Lidenda sneered back at him. "Are you threatening me, you filth? How smug will you be when you understand your fate is tied to ours?"
"To the Spire, maybe. But not to you."
"You're stuck here, you idiot! I burned your precious boat!"
Prickles ran across Dante's face and through his mind. He clenched his fist. "Then you've killed us all."
The woman laughed in his face. "Just you, I think. I will lead the Astendi through this just as my Lineage always has."
"You're lying," Elis said. "You didn't burn the boat. It's worth more to you than everything else on this island."
Lidenda's face darkened as she noticed the boy for the first time. "Elis? What are you doing among them, boy?"
He mumbled something, stopped, then made himself meet her gaze. "Fighting to save our people."
"You're abetting them. You traitor! I always knew your heart was fouled!" She motioned to her priest. "Uldrag! Macan! Bring me their heads."
The priest drew one of the Odo Sein swords. One of the warriors produced a bone club, its end studded with shark teeth. The rest of the warriors drew weapons as well, makeshift instruments of bone and broken shell that were something between axes and maces.
Dante raised his eyebrows at them. "Not one step closer."
"Sorcerer-rats don't give orders to humans!" Uldrag lifted the sword and advanced.
Dante raised his hand and knocked the priest in half with a disc of shadows. He turned on the warriors. Macan froze, then flung down his club. The others disarmed themselves and backed away.
"You're right to fear sorcerers," Dante said. "Your mistake is not fearing them enough. You have five seconds to tell me where the boat is, Lidenda. Then I start peeling off skin and stripping off fingers."
Fire erupted from the hill to their left, casting flickering shadows across her face. "Don't you touch me! Don't you dare think you can defile me like that. So much as try it, and the Great One will dissolve you body and soul."
"Three. Two. One—"
She hissed, then turned and ran. Dante supposed he could have harmlessly bound her feet to the soil. But he didn't like her, and she was wasting his time. He stretched the shadows into a long thin blade and slashed it across the back of her ankle.
She screamed and fell into the grass, clutching her ankle. She rolled onto her back and kicked herself away from them, scrabbling for the Odo Sein blade strapped to her hip.
"Get back! Don't you touch me!" Her voice tipped into hysteria. "Oh, I can see the rot in you like a cloud on your soul. A cloud of decay and—"
Dante slammed a bolt of nether into the dirt next to her head. "Tell me where the boat is and you might live to see the dawn."
Lidenda pushed herself up, her face streaked with tears and dirt. She dug her hands into the soil, tipped back her head, back arched, and screamed.
Done, she lowered her chin to her heaving chest. "The second granary. The boat is there."
"The granary?" Elis said. "Why there?"
"The second granary. Uldrag thought it was fresh wood. He wanted to see if we could plant it and grow more."
"Is she telling the truth?" Dante said.
Elis gave a high and narrow shrug. "I…think so. It makes sense."
"Good." Dante pointed his finger at Lidenda. A black dart zipped into her forehead. She fell on her back, legs spasming as she died.
"You said you'd let her live!"
"I said she might live. I was wrong. Now come on."
Dante glared down the warriors who'd been watching them from a distance. Blays gathered their swords, scowling at the corpses of the thieves. The warriors backed off and dissolved into the smoky night. Elis ran for the settlement. Fiery streamers were still drifting down from the heavens as many had already landed and touched the grass alight. It looked as though the entire island might burn.
A mob of people stumbled into view just ahead of them. A sputtering fire on a nearby hill gave enough light to see that most of the people weren't warriors, but more of the women and children and elderly they'd first seen when they were brought to the settlement. Most regarded the four of them warily, but Pila broke from the crowd and ran toward them, the grass of her skirt and jacket streaming behind her.
"Elis!" She grabbed him by the arms. "Are you okay? Have you seen Master Lidenda?"
"She's…" He gave a quick glance over his shoulder. "Dead. Some foul creature killed her."
