"I thought this place was supposed to be peaceful!" Blays swung at the being, which blocked the Odo Sein blade with a thick forearm. "Like a holiday!"
"But violent assault is how most of your holidays end up."
Dante concentrated the ether in his hands and blasted it into the thing's wide chest. This blew a hole straight through it, but no blood or guts flew out the other side, just undifferentiated matter. Unperturbed, it surged toward Blays, stabbing at him with its talons, which looked much more like knives than the claws of any mortal creature. Blays twisted out of the way, grimacing as he dropped into the obscurity of the mists.
The hole in the creature was already mending, glowing with ether as it did so. This didn't seem to require any active effort on the being's part. It stalked toward where Blays had disappeared, the fog eddying as he struggled to get back to his feet, his head and one shoulder popping into view. The being drew back both arms.
Baring his teeth, Dante filled his hands with nether and launched it at the thing's head. Its featureless face shattered like a piece of pottery thrown out from a third-floor window. Instead of healing, its ragged neck wound smoldered like the shadows had set it on fire. Its body slid apart into scores of pieces, dissolving into slate gray steam that merged with the general fog.
Blays got to his feet, swords in hand, breathing hard. "What just happened?"
"Something objected to us."
"I thought you weren't supposed to be able to hurt things in the Mists."
"I don't think that thing was from here. Maybe the rules don't apply to it."
"Or to us, either?" He tugged his doublet around, exposing the slashes through its collar—and the blood flowing from the wounds to his shoulder.
Dante bit his lip. "The same exceptional quality that lets it be hurt might also let it do hurt."
"That might be logical enough. But you're still going to have to explain how you were able to kill it with the nether in a place that isn't supposed to have any."
"Ah," Dante said. "All right, that is odd."
"Do you still feel like we're in the right place?"
"The fact that the same thing is happening to the Mists and our world makes me think we're on to something. But this was the very first cavern we came to. And we're not getting anywhere at the moment. I say we explore the Legs some more. If we don't find anything else, we'll come back here and try again."
Leaving the Mists was easy enough: all you had to do was lie down and go to sleep. But as Dante lowered himself to the unseen ground, and the cold wrap of the fog settled in over his head, blinding him to whatever might be approaching them, he had to make himself close his eyes.
He sat up with a gasp. Ether danced over the walls of the cavern. He got up, pacing around, and told the others what they'd seen.
"The Mists are afflicted as well," Gladdic said. "If you were able to come to harm there, does that mean the spirits of the dead can also be harmed—that they can also be killed?"
"That would be right in line with Taim's goals," Dante said. "The real question is whether their spirits will even be able to fight back against him."
After one last look around, they departed the tunnel and ascended to the surface. The Golden Dart rested in the grass where they'd left it. Dante had half expected to find it crushed into pieces. Or vanished like ashes in the rain.
They climbed aboard and resumed travel along the coast, which at that moment had them heading generally westward. Only a few minutes later, Dante felt another tunnel open in the earth ahead of them. This one was smaller than the first, just wide enough for two people to walk down at once, and led to a smaller chamber as well.
There, the eggs were also smaller—and they were unhatched. They destroyed them all and left the chamber with the goo still dripping out of the shells.
Between the ash-blanketed sky and the winds pouring in from the north, the day was the coldest it had been since they'd crossed the pass into the Rift, and grew colder yet as the afternoon wore on. Wanders drove them onward in stony silence. He brought them around a rocky arm of land. Ahead, a boat rested a hundred feet from shore, the first one they'd seen since leaving Ynding.
It was a single-masted cog, somewhat larger than their sloop. It was motionless, probably because its sail had been torn down—and because a great hole had been punched in its side, causing it to list as it took on water.
Wanders turned and raised an eyebrow at Dante.
"Let's get a little closer," Dante said. "But don't leave the shore."
