A woman edged forward, bow aimed at Winden's chest. She spoke. The words had the rhythm of Taurish, but they bore a thick accent Dante found hard to parse.
"Their speech," Winden said. "It's like the Gauden. This woman, she says we've profaned their island. That we're rixen."
"We need to speak to their king." Dante's face twitched as he remembered his mistake with the woman in the Mists. "Or queen. We'll explain everything."
Winden turned back to the Dresh. She repeated Dante's words in an accent similar to the one the other woman had. He didn't pick up every single word, but he was familiar enough with Winden's speech to get most of it.
The woman with the bow shook her head sharply. Her words were low yet heated.
Winden stiffened. "She says we're dead. That we became so as soon as we stepped onto Spearpoint."
The woman adjusted her bow at Winden's chest. Her people cocked their spears.
"Stop!" Dante gestured to the rope of rock connecting their island to the much larger one. "I built that. I can destroy it just as easily. But if you kill us, it will stay here until the Current tears it away. Until then, you'll never be safe."
Winden translated hurriedly. The woman replied. Winden said, "She asks if you will destroy the bridge."
"If we speak to their ruler?" Dante said. "I swear it. On my life."
Winden relayed this. The woman replied, pointing at Dante, then the ground.
Dante cut Winden's translation off; he was starting to get the rhythm of the Dresh's speech. "She wants me to prove it? That I can take away the bridge?"
Winden shifted her weight. "That's right."
He'd had the nether in hand since the instant the Dresh had appeared. He reached into the ground three feet in front of him, elevating a foot-high pillar of rock. With a flourish of shadows, he shaped it into an approximation of the weathered statues in front of the temple in Kandak, whose small features resembled those of the Dresh.
The woman got a strange look on her face. Beside her, a man said a single word. This was repeated by several others.
Dante cocked his head at Winden. "Did he just call me Loda?"
Winden laughed, though it was more of a release of tension than an expression of mirth. "No. But the concept is similar. One who moves the rock."
Most of the Dresh still looked hostile, but several now appeared curious. The woman lowered her bow and spoke.
"We are to lay down our weapons," Winden said. "And follow her. If we step off the path, we'll be killed."
In Mallish, Blays said, "We're not about to be killed, are we?"
Dante unbuckled his sword belt. "I think if they wanted to do that, they'd do that."
"I don't have a great feeling about this." Blays smiled charmingly at the Dresh and began the lengthy process of disarming himself. "If something goes wrong, take Winden and run as fast as you can. I'll shadowalk in and out of them. Cut them to ribbons."
"I can handle myself."
"Against a volley of arrows? Maybe, maybe not. Even if you can, I'm not so sure about Winden."
Winden tucked down the corners of her mouth. "I will be fine."
"Wonderful. New plan: if something goes wrong, we just massacre them as fast as we can."
He handed over his two swords and copious knives. The bow-carrying woman said something. Her people parted. She gestured Dante forward onto a path worn into the dirt. She kept her bow in hand. Eight warriors surrounded Dante. The rest fell in behind Winden and Blays.
In less than a hundred yards, the wild jungle gave way to a cultivated orchard of yellow, orange, and pink citrus fruit. The trees didn't look orderly enough to have been harvested. After the orchard, the land cleared into a grassy field broken up by shade trees, benches, and some cleared spaces that had the look of ball courts or playing fields. This was screened off to the left and right by more orchards, rendering any evidence of inhabitation invisible to observers at sea.
Ahead, a swampy san field sprouted thickly. Past this, a few dozen black stone homes clustered around a small, circular bay. The shallow water was an aquamarine that took Dante's breath away. It opened to the sea, but the entrance was hidden by two tree-encrusted arms of rock, one extending from the south shore and the other from the north. Twenty feet high, the breaks kept out the Currents.
"Stay," the woman said.
