"Well, we haven't been troubled by anything worthy of being called a disaster," Nak said. "But we are having…rather less of a good time."
"Are the creatures in the lake getting worse?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact. We'd thought we might be able to clean them out, but it's become something of a stalemate. And that isn't the only thing. People have been disappearing."
"Couldn't those two things be directly related?"
"Well, I don't think so. Most of the disappearances haven't been on the water or shore. They've been up in the hills. A few were even in one of the towns. But no one had seen any creatures about. We didn't find any tracks, either."
"What do you think it is?"
"The Galladese say they've never seen anything like it. That leaves me with approximately one suspect. But I don't have any idea how the entity is doing it—or if there's some greater design to it than mere chaos and attrition."
Dante made him promise to let him know if anything else came of it, then ended the conversation. He stayed up later than he meant to that night. Not over his worries and fears, but the opposite: for the first time since the plagues had started, he felt as though he could rest.
Which should have meant, of course, that they'd all be struck by red lightning in their sleep or the like. But they woke in the morning ready and whole, and struck out just as soon as they'd shrugged off the stiffness. The day was as pleasant and easy as the one before and it was around two in the afternoon when Dante blinked at the realization he recognized the woods around them. Another ten minutes, and Artag had them standing before the shallow cave that held the portal back to Yent.
Dante glanced at the Cleanser to thank him, then did a double-take. "Is something the matter?"
Artag shook his head and brushed at his eyes. "I am sad to see you go but know that you must. I dearly wish to pledge you my blades, but I must return to safeguard my people. I am so grateful for what you have done but have no way to repay you. These are among the many things that hold down my heart."
"Don't worry about it," Blays said. "If we get through this, we'll be happy to return so you can pay us back with your finest treasures and liquors."
"There's no debt to repay," Dante said. "We couldn't have done this without you. After we put an end to this, if we still have access to the portals, we'll bring you to see our home city of Narashtovik."
"The Dead City is not my home," Gladdic said.
"We'll see each other again some day, Artag. But if we don't, rest assured it's because Blays screwed up and got us all killed."
They clasped hands, then Dante stepped through the portal. The process still disoriented him, but not so badly nor for as long as it had initially. He wondered if that was because his mind and body were adapting to the portals' sorcery, or if it only felt that way because the whole world had become so disorienting that the portals felt trifling by comparison.
He almost expected to find Nolost waiting inside in ambush. But the passage was empty, and he crossed over to the jungled land beyond the kingdoms of the gods.
A sleek dark shape loped toward him far faster than any man could sprint. Dante grimaced and drew the nether, but it was just Maralda in her panther's form, and she came to a hard stop and sat on her haunches and looked at them like she recognized them and was deciding whether to attack them anyway.
"Well?" she said.
"You were right," Dante said. "It wasn't easy. But it's done."
"I didn't think Antole would ever agree to do anything for you."
"He wouldn't have. Then Nolost tried to destroy him. Before that, he was more than happy to let the whole thing burn to ashes."
She gave a purring laugh. "A stupid move, trying to destroy Antole instead of counting on his nature to simply accept whatever might come to pass. But that is of course the fault of Nolost's nature. Destroying is what he does. Remember that, it can be his weakness."
Blays raised his eyebrows. "His compulsive urge to murder his foes?"
"Just so."
"Then we'll really have the last laugh if he commits the blunder of killing us all."
"We've been traveling today, but we're not exhausted yet," Dante said. "What can you tell us of the last of our destinations?"
"You will be seeking the Emerald Titan," Maralda said. "But let's move away from this gateway, in case anyone might be listening through it."
"Er, they can do that?"
She fixed him with her golden cat's eyes and he suddenly felt very small. "I'm not the only one who can use these things," she said. "Now come."
She padded off through the undergrowth while little monkeys hid themselves behind the leaves until she'd passed by. Dante was sure it was quite hot out in the sunlight, but they walked in the deep shade and the air felt as damp as a cooling rain. Maralda found the stump of some fat old tree and hopped up on it and stretched out.
"First, tell me what you saw in Bagrad," she said. "Then I will tell you what I can about the land of the Emerald Titan."
Dante was getting a little tired of telling his story so many times, but he supposed it was particularly important in this case. Telling it back, it sounded outlandish, full of things and events that simply weren't possible in Rale, and if he'd been an outsider, he probably would've thought it was lies and madness. Thinking this made him abruptly paranoid that he was insane—that the entity had stealthily invaded and corroded his brain, filling it with hallucinations and false memories—but even if that was the case, he had no choice but to tell his story as he remembered it.
She nodded when he was done. "It sounds like you should have died many times over. And that you're very lucky you didn't decide to go back to the Great Navel even five minutes later than you did."
"I think Antole could have held out longer than that," Dante said. "The Four That Fell might be spirits of themselves, but they're still immensely powerful."
"I'm not sure," Blays said. "I think this time, we might have gotten that lucky. And that by all rights we should be floating around in some monster's belly asking each other what happened."
"Lucky or not, we're still here. And we're this close to putting an end to the plagues. Where do we go next?"
Maralda swiped at something in the grass. "The Emerald Titan of Kalabar."
