The Red Sea

by Edward W. Robertson

  She touched her right elbow with her left hand. The gesture had the crispness of a salute. "My name is Winden. To help? You will follow."

  Winden strode west from the plaza. The land sloped uphill, carrying them past more of the bamboo-ish houses. Some of these were perched atop thigh-high foundations of black stone. Most of the streets were unpaved. The few that were cobbled were as gappy as the plaza. The sun was relentless, but a steady offshore wind dried most of Dante's sweat.

  Flakes of ash fluttered in the wind. Townsfolk jogged toward shore with rods braced over their shoulders, a bucket of water hanging from each end. They all glanced at Dante and Blays, but no one said a word. The men and women both wore sleeveless shirts. The men wore short trousers. The women dressed in skirts, with one side hanging below the knee, the other side rising to mid-thigh.

  "It's funny," Blays said, staring after one of them. "I've always heard people from climates like this stroll around with everything out to the wind. But these people are as modest as people who have to wear clothes."

  "Try not to sound too disappointed about it."

  The road leveled out. Houses and shops surrounded a large square, the center of which held a large building of black and purple stone. Carved columns held up overhangs. At the structure's base, a row of weathered, somber statues gazed out to sea. As Dante watched, a man cocked a metal-headed mallet and slammed it into the side of a statue. With a painful crack, it split in half, tumbling to the clay.

  "He's supposed to be doing that, is he?" Blays said.

  "The stone," Winden said. "We will need it to rebuild."

  She climbed the steps. Arched, doorless entries led to a cool foyer. Four men and two women lay on mats on the stone floor. A woman and a man tended to them, dressing their wounds with redolent poultices, the scent unfamiliar to Dante's nose. Winden spoke to the couple, who eyed Dante, then showed him to a man with a deep gut wound. The foul smell it produced promised he wouldn't live out the week.

  The cut on Dante's arm had scabbed, but he'd suffered a few scrapes from the destruction of the house. He used the blood from these to feed the nether and sent the shadows to work. Within moments, the man's wound sealed, leaving nothing but a bright pink line.

  As Dante worked on the others, someone called Winden outside. By the time Dante finished treating the wounded, his hands were a little shaky, but after his work on the tunnel in Gallador, he knew his limits very well. He hadn't reached them yet.

  "Have you delayed seeing him for long enough?" Blays said. "Or would you like to stop for a beer on the way?"

  "I was helping the injured. Good enough? Or is your compassion all for show?"

  "I meant a celebratory beer. For your good deeds."

  Winden walked back inside and rejoined them. "Your captain. She says that they will go. That they will be back in two weeks. That you will meet them here at the bay then, or they will move on again."

  "They're leaving?" Blays glanced toward the building's entrance, which was elevated enough to have a view all the way down to the bay. "Was that part of the plan?"

  Dante shrugged. "We don't know how long we'll be here. We can't expect them to stay." He turned to Winden. "We're ready to see him."

  "Then we walk." She led them around the back of the building and into the jungle.

  There, people rested in a hot springs, easing their muscles after the exertion of the raid. Steam wafted from the waters. The bathers glanced at Winden, then rested their gazes on Dante and Blays.

  The path bent to the right. Within a few feet, vines and shrubs grew so densely that someone had had to hack them back, tunneling their way up the hill. Winden drew a long, square-headed knife, chopping at the stray twigs that had already begun to encroach on the trail.

  Since making landfall, Dante had been too busy killing strangers and stopping other strangers from dying to let Nak know they'd arrived. As they marched on, Dante touched his brooch to activate his loon.

  He felt nothing. Heard nothing. He tried a second time, then a third. He switched the device to allow him to speak to his friend Mourn instead, but this failed as well. As did every other connection he attempted. Keeping one eye on the clay trail, he sank into the bone that comprised the loon's main functionality. The nether that fueled it was gone.

  "My loon," he murmured to Blays. "It's gone dead."

  Blays cocked his head. "Gone dead? What, have you been using it too much?"

  "I haven't been using it at all."