Wanders nodded once and guided them forward. Dante got out his knife but didn't yet draw blood. As they neared, he could see a pair of bodies floating among the spilled cargo. They weren't moving. Nor was anything on the ship.
The water stirred. A tentacle lifted, hovering above the cog almost quizzically. It twitched upward, then slammed down onto the deck.
Blays thrust out his arm at the boat. "Someone's still alive!"
A figure had popped up from hiding, sprinting for the gunwales, her legs kicking as she flung herself overboard.
"Don't you dare tell me to get closer," Wanders said.
"We won't." Dante's mind raced. "And we don't have to."
He slid the knife across his arm. The instant he had the nether in hand, he shot it forward, skimming it over the water. The woman surfaced, screamed, and kicked violently toward shore. The tentacle was busy hitting the cog again, and bashed down into the deck for a third time, looking to rattle any other crew or passengers from hiding, but a second limb rose from the frothing lake and slammed down toward the woman.
She vanished under the surface. The tentacle crashed into the water, sending up a massive plume of spray. Certain he was already too late, Dante swerved the nether into the depths. He reached the lake bed and jerked it upward. The tentacle reemerged, curling its tip like a question mark as it waited for its prey to come up for air.
A lump of land surged upward into a flat islet. The tentacle whipped toward it. Scanning it frantically, Dante's eyes locked on a discolored lump—possibly no more than a dislodged piece of debris—and bulged the earth beneath it toward dry land.
The huge limb came down on the original piece of the islet, obliterating it into mucky bits. Yet the leading edge of the earth had advanced far enough to escape the beast's wrath.
"Put us ashore," Dante said. "Right now!"
Wanders grunted and swung the Dart about, letting the wind blow her toward land with far greater speed than any captain would allow under sane circumstances. The sea monster clubbed down another part of the bridge-like extension Dante was pushing hard toward shore, but his payload kept just ahead of it.
The Dart plowed into the mud and came to an abrupt stop. Their bodies didn't; some sprawled across the deck while others clung to whatever they could. As soon as they stopped getting thrown about, they vaulted over the side, heaving at the boat, Dante manipulating the earth beneath it to bear it inland faster.
Ether winked in the gloom as Gladdic fired it at the tentacle, which was lifting up for another lash. Much brighter light glared from the spear as Blays extended it and stalked toward the edge of the water. With a final shove, Dante delivered his cargo to shore. It appeared to be a local woman, a few years younger than himself, but she was so muddy and bedraggled he couldn't be quite sure of that, let alone if she was still alive.
He took hold of her, staggering backwards. Winden and Gladdic moved to flank Blays. Something was racing toward them just below the surface, a long V-shaped ripple trailing in its wake.
"You want this?" Blays yelled, jabbing the spear forward. "Come and get it!"
The tentacle sprung upward, rising twenty feet into the air, bobbing back and forth. Behind it, Dante could just make out the shape of something more in the shallows. Something immense.
The limb jabbed toward Blays. He stabbed at it with the spear. The tentacle jerked itself to the side, then made several exploratory jabs, or feints, but pulled back whenever Blays came at it with hi
s weapon.
"What's the matter?" Blays straightened, planting his feet and the butt of the spear. "Come now, don't tell me you're afraid of the weapon that killed the most powerful man to ever walk this world."
The limb went still, like it was staring at him. Blays lifted the spear and pounded the butt into the ground in front of him. A blast of raw force crashed into the tentacle, sending it squiggling limply backwards. It shook itself, lifted higher yet, then slithered beneath the water.
"That's what I thought!" Blays glanced over his shoulder at the others. "Now that I've heroically driven it off, shall we run away as fast as we can?"
Dante shook his head. "If we leave the boat, we'll be paddling home on a pile of splinters. Make sure that thing doesn't come back for us."
"Hold off the leviathan by myself?"
"Would you mind?"
"I'm about ready to demand another knighthood."
