In desperation, Dante threw a blade of nether at the doorway, clipping one of the worms off at the root in hopes the stub might withdraw, or that it might be vulnerable there. Both pieces writhed about for a bit, then stuck themselves back together.
A wave of worms came at him and for a while he was too busy dispatching them to think about anything at all. One after another, he cut off their heads. Severing their tube-like bodies worked temporarily. Was there a way to stop them from regenerating?
Or—he tipped back his head to gaze at the roof of the tunnel—did he need to start thinking in much bigger terms?
"Maybe we can't kill the entity," Dante said. "But what if we can kill the portal?"
"Sure," Blays said. "Just point me to its portal-heart."
Dante moved his mind into the fabric of the floor. As with the other passages between worlds, the nether and ether that made up the surfaces of the tunnel curved away from the lattice of reality, turning silvery green just before they disappeared. He shaped a drop of nether into the sharpest scalpel he could and raked it across the light and shadow that undergirded the floor.
It didn't cut cleanly. But it did cut. Fibers of ether curled away while nether bled off into the unknown.
"This might actually work," he said. "But I want to be a lot closer to the exit when we try it."
Praying that he wasn't making a mistake more gigantic than the entity's arm, he led a hasty but mostly orderly retreat toward the doorway they'd stepped in from. The worms could lunge with the speed of a snake, but they couldn't wiggle through the air as fast as the humans could run, and they could do little to hamper the retreat.
"The ether and nether that underlies all of this," Dante said to Gladdic as they went. "You and I are going to rip it apart. As hard as we can."
"We're really going to do this?" Blays said. "What happens if we're still inside this thing when it collapses?"
"Then we were screwed either way. Because this is our only hope." The black doorway hung before them. He skidded to a stop. "Gladdic! Right now!"
Dante sliced into the weft of the flooring. Gladdic did the same, tearing into it with both light and darkness, moving the path of his destruction away from Dante as he went. At a glance, the ether cut more deeply, but given Dante's relative skills with the two substances, he thought it wisest to stick with the shadows.
"Are you done yet?" Blays said.
Dante sputtered. "We're just starting!"
"Well, the worms are almost done getting to us."
Dante took the briefest of looks up from his work. Dozens of worms swam toward them through the air, bodies reaching all the way back to the other end of the portal.
Dante drove another dark scythe into the substrate. "Then you're going to have to make them pay for every foot they get closer."
Artag's device made its unmistakable twang, repeating rhythmically. Blue fire leaped up from one impact after another, stalling the worm-like appendages behind the flames until they faded away a few seconds later.
"That is all that I have." He stowed his crossbow and brandished his twin blades. "Yet I will not let them past!"
Blays positioned himself beside the armored man, spear at the ready. Dante tore another gash in the energies within the floor. A whole section of it peeled back and frayed apart. Where it had been, he no longer felt anything at all.
"Carve it in the shape of an X," Gladdic called. "The substrate will fall apart of its own accord."
Dante nodded and dragged his nethereal scythe perpendicular to a long cut he'd just made. Blays and Artag charged at the incoming worms, Blays' spear flashing white as it made contact. Just as Gladdic had said, as Dante lengthened the cut, four flaps of substrate fell away from each other and disintegrated.
He turned away from the crumbling X to cut another one into the portal floor, slashing wildly and without any hint of artistry. Artag fell back a step, grunting. A worm had wounded him; it reopened its jaws for a fatal strike. Blays cut down the two in front of himself and pivoted, jerking the Spear of Stars in an awkward blow that was somehow able to cut the head off the thing before it could bite down on Artag. The Cleanser got back on his feet next to Blays.
The entire substrate gave a shudder. Dante's heart beat even faster, but the flooring stabilized. He ripped another X across it.
"Tell me you're almost finished!" Blays yelled.
Dante expected to see the two warriors getting driven back by the swarm of worms. But something much larger drew his eye instead. At the other end of the passage, the hand of the entity rose from its torpor and cruised forward—ignoring the Fountain and heading straight for them.
"We will stand no chance against it," Gladdic said. "When it draws near, leap through the doorway. I will stay here to finish what must be done."