She jogged toward one of the houses, leaving the three outsiders surrounded by warriors. There were only two people down at the lagoon. The village itself seemed deserted. Most likely, after seeing the steaming ocean coming their way, the Dresh had pulled everyone out to sanctuary. Judging by the number of buildings, however, there couldn't be more than three hundred people in the village.
Yet the lagoon and its enclosure looked perfectly engineered. Dante might have been able to believe this was the simple result of hard work, except that the houses, despite some wear and tear, had a smoothness and a regularity to them that suggested the Dresh had once had an earth-mover. Interesting. From what he'd learned, earth-moving had originated in Narashtovik long, long ago. Then, following a great cataclysm, all those who knew its ways had walled themselves off in Pocket Cove, where they'd remained hidden for the last thousand years. Either the Dresh had discovered the ability on their own, or one of Dante's sorcerous forebears had found their way to the islands ages before the Mallish invasion.
The Dresh earth-mover must have died, however. And not been replaced. Or they wouldn't need Dante to do away with the bridge.
The woman reappeared from the stone houses accompanied by a middle-aged man and woman. Both wore green wraps. He was portly, balding, and bore an amused look. She was tall and thin and as severe as a bamboo cane.
The trio stopped before them. The stout man raised his left hand, gesturing in the same way Winden had on arriving. The thin woman swatted his wrist. He rubbed it, frowning at her.
Winden and the woman with the bow made introductions. The man's name was Sando. The woman was Aladi.
Sando looked Dante and Blays up and down. His eyes glittered. "It seems we have a problem. You see, you're here."
"You brought the land to our island," Aladi said. "Why?"
"I'll answer everything you want to know," Dante said. "But before we get too deep, I want you to swear you'll speak truth. Before your people and your gods."
Aladi's face darkened with fury, but Sando merely laughed. "You expect us to lie to you? You've spent too much time among rixen."
"I won't swear a thing." Aladi was the same height as Dante, yet she managed to look down her nose at him. "You disgrace yourself by asking."
Sando rolled his eyes. "Can you blame him? Look where they came from."
"Pardon me," Blays said. "Are you two married?"
The man laughed until his eyes began to water. Aladi gave Blays a stern look. "Of course we're married. If you can't handle a relationship with your spouse, how could you handle one with your entire people?"
"I imagine you have more than your share of assassination attempts, then."
This finally put a crack in her reserve. She gestured to take in the island. "Why are you here?"
"I am the leader of Narashtovik," Dante said. "A city thousands of miles to the north. Tens of thousands of people depend on me. But because of the ronone, I might never see them again."
"The ronone is everywhere. What does this have to do with us?"
"There was once a cure, wasn't there? On the main island, it's been lost for centuries. No one even remembers how it was done. You're the only surviving Dresh. We hoped you might know how to lift the sickness."
Sando's expression went grave. "Do the rixen know we're here?"
Dante shook his head. "We're the only three people who know. We didn't hear it from anyone living on the island. We had to travel into the Mists. There, we learned it from a Dresh woman who died during the Mallish invasion."
The two leaders exchanged a shocked look. Aladi said, "How did you convince her to tell you we were here?"
; "By being royal pains in the ass." Blays swept his hand north. "The Mallish are returning. If the people on the island can't learn how to cure themselves, they'll have no hope."
Sando and Aladi gave each other another look. Sando stepped back. "Give us a moment."
They retreated from the group and held a hushed conversation. Sando no longer sounded jovial; Aladi no longer sounded hostile. They concluded their talk and returned.
"We know how to lift the ronone," Sando said. "If we show you, will you leave? And tear down the bridge?"
The hair stood up on Dante's neck. "Of course."
"And all three of you—you'll never tell another soul that we are here."
"We have no desire to harm you. We'll take your secret to our graves."
"Swear it," Aladi said. "Before your friends and your gods."
Dante did so, joined by Winden and Blays.
Aladi bowed her head. "Then come this way."
She walked along a path ringing the village, heading for the far side of the bay. Sando reached for her hand.
