The Great Rift

by Edward W. Robertson

  An arrow streaked toward Blays. He sidestepped and struck it down midflight. A man in red charged Dante, a rectangular shield covering him from chin to shins. Dante held his ground and fired a bolt of shadows through the man's eye. The body tumbled forward onto the shield, skidding over the rocks.

  Firelight lit the rocky shore. Every man in red lay among the wet stones, writhing or silenced, dying or dead. A burning arrow shot lanced from the barricade into the hide shield on the banked longboat's prow. Blays hollered and swung his sword in a circle, waving Lolligan's men back to the safety of their makeshift wall. Arrows volleyed from the galley's deck and ricocheted from the abandoned rocks.

  Rhythmic cries erupted from the galley. Oars thrashed at the water, rotating the ship sidelong to the island. The galley began a slow advance. In moments, the archers on its forward deck would have clear fire on the barricade's flank.

  Shouts filled the air to the south. A dozen men rushed through the dark yards of the house, bows in hand. They swarmed up the stairs to a third-floor balcony which was level with the firing platform on the galley. Two men pulled down the balcony's canvas roofing and draped it over the railing, providing some measure of cover for the others, who immediately rained fire on the archers in the galley.

  "Fall back!" Blays yelled.

  Covered by the men on the deck, the soldiers pinned behind the fiery barricade raced toward the safety of the house, ducking low, shields held above their heads. Dante ran with them. Sporadic arrows whisked between them. One man fell, an arrow buried in his leg. Lira ran back and helped him to his feet.

  Another band of reinforcements sprinted up from the pier. With the house between them and the galley, Dante took stock of the wounded. Four of Lolligan's men had died down on the shore. Another six had been shot or badly stabbed in the scrum. While those still fit to fight thumped across the house to get to the decks and fire on the galley, Dante called out the servants, who helped him bear the wounded into the dining hall. Dents in the rugs showed where chairs and tables had once stood. Now it was perfectly empty, the ideal place to stretch out the bleeding men and seeing to their wounds. Dante patched up the two unconscious men with the blood-hungry nether, then left the others to be bandaged by the maids and footmen.

  He ran outside onto the balcony. Men erupted in cheers. He grinned, but the noise wasn't for him: past the dark shore, the galley had turned, thrashing northward across the lake. On the many decks of Lolligan's home, sixty-odd mercenaries hollered, ringing their swords against their shields.

  Dante ran from deck to deck until he found Lolligan, Ulwen, and the woman in blue, whose clothes clung to her body, sodden with sweat and water and blood. They smiled from the balcony, watching the galley retreat.

  "What are you standing there for?" Dante said. "Let's get on a boat and finish them off."

  Lolligan smiled, but his eyes were creased with worry. "I think we've done all we can tonight."

  "What are you talking about? Their men are decimated. Their sorcerer is wounded and weak. We can take them."

  "He speaks to the future," agreed the woman in blue. "They attacked us first, in the concealing shadows of darkness. Who would say we don't have the right to fight back?"

  Lolligan nodded. "To hound them across the lake, however? To hunt them down and kill them? How do we argue that was a mistake? That it was forced upon us?"

  Anger flashed over Dante, as much for this sudden split in solidarity as for the fact Cassinder was escaping over the black waves. "That man is one of the prime reasons the palace is pushing for war. Erasing him from the equation brings us one step closer to peace."

  "Then there is tomorrow." The woman in blue gestured at the dark blot of the galley. "What if we spend our men tonight, and the dawn brings a fleet of the king's ships?"

  "Not to mention potential pushback from Jocubs' supporters in the TAGVOG," Lolligan said. "If you want us to be able to stand with you and the norren, we'll need the manpower to stand firm against our enemies here."

  Exhaustion dropped on Dante like a fog. His muscles felt trembly, weakened by the climb up Jocubs' water closet, the swim through cold waters, the battle on the shore. Sapped by the demands of the nether, his mind felt like the longboat he'd hulled: sluggish, sinking beneath the surface of a cold abyss.

