The Great Rift

by Edward W. Robertson

  Meanwhile, the few norren who desired political office were typically those who lacked the brains to ever be granted it. Many of the most thoughtful spoke little at all, preferring to be thought of as mentally crippled rather than exposing the wisdom of their philosophies and thus putting them at risk of a sudden promotion to power. And the more cunning leaders, upon discovering firsthand how unpleasant the demands of the crown, scepter, or wolf's-head could be, took to deliberately espousing theories of life and scripture that were flawed, flagrantly heretic, or outright nonsense, hoping to have the mantle snatched from their shoulders and draped over those of some other sucker. Often, the public saw through these deceptions and played along anyway in a stubborn effort to call the chieftain's bluff.

  The result was twofold: the policies of clans, villages, and territories could suddenly become bizarre or outright self-destructive, leading to regular turnover at the top and a widespread degree of low-level chaos that the regimented politics of the capital in Setteven found laughably easy to exploit (and which Dante found maddening to try to keep up with). And in the rare cases when a mayor or chief stuck fast to his or her position for years or decades, their realm might be stable, but the leaders themselves were often resentful and bitter of their responsibilities—sometimes poisonously so.

  The man who opened the door was one of the latter.

  Old even by norren standards, gray colored the mayor's head, brows, and beard. He was lean like jerky is lean, but had lost none of his 7' 6" height to old age, or in any event had plenty to spare. As he towered two full feet above, Dante suddenly understood how it felt to be a dog that's just been discovered snatching up the roast.

  "Are you the mayor?" Blays said.

  "Are you knocking on the mayor's door without knowing who the mayor is?"

  "We're friends," Dante put in quickly.

  "Doubt that. Don't often feel like taking a hammer to the heads of my friends."

  "We're here to help. A clan of norren was taken as slaves—"

  "And now they're gone, and the rest of us still got to look out for ourselves." The old norren lowered his face inches from Dante's, filling him with the same vertigo that might come from being stared down by a mountain peak. "Unless you're looking to become a part of my doorstep, get off of it."

  Blays stood his ground. "If you change your mind, we'll be sleeping on your town's lawn."

  Something shifted in the old man's eyes. He closed the door hard enough to make Dante blink. Laughter trickled up from the plaza far below.

  "He's got my vote," Blays said.

  "He's hiding something."

  "Tall as he is, he could be hiding a pike up his ass and you'd never be the wiser."

  "That would explain the general tightness of his character." Dante kicked a pebble down the trail. It bounced awry, bouncing over the edge and clattering on the stone incline below. "He knows something. That's why the clan came here. That's what he meant about looking after themselves now."

  "Sounded like typical norren fatalism to me."

  "I think he thinks talking would put him in danger. Maybe pose a risk to whole town. If so, how do we make him talk?"

  "I predict he's impervious to threats."

  "Physical ones."

  A smile began to spread on Blays' face. "Bribery? Blackmail? We don't even know the guy's name."

  "Then it's a good thing we have absolutely nothing better to do than plot and scheme to ruin his life."

  "I'm sure you're aware that tradition and logic dictate the best place to scheme is in a pub."

  "My thoughts exactly."

  "Wait, really?"

  Dante nodded downhill. The lanterns of the public houses flickered over the sprawling stone mosaic. "If there is one thing you can always find in a pub, it's people willing to badmouth public officials."

  "We'll have to be careful not to draw suspicion. I'll disguise myself by getting drunk."

  No less than three public houses stood in the square. Dante chose the loudest, a two-story structure with a ground floor of clamshell-studded clay bricks that must have been fired from river mud. Its upper level was unpainted pine boards; that and a visible slant to many of its windows marked the second story as a later and somewhat hasty addition.

  An old man poked at meat grilling over the fireplace. Scents of fish oil, beer, and sweat miasmaed the wide room. Though few humans peopled the norren lands, the pub's patrons, like those of any decent port, were a diverse bunch, evenly split between human and norren. The furniture didn't reflect this democratic spirit. Human legs dangled from chairs built for much larger bodies.