Dante rifled his mind for any way to object to this. Finding nothing, he could only nod.
The hand flexed its restored fingers. Blays weaved in and out of the worms so skillfully it was as if he could predict their every move, spear winking as he laid into them, tying them into clumsy knots as they tried to follow him.
"Go!" Gladdic yelled. "There is no more time!"
Blays backpedaled toward the doorway. Artag fell back alongside him. Dante kept ripping at the substrate until the worms untangled themselves enough to wriggle toward him. Then he made for the portal as well.
As he passed Gladdic, he gasped and grabbed the old man's shoulder. "No! Come with us!"
Gladdic snarled and tried to shrug him off. "I must stay!"
"There's no point!" Dante gave him a heave, staggering him. "The substrate is unraveling on its own!"
The hand bowled past the army of worming tendrils, knocking them aside like they were as insubstantial as dry leaves. Gladdic tried to plant himself, but Dante stuck his foot behind the old man's ankle and tripped him through the portal.
One moment Dante was running forward through the yawning doorway. The next he was shooting upward into a tight stone tunnel. He flailed his arms to try to grab something before his momentum gave out and sent him falling back through the portal. Blays and Artag caught hold of him and heaved him onto solid ground.
"We destabilized it," Dante said. "It'll fall apart within another minute."
Artag stared at him. "And what will happen to the Fountain when that happens?"
"I have no idea whatsoever."
Dante reached out into the rock around them, loosening the plug of it that surrounded the Fountain and mounding it up beneath them, pushing themselves upward—and pulling more of the Fountain out from the portal like the drawing of a sword. His head swooned from the sensation of moving upward while his body stood perfectly still. Below them, he could feel flecks of the portal fraying from itself.
"How did you know you could do that?" Blays said. "Rip the thing apart like that?"
"It's made of ether and nether," Dante said. "Anything made of the two powers can also be—"
He screamed as a dark column thrust from the hole in the ground before them. The smoky finger groped about blindly. Dante stopped pushing them upward and opened a hole in the rock behind them, which he scrambled inside. Out of the finger's range, he resumed extracting the Fountain from the crumbling portal.
The finger of the entity wormed its way further into the chamber, scrabbling for the cubby Dante had just opened. He tried to retreat further but his back banged into the rock wall. Blays had retracted the spear to its rodly shape and as the finger made to smash him against the wall he couldn't do anything but duck. Ether pulsed from Gladdic's hand into the finger, which reared back for another strike.
It paused, standing motionless. Then it yanked back from the chamber as quickly as a fish fleeing a predator. Dante drove them higher, then froze, searching downward.
"The portal's gone," he said. "It's torn itself apart!"
Gladdic brushed off the front of his robe. "That is why the entity withdrew."
Blays wandered forward, peering down the hole in the gr
ound that had once led to the portal. "Will he be able to just open a new one?"
"It can't be that easy," Dante said. "Or else he would have just opened one up right under our feet and grabbed us."
"Enough of this babble!" Artag roared. "What of the Fountain? Was all of it removed from the portal in time?"
"No. And I don't know how much wasn't."
"Then is it intact? Or has it been…compromised?"
Dante moved his mind into the stone around the Fountain of Iron. He could tell at once that much, much more of it was present in Rale than when they'd first found it. He started to liquefy the rock and draw it away, revealing the sky far above them. He exposed the tip of the Fountain, its iron gleaming in the weak daylight. He had expended a tremendous amount of nether over the last few minutes and as he worked his way downward, pulling more and more stone away from the Fountain, his hands began to shake.
Exhausted as he was, there was a thrill in revealing the glory of such an object to the world, and he pressed on even as the shadows grew first stubborn, then rebellious. At last he reached the bottom of the violent-looking structure, pooling the last of the removed stone away into the recesses of the earth.
Artag dropped to his knees. "The Fountain." His shoulders slumped. "It is unhurt!" He laughed, pushing himself to his feet, tears falling from his eyes. He turned on Dante and crushed him to his armored chest. "Thank you! Thank you all!"
"We didn't save the Fountain entirely because we knew how much it means to your people," Dante said. "I was also concerned about the part where it was our only hope of survival."
