by Dorian Hart
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”
Boss, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Do you need more intelligent cats?
Pewter, do I detect a note of jealousy?
I’m simply pointing out that cats don’t always get along, and making them smarter won’t necessarily change that.
You are jealous!
Aravia noticed again that the bed had been removed from the room. “What happened to the furniture?”
“That was Tor’s idea,” said Ernie.
“Because of what you said right before you left,” Tor said to her. “You said ‘I need to remember this room.’ I figured that meant you were planning on teleporting back here. But you hadn’t spent that much time memorizing the details, and I remember you saying once that if you weren’t entirely sure where you were teleporting to, you might end up missing your target by a few feet. I wanted to decrease the chance you’d end up teleporting into the bed.”
“Tor, that was…thank you. Your logic was entirely sound.”
He really looks after you, have you noticed?
Of course he does. We’re friends. We look after each other.
That’s not where I was going with that.
Tor smiled broadly after her compliment. His eyes shone.
This is not the time for that discussion. Truth was, she hadn’t entirely sorted out her feelings toward Tor, but the act of trying made her lose critical focus, and so she tended to push the matter to the back of her mind. Now that she knew she was a minor deity of sorts, there were more important things to consider.
Grey Wolf’s voice broke up her stream of thought. “We should make straight for Culud.” He rubbed his hands together and cracked a rare smile. “Tor can get us carpet reconnaissance to keep us near the road across…Gurund, you said it was? We’ll be able to pick out the straightest line up into the Stoneguards. Someone in Culud must have some idea how we can get over or under or through the mountains.”
Aravia concurred. “Even with Step along, I think we could reach Culud in less than two weeks, assuming that nothing unexpected happens.”
“Because nothing unexpected ever happens to us,” said Dranko.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” said Tor. “We deserve some luck, I think.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Dranko puffed on a cigar and leaned back against a tree. The campfire warmed his feet. “So, Step, any regrets yet about coming with us?”
“Quite the contrary. I never imagined I would spend so much time aboard a flying carpet.” He looked down at the ground and frowned. “I hope Kemma is not displeased that I have flown upon a Delfirian holy relic.”
“She won’t mind,” said Dranko. “‘Cause you know who’s not using it? The Delfirians.”
Step gave him a sharp look. “Kemma’s mind is not for me to know.”
Over the thirteen days since they had departed Djaw together (thankfully with their weapons returned, as Yellow Radiance had promised), the company had caught up Certain Step on their various travels and tribulations. He’d been quietly inquisitive and had lost most of that initial belligerence.
Dranko blew out a stream of smoke. “I don’t see why that should stop you from speculating. Or will Kemma get mad and scorch you with a sunbeam?”
“Of course not!” Now Step sounded angry again. “Our gods honor the Law of Interference, which you call the Injunction. They do not sully themselves by dabbling in the affairs of mortal men. But that is no reason to treat them with disrespect. You have a loose tongue, especially for a priest.”
Dranko chuckled, and it was almost more than he could bear not to make a “loose tongue” joke. “Our gods bend the rules all the time. Speaking of which: Hey Morningstar! You haven’t given us last night’s report on the Dream Team.”
Morningstar sighed. She always sighed when he talked about her sisters. “Must you call them that?”
“Yeah. I must. Sorry.”
“There is nothing new. My sisters grow more comfortable and skilled each night. Sometimes I even hope that we are overprepared, that we will overwhelm Aktallian without suffering any losses. Abernathy hasn’t been to the Greenhouse in three days, so there has been no news from Eddings. Other than being ready for Aktallian, my only concern is that Amber will break her promise to keep our training secret, but there’s nothing more I can do about her.”
Dranko stared out westward into the dusk. The Stoneguard Mountains scraped against the sky. At the end of each day they loomed higher, an impossible, impassable wall of gray-black spires tipped with silver-white. Tor had begged to fly Horn’s Company over them in shifts, but Aravia had warned against it. Vyasa Vya became unsteady in high winds, and the air atop mountains that high would be far more violent than anything they had thus far had to deal with. In addition, she had said, the temperatures would be dangerously low and the air too thin to breathe.