"I'm not stuck in the Pastlands or something, am I?" Dante said. "We're really about to get our answer?"
Blays eyed the woman who'd first spoken to them, who was still carrying her bow. "It meant something to them that we'd met with the dead. Maybe we should befriend a few more ghosts."
The path curled around the bay and up a low ridge. On the other side, the crumbled remnants of another jetty did little to block the Currents, which poured into a second bay, churning it too violently for fishing or the farming of mussels. A dike of stones and earth had been built along the bay's south shore, but the tides had eaten through this, spilling into the field beyond. Dante could just make out the orderly squares where san roots had once grown, but the plants had been killed by the salty water.
After another citrus orchard, they passed into the jungle. Birds twittered from the branches. Lizards scuttled over sunny boulders and climbed the trunks of palms. Trees soared eighty feet high, fighting for their share of the light.
The path spat them into a clearing a hundred feet across. In its center, a gray tree stood alone. Its leafless branches arced over the clearing. There was a steady wind, but it wasn't moving. Branches lay shattered around its trunk.
"The Star Tree," Sando said softly. "Its fruit cures the ronone."
Dante drifted forward. "It looks like Barden. The White Tree of Narashtovik."
"I don't know of those things." Aladi matched his pace. "These trees, they were harvested this way. Ages ago. To be rid of the ronone for good."
He scanned the branches. "Where are its fruit? Is it out of season?"
She laughed sadly. "It is dead."
"Dead?"
Sando tipped back his head. "They are nothing like the trees they were cultivated from. Very difficult to keep alive. Need constant attention. Years and years ago, our last Harvester died. And so did our Star Tree."
In a daze, Dante kneeled and touched one of the fallen branches. It wasn't rotten. It didn't even feel like wood. More like bone—or shell. He picked up a fragment. The outer layer was gray, faded, but where it had broken, the edge was pearlescent.
He let it fall to the ground. "How do you regrow a new one?"
"Like all things," Sando said. "With a small seed."
Blays broke into a grin. "Great news. Winden here's a Harvester. Give her one of the seeds. She can grow you a new tree."
"She can't," Sando said. "The seeds, they're all gone. When this one died, our old ones tried to grow more, but their Harvester was dead too. Most of the seeds were lost then. The others were ground up and eaten to cure the ronone."
"Well, that wasn't very forward-looking."
"Our people always hoped to find a new island. But none of our sailors ever returned. After the tree died, they continued to search. They needed sailors who could travel for weeks without dying of sickness."
Dante turned to Winden. "Have you ever seen anything like this?"
"Never," she said. "There is nothing like this on our island."
"Can you regrow a new tree from a piece of this one?"
She shut her eyes. Nether flickered around her hands. She shook her head. "This tree. It's dead. I can only Harvest what lives. Or seeds that yearn to."
Blays pointed at the grayed trunk. "Where was the tree that grew the seed for this one? Was it on the main island?"
Sando gritted his teeth. "The other trees, they all died in the tribal wars before the Mallish came. When our people came here, they had a single seed. They used it to grow this Star Tree."
"So we'll search this entire island," Dante said. "There must be a lost seed somewhere."
"We've shown you the tree." Aladi's voice was firm again. "That was our deal. Now go. And tear down the bridge."
"We can't go yet. We still don't have the cure."
"We promised we would show you the answer. There was no promise you would leave with a cure."
"She is right," Sando said. "We showed you our land. Now be gone from it."
Around them, the warriors moved toward their weapons. Frustration pulsed in Dante's veins. At last, he had his answer, but the path had led him to a cliff's edge. Nothing lay below but vacant sea. His hope was wearing thin.
But hope wasn't the only thing being eroded.
"This land," Dante said. "It won't be yours for much longer."
Aladi stepped in close, face inches from his. "Do you threaten us?"
"I'm telling your future. You once had an earth-mover, too. Someone like Loda. That's how your people built this place. Only that sorcerer passed away like the Harvesters."
