He didn't really like the idea of shouting her name and thus their location to any predators lurking in the trees, but he liked the idea of the other things he'd just said even less, and so he did some hollering, then some waiting and listening, then more hollering. He was mid-shout when a shrub to his right bent itself to the side.
Maralda gazed at them like she'd never seen them before. "It's not wise to yell out to this place."
"I gathered," Dante said. "But I didn't know how else to find you."
"To let me find you. Do you think I wouldn't have been able?"
"I don't question your ability, milady."
"Just my word?"
"I feel," Dante said, "that if I don't choose my next words very carefully, I am about to be reduced to a me-sized smear."
"So, you know that thing we were supposed to do?" Blays said, changing the subject so overtly that Dante was all but certain he was supposed to feel like a fool for not doing so himself. "We did it!"
Maralda turned her eyes on him. "So soon?"
"Probably. We think. Maybe you could confirm it for us?"
Blays started the tale before she could decide to recant her agreement with them, and she even looked as though she might be listening to him. Dante took over part way through and finished the story.
"The chamber with the red platform," he said. "Was that meant to signal Sandrald agreed to help us?"
"Yes," she said simply.
Dante asked several further question, but she wouldn't elaborate in the slightest. Eventually, he folded his arms and gazed up at the boughs. "He almost killed us. He was furious. He thought he'd been forsaken."
"Hasn't he?"
"We would have been happy to make offerings to him for the sacrifice he made for us. To praise and honor him—really, he deserves a holiday set aside to do just that. Why didn't somebody just come and tell us about the feats required to make this world for us?"
She shrugged. "You know I'm not the one to ask that of."
"Humans didn't even exist on Rale at that point in time, did we? So how were we supposed to know about what had happened?"
"Were you?"
"I don't get…" Dante pressed his palms together in front of his mouth. "Look, what was even the point of making Rale if you were going to leave us so ignorant of our most basic history that we didn't even know who to thank for our existence?"
She tilted her head, bemused. "You ask me of this, when I am here, loping through the jungles? Climbing the mountains? Searching for the things that have never been looked upon before?"
"The things I'm saying now are similar to your original objections to Rale, aren't they? All right, I suppose I'll save this line of questions for one of the gods who did have a hand in our world."
"The obscureness of their motivations is not our most pressing concern," Gladdic said. "Our mission has only just begun."
"But this could be why we're in this position in the first place," Dante said. "If the gods had kept more of a presence in our plane of being, maybe Taim could have stopped the Mists from ever straying from his purpose to begin with."
"Maybe." Blays picked a small purple flower and tossed it in the air to himself. "But if they'd kept more of a presence among us, that means they would have been messing with us a lot more, too."
Gladdic sighed. "This may be discussed as we travel: but for now, it is irrelevant. Maralda, where are we to journey next?"
"Three choices," she said. "And choices of three are always the hardest to make. Should I make it easier on you?"
"It would be nice if something would."
This provoked a small, short-lived smile from her. "Have you heard of the Emerald Titan?"
"No," Dante said.
"Nope," Blays said.
"I have not," Gladdic said.
"Then maybe we will save it. What of the Fountain of Iron?"
All three shook their heads.
She frowned, disgusted. "You've managed to travel all the way here, to the wilds beyond the God's Own Realm, and you don't even know the wonders of your own world?"
Blays shrugged. "Perhaps we've traveled enough to have learned that most travels far from home result in a bunch of angry locals trying to kill you."
"Maybe that has more to do with the quality of you as the visitors." Maralda snapped her hand to her neck, pinching a bulbous purple wasp to death before it could land on her skin. "Last chance, and then we draw straws. The Spire of the Nautilus."
"No," Dante said.
"Nope," Blays said.
"I…have," Gladdic said. "Though it was a great deal of time ago."
Her eyes shifted to the old man; for a moment, Dante could see the bottomless depths within them, a depth he'd only seen in those of her fellow gods—and to a lesser extent in the shifting blue shades of the eyes of the lich.
"What have you heard of it?" She lowered her chin a fraction. "Or did you look on it for yourself?"
"I read of it in a book whose author and title I no longer remember. I can recall that the author claimed to have spoken to a woman who claimed to have visited the land of the Spire—though the author had many doubts, for that land, Snarjlend, lies all the way across the Calish Ocean from Allingham, a voyage that fails with such great frequency that it is only attempted a few times each century, and only then by the most desperate, foolhardy, or insane.
"Among the traveler's fantastical claims was that she had looked on the Spire of the Nautilus. This was described just as its name suggests: a tower made from the shell of an immense sea creature. The traveler said the creature that once inhabited it had died long ago, but that it still housed great secrets—and even greater treasures. Rumors of such drew many thieves, pirates, and adventurers, but the Spire was guarded by the Astendi, ferocious sea warriors who killed every last soul that tried to step foot on the islands that surrounded the Spire. The woman had only seen it from miles afar, as the ship she'd booked passage on made its way back east toward the shores of the Western Kingdoms."
Maralda nodded slowly. "You have a good memory."
"Is the story true, then?"