Pila wailed. "The Master has fallen? What now can we do?"
"Take the people to the Spire of the Nautilus. The Great One will keep them safe. Just as she always has."
"Yes. Yes of course. But where are you going?'
"To turn over the slaves. Now go! To the Spire!" Elis turned on the three foreigners. "Now, you! On the march!"
Dante tried not to smile as he jogged after the boy. The mob rushed north while they ran south. There didn't seem to be any more strings of fire on the way from above, but maybe it was too hazy with smoke to see them. Even if the last had fallen, enough of the grass was burning that Dante didn't know if any of it would come through unscathed.
The settlement was dark and silent. Elis took them along the hard dirt path that ran down the middle of the family parcels until he came to one that was fronted with two tall stone posts and a crude wicker gate that had been left flung wide open. Most of the largest and best-preserved shell-houses stood on the land within, black lumps among the half-kempt sward.
Elis slowed as he neared one of the shells. It was old and worn, its many cracks grouted with dried mud, its several holes patched with rough stones held together with a crumbling pink cement. The opening, much larger than a normal doorway due to the nature of its former occupant, was closed off with a door of densely woven straw. It didn't look like any granary Dante had ever seen, but when he entered at Elis' heels and shined the ether into the space, it revealed their boat no worse for wear. The paddles were even inside it.
Dante gave it a quick check for damage, then joined Blays in dragging it outside.
"If there's anything you need," he said to Elis, "grab it now. We're not going to be back for a long time."
"There's nothing for me here," Elis said. "At least not yet."
The boat was light enough to drag around, but heavy enough that they were going to have to catch their breath more than once on their way to the shore. Dante supposed that if any of the fires got too close, he could just fling the dirt on top of it to keep it safe. They left the settlement behind, taking a fork of the path that looked to lead straight to the water.
Blays wrestled the boat free of a shrub trying to entangle it. "I don't suppose you know how to harvest this thing a pair of legs?"
"I'm surprised you're not asking for wings," Dante said.
"We've already established that you're nowhere near good enough to be able to do that."
Dante coughed as the wind shifted, filling his face with smoke. A small blaze that had been puttering along by the side of the path roared hot. It swept across the way forward at an angle, jumping the path to torch the grass on the other side of it as well. Elis stared at it a moment, then broke to the left, away from the advance of the fire.
Sparks and smoke threatened to blind and choke them, but they were soon past the fire and back on the path. The land was dark before them, fire-free. They would have a clear shot to the beach.
"Elis." Gladdic motioned down the road. "Tell your countryman to clear himself from our path."
"I can't do that." Elis came to a stop. "For that is no Astendi."
With a twinge of foreboding, Dante dropped the boat and summoned the nether, which flocked to a scrape on his hand. A man stood on the trail forty feet ahead of them. There wasn't enough firelight for a good look at him, but both the shape of his clothes and his height and build suggested he was a stranger to the island.
Blays lowered his hand to the grasp of the shrunken spear. "My gut tells me we're not going to be able to reason with him."
"You can te
ll that just by looking at him?" Dante said.
"It's more that he's apparently the sort of fellow who likes to stand around in the dark in the middle of a firestorm."
"Stand aside there," Dante said, putting some boom into his voice. "We've got no trouble with you."
The man didn't move.
Dante pressed his lips together, brought a pinch of ether to his hand, and cast it into the air. Its light washed over the stranger. He was taller than any of them, much too tall to be Astendi, and he wore a traveler's cloak that wouldn't look out of place in most of the kingdoms Dante had been to. He was almost absurdly handsome, with a brow you could hammer iron on, a long straight nose, and a chin like a brick.
Only there was something wrong with the left half of his face. Something too jarring for Dante's eyes to make sense of right away. For one thing, it seemed to be moving: and not just his face, but the left side of his clothes and body as well. For another, it was in a state of deep decay, and was getting blacker and more putrid with each moment.
The man looked them up and down. "You aren't as impressive as the others I've had to deal with."