  "It compromises us all, doesn't it? This struggle." Dante shivered. On the north shore, fires hissed as servants doused the mounded furniture with buckets of water. Bitter smoke boiled across the island. "We'd better leave tonight, then. It will be much easier for you to pass off whatever story you please when Jocubs' killers aren't around to be questioned."

  Lolligan tipped back his head, eyes glinting in the moonlight. "That might be for the best. Do you still have my salt? On the road, a small luxury can make all the difference."

  Dante smiled. "I still have your salt."

  "All I ask is you save a pinch for whoever runs your kitchens." He frowned at the city. "You should leave for your own safety, too. Mennok knows what new horrors tomorrow will bring."

  "Blays would advise you to tell as many different stories as you can and let confusion win the battle for you."

  Lolligan chuckled, shaking his head. "Thanks for all your help. Let's meet again in safer days."

  Dante went downstairs to round up the others. The house smelled of blood and smoke. Lira had a gash on her upper arm, and a fist-sized bruise on Blays' chest was already magenta and swollen, but none of their group bore wounds that would slow them down. Hurriedly, they cleaned their swords and packed their clothes. A rowboat awaited them at the dock. At the stables, the boy rubbed his puffy eyes and slogged off to fetch their horses.

  Dante settled their accounts and rode east. Everyone was as tired as the stablehand, too exhausted to even ask where they were headed. Then again, maybe it was obvious: they were going home.

  Dawn spilled over the western mountains when they were halfway up the pass. They stopped for breakfast, or the world's latest supper. Green mountains ringed the long blue lake. Pillars of smoke rose from hundreds of different chimneys. Birds peeped from the branches, pecking at fresh buds and hard green seeds.

  "Pretty, isn't it?" Blays said. "I hope Moddegan doesn't decide to burn the whole valley down."

  "At least that would slow down his march on the Territories," Dante said.

  Lira glanced up. "Was that what this was about?"

  Dante gave her a brief glare. "This was about letting a people choose their own leaders."

  "Specifically, leaders who want the same things we do."

  "I'm fine with what we did." Dante swung up into the saddle. His head thudded. It would be hours before they reached the next town and the beds it would offer. Lira's accusation followed him all the way.

  16

  Ants scrambled in and out from the mouth of their sandy hill, unaware of their impending destruction. And what could they do if they knew? Run? Escape to the safety of their deepest tunnels? They certainly couldn't stop it. Their fear, their anger, the frantic waving of their antennae, none of it would make the slightest difference to the coming disaster.

  Kneeling in the dirt, Dante shaped a finger of nether and pushed it into the top of the hill.

  He meant to dislodge a single grain. Instead, the rod of shadows shoved over the hill's entire top into a crumbling caldera. Ants wriggled in the sand, forcing their way into daylight and air. Dante stripped the shadows away until they were as nimble as a pin, then brushed sand up the half-ruined hill. Grains slid back into a lazy pile.

  If he wanted, he could push a boulder. He could crack the side of a cliff, shearing rubble into a lethal rain of falling rocks. He could pound the anthill into a hard-packed hole, killing everything inside it. But all that was physical brawn, nothing more. The People of the Pocket hadn't been moving the earth by brute force. They had reshaped it. Made it grow like the body and branches of a tree. And however much Dante fiddled around in the dirt, he couldn't begin to replicate that.

  Still,
he practiced during every stop they made along the eastward road. The mountains of Gallador faded into the spring haze. Grass bent in the wind and danced in the rain. They saw no sign of pursuit from the lakelands. Still, they rode swiftly, trotting and walking until their horses grew tired, then swapping them out for their spares.

  He looned Cally two days out from Wending to let him known they may have led a revolution.

  "May?" Cally said. "What part is uncertain? The torches and pitchforks, or your participation in waving them?"

  "We don't how it turned out," Dante said. "The king's soldiers might have come back and put it down."

  "The king's soldiers?"

  "The ones we fought." Dante sucked in his breath. "Unintentionally."

  "Were they in disguise?"

  "Uniforms."

  "Were you?"

  "Disguises wouldn't have helped. Cassinder was leading them."

  "So you fought—with swords and the like—against the king's own troops." Cally's fingernails clicked against something hard. "Well, this ought to help the norren quite a bit."