  Blays ordered while Dante found a promising seat at the end of a long table just high enough to make resting his elbows on it entirely awkward. The wooden bench was worn shiny and smooth from the butts of countless travelers. His pint was pleasantly bitter and just as cold as the wintry air outside. Blays bought a platter of steaming, flaky white fish, nearly doubling the price with a side of extra salt.

  Dante had expected the dozen-odd norren and humans at the table to begin criticizing, insulting, and slandering the mayor at a moment's notice—from their supple leather coats, they were native to the territories, if not Cling itself—but three pints and an hour later, he had nothing to show for himself but a decent buzz. Blays seemed happy enough, chatting away with a shaven-headed norren about various flavors of norren beer, a topic which, given the hundreds of varieties of norren wheat (they approached the cultivation of their staple crop with the same rigor and vigor they brought to their art), could fill a solid month of discussion, and Blays gave every indication of doing just that.

  "Excuse me," Dante finally said to the gray-bearded norren to his right. "Can you tell me who's mayor here?"

  The man didn't look up from the chipped clay mug he'd been staring at the last five minutes. "Why do you ask?"

  With a drunk's skill for plucking up lies as easily as fallen scarves, Dante said, "I'm looking to do some shipping here."

  "You're not from here. It's obvious as a sunrise. So let me spare you the speeches about Mayor Banning and say this: he's great. You couldn't ask for a better leader. Honest. Forthright. A man who looks out for his town."

  "I see."

  "Put him in charge, what, forty years ago. Stoics of Barnassus. After he wrote that, they tried to put him in charge of the whole territory, but Cling wanted him too—hometown and all. Fought themselves a little war about it. Cling's victory inspired him to write The Posture of Virtue Is Not Kneeling."

  "I've read that," Dante said. "He argues that taking a stand against a stronger foe guarantees the eternal blessings of both Haupt and Josun Joh. Very spirited."

  The norren eyed him, drawing back in the universal gesture of reappraisal. "Should try to take a look at his paintings if you get the chance. Landscapes so real you could tip them back and pour their rivers right in your mouth."

  "Really? Where can I find them?"

  "Not his workshop, that's for sure," the old man laughed. "He keeps that locked down tighter than the princess' panties. Couldn't even tell you where it is." He gulped his beer. "Can't blame him, either. He'd never get one stroke down with a crowd of gogglers pressing in over his shoulders."

  Over the course of the night, Dante struck up conversations with the pubkeep, another norren local, and a trio of human bargemen who made regular call at Cling. On the starlit walk back to their tent, he detoured back to the river shore.

  "They all said the same thing. A man whose integrity and talent is matched only by his prolificness." He spat beery aftertaste into the slow-moving waters. "I hope you came up with something more helpful."

  "Oh," Blays said. He reached down for a stone and wobbled, slapping both palms into the muck to steady himself. "That."

  "That?"

  "I sort of forgot why we were there." He attempted to wash his hands in the river and fell down again, soaking his pants. "I think I need to go to sleep."

  Dante sighed and headed to the tent, where
Blays proved himself right by collapsing into his blanket, where he stayed until well past noon. The clan was similarly indolent, fishing, napping, sketching circles in the mud, where they lit candles and knelt to pray to Josun Joh for direction. Dante, turning to more earthly forms of action, decided to follow the mayor.

  Technically speaking, he wasn't following Mayor Banning. A dead fly was. But Dante had killed it—three, actually, but the first two were too mangled to use—revived it of a sort, and sent it after Banning the moment the mayor lumbered from his cliffside home. Seeing through the fly's eyes was so nauseating Dante puked his guts up all over the shoreline reeds, where a hungover Blays had had the same idea. Unlike the sights and sounds he received from dead animals, which were essentially the same as (if sometimes sharper than) his own, the senses relayed from the fly were kaleidoscopic and chaotic, a fractured, fisheye view of the world that careered into stomach-stirring anarchy the moment the insect took wing. The only way Dante could keep up was to lie down in the darkness of the yurt with his eyes closed and a cloth over his face, a posture which Blays imitated after just a few minutes of trying to battle the shimmering sunlight mirrored on the blue waters.