  "Well, you have to use it sometimes. Otherwise it'll use itself while you're asleep."

  Dante stared, then scowled. "You're disgusting. And this is serious. Is yours working?"

  Blays gazed into the distance, muttering to himself as he tested the loon. He shook his head. "Nothing. Has this ever happened before?"

  "The only time they go dead is when you use them too long, without allowing their nether to replenish. It's possible we're too far away from the loons they're paired with. The distance could have depleted the nether. Broken them."

  "In other words, we're completely on our own here."

  Dante stared up at the woman's back. "Looks like."

  They climbed on. The trail rolled up and down but did more ascending than descending. Within twenty minutes, the air was notably cooler, though still as warm as an early summer day in Narashtovik. And far more humid. Dante sweated nonstop. Birds hooted and squawked. Insects buzzed everywhere. Dante was soon slapping himself whenever he felt the faintest tickle.

  "Who were they?" Blays said. "The people who attacked your town?"

  Winden's jaw tightened. "People of the High Tower. Tauren, as we call them. Raiders from the south coast."

  "They had swords. Chain mail. Where'd they get it?"

  "Raiding. Trade. Wouldn't know."

  "Does this happen often?"

  She drew a leathery canteen, eyeing him. "It didn't used to. Now it does."

  Patches of the trail were staggered like high steps, requiring them to scrabble up the slick clay. After a few minutes, a rhythmic noise began ahead, booming, hissing, and repeating. It sounded like surf, but they were currently a few hundred feet high and at least a mile inland.

  Ahead, the sun brightened. Winden came to a stop. Stepping up beside her, Dante squinted against the glare, then gasped, shuffling back from the edge of a cliff. Hundreds of feet below, waves sluiced through a gap, white-headed and roaring. Sixty feet away, the land resumed. The ravine was spanned by a web of ropes.

  Blays laughed in disbelief. "I'm to believe a sick old man crossed this?"

  "Of course he didn't," Winden said. "Are we sick or old? No? Then we will cross. It's much faster."

  A set of steps had been hacked into the cliff's edge, leading down to a platform in the rock three feet wide by six across. On it, Winden reached into a wide sack spiked to the wall of the platform and grabbed a carved wooden hook. A thong dangled from a hole drilled through its handle. She tied the cord around her wrist, then secured the hook over the topmost rope and stepped onto the lowermost. As she walked forward, she used her free hand to grab the vertical ropes connecting the upper and lower ones.

  Dante observed her methods, then descended to the dug-out platform, took a hook from the bag, and edged out onto the ropes. These swayed beneath his feet, but he adjusted quickly. Far below, the sea crashed and boomed. Dante didn't mind. The crossing took his mind off the destination.

  By the time he stepped foot on the solid ground of the other side, Blays hadn't budged. Dante grinned, enjoying the rare opportunity to be the first to have braved something ludicrous.

  "Come on!" he called, hands cupped to his mouth. "Or would you rather wait alone in the jungle?"

  As if to punctuate this, an animal roared from inland. Blays grimaced, got out a hook, and crossed over.

  Safely on the other side, Blays glowered at Winden. "Tell me there's a reason you have him stashed in the forbidden heights."

  "It helps the sickness. Not much further."

&nb
sp; They walked on. The woods were as thick as before the rope crossing, but where previously the land had rolled up and down, it now progressed in a series of rises and plateaus, as if it had been sculpted into steps by a giant.

  As Dante grew winded, they topped another plateau. The ground ahead was clear, a pocket of sunny grass within the shaded forest. A square stone building rested in the clearing. It was smaller than the one in town where he'd healed the people wounded in the raid, but given its remoteness, its presence felt greater, like a hidden temple. They crossed to it. A cool breeze stirred the grass.

  "Wait." Winden climbed the three steps to the doorway and entered.

  "You ready for this?" Blays said.

  "I don't see how I could be." Dante wiped sweat from his brow. "But I'm here."

  The woman walked back onto the stoop and nodded. Heart pounding, Dante walked up the steps. The front half was one large room. Though slits were cut in the walls to allow a cross breeze, it was as dim as twilight; after the glare of the tropical sun, he could hardly see a thing.