They had stopped for the day in the foothills, after nearly two weeks of uneventful carpet-shuttling and wilderness camping, with two stops in small villages to resupply. Dranko had dropped one of his little bottles into the Eternal River as they crossed over north of Levenmud, a little scrap of paper sealed inside proclaiming, “Dranko was here.” Even though his current adventures were far more likely to bring about his dream of long-lasting fame, the thought of people all around Spira finding his notes and wondering who “Dranko” was made him unaccountably happy. Ernie had watched him do it, and Dranko had laughed it off. “Just a hobby,” he had said.
It had taken them two days longer than expected to come this far; they had strayed too far north and for the past two days had been angling south and west down the skirts of the mountains. Tor, who earlier had reported seeing what he guessed was the town of Culud, said they could reach it by midnight. But the skies were socked in with clouds, and stopping in the early evening gave Aravia the perfect opportunity to hop back to Djaw to see what the sage Keen Mind had dug up. Tor had insisted on going with her; the two had been gone for about an hour now, and should be back any—
“Someone’s coming.” Grey Wolf jumped to his feet and drew his sword.
“It’s us!” came Tor’s voice out of the darkness.
Tor and Aravia walked into their firelight, Pewter scampering around their feet. Ernie passed them hunks of bread as they sat down by the fire.
“Well?” asked Grey Wolf. “Was the sage worth all the money we spent?”
“I think so,” Aravia answered.
“She didn’t know anything about the Crosser’s Maze,” said Tor.
Dranko looked over at Morningstar. “Good. Because if it turned out we spent that lovely evening with Shreen unnecessarily, I’d have been royally pissed off.”
“Keen Mind did dig up some interesting information about Het Branoi. Disturbing, but interesting.”
“Wonderful,” said Dranko. “We were running low on disturbing news. Tell us.”
“Tea first,” said Ernie, handing Aravia a steaming tin mug. Aravia shivered as she took it. Tor unrolled his blanket and draped it around her shoulders. Would he ever get around to professing his feelings to her? That he hadn’t was nearly as baffling as Aravia’s complete failure to notice how he fawned over her. But then Aravia didn’t seem like the canoodling type, and the intellectual gulf between the two was as wide as an ocean. All for the best, Dranko supposed. The last thing Horn’s Company needed was a romantic entanglement.
He glanced over at Morningstar, who still kept her back to their campfires. She had almost adapted fully to sunlight, but something about firelight in the darkness still hurt her eyes. Her white hair glowed in the light of the flames.
Dranko laughed to himself. Talk about a gulf.
“Several hundred years ago,” said Aravia, “a group of Black Circle cultists built four pyramidal towers known as the Hets in various locations across Kivia.”
“The Black Circle?” said Grey Wolf. “Here? Why haven’t we heard anything about them or seen any sign of them?”
“We hadn’t heard nothin’ back home, neither,” said Kibi. “Not ’til we got summoned by Abernathy.”
“Keen Mind said they’re an old cult of forbidden knowledge that has never risen above obscurity. But the Hets were built by an even more obscure splinter faction among the Black Circle, who called themselves the Insulati. According to some legends whose provenance Keen Mind could not guarantee, the Hets were enchanted to be bigger on the inside than the outside. There were four known Hets: Het Chanob in the mountains between Delfir and Bederen, Het Kai Kin in southern Ocir, Het Runnel in the hills of central Anlakis, and Het Shirfin somewhere in the Endless Wood.”
“But no Het Branoi?” asked Ernie.
“No. According to Keen Mind there were only four.”
“But if there were five,” said Tor, “then Het Branoi could be the last of them, like in Step’s poem.”
“Precisely,” said Aravia. “And it would be the last because the Black Circle itself razed the other four. The rumor at the time was that the Insulati were involved in some experiment that was so horrible, so dangerous, that not even the Black Circle could abide their existence. They gutted and demolished the Hets and never rebuilt them.”
