his palm. Uphill, Gladdic faltered a step, a line of confusion crossing his face to see them standing their ground.

  "So," Blays said. "Plan?"

  "Cut it open." Dante dropped back, standing shoulder to shoulder with Blays. "And hope you're right."

  The first Star-Eater bunched its legs and flung itself at them, crossing twenty feet in a single bound. It slammed down and raked at Dante with its long black claws. The monster was much smaller than the swamp dragon had been, but the fact it stood upright—twelve feet if it was an inch—made it feel horrifically large. And while he'd fought a far bigger one at the Reborn Shrine, he hadn't dueled it. The urge to break and run was almost overpowering.

  Dante skipped back, the claws flashing past him and gouging into the rock in front of him. His sandal came down on a patch of iron slick with rain. His foot flew out from beneath him, dumping him onto the metal.

  His shoulders hit first, his head snapping back. Light flashed across his eyes. A shadow hung over him, filling the sky; a white sun blared within it. The darkness reached for him. Purple lightning lashed out, cutting across the shadows.

  The demon's scream jarred Dante's mind back into action. He was lying on his back and Blays had just struck the demon—and saved Dante's life. Wisps of shadow fizzled away from the Star-Eater's finger, which was now just a stump.

  Dante grinned. Blays' sword had actually hurt it. Presumably, as Blays had deduced, because it was churning with trace-nether, the same raw substance the Andrac was made from. While it existed in the real world as a kind of ghostly projection, impervious to steel, attacking it with a trace was in effect attacking it with something from its own realm. Or like when Blays fought them within the shadows, where they could be hurt.

  To left and right, Naran and Volo were in full retreat. The Odo Sein followed, but gave the two Andrac a wide berth. Volo was somehow firing her bow on the run, searching for a weak point in the knights' armor, keeping control of her footing even as her sandals skidded over rock and iron. There were a few archers on top of the hillock trying to take shots at Naran and Volo, but they were overcompensating in their efforts to avoid hitting the knights, their arrows arcing past.

  The demon's hand had already stopped leaking shadows. Unbound by whatever ability the Odo Sein were using to lock the nether in place, the demon's traces reformed its severed finger and claw. Blays rushed the creature. It clawed at him and he spun to the side, raking both swords down its arm. Nether gouted from the wounds like inky blood.

  Dante reached for it, but before he could try to take hold, the second demon lunged at Blays from the side. Dante charged and slashed into the second Andrac's leg. It spun on him and swung its claws down at his head. Dante thrust up his nethereal blade, holding it at a 45-degree angle to intercept across as wide a space as possible.

  The claws came down on the sword with a sound like a hammer smacking an ingot. The blade held, but something snapped in Dante's wrist. Pain shot up to his elbow. His sword fell from his grasp and landed with a clang. He bent to pick it up, but the Andrac was slashing at him with its other hand. Dante twisted himself under its claws and backpedaled three steps. The Andrac crouched over the sword as if claiming it, then grinned at him and whirled on Blays.

  "Behind you!" Dante yelled.

  At that moment, Blays was jabbing and slashing at the other Star-Eater with both swords, whipping them around so fast the demon was actually falling back a step, its mouth closed in a glowing white line. Now, Blays spun about, flicking his wrist to send his sword skidding into the other Andrac's claws.

  Parrying the blow, he sidestepped to avoid the first demon's attack at his turned back. It was almost as if he could feel the demons' every move. And maybe he could—maybe there was a ripple in the nether, some subtle hint—but watching him parry and counter the attacks of two demons at once, Dante thought he had simply been born to fight.

  "Take cold comfort!" Gladdic called from above. "When you die, your souls will mingle to form a new Andrac to fight for me."

  The archers had quit firing. A glance their way showed the cause: Gladdic and a pair of soldiers had murdered them with a long lance and a stout blade. Standing over their corpses, as well as those of the servants the knights had killed earlier, he turned away from the battle and swung his hands together. Gathering the traces. A third demon unfurled, shrieking in joy.

  Dante's wrist throbbed. Possibly broken. He watched helplessly, casting about for nether that wouldn't budge from its crevices in the earth. The Star-Eaters were attacking Blays more cautiously now, exposing no more than their claws. Blays was too busy keeping himself alive to risk a sustained attack that might wound one of them again.

  All the demons had to do was bide their time and wait for him to make a mistake.

  Blays retreated a step, then a second. As the demon who'd disarmed Dante followed Blays, it
left Dante's sword alone on the rock. Dante rushed up to grab it. The demon who'd disarmed him spun about, backhanding its claws at his head and forcing him back.

  "Now!" Dante screamed. "Draw its blood!"

  Blays, momentarily alone with the other Star-Eater, pressed hard, blades pinging against its blocking claws. He jerked forward, pressing toward its center. It deflected him, then fell back a step to give its partner the opportunity to rejoin it. As it moved its weight back, it left its left leg extended forward for balance.

  Blays collapsed as if struck. He whipped his right wrist downward, slamming his blade into the top of the demon's exposed foot. Shadows spurted to either side.

  Dante snapped at them like a striking snake. Unlike every drop of nether in the valley, the shadows bleeding from the Andrac responded to his call—because they were traces, immune to the Odo Sein's oppression.

  Great coils of darkness wrapped around his forearms. He hurled some of the nether downhill, into the backs of the knights who were still chasing Volo and Naran across the hellish terrain. Others he pressed to his ribs and wrist. His pain numbed, then vanished altogether.

  The demon guarding his sword hissed like crackling fire and charged at him. Still pulling nether from the wounded Andrac, Dante thrust up the rock beneath his lost blade, popping it into the air and spinning toward him. Blays might have caught it out of midair, but Dante let it fall beside him.

  The wounded demon was staggering, falling in on itself. Blays hacked at its body with both blades. Dante wrenched out another handful of shadows and plunged them into the ground beneath the Star-Eater charging him, yanking the rock away. The demon tripped into the hole. Dante lunged forward, skewering its arm as it grasped for a hold.

  Its nether coursed from the wound. Dante took it and shaped it into black bolts, slinging a salvo uphill toward Gladdic. There, the priest had already crafted another demon from the dead archers. He gestured frantically, calling a third from the traces left by the murdered servants. The three Andrac crossed their arms over their faces and waded into the incoming shadows. Dark tufts sprayed from their bodies. They swatted at any bolt that tried to slip past them, hands fraying into dark clouds that were already starting to reform.