Dante turned to the waterlogged woman he'd just rescued. The nether was still circulating through her body, but her heart was hardly stirring and her lungs weren't at all. Drowning wasn't as easy to treat as a wound or common disease, but it wasn't incurable either, and he squeezed her lungs to force them to contract until she coughed compulsively, spewing lake-water down her sodden cloak.
Her eyes flew wide. She jerked about, her arms and legs not wanting to respond to her commands, then kicked herself a few feet back from Dante and stared at him. "Who are you?"
"We're—"
"The ones who just saved you from getting eaten by a giant squid," Blays finished. "Who are you? And why are you out on the water?"
Her dark eyes darted between them. "My name is Ranala. I am from Gundid, and I am on the water because I have no other choice."
"A slave, are you? I swear you can't walk two miles in this place without getting locked up by raiders."
Ranala gave Blays a steady look of disdain. "My daughters are sick with a strange illness. They told me it feels like it's eating them from inside. We were heading north to get medicine from the Hermits of Alavone—and if they refused us, to try to gather any herbs we could find on their slopes."
"Your daughters," Dante said. "Had they suffered any fits? Any loss of physical control?"
"The both of them. That's when I knew it wasn't something that would depart them on its own."
"I don't know who these hermits are, but I doubt they'll be any use. Go to the north shore of Lake Ellowyr and look for the priests there. One of them might be able to help you."
"You have a boat." She struggled to get to her feet, swiping at Blays' hand as he offered her help up. "You have to help me. Take me north. You're the only ones who can fend off the monsters!"
"That's exactly why we can't spare a minute more on this. We are at this very moment on a mission to—"
Ranala gasped, eyes fluttering, and reached for Dante. He grabbed for her, but before he could grasp her shoulder she collapsed into the grass. Her legs kicked against the ground.
Blays took a step back, then drifted toward her. "Tell me it's not the strands."
"I don't see any sign of them." Dante flushed the nether up and down her body. "I don't see any other injuries. She probably just fainted."
"Or she has been stricken with a condition we have not yet seen," Gladdic said. "For it seems clear that we will continue to be assaulted in new ways until we put a stop to the source of them, or they put a stop to us."
Dante had the feeling he didn't just mean their own efforts, but "us" as in "people." He turned back to Ranala, but nothing he tried could wake her, not even a pinprick of nether, which her total lack of response to proved she wasn't faking being asleep, either.
Blays crouched on the balls of his feet, frowning. "What are we going to do with her?"
Dante twisted one of his sideburns, thinking. "According to the map, Gundid's at least thirty miles south of here. We could send her on her own. They don't come up on the land."
"So everyone at Ynding was killed by a mysterious land-monster attack?"
"What does it matter? If her daughters have the strand, they're dead by now anyway."
"You're probably right. In hindsight, we should have brought more people with us to deal with stuff like this so we'd stay free to go get devoured by krakens."
After briefly considering hauling her further inland and dumping her in the brush, they brought her aboard the Dart and cast off, continuing their search southward.
They found another tunnel three or four miles on. It was another small one, though, and all the eggs in its main chamber had already hatched. They sailed further south, the shore growing jagged with rocky spires, then flattening out into gravel beaches.
As the day drew on—Dante thought it was perhaps two o'clock, maybe three—he turned around for a look behind them. "I don't think we're going to find it this way. We're getting awfully far from the Legs."
"Just because the monsters found Old Sane Jim at the Legs doesn't mean that's the exact spot they came from. Maybe they just spotted him on the water and swam over in search of a snack."
"Maybe so. But I can't shake the feeling we missed something in the big cavern, or in the Mists. I want to take another look. And bring Gladdic with me this time. And if he can't find anything, let Winden take a look."
"Then we will need more flowers," she said. "I will ready them."
She found a secure spot to sit down and perform some intricate harvesting. Wanders turned them about and reversed course for the Legs. Dante had focused on the shoreline as they'd traveled south, so on their way back, he searched the lake bed beneath them, as well as further out into the waters to the east. As the darkness deepened to something close to twilight—though sunset itself was still at least an hour away—rendering even the shallows too murky to see into, he also explored the path ahead of them to allow Wanders to keep as close to the banks as possible without running aground.