"I have not heard of this Titan," Gladdic said. "Yet Kalabar is known to me."
"Kalabar?" Blays said. "As in 'the misty jungles of twice-ruined Kalabar'?"
Gladdic turned to him, openly puzzled. "You know of Kalabar?"
"Sure. That's where most of The Troublesome Travels of Riddick Dover happens."
"That is but a rogue's-book of fiction!"
"It sounded pretty real to me. Maralda, in Kalabar, do they ride around on giant lizards?"
"The nobility does," she said.
"And do the women fight during war just like the men?"
"In one war," she said after a moment's thought. "But that was an unusual one."
Blays held his hand palm-up to Gladdic. "There you go."
"Very well," Gladdic said. "And what expertise has The Troublesome Travels of Riddick Dover bequeathed to you?"
"Oh, I don't know. I haven't read it since I first learned to read."
"You were almost twenty," Dante said.
Blays brushed something from his shoulder. "It was still a long time ago."
"Then can someone who does know what they're talking about start talking about it? Gladdic?"
The old man squinted as if pained. "It is a strange land. At times, it has built a civilization that might have been able to stand against Mallon or Gask. Yet there is some flaw within it—be it in its system of governance, its rulers, or its peoples—that seems to drive it to schism from within, collapsing into civil war and barbarism that persists for generations before calming down enough for the survivors to begin to rebuild. Thus if a traveler were to visit it in any given year, he would have an equal chance of finding himself within a highly refined and pleasant culture, or a hellscap
e of nightmarish bloodshed.
"Within Mallish literature, this has caused Kalabar to be used as a parable or metaphor for other subjects with a duality to their basic nature, especially if there is an uncertainty to which aspect of the duality might be expressed at any given time. For instance, a man stricken with an illness where he might be perfectly lucid on one day, but the very next he will appear as a raving madman. Or take a cask of pork that might be either toothsome or rotten, and it cannot be known which until it is opened.
"However, the regularity of its collapses means that anything else I might know about Kalabar is of no worth. For by the time news of its current customs or prosperity finally reaches our own lands, it is likely that it has already been rendered obsolete by another war and descent."
"Oh good," Dante muttered. "Still, Maralda, you thought dealing with Kalabar would be easier than Bagrad. Why?"
She had been washing herself with her paw, visibly bored by Gladdic's rambling, and looked up in surprise. "Because there's nothing in Bagrad but crazy people. In Kalabar, at least they're sane half the time." She flowed to her feet and stretched her front paws out in front of her. "But also because the Cantag kill strangers who try to find the Fountain, whereas the Kalabari love to show people the glory of their Emerald Titan—or at least, they did in the long-ago time when I last knew them."
"Then let's hope nobody spat on it or something and soured their hospitality. Last question: whose spirit is within the Titan?"
"The second of the entities that lost their lives in the War of the Forging. Her name was Larisse."
"What was she an entity of?" Blays said. "And please don't say 'promising to aid the valiant and handsome warriors before violently betraying them at the last second."
Maralda had started washing her face again as he spoke. "She was the summer tending of crops with many weeks to go before the harvest."
"That's awfully specific, isn't it?"
"Not really. She is about that specific thing as the purest representation of its idea. Of any task in life when the excitement of a new beginning is long behind you but there remains much more work to be done before you can at last set down your tools and claim your rewards. Many long journeys are this way, too: novel at first, but then a great deal of discomfort and even tedium before you reach your destination. Larisse would probably once have told you that life itself is an expression of this idea."
"So she's either the entity of the narrowest thing I can imagine, or of all existence. How many entities were there, anyway? Or are there?"
"I don't have any idea."
"They're so hostile to you that you once fought a war for existence with them, and you don't even know how many of them there are?"
"They exist within their own world. If you can call where they exist a world. Most of them have no interest in your world, either, at least not directly. So they live beyond our awareness."
"Do you think she'll help us?" Dante said. "The entities seem much less receptive to us than the gods. What if she's as indifferent to us as Antole meant to be—or even outright hostile?"
Maralda shrugged a lithe feline shoulder. "Then I suppose you'll have to get Nolost to attempt to destroy her as well, so that you can save her from his clutches, obliging her to grant your wish."
Dante questioned her for a while longer, but soon saw that he'd chewed all the pulp away from the seeds of the pomegranate. He asked Maralda to lead them to the passage to Kalabar and she ambled through the forest until she came to a thicket of streams and rapids. Mist rose around from the pounding water. A waterfall fell from a verdant cliff and Maralda brought them to it and gave a short nod.
"Walk through the water," she said. "You'll pass through to the other side before you come to harm."
Dante glanced up at the clifftop, pulled his hood over his head, and stepped forward.
"Don't let yourself believe that you understand him," Maralda said, bringing Dante to a halt. "You've pushed further than he ever believed that you could. He won't underestimate you any longer—and he will be furious that even when he manifested in person to destroy you, you still managed to thwart him."
Dante nodded and stepped through the wall of water. He emerged into a now-familiar passage. The stars scattered across the walls burned silently.