"If you're trying to insult us," Blays said, "I have to warn you I'm in a very murdering mood."
"Who you are doesn't interest me enough to insult you. You won't exist long enough for it to matter. None of the others have survived, no matter how skilled they were with sorcery or sword. Not when I have come for them myself."
Blood rushed through Dante's head. "You're him. Nolost."
The man stared at him, one eye clear blue and piercing, the other sunken far back within its rotten socket. "No."
"Then what? His messenger? His champion? His avatar?"
"Consider me…an aspect. Taking a form capable of speech with ones like you reduces him by so much that I cannot consider him myself at all."
"And you're here to kill us?"
"This isn't your land." As the aspect spoke, the last of the flesh fell from the left half of his face, revealing bare skull beneath. "How did you get here? And so quickly?" His remaining eye narrowed. "You are serving as an agent. But to which one of them?"
"What are you talking about?"
"One of the gods sent you here. Which one do you serve?"
"I am a priest of Arawn, but we're not acting in the service of any one of the gods. We're here for the people of Rale."
"The language you speak comes from across the sea. Even if you'd set course for this island the first minute after his coming, you still wouldn't be here yet. There is also the matter of how you know to come here at all when among your kind that knowledge is as dead as the god within that hollow shell."
"Convince yourself of whatever you want. But we're no one's agent."
"I doubt that very much. More likely that you don't understand who you serve—or that you might be capable of understanding, but prefer to lie to yourself instead. Regardless, it is not hard to guess. It is almost certainly Carvahal. And it is more than likely that he is conspiring with others. That is how he prefers to scheme, for if he can draw others into his conspiracy, then he can cast the blame on them if it fails."
"And you think he's using us? To do what, exactly?'
"To undermine the order of the gods. He has always resented playing the subordinate to Taim and Arawn. He has considered it a great unfairness from the very beginning. That is why he has been scheming from the very beginning."
"So you're trying to tell me that Carvahal might be scheming to overthrow the god who's currently making his second consecutive attempt to obliterate us? And you think that I should be bothered by this?"
"Yes."
"As long as we wind up saving Rale, I don't care if his real goal is to transform himself into the world's biggest monkey."
"What if he has no intention of saving Rale?" The aspect's body flickered like one of the fires in the distance. The left side of his cloak shredded to thin tatters. His exposed bones grayed, then crumbled away. This should have left nothing behind, but Dante could still see something there: the blackness of the void, like the annihilatory breath of the shadow-dragon. The man smiled, one eye gleaming and lively, the other a bottomless pit. "What if his promise to you is nothing more than a lie?"
"Then we're doomed," Dante said. "But that's exactly why we have to have faith in him. Because he's the only hope we have."
"Are you so sure of that?"
"Now hold on," Blays said. "Why do I get the sense that the element of collapse and chaos is about to try to bribe us?"
The construct uttered a short laugh. Like his face, the sound was made of two parts: one warm and rich, and the other airy and unearthly, like a wind stirring from a cavern that hasn't felt fresh air in a lifetime.
"There is space for you in the Becoming," he said. "Not for all your kind. But for enough."
"Sounds lovely," Blays said. "Where will you be housing us? Next to the creepy gray perma-children? Or the existence-erasing dragons?"
"There are parts of that world you would find more beautiful than anything in this one."
Dante folded his arms. "Pretending like there's a reality where we could trust you to uphold your word, why would you even make us such an offer?"
"Because everything that humans become part of falls apart. That is part of why he likes you, if he can like anything, and is willing to make you this offer at all." The construct's gaze was so unnerving Dante had to brace his neck to stop himself from looking away. "In time, when you are ready, he will bring you to the gods-realm instead. And you will do what you do to every place you go: the one thing that we could not do: break apart the home of the gods, and cast it into ruin."
"We've already turned down a much better offer from Taim. The very fact you're talking to us—and trying to bargain with us, no less—makes me think Nolost isn't as sure of his victory as he'd like to be."