The plan was to continue to the largest of the tunnels they'd found even though it would mean a few hours of travel after nightfall. Shortly before full sunset, though, Dante cocked his head.
"Captain Wanders," he said. "Bring us to a stop, would you?"
The captain grunted and finessed the tiller and sail. They drifted to a halt, bobbing gently. Dante peered eastward over the lake.
"That wave," Gladdic mused. "It does not appear to be moving."
Blays leaned forward. "What wave? How are your eyes better than mine, old man? Wait, don't answer. It probably had something to do with demonic sacrifice."
"We sailed right past it before," Dante said. "But there's land there. Wanders, can you take us closer?"
Wanders snorted. "The last words heard by many a captain."
He obeyed, though. Dante heard Blays draw his rod and felt Winden and Gladdic bring their powers close to hand. His heart beat steadily as the Dart pulled further and further from the safety of the land.
"There's a strange drop-off here," he announced quietly. "Sharp as the cliffs at Pocket Cove. Then it leaps up again, just as sudden. There's much more to that island than the little piece we can see."
"You're telling me that giant lakes sometimes have deep spots? Now that's a momentous discovery." Blays squinted out at the water. "See any glowing portals to other realms?"
"There's a tunnel. I think. But it's deep underwater. It's going to require work to get to, and I really don't want to do that out here in the pitch black—or even worse, while using the ether to see what I'm doing, alerting every beast for thirty miles that there's something tasty to come eat. Wanders, take us ashore, please."
He was all but certain something would come for them before they made it in. But before he knew it the hull was scraping over gravel, and they were lugging it up where Dante could shield it with a wall of rock. Even after making camp and dinner, and tending to Ranala, who stirred and moaned some but remained unconscious, it was too early to sleep, and they passed the time discussing tomorrow's plans, particularly the matter of how they were going to exp
lore a passageway that was a good eighty feet underwater.
They came up with a few answers—go in from the top, or (assuming there was a cavern within the structure) lift it up above water—and it was even conceivable that they could just go straight into the Mists and hunt for a doorway there while skipping the engineering problem altogether—but Dante didn't fully buy into any of them. He believed there was a portal of some kind to be found there: and that it would be protected from people like them.
A thought struck him as he was trying to fall asleep. He got up and walked down to the soft wash of the waves. The lake looked perfectly harmless, yet as he sank the nether down into the deep part of the bed, he raised it slowly, pausing now and then to watch for signs that anything had been alerted. After ten minutes of work, he'd raised a broad underwater causeway most of the way out to the islet, keeping it an even twelve feet below the surface. He returned to camp and went to bed.
Late in the night, a woman screamed.
Dante kicked himself from his blankets, shedding ether across the shore. But this didn't reveal any leviathans or armies of scuttling crustaceans. Winden was lying on the ground, clenching her hands to her throat as her legs drummed against the turf. Ranala was awake and metal glinted in her hand. Blays stood before her, blade drawn and pointed at her throat.
Dante dashed toward Winden and slid into the grass beside her. Nether swathed her hands. Rushing to the blood that poured from the deep gash across her throat.
Dante blinked and bit the inside of his lip. Tasting copper, he doused her neck in shadows.
"Who are you?" Blays leaned closer to Ranala, face hard in the eerie light of his blade. "Tell me why you did this!"
Ranala's face contorted. "You pose like such heroes. You wouldn't even help me!"
"What do you call saving your life from a leviathan?"
"Better to have let me drown!"
Beneath Dante's hands, Winden was choking, her eyes darting about in the ether-light. Dizzyingly bright red blood spilled from her lips.
"Tell me why you tried to kill her!" Blays roared.
The Twelve Plagues (The Cycle of Galand Book 7) Page 10