"I know just why you made this effort. I would pledge my life to your service for it." The Cleanser surged to his feet and pivoted neatly about. "Now it is time to meet him."
The Fountain of Iron hung above them like a massive fir tree made of blades, every bit as eerie and beautiful as Barden. As they approached its base, Dante was overtaken by a sense of vertigo at the thought of it toppling toward them and simultaneously smashing them to paste while cutting them into thousands of noodles.
Before they could come to a stop and beseech the structure, two doors swung apart in its base with the echoing squall of a portcullis being raised. Artag bowed to the darkness that lay beyond and motioned for them to step through.
Dante emerged into a space so different from what he'd expected that he barely had the presence of mind to move before the others bumped into him from behind. He stood on a cold and windy peak. Its flanks were swathed in grass and deer moved through the tall green blades. Hawks floated on the updrafts, their wings as fixed as axles. The sky was a washed-out blue except for a few streaks of clouds that looked like they'd been painted across the heavens with long single strokes of a brush.
"Er," Blays said. "This is the real Fountain, right? And not some wild ruse that's trapped us in an unknown world?"
This thought was sickening enough that Dante was struck with a second round of vertigo, to the point where he found himself reaching out and thinking about sitting down.
"Do you think that I would betray you?" Artag said from behind them. "This is the Fountain of Iron. You have my word as—"
IT IS I.
The voice was the rumble of distant thunder.
"Thank you for speaking with us," Dante said. "My name is Dante Galand, High—"
I KNOW WHO YOU ARE AND WHAT YOU DO.
"Wait, you do? But there's only about a half dozen people in all the worlds who know both those things."
NOLOST TOLD ME OF THE STRUGGLE AS HE DRAGGED ME DOWNWARD TOWARD HIS REALM. HE MEANT TO TORTURE ME WITH THAT KNOWLEDGE.
"Yes, he's a real charmer," Blays said. "Then can I go out on a limb and guess you're amenable to helping us?"
IT IS YOUR WAR, AND NOT MINE. AND SO WHATEVER MIGHT COME TO PASS, LET IT BE SO.
Thunder sounded from far away, but Dante couldn't tell if it was the real thing or the Fountain muttering to itself.
THAT IS WHAT I WOULD HAVE TOLD YOU. NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU MIGHT HAVE PLED FOR MY MERCY, MY ANSWER WOULD HAVE BEEN THE SAME: IT IS YOUR WAR TO FIGHT, NOT MINE.
Dante lifted his eyes skyward. "But…?"
THEN NOLOST'S FEAR—AND THE NATURE IN HIS CORE—LED HIM TO TRY TO DESTROY ME.
The earth broke apart right in front of them; everyone but Gladdic fell back and cried out, lifting their arms for protection. A huge anvil rose from the crack, breaking the stone apart as it lifted. Above it, a piece of nether and a piece of ether chased each other in slow circles through the air.
Blays cocked his head. "Not going to make us pass any tests like the others?"
YOU HAVE ALREADY PASSED A GREATER TEST THAN ANY I COULD GIVE YOU.
"Thank you, Antole," Dante said. "That is your name, isn't it?"
IT WAS. IT CAN STILL BE USED.
"You were—are?—an entity like Nolost, right? What are you an entity of?"
THE ROAMING OF LAND AND THE TAKING OF IT.
"War, then? Like Gashen?"
NO!
Once distant, the thunder of the voice now cracked from right on top of them, startling Dante so badly he spasmed like he'd been struck by it.
I AM THE HAWKS IN THE SKY AND THE DEER IN THE GRASS AND THE TIGERS AND MEN WHO HUNT THEM. I AM THE GROUNDS FROM WHICH UNKNOWN AND TERRIBLE FORCES ARISE TO LAY WASTE TO THE WEALTH AND DECADENCE THAT HAS HEAPED UP IN THE CITIES. I AM THE GREAT FIELD WHICH WILL FEED THOSE WHO LIVE UPON IT, BUT ONLY IF THEY HAVE THE WILL TO NEVER STOP MOVING ACROSS IT. I AM THE WILDS BETWEEN SAFE PLACES THAT GIVES GREAT REWARD TO THOSE WITH THE COURAGE TO CROSS IT.