  "You think so?" Dante said.

  "Certainly. Now Moddegan will ignore them altogether and come straight for us instead."

  "Cally, at this point do you really think there's any hope we can stop this?"

  "Sure. So long as every last norren agrees to a treaty they'll never, ever agree to."

  "That's what I thought. Wending's merchants were ready to enlist themselves at the king's side. We just turned them into rebels."

  Cally sighed. "I suppose you've done me a favor. Now when I tell the Council this is all your fault, I won't have to lie."

  Pedestrians and horse-teams trickled west, outnumbering the eastern traffic ten to one. After two days of this, curiosity got the best of Blays, and he planted himself straight in the path of a man, his wife, and their three children, all on foot. The man stopped, stiff, fist clenched near his belt.

  "Don't worry," Blays said. "We're not bandits. Anymore. Why are you headed west?"

  The man glanced at the odd assortment of Dante, Lira, Mourn, and Fann. "To get out before the soldiers get in."

  "Think it'll come to that?"

  "Norren won't budge." The man gazed at Mourn. "Guess we have to instead."

  Mourn stared at the road. "We're not the ones making threats."

  The man tightened his fist. Blays raised his eyebrow. The man hunched his back and continued down the road.

  Dante made no detours until the wheatfields of Tantonnen. At the town of Shan, he broke north to Brant's estate. Again, Brant opened the door himself, greeting them with a grin, his thick arms crossed over his gut.

  "Heard you've been sowing troubled seeds."

  "Doesn't sound like us," Blays said. "Must have been some other Blays."

  "Funny. I heard two young men from Narashtovik fell in love with the daughter of some mucky-muck teamonger. When they tried to abscond with the lady, the merchant objected, so they dumped a sack of tree-cobras in his room while he slept."

  "Definitely not us," Blays said. "Me, I'm promised to my one and only. And as for him," he said, jerking a thumb at Dante, "I don't think he even knows what a woman is."

  "Nonsense," Dante said. "They're the ones with the dresses and nice smells, aren't they?"

  Brant beckoned them inside. "Whatever the case, the whole deal wound up in some ripping nighttime brawl. Last I heard, King Moddegan sent a half dozen galleys upriver to put down the fighting."

  Over dinner, Dante gave the farmer a more accurate if censored version of events, and was happy to hear that not only had the Clan of the Golden Field ceased their banditry, but were suspected of having slain a crew of human highwaymen who'd begun attacking wagons themselves. Narashtovik's first payments had already arrived, too. In response, the farmers had dispatched their first load of grain to the Territories not two days ago.

  "Nice to know one thing in the world's going well," Dante said.

  "It's the best things have looked for us in years," Brant said. "If you could just get Moddegan and the norren to let go of each other's throats, we'd have to build you a statue."

  They rode on. Smoke hung on the western plains. At a bridge over a swift and noisy stream, Blays stopped to stock up on water and feed the horses. Dante picked through the reeds on the muddy banks and called to the nether hiding under the algae-slick stones. Shaping it into a black stylus, he folded his hands in his lap and traced his name into the muck. Nether lurked in the mud, too, as well as in the water that welled up in the letters of his name, pinpricks of darkness that he pooled in his palm. How could he speak to the soil? Make it move in tune with the nether it contained? Shadows rushed to his hands. He pounded the nether into the mud, splattering himself and the stream, obliterating his name.

  A hundred miles from Narashtovik, the black woods swallowed them up. Cally raised Dante on the loon and told him to hurry home. He wouldn't explain why. Dante resumed at a gallop. They reached the city in two days. Cold spring rains battered the rooftops, swirling the streets into a slurry of horse dung and mud. Men ran from doorways with their hoods pulled tight over their heads. Atop the Pridegate, guards watched Dante pass; they were as still as the rooftop gargoyles, rain ticking on their metal helmets. Compared to the ebullience of Thaws, the streets were desolate, tense, a place to be fled rather than enjoyed.

  At the gates of the Sealed Citadel, Dante pulled back his hood and called out his name. A guard leaned over the battlements and disappeared inside the gatetower. The portcullis cranked into the walls with a cacophony of clunks and shrieks. A footman splashed across the courtyard. Cally was waiting.