  Through the fly's manifold eyes, he watched Banning take meetings with merchants. Have lunch with his wife. Have more meetings with merchants, followed by a meeting with a mayor from downriver, and finally, with another pair of merchants, whom he spoke with over dinner and wine before retiring home to read scriptural scrolls in the candlelight.

  The next day, during negotiations with a landlord from upriver over the prospect of floating his timber through Cling, Banning rose and smashed the fly into a gooey blot. Dante's second sight disappeared with a pinprick of pain in the center of his brain. Citing exhaustion, he sent Blays to catch him a new fly, which he had back in action by midafternoon. Just in time to watch things conclude with the would-be timber baron, whose proposal was denied on the grounds it might interfere with local fishermen.

  For three days, Banning did nothing but rise, meet, eat, and read. On the fourth day, rather than descending the switchback to his offices on the short hill on the north end of town, the towering norren climbed to the very top of the rise in which his house was set and continued west into the woods. He wandered along as if aimless, gazing at sunbeams, kneeling to brush leaves from stones. After a few hours, during which Dante nodded off more than once, Banning trudged to a fold in the hills where a small, simple cabin hid among the thick trees. The mayor knocked on the door. A young norren appeared, smiling, and handed Banning a wide, flat object bundled in cloth. Paint smeared his hairy arms.

  Dante opened his eyes and went to get Blays.

  "He doesn't paint his own paintings," he explained. "He doesn't have time. He's so busy running the town's affairs he has some kid do it for him, then picks them up when they're done."

  "So what?" Blays picked pulled chicken from his teeth; still traumatized from their days-long march of crusty bread, he'd made it his mission to try the fare of every stall, inn, and bakery in town. "Every master in Bressel does that."

  "We're a thousand miles from Bressel. To the norren, the things you make are a reflection of your soul. That's why it's such a big deal. Passing off someone else's work as your own is like plagiarizing the Cycle of Arawn."

  "A great way to get lynched by humorless scolds?"

  "And to get him to talk."

  "Now?"

  "He's miles from town. We can catch him on the way back."

  "What about him?" Blays nodded at Mourn, who idled at a bakery across the plaza, crumbling bread into his mouth. Out of shame or confusion, the young norren hadn't mentioned suddenly falling asleep the other night, but he hadn't ceased following them, either.

  "Let him follow. If Banning tries to kill us, we'll have a witness."

  Blays went back to the tent for his swords. While he was gone, Dante sat down and closed his eyes. Banning was still in the woods to the north, traipsing Cling-ward with the help of a tall staff, a package tucked gently under his other arm. Dante didn't bother fetching his own sword. He doubted Banning would attack them outright, whether in feigned outrage to their accusation or to stop them from telling others, but if Dante was wrong—and given how seriously the norren took these things, there was always a chance—his middling swordplay wouldn't be much use against the towering mayor.

  They puffed their way up the switchback road, then followed the dirt trail traced across the hill's flat crest. Mourn lagged a hundred feet behind, but once the trail gave out and the two of them cut across the high brown grasses of the open field, the young norren jogged to catch up, his face dark with annoyance at being forced to run after his troublesome human charges.

  "Where are you going?" Mourn said when he reached their side.

  "Our daily stroll across the middle of nowhere," Blays said.

  "You're not supposed to leave town."

  "And my mother didn't want me to grow up a swordsman like my dad, either, but that didn't stop me from disgracing her dearly departed memory."

  "Turn around and get back to your tent."

  Dante scowled over his shoulder. "If you'd like to try to stop us, please let me know where to send your remains. Now go back to town and beseech Josun Joh to tell you what to do next. It's worked great so far."

  "Josun Joh's words are real." Mourn's voice sounded so hurt Dante almost stopped.

  "You've heard him?"

  "Not me personally. Vee and Orlen do most of the talking."

  "Then how do you know they're not making it all up?"