“What could they possibly have been doing?” asked Ernie.
“That’s the disturbing part,” said Aravia. “Keen Mind has some pages from an old Black Circle journal from the period, and apparently the Insulati were trying to open gateways to the Reaches.”
Aravia said “Reaches” with wide eyes and followed it with a dramatic pause, as though they all ought to flinch at the very notion. Was that something Dranko missed during one of those boring theology lessons? He glanced from side to side, but everyone else looked just as baffled.
“What are the Reaches?” asked Ernie finally.
Dranko found that Aravia usually launched right into absurdly detailed explanations of things, so her blank-faced pause was more troubling than the word itself.
“It’s…”
She stopped and thought some more. “When Serpicore first introduced me to the idea, he asked me to imagine that everything in creation cast a shadow into a second, darker universe. The Reaches are…a place. An endless black void, filled with madness. Even the stars are mad. Reality there is not compatible with our own. And it is populated with creatures that are themselves madness. Sometimes they are depicted as formless blobs, black and shapeless as floating blots of ink. Elsewhere they are drawn as huge tentacled things, swimming through the void like sea creatures. But one thing is agreed upon by the scholars: They are powerful beyond reckoning. If they wished, they could destroy this world, or any other, as easily as you might swing a sword through a doll’s house. Their reality, their universe, is merely shifted slightly away from ours, but for the denizens of the Reaches it would be little bother to reach out and rip our reality apart.”
“That cannot be,” said Certain Step, his voice vehement. “The gods would not allow it.”
“You don’t understand,” said Aravia. “The things that dwell in the Reaches are farther beyond the power of the gods than the gods are above the likes of you and me. They would erase gods and mortals alike with no effort at all.”
Dranko snorted. It was unlike Aravia to put such stock in a scary children’s story. “In that case, how are we still here talking about it? What’s been stopping them from destroying the universe all this time?”
“Nothing,” said Aravia. “But more importantly, nothing has started them on the task, either. We are saved by being beneath their notice. I imagine that there are anthills in our yard back at the Greenhouse. Dranko, why haven’t you gone out there and stomped on them or poured boiling water into their nests and tunnels?”
“Because ants are harmless. Why would I bother?”
“But what if the ants marched across the yard and into the Greenhouse?” Aravia continued. “What if you found them crawling over your dinner plate?”
“Boiling water,” said Dranko.
Aravia nodded. “Exactly. So if these Black Circle fanatics were trying to open portals between Spira and the Reaches, they ran the risk of rousing the attention of the things that live there. It’s no wonder that the rest of the Black Circle put an end to them.”
“But they must have had a reason for trying in the first place,” said Morningstar.
“Well,” said Aravia, “there are tales, unconfirmed and almost certainly apocryphal, that denizens of the Reaches have made dark bargains with the occasional mortal who has managed to contact them. I could imagine the Black Circle cultists thinking that they could reach some agreement with those…things. As for the overwhelming peril, I see three possibilities. One, the Insulati didn’t understand the danger. Two, they did understand it and found some way to mitigate it. Three, they understood it and simply felt that their goals were worth the terrible risk of contact.”
“I hope it was that second one,” Dranko muttered.
Grey Wolf walked in circles around the campfire—a variation on his usual restless habit. “Aravia, tell me I have this straight. Our two Eyes of Moirel think we’ll need to collect a third one from Het Branoi. And Het Branoi is likely the fifth and only surviving one of these Insulati pyramids where they were doing some unspeakable experiments with the Reaches. But we don’t know where Het Branoi is, and the only reason the Eyes think we might want to go there in the first place is that we’ll need to ‘travel nowhere.’”
“Mostly right,” said Aravia. “It’s possible that Het Branoi was destroyed along with the rest, and that the Eye is somewhere in its ruins.”
Grey Wolf blew through his closed lips. “Because of the way our lives tend to go, I’m going to assume that the Eye is in the stomach of one of those Reaches things and we’ll need to convince it to throw up.”