  At the far wall, a figure stirred from a pallet, gingerly propping himself upright. As Dante's eyes adjusted, he gazed on the face of his father.

  5

  The man was older than he remembered, yet younger than Dante had imagined—late forties, wrinkled around the eyes and mouth, black hair streaked with gray, his beard the white of dirty snow. His face was drawn. A blanket wrapped his shoulders, obscuring his form.

  A wave of heat rolled over Dante's body. He had virtually no memories of the man left, and the few he did possess were vague. He supposed, at first, he'd been trying to forget. Better that than to dwell on them, to be constantly reminded that his father had sailed off to the Golden Islands, orphaning Dante to the care of a monk in a sleepy village.

  After a few years, however, Dante no longer had to make any effort to leave those memories behind. By the time he found his copy of the Cycle of Arawn, and began his journey into the ways of the nether, where he'd come from had become irrelevant. Like clearing your throat before you speak. Or the memory of a dream fading as quickly as you woke up.

  The emotions Dante felt on seeing Larsin again were as just as hard to catch on to.

  The man's eyes were blue, and though the rest of him was tired and weak, these still bore the shine of life. His voice was a whisper: "You came."

  Dante drifted closer to the pallet. "You caught me at a good time."

  "I didn't think you would. And I wouldn't have blamed you." His gaze moved to Winden, then Blays. "Where are the others? Those who sought you?"

  "Only one of them made it to me. A young woman. She died after delivering your message."

  The sick man winced, eyes crinkling. "Sorry to hear that."

  Dante stopped beside the low bed. "I hope it was worth it."

  He felt for the shadows. After healing the people in the town, his hold on the nether was tenuous, but he wasn't exhausted yet. He should be able to stabilize the man at least. If the work proved difficult, he could finish it tomorrow.

  Dante stretched out his hand. "Do you know where your illness came from? Bad air? Old meat? Did you share clothes with someone who was sick?"

  "None of the above." The bearded man chuckled, then coughed, his suntanned face paling. "Went somewhere I wasn't supposed to. Like I always do."

  "What do you mean?"

  "The Stained Cliffs," Winden said. "They're cursed."

  "And the act of visiting them causes you to fall ill."

  "That's the lore."

  Dante maintained a neutral expression. "Know what, it isn't important. Neither are your symptoms. All that matters is that something is wrong and I will make it right."

  He closed his eyes and followed the shadows into the man's body. Treating him in this way, it was easy to pretend that the man before him was simply one more in the long line of people Dante had mended. Not to suggest that he was any kind of saint. He had hurt as many as he'd healed. Putting people back together was a type of penance. A way to remind himself that, although effective at it, the nether wasn't made to destroy.

  It obeyed its user's wishes. For good or for ill.

  He had been causing and healing injuries for a decade. Finding the wrongness inside Larsin was no more difficult than lacing up his boots: it existed in spots across his organs and limbs, dark and opaque. These spots looked and felt like nether—but when Dante tried to move them, they refused to budge.

  And when he sent the nether to cleanse them out, he could find no purchase.

  Frowning, he withdrew, observed the spots from afar, and tried again. Again, he couldn't so much as make them wobble. They were as slippery as a wet fish, as intangible as sophistry.

  He had seen these stains before—inside Riddi, the woman who'd been netherburned. He'd taken them as an odd symptom of the burns. However, attempting to treat a netherburn with more nether actively made the condition worse. In Larsin's case, Dante was unable to do anything at all, for good or for ill. After ten minutes of mental strain, his grasp on the shadows was as clumsy as a dead limb.

  He stepped back from the pallet, wiping sweat from his brow. "It's no use. I can't help him."

  He turned and walked out of the doorway into the blinding afternoon sun. Speech drifted from the house. Footsteps rustled. Blays joined him in the grass.

  "Er," Blays said. "So that's it?"

  "I can't help him. It's almost like he's netherburned. Whatever's wrong with him, the shadows can't touch it. I can't believe we came all this way."