"I wouldn't know any more than you would know about my journeys through the Tunnels of the Blind. You will have to find out for yourselves whether the Spire exists as the traveler claimed. Are you prepared to go to it?"
"What, already?" Dante said.
She tended to be earnest, but now gave him a wry look. "I was under the impression you had some concerns about your world's immediate future."
"One or two. But even if you don't know anything about Snarjlend or these so-called Astendi, you must know something about the Spire of the Nautilus. Who lies within it?"
"Farelin—if she is still there."
"Was she a friend of yours?"
Maralda laughed in a not particularly kind manner. "She got along with most everyone. But she always hated my guts."
"Do you think she'll be willing to help us?"
"She might, as long as you don't mention my name to her. But you saw what time and isolation did to Sandrald, who was once far more kind and gentle than Farelin ever was."
Insisting she knew nothing more that would be of use to them, she led them once more into the jungle. As dense as the canopy was, Dante wasn't sure of his sense of direction, but he thought she'd gone north when she'd taken them to the doorway to Barden. This time, she seemed to be walking to the west. Which corresponded to the directions they would have needed to travel from Gallador, the place where they'd entered the Realm from, but when he asked her, Maralda told him that was coincidence.
"Really?" Dante said. "You're not just bluffing me?"
"If I cared if you knew," she replied, "I wouldn't lie to you. I just wouldn't tell you."
"Then will you tell me what happens to our plans if anything happens to you?"
"Then I will be happened to."
"But what about us? How will we get to the remaining sites?"
"Nothing has happened to me for a longer period of time than
you can conceive, and I travel places more forlorn than anything you've ever seen. Perhaps you shouldn't worry about anything happening to me."
"Maybe not," he said. "But this moment is different from anything that's happened in an age. Maybe since the War of the Forging itself. Isn't it?"
She just shrugged. Before he could settle on another approach to pry more information from her, a new doorway appeared before them.
"I would wish you safe travels, but I don't think that you'll have them no matter how hard I might wish," Maralda said. "Remember to remember where you come through. You won't know the land, like you did at Barden."
This gave Dante the troubling understanding that if they were to lose track of the portal, they'd be strangers on an entirely foreign continent, and without any dreamflowers at hand, they'd have virtually no chance of ever leaving wherever it was that they found themselves. Nolost would consume the world and they would die there, and no one would ever know why they'd vanished, or to where.
These thoughts made him all but run down the starry tunnel to the other doorway. As soon as he stepped through into Snarjlend, he was immediately beaten unconscious.
15
The sound was deafening. One long, hard, never-ending crack. But as his ear grew more attuned to it, he found that his first impression of the din had been wrong: instead of one big never-ending cracking noise, there were many many cracks, thousands upon thousands of them, each one lasting a fraction of a second before being replaced by countless others.
He had the idea he should be in a lot of pain, but all he felt was a gauzy warmth. He'd just been healed. He opened his eyes.
His sight came under an assault nearly as drastic as the attack on his hearing. Lots of white blurriness, with dark grayness behind it. The stuff overhead was stable enough: a rocky overhang. Outside the shelter, however, the world was being brutally battered by hailstones the size of peach pits.
Dante sat up and gingerly rubbed his head, but it was pleasantly half numb. "Where in the world are we?"
"Halfway across it." Blays was crouched beside him, watching the storm. "If we wound up where we wanted to be."
"Is the hail one of the entity's plagues? Or is that just how it is here?"
"I sure hope it's Nolost's doing. Otherwise, it's going to be very, very hard not to laugh at what the locals' heads must look like."
"Do not wish that, even in jest," Gladdic said. "For if it is sent by Nolost, it may never let up."
"Then eventually there'll be so much ice on the ground we'll be able to carve a tunnel through it that will protect us from the stuff that's still falling. See? The problem solves itself."
For several minutes, it looked as though it might just come to that. In time, though, the hail shrunk in both size and volume until it was no more than occasional pieces of pea-sized ice leaping up from the pounded soil.
Blays ventured out from the overhang, shielded his hand over his eyes, and gauged the sky. "I'm not seeing any red lightning. So it might just be what passes for normal around here."
They gave it a few more minutes just to be sure, then Dante had them bring him to the spot where he'd been knocked out, which was right uphill from them in a shallow box canyon with cliffs of pale blue stone. This appeared very distinctive to his eye, but just in case it was common in Snarjlend (assuming that's where they were), he lifted a pillar of stone to the side of the canyon mouth.
As he finished, a few pieces of hail resumed falling. Blays swore. "What happens if the big stuff comes back when we're crossing an open field?"
"Seeing as he's the only one of us who knows anything about this place, regretfully, Gladdic and I will have to use you as a shield." Dante blew into his cold hands. "Speaking of, where's this Spire of the Nautilus supposed to be, Gladdic?"
Gladdic scowled at the rocks blocking their line of sight. "On an island off the shore from a great city."
"If we're across the sea from the Western Kingdoms, then most of the coast should be to the east. Might as well head that way."