"That sounds incredibly great," Blays said. "I don't suppose there's any way to bring you back to life?"
MUCH OF THIS REMAINS EVEN IF I DO NOT. THE NATURE OF WHAT WE EMBODY CANNOT BE KILLED SIMPLY BY KILLING US.
Dante tugged at his sideburn. "So even if we could kill Nolost, it won't bring an end to entropy and destruction and the like."
YES. BUT HAVE NO DOUBTS ON THIS MATTER. NOLOST CAN BE KILLED. JUST AS I WAS.
"I don't suppose you know how to do that?"
THE SAME WAY THAT ALL THINGS ARE KILLED: TEAR APART THE BODY UNTIL IT CAN NO LONGER HOLD—OR LOCATE THE HEART WITHIN THAT BODY, AND PIERCE IT UNTIL IT STOPS BEATING.
"Right." Dante gazed across the quiet hills and fields below them. "I don't mean to be rude, but if you know our mission, then you know we need to be on our way to the last of the Four That Fell. Thank you very much for your aid."
He gave a bow and headed for the doorway, an unframed mirror-sheened rectangle standing on its own behind them on the peak.
BEFORE YOU GO.
Dante turned. "Yes?"
I HAD HEARD OF YOU AND YOUR SECOND BEFORE TODAY.
Blays looked up. "Second?"
I GATHER TALES OF ALL THE AGES' GREAT SORCERERS AND WARRIORS. THAT IS ONE WAY THAT I PASS MY TIME. IN THIS AGE, YOUR EXPLOITS ARE UNMATCHED BY ANY OTHERS. DON'T LET NOLOST TAKE YOU. THERE WILL BE NO ONE ELSE WHO CAN REPLACE YOU.
"Thank you," Dante said. "I think."
A wind blew over the grass, making it bend and wave. Dante somehow knew this was a gesture of goodbye. He nodded his head and stepped through the door.
24
They'd only departed a hundred feet from the Fountain before Artag murmured for them to stop. "You will want to see this."
Dante frowned and turned about. Just as he was about to ask what they were standing around for, the Fountain of Iron shimmered. Its blades and angles softened; its tip lowered as the metal at its base puddled into a silvery glob. It collapsed alarmingly fast—Dante saw then why Artag had put so much distance between them and it—until every last part of it looked to have melted. It flowed up the side of the Navel like a molten river until it came to one of the huge holes in the walls, then entered. More and more of it vanished into the undertunnels until the only remaining sign of it was the gouges its blades had dug into its resting spot.
Blays made an impressed noise. "So that's how a three-hundred-foot torture device fits through a dec
ent-sized hallway."
"Do not speak of it in that way," Artag said.
"Well, that's what it looks like."
"Perhaps," the Cleanser granted. "But its appearance is the means through which it protects itself. And continues to exist according to its nature, even after death."
They scaled the ramp that ringed the Navel and returned to the forests of Bagrad. Artag tramped forth with much greater spirit than he'd had at the start of the day. Dante was more than a little relieved himself. They'd started the day thinking the Fountain was lost, and a few hours later had terrorized themselves with the guess that it might already be destroyed. Since then, they had not only found it, but enlisted it to their cause. It was most likely only a matter of days before they stabilized Rale enough to start fighting back in a state of all-out war.
It was a quiet and peaceful day and the full sunshine was the first that Dante had seen in what felt like weeks, its bright bands slanting through the trees while twittering birds hopped up and down the branches. He kept a few insect scouts on the prowl, but none of them ran into anything worth getting worried about, and when they made camp for the night, it was with the general mood that the rest of their time in Bagrad would offer them a short reprieve before whatever was to come in the next land they traveled to.
After eating and resting enough to be able to think about things other than traveling, Dante looned Nak. Nak sounded quite happy to hear about their success at the Fountain and how close they'd come to their goal, but he wasn't asking half as many questions as normal.
"And how about you?" Dante said once he was through. "I assume I would have heard from you if any new disasters had struck."
The Twelve Plagues (The Cycle of Galand Book 7) Page 39