  "But he's not netherburned, is he?"

  "I don't think so. It's odd, though. Riddi had similar symptoms. I assumed the netherburn was what killed her, but maybe it was masking something even deadlier."

  "If this is that unfamiliar to you, maybe you're missing something. You can't give up this fast."

  Dante untucked his shirt, flapping its hem to dry his sweat. "I tried everything I know. Whatever this is, it's beyond me."

  "How odd." Blays folded his arms. "I don't think you've ever admitted something's beyond your power. Why are you so quick to give up on this?"

  Dante was spared having to respond by Winden, who emerged into the clearing, the steady wind ruffling her brown hair. Around them, bugs were singing, but her face had gone as stolid as a tombstone.

  "You can't help him."

  Dante shook his head. "I can try again tomorrow. After I've rested. But I'm afraid it won't do any good."

  Her eyes dimmed. "This outcome will be disappointing to many."

  "Why? Who is he to you? The people he sent to Gask, why did they give up their lives for his?"

  "Years ago, when he first came here, he brought the trade back, too. Iron tools and steel blades. For that, he was made part of the family of Kandak. Later, he helped drive off the Tauren, too. He was good to us." Winden tugged the bracer up her left forearm. "But he was no good to you."

  Dante snorted. "Are you always this blunt?"

  "Do you find it better to hide from truths?"

  "The truth is he was neither good nor bad to me. He couldn't be either, because he wasn't there. So guess why I came here?"

  "To learn why he left."

  He smiled ruefully. "Wrong. I came here to make him well. To show him what I had become without him—and to rub it in his nose."

  Winden laughed. "But you couldn't. Good haid."

  "Haid?"

  "One of our words. It is like…" She gestured as if reeling in string. "When mean feelings are thwarted. You should be happy for the chance to be corrected by your failure. But it only makes you feel worse."

  Dante creased his brow. "That's a big concept for a small word."

  "Regret, it has many forms. It's important to know the differences." Winden nodded back at the black building. "We stay here tonight. And you will try again in the morning."

  Dante had little desire to stay. He had no interest in the explanations or apologies he expected Larsin to start making, especially if it became clear Dante co
uldn't help him and he was on his deathbed. But between the fighting, the hiking, and the expenditure of all the nether he could safely command, he was exhausted.

  Thankfully, Larsin was, too, and slept through the afternoon. Winden passed the remainder of the day beneath a thatched shelter in the trees, grinding roots on a stone table. Dante wandered around the woods examining the insects. There were your typical ants and spiders and such, but most of the species were new to him. Some of the creatures were very slightly new—a perriwen beetle that was iridescent blue rather than matte black—but others had no analog to anything he'd seen, such as the thumb-sized red insect that walked on six tiny snapping claws.

  Blays had a rare bout of good sense and left him alone. The sun set, alighting the clouds with red, pink, and orange. Back at the house, Winden fed them a mealy paste. It was spiced with a substance that tasted like the distilled sweetness of fruits, but an underlying brackishness permeated the mush.

  As soon as Dante finished, he went to sleep on a pallet in the back room. He slept fitfully, woken twice by Blays and Winden murmuring in the adjoining room. Probably discussing whether he could heal Larsin.

  He woke with the dawn. Winden helped Larsin outside to tend to the obligations of nature. After a meal of the leftover paste, Dante returned to the main room and kneeled beside the ailing man's bed.

  "Taking another go at me?" Larsin rasped.

  Dante nodded. After the night's sleep, the shadows flowed without resistance. He attacked the black stains inside the man from every angle he could think of. Lost in the work, he gave no thought to the individual he happened to be working on.

  By mid-morning, with his command slipping, Dante let out a long breath, stood, and walked to the front stoop to sit in the shade.

  Winden followed him. "You found nothing."

  "I tried everything. Whatever's afflicting him, the nether's no use. What exactly does your lore say about how the disease is contracted?"

  "That it comes through visiting the Stained Cliffs. The ground there, it's tainted. When storms stir it, you can get sick."