It was good reasoning, but they had no sun to take the direction from, and of course any landmarks that a local might orient themselves with would mean nothing to them. Unsettlingly, if the storm had been sent from the entity, the sun might never come back out to confirm which way was which.
So he started off in the direction he thought was east. Hail stones ground and slid underfoot. The air smelled of rain and beaten-up earth, though in most places the ground was covered with a thick springy cover of grass that looked to spend more effort weaving itself horizontally than it did growing vertically like grass typically did. They had arrived within a little warren of canyons and shallow cliffs that hadn't allowed them to see to the horizons, but after a few twists and turns, they entered a wide plain spotted with small hills and groves of trees.
As well as one city, some miles to their right. With a white-capped sea beyond it that almost confirmed they were heading in the right direction, and were likely in the right place as well. But clouds hugged the coast, and curtains of rain obscured whatever might lie further out among the waters.
"Suppose that's our spot?" Dante said.
Blays looked up and down the coast. "You can go look for our city in one of those empty patches of grass, if you want, but I'm going to look for it there in that city."
Dante made way for it, kicking a few hail stones across the turf. "If this storm had hit us back home, the grass would be totally destroyed. This stuff barely got dented."
"Unlike your skull," Blays said.
Gladdic kept one eye on the blackened skies. "Do you believe the gods crafted this grass to withstand the storms here?"
Dante shrugged. "Why else would it be so different?"
"Then the storm cannot be one of Nolost's plagues. So long as we remain ready to act, it should be safe enough to travel onward."
Dante sent his mind into the dirt to confirm that he could. "If it picks up again, I'll stick a stone roof over our heads. There will, of course, be the small matter of the rent."
The sideways manner the grass grew in meant it was spongy and compressive, and the storm had rendered it squelchy and a struggle to walk through. So when they gained a bit of elevation and Blays pointed out what appeared to be a road, if a strangely colored one, they diverted toward it, and were happy to find a trail of blue cobbles mortared together with bright pink concrete. Some of the local grass grew past its edges, but the surface was in good shape and bore them along easily, so long as they made sure to shuffle through the hundreds of hail stones that would otherwise have them slipping about like toddlers in a greased bath.
There didn't look to be travelers in either direction. Then again, it would be several more weeks until winter broke, and if the cold wasn't enough to keep people off the road, the murderous weather might just do the trick.
A grove of trees huddled around the road ahead. Such spots drew bandits like drunken merchants also drew bandits, and Dante held the nether close at hand. The grove was empty, but they stopped anyway to goggle up at the trees. These had normal enough trunks, which were smooth, thick, and straight, but the tops were unlike anything they'd seen before. There, a shallow hardwood cone grew like the cap of a giant mushroom—and long leaves sheltered beneath it, a yard or so long, a half foot across, and as thick as a slice of bread.
"We are sure we're still on Rale." Blays looked ready to make a break for it if the leaves made any sudden moves. "Aren't we?"
"Afraid of the trees?" Gladdic sounded amused.
"I'm afraid that those are the tails of crocodiles badly disguised as trees."
He'd no sooner said this than one of the leaves—if that's what they were—unfurled from the underside of the wooden "cap" and cautiously probed at the open air like a long green tongue.
"Gah!" Blays said. "Can we burn them? Because they really look like they need burning."
"That's how the trees protect themselves, isn't it?" Dante said. "They grow themselves a shield to hide their
leaves under."
Blays toed a broken piece of hardwood, then nodded upward. "Still got pretty beat up, though."
It was true: nearly all the trees had had pieces knocked out of their caps, and more than a few of the leaves lay pasted to the ground.
"You think the storm was worse than usual."
"Maybe storms like this are normal here—but Nolost made this one even worse."
Dante wanted to take a closer look at the trees, maybe even try harvesting them some, but the damage to them suggested the travelers ought to get moving before the skies decided to split open again. Once he was free of the trees, it occurred to him that while the groves in the fields looked to be spaced at random, or at least according to their own nature, the ones along the road were placed at regular intervals: places, clearly, where travelers could rush to take shelter in case it began to hail.
Some little rodents or rabbits or the like emerged to root around in the spots where the grass had been torn up. Dante killed one of them and sent it scampering down the road ahead of them. It wasn't quite to the city when a hawk swooped out from one of the shield-trees and ripped it in half. The way looked clear enough, Dante supposed, and he didn't bother with a new scout. After another hour, and several stands of shield-trees, they approached the city, a broad sweep of low buildings that were mostly of the same two colors as the road, with splotches of green mixed in as well.
There was nothing nearly as tall or imposing as the cathedrals, towers, and palaces of cities like Bressel or Narashtovik or any of Gask's major cities. Or even the much smaller mercantile towns in Alebolgia. As the three of them neared the jumbled stone of the walls, and saw why, they drifted to a halt.
"We might be too late," Dante said. "Nolost already tore this place apart."
The reason everything had looked so short and squat from afar was that nearly everything lay in clobbered ruins. Nothing had an intact roof, and few structures had upright and undamaged walls.
The Twelve Plagues (The Cycle of Galand Book 7) Page 22