  Inside the keep, Dante shed his sopping cloak and jogged up the stairs, Blays behind him. Cally sat behind his desk, tapping the blunt end of a quill into a blob of ink spilled on the surface of the dark wood. He nodded at them without looking up. His eyes were sunken, ringed with wine-dark circles. His white hair lay flat against his head. Blue veins traced his unusually pale face, as if he'd already joined Arawn in the other world where sunlight was a stranger, left to wander endless fields under the silver of the stars.

  "You got here quick." His voice was as flat as his hair. "That's good."

  Blays rested his hand on the hilt of his sword. "Either something's wrong or you're starting to show your age. Since you haven't crumbled into a pile of dust, I'm guessing the former."

  Cally smiled wryly at the spilled ink. "Is it that easy to tell?"

  "Oh, no. Only if you've got eyes."

  Cally dropped the quill and steepled his fingers against his chin. "There was another riot in Dollendun. Moddegan's troops marched across the river to put it down. They did. They burned down half the norren quarter, too."

  "Are you kidding me?" Dante said.

  "The clans have gone berserk. At last count, 23 had rejected the treaty. The chieftain of the Clan of Twinstreams actually shoved his copy up his own ass just so he could shit it back out."

  Dante pushed his fist to his forehead. "I'm guessing Moddegan didn't lay down his crown and do the apology dance."

  Cally gazed at the congealing ink. "I haven't received the official announcement yet. But rumor, as always, outraces the sun. The clans have been outlawed. Any norren who resists the commands of Gaskan soldiers, lords, or officials elected or appointed is to be seized as property of the crown. Or killed without penalty." Cally looked up, impossibly old. "It's been decided. He's going to war."

  "Well shit," Blays said.

  "You're the one who's been saying this could happen all along," Dante said. "Or was I getting you mixed up with some other 120-year-old head of the Council of the Sealed Citadel of Narashtovik?"

  The stormheads of Cally's brows collided. "Yes, but among the manifold risks and rewards of supporting the norren, early war was literally the worst outcome. It's hardly fair."

  "Fair?" Dane laughed. "Even if this was our worst nightmare, I assume you planned for it."

  "That doesn't mean I have good plans. Wh
en the most powerful man in the known world decides to come stamp you into paste, there's not a whole lot planning can do for you."

  "You always have options," Dante said. "You can always fight back."

  Cally rolled his eyed, mustache twitching. "You can leap off a cliff, too, but it won't get you any closer to the moon."

  "Let's assume we've only got a few months left to our tragically brief lives," Blays said. "What's going to be the most fun for us to do in the meantime?"

  A smile fought through the thicket of the old man's beard. "Okay. Fighting back."

  Blays thrust up his fist. "So let's take a cue from the norren, stuff that treaty right up our ass, and shit it back out!"

  "We're not doing that."

  "Then at least let us go drive those red-shirted sons of bitches out of the Norren Territories."

  "The Council's going to hate this," Cally smiled. "Brace yourselves for shouting."

  He scheduled the meeting for four days later. In the meantime, he dispatched riders to recall Olivander from the villages of the eastern foothills, where he was running headcounts on men of fighting age, and to fetch Kav from his estate on the northwest shores. The rains continued, tumbling from the tight ceiling of clouds. Sometimes it poured down in great seaside squalls, solid sheets of water that flushed down the hills and flooded the basement of the barracks. At other times, the rain descended in a dewy mist, glomming Dante's eyelashes and slicking the cobbles. It was in such a rain that Cally insisted on taking Dante to the graveyard.

  Most of the graves on the northern hill were centuries old. A scant handful were adorned with the pine boughs marking the anniversary of their occupant's passage. Moss clung to stone markers. Some of the tomb-pillars had toppled, lying cracked in the weeds. Cally passed Larrimore's marker, clean and white. Damp grass soaked the legs of Dante's pants. His cloak hung heavy and damp from his shoulders. His hands were as frigid as the dead.

  "Are we scouting your future resting place?" Dante slicked rain from his eyes. "Or have you decided you'd rather die by a cold than a sword?"