She slitted her eyes. "How do you know that?"
"Your lagoons. The protective jetties. It's obvious this place was sculpted. Except the Currents are starting to wear it away. You haven't been able to repair what's been damaged."
Aladi stepped back. "Make your point."
"The Currents will devour this place. They'll eat through the rocks and spoil the lagoon. Next, they'll flood your fields. Spearpoint Rock won't last forever."
"Much longer than I will."
"How much longer? Fifty years? A hundred? Surely not a thousand. Look how much wear this place has taken since its creation. Boot us out, if you want. But you're damning your descendants to a miserable end."
"What do you care for them? You only want your cure, yes? So that you can get away from here."
"I can make this place bigger for you. Rebuild your barriers. Just let us search the island."
"And if you make it bigger, then what? It holds a few hundred years longer? What you said, it's true. This island won't last for long."
"Come back to our island," Winden blurted. "Your island."
Aladi and Sando exchanged yet another of their looks. Sando turned back to them. "Then we will have it back. All of it. The sons and daughters of Mallon will take the cure—and then they will leave."
Silence fell across the clearing. Dante looked to Winden, but she was staring at the ground.
"There's a minor problem here," Blays said. "We can't make a promise like that. Are you aware of the charming people known as the Tauren?"
Aladi smiled thinly. "We keep watch. We know they make war."
"And their goal—backed by Mallish steel—is to take the whole damned island for themselves. They'll never give it back to you."
"But you would?"
"Sure. I don't own the place. If you want, I'll give you all of Mallon, too."
Aladi laughed with genuine happiness. "You are more honest than most. But we need more than hollow words."
"I hate this," Winden whispered. "But I hate what my ancestors did to you more. The Kandeans will leave. Our lands, they're yours."
Around them, the warriors murmured. Sando chuckled and raised a brow at Aladi, who nodded.
Sando reached for Winden's hand. "I have made a decision. You are not a rixen. So perhaps you will deal fairly and honor your bargains."
"What will you have us do?
"
"We don't want Kandak. You have made it your own. But we will have our piece of the island. Promise me that you will defeat the Tauren. That you will make it safe for us to return. And I will tell you where you might find another Star Tree."
Winden eyed Dante. "If you want your cure, you will need to help us face the Tauren."
"If that's what it takes?" Dante said. "I'm yours to command."
"It is good to agree." Sando smiled. "Well then. Do you know of Durado?"
"Winden told us the story. He led a rebellion against the Mallish. When that failed, his daughter Eleni brought the Dresh here."
The portly man chuckled. "It is also good to hear their names have lived on. When Durado brought all the peoples together, they found they had much knowledge they thought had been lost. With the help of all the chieftains, Eleni cultivated a plan. They would come here, cure the sickness, and wait for the Mallish invaders to die.
"So they stole the seed—our seed—from where they were kept. No one knew how to grow it, but they brought dreamflowers as well. When they came here, they traveled into the Mists. Spoke to the ancestors. And learned how to grow the seed. Our people no longer had the sickness. But the Mallish refused to die.
"Our people, they were too few. Not enough had the talent to call out to the darkness or the light. To Harvest the trees or the rocks. When our sorcerers died, there were none to take their place. The Star Tree died, and the generations that came after were stricken with sickness. This island, this haven, it became a prison."
Dante licked his lips. "Do you know where Eleni stole the seed from?"
"The First Basket."
"And where is that?"
"You'll soon be on your way there." Sando seemed to find this very funny. "The First Basket—it is within the High Tower of the Tauren."
22
Blays groaned. "Should have guessed. The object of desire is always in the enemy tower."
"How do we know the Tauren haven't used all the seeds?" Dante said. "Or that the Basket is even still there?"
"The Basket remains," Winden said.
Sando shrugged. "The Mallish, they had no idea what the seeds were for. But they knew the tower was of great value. As was the Basket inside it. They preserved everything."
The Red Sea Page 30