  "Some summers ago, the clan headed to the highlands to wait out the heat. The peaks are high and jagged there, ready to tear open the belly of any stupid and lazy clouds who get too low. But it was dry there too, because sometimes the gods hate us. And who can blame them, when every smart lad in the land is ready to denounce their very existence." Mourn waited a moment before going on. "We were gathering jen-nuts when Orlen went stock still. Josun Joh had spoken to him, he said. There was a fire past the western ridge. We needed to move.

  "We traveled east. Within an hour, the fire jumped over the ridge and swept over the valley where we'd been earlier that morning. Maybe we'd have had enough time to get away. But we were on foot, like always, and fire can outrun any man when it's hungry enough."

  "Orlen probably smelled smoke," Dante said.

  "When Josun Joh spoke to him, the wind was blowing westward."

  "So he saw the smoke. Fire has a unique property of being visible."

  Mourn tromped through the weeds in silence. "At least tell me where you're going."

  Blays touched the pommel of the sword at his hip. "Oh, just to kick the mayor until the stars whirring around his head show him the sign to tell us where the hell your cousins are."

  "I think Vee hates me," Mourn declared. "Why else would she assign me to you two?"

  "Maybe she hates us."

  "It's a stupid thing, really. You're running off to gods know where, and what am I supposed to do to stop you? Attack you? I don't think any good will come of that. Except for the local worms. So I'm supposed to run off and tell mommy and daddy like a spited toddler?" Mourn shook his head at the state of things. "You know what, to hell with them. If they want to guard you, they can guard you themselves. We're beating up the mayor? Let's go beat up the mayor."

  The hill sloped down into a low forest of birches and young pines. Star-shaped yellow flowers dotted the roots of the trees. Dante shut his eyes to glance through the fly's and tripped into a pile of pine needles. Smelling sap, he kept his eyes shut.

  "Are you okay?" Mourn said. "I think he's dead."

  "I'm not dead." In the fly's fractured vision, dozens of Bannings hiked up the side of a hillside more or less identical to their own. He ordered the fly up, stomach lurching. He managed to prevent himself from puking until the bug had located them among the trees, confirming the mayor was no more than a half mile away. When Dante was finished, he kicked pine needles over the hot,
sour mess, gargled with cool water, and gestured down the hill. "Stop staring at me and start looking for our man."

  They need hardly have bothered. Within a minute, Banning began singing to himself, an eerie, droning tune that carried down the hillside like the honking of morbid geese. When Dante stepped in his path, the spire-tall norren stopped less than a foot away. Dante tensed, preparing to fling himself out of the way.

  "I know you." Banning's face darkened. "Just because the cliff isn't here doesn't mean I won't throw you down it."

  "You should at least hear what I'm about to say," Dante said. "Then some people might even not blame you for what you've done."

  "Talk sense or talk less."

  "That package under your arm. Is your name on it?"

  Banning didn't glance down. "It's the last stroke I make."

  "Typical of most artists, I imagine. Except, apparently, the man who actually paints yours."

  The mayor's gaze was as still and deep as a lake. "Pick up a weapon."

  Dante cocked his head. "What?"

  "So I don't have to say I killed an unarmed man."

  Sudden anger rippled through Dante's veins. With it came the nether, great pools he gathered in his hands. With a thought, he shaped them into shadowy ropes which looped around the tree branches and clawed at Banning's rugged face. The air dimmed like an instant sunset. Dante gave form to the nether for those who couldn't see it, viscous, liquid shadows that dripped from his hands like reluctant blood.

  "I could have threatened you with violence," he said softly. "But I could tell at a glance it wouldn't work, and I'd have to either back down or hurt you, which I don't much like to do. But if you don't answer my questions about the missing norren, I will tell the city where your masterpieces really come from. You'll be exiled from Cling to die as an old man in a place you do not know."

  Anger flowed over Banning's face, followed by a quiver of fear that was clearly visible beneath his thatchy beard. "If someone were to have up and enslaved a clan, you think their fellow norren would be happy to point those people out."

  "Unless?"

  "Unless saying such would threaten the ones that they hold dear."