Dranko had to laugh at that. “More likely the last Eye is in its eye socket, given how ours tend to behave.”
“And,” said Aravia, “we do know where Het Branoi is, more or less. Keen Mind, who quite lives up to her name, found in her research that there once was a small kingdom where now there is nothing but ruins and tundra, in the uncivilized wilds of northeastern Kivia. That country was named Surgoil, and its central region was called Branoi. I’ve marked that area on our map. We can find it.”
No one spoke for a long minute. Grey Wolf broke the silence. “Kibi, you said that the purple Eye of Moirel lost its sense of good judgment when you used it to blast Sagiro and the Sharshun. And when we learned about Het Branoi, it was the purple and green Eyes speaking together. So it’s possible that not everything they told us through Eddings is going to come to pass. Would you agree?”
“I ain’t certain,” said Kibi slowly. “That was only a guess. But if you ask me, and as I always say, there ain’t no such thing as destiny. Ain’t nothin’ gonna come to pass unless people like us make it happen.”
Grey Wolf sighed. “Anything that gives me hope that we might avoid going into one of these Black Circle towers, I’m willing to entertain the idea. But yes or no, it’s all a matter of the future. For now we need to stay focused on the Crosser’s Maze. We should all get a good night’s sleep, and tomorrow we’ll visit Culud and learn how we can cross the mountains and reach the jungle. I’m just about ready for this gods-forsaken quest to be over.”
Certain Step stirred. “Gods-forsaken? From the tale of your journeys, I’d say the gods have smiled upon you as few mortals could claim. They guide you with prophecy, they bless you with gifts.” He looked pointedly at Dranko, and his voice grew stern. “And they ignore your insulting attitude toward them. Unquestionably your gods are invested in your success and are doing what is in their power to aid you while maintaining the Law of Interference. Every day you should be on your knees, praying and thanking them for watching over you, and not taking their names in vain!”
By the time he had finished, Step was practically shouting. Some of the older priests at the church of Delioch had been like that—no sense of humor when it came to all-powerful div
ine beings. As if the Traveling Gods had nothing better to do than flick their godly fingers at little mortal ants who showed any outward sign of not taking them seriously enough.
Merciful Delioch, but Dranko couldn’t stop himself this time. “Well said, Step.” He looked skyward and held up his hands. “Oh Great Delioch, glorious Puppeteer, whose mighty hand even now I can feel part way up my arse, thank you for your gifts of healing that have saved my friends, even though I’d prefer if they didn’t bring me so close to death myself. Have you met Kemma, Kivian goddess of the sun? I hear she’s a pretty nifty lady, so if you two are meeting sometime soon for drinks, do me a favor and tell her that she has a worshipper down here named Certain Step with a pole up his nethers that could use some holy removal. Thanks, and Amen.”
Certain Step surged to his feet, grabbing his sword from the ground next to him and drawing it awkwardly.
“Whoa, hey!” Dranko stood quickly and held up his hands, ready to nip around to the far side of the tree if he had to. Poked the bear a little too hard…
Ernie, closest at hand, moved between the two of them, his own sword out. Step stepped closer but didn’t move to strike. His face was beet-red and his eyes were wide with fury. His sword shook in his hand.
“You will take that back,” he said.
“You will ask nicely.” Dranko still couldn’t help himself.
“Dranko, just apologize,” said Grey Wolf wearily.
Oh, fine. “Step, I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. It was just a joke.”
Step wasn’t laughing. “Your own gods may tolerate your blasphemous mouth, but I will not hear your words of mockery directed at Kemma. The children of Yulan and Manisette are of a kind we should not dare to offend. We owe them our worship and obedience, not such casual contempt.”
He looked down at the sword in his hand as if startled to see it there and slid it back into its sheath. “I didn’t mean to threaten you,” he said, “but words against my goddess do not sit well. Please. Keep her out of your japes.” Step hastily retreated to the far side of the fire and sat down, not looking at anyone in particular.