"It must comfort you to think that."
"Why is he even doing this? What is Taim offering him?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing? Then why—"
"Do you also ask why fish swim and birds fly?" The aspect's left half rippled. The void vanished, replaced by an intact but clearly dead half of a face and a very dirty and rumpled half of a cloak. "Why fire burns. Why floods run downhill. Why things fall when dropped and why life ends in death. That is the way. For him—for all things like him—it is to have a way, but to be conscious as well.
"Don't you see? Every time you build something, no matter how small or mean, you are wielding power against him. And what is the way of humans? To build things, only to let them fall apart, or destroy them yourselves? This also offends him. It makes no sense: it is better to have never built at all. This shows the futility and meaninglessness and nonsensical core of your lives, which means that it is better to end them.
"But that is only reason, and this way is not something that can be argued. Not when the way is the only way to reach perfection—when everything is annihilated, nothing can be wrong or in error, and everything at last is equal in place. This is the way to have full rulership, full ownership over a thing. It is the only way to own full power. And to have anything less than full power is to guarantee that, one day, you will be destroyed by whatever parts of that thing you didn't control.
"Yet it runs deeper even than this. The rush and the thrill and the glory of it. It is only when one takes a thing apart to its smallest pieces, and then annihilates those pieces themselves, that one at last feels in harmony with the song of the universe." The aspect hadn't moved since they'd first seen him, but he at last took a step toward them. "I don't expect you to understand. But you asked, and these are some of the thoughts and ways that he has."
"Enlightening," Blays said. "But in case everyone's forgotten what all the smoke and fire means, this island is about to burn down. It's time to kill this thing or find out if it can kill us."
The construct's left half began to shed its rotting flesh again. "I didn't come to destroy you."
"Then what? To sh
ake our hands and wish us a clean, well-fought all-out war for survival?"
"I came here to witness the looks on your faces as I told you that the entity is about to destroy the Spire of the Nautilus."
"You lie," Dante said.
Firelight danced over the aspect's smile. "You are free to disbelieve me. That will make it all the sweeter to him."
Blays jabbed his metal rod at the air. The Spear of Stars snapped free like a bolt of lightning. "Let's see how he likes scooping your guts out of the grass."
He swung the spear downward at an angle from his side and advanced on the aspect with a gliding motion. Dante sucked more shadows to himself, shaping some into darts while reserving much in case the aspect launched an assault on them. Ether blinked from Gladdic toward the enemy.
With flesh still falling from his bones, the aspect turned his left shoulder to them and extended a skeletal hand. Darkness flowed from it. But not nether. The substance met Gladdic's attack and swallowed most of it noiselessly, without so much as a spark. Some shreds of ether made it through to strike the aspect, tearing a few small pieces of him loose, but it wasn't certain that these parts of him weren't about to have fallen off anyway.
The aspect spread his fingers wide. Another cloud of blackness swirled forth. Blays was already lunging, driving the long blade of the spear dead center toward the enemy's chest. Dante held his breath as the two powers met. Everything flashed white, then went black. Before he could start to panic about blindness or being attacked by surprise, his vision returned, though only in shades of gray. Both Blays and the aspect had staggered back from each other but remained on their feet.
Blays' face was blank in a way that suggested he was half dazed, yet he surged forward again. He stumbled—this would normally be a feint, but given Blays' current state, Dante thought it might be genuine—then drove the spear into the now-skeletal side of the aspect. A mortal would have been scattered to the nine winds by this, but it merely punched a gaping hole through the aspect, broken ribs dangling like dead leaves.
Before Dante had seen the outcome of this, he launched all the nether at his command. The aspect managed to ward off some of it with a fog of void, but the rest slammed into him, shredding his healthy and handsome half as well. He flew back, landing heavily on the dirt road.
The Twelve Plagues (The Cycle of Galand Book 7) Page 28