As he waited for Blays and Gladdic, he slipped his knife free and made a small cut on his arm. He loosened his sword in its scabbard and pulled a broad sheet of nether to him before stepping through the other side into Kalabar.
It was a good thing he did. Because he walked out into the middle of a war.
25
Men and women clashed in the mire of toppled towers and trees. The sky was as black as wet iron and missiles of ether leaped across it like furious angels. Lances of shadows plowed furrows through the ground and knocked limbs from bodies. Dante had seen enough battles to know at once that this was a struggle between two armies, but from what he could see only one side of the struggle wore the colors of their realm or cause, and their orange tabards and black belts had the look of finery that had been worn for many years past when they should have been replaced.
The other side looked to be dressed in whatever they could find. Little more than rags. Few had shoes of any kind. Their weapons were of visibly lesser quality, too—while their foes bore bronze axes, spears with two long prongs, and daggers with wooden handles as long or longer than their blades, many of the poorly-dressed fighters had little more than farming tools or simple sharpened sticks.
Yet they were winning. And once Dante saw it, it was easy to understand why.
"What in the devil?" Blays said. "They're fighting with the demons?"
"They might not be demons. They could be local creatures, like some of the ones in Bagrad were."
"Like hell they're not demons. They're all half-shaped, like unfinished sculptures. They're straight out of the Becoming."
Dante fell silent. It was true: the monsters cutting through the orange-clad men and women looked like nothing out of their own world. They looked similar to the immense swarm that had overrun Attahire, although much fewer in number and physically much larger, their scythed limbs slashing effortlessly through the screaming soldiers.
The sorcerers of the orange-clad soldiers were just able to hold the beasts at bay. But they were losing people with each moment, and Dante's instincts told him it wouldn't be long before their forces collapsed into a route.
"This is a fortunate turn," Gladdic said.
Blays gave him a sour look. "That we've blundered into a demonic civil war?"
"Yes. For all we must do is join those who fight the demons, and we will resist Nolost's power even as we convince his foes in Kalabar that we are friends who they ought to help in kind."
"I can't decide if that's shamelessly manipulative or just good thinking." Eschewing his spear for the moment, Blays drew his swords, purple light snapping up and down the steel. "Let's go gut some horrors."
He jogged forward, gathering speed. High in the sky, flaming objects left trails of smoke behind them, but this didn't appear to be linked to the melee unfolding in front of them. Dante had kept hold of the shadows since stepping through the portal and he shaped them into hard black blades. Before plunging into the confusion of battle, he had the presence of mind to take a look behind him to see where the portal was located. They appeared to have stepped out of a hole in the trunk of a giant tree whose leaves and branches formed a perfectly round ball atop its tall and mighty trunk.
Feet struck the ground in an alien cadence as two of the moose-sized creatures charged a line of the soldiers in orange. Dante slung his blades into the front legs of the one closer to him, clipping them off at one of their joints. The thing opened its mouth to scream as it fell on its otherwise featureless face and skidded through the mud.
Warriors on both sides fell back to stare at the strangers. Within their dark brown faces, their eyes were as bright as ether. One of the orange-men summoned the shadows to him.
> Dante waved his arms. "We are your friends! We are here to slay the demons!"
Uniformed soldiers shot glances at each other and shifted their grips on their weapons.
"They have no reason to trust what we say," Blays said. "But if we're good at it, it'll be hard to argue with what we do."
He broke to his right, toward a group of people in rags that were running in behind the demons, clearly intending to shred through the enemy after the creatures punched gaping holes in their lines. Men and women shouted in alarm. As the demon that was still on its feet hit the first of the orange-men, Gladdic gored it in the side, spraying black ichor down its smooth gray skin. It hacked into the soldiers around it, but it was already staggering, its charge all but stopped.
The warriors Blays was running toward yelled at each other and took up a formation that was hasty but more orderly than their makeshift weapons implied they were capable of. He didn't slow down. The middle of the line wavered.
"There is one of him and fifty of us!" a man called out. Though the pendant around Dante's neck rendered his words clear, the rhythm of them was unlike anything he'd ever heard, slowing only to quicken again. "He is an amber-bringer. There is nothing to fear!"
Gladdic pounded at the demon again, knocking its legs out from beneath it—though that wasn't enough to stop it from lashing out at the orange-men as they tried to stab it with their two-pronged spears. The one Dante had crippled tried to drag itself into the fray. He put a bolt of shadows into its head. When that didn't do the trick, he followed it with a second.
Battle cries roared from the defenders as Blays closed on them. They braced their stick-spears and pitchforks. Just before they could impale him on a dozen different points, he vanished into the shadows.
They cried out and fell back in confusion. He reappeared in their middle and cut two of them down before they had time to scream. He slew three more in as many seconds, then disappeared again.
He blinked back into being at the rear of the formation. Dante could no longer tell how many Blays was killing, but it was seconds yet before they began to yell and turn about. This time Blays seemed ready to stand his ground. Dante wouldn't have been able to keep track of the speed of Blays' blades if not for the silver and purple light trailing behind them as they jabbed and parried and disarmed and slew.
The Twelve Plagues (The Cycle of Galand Book 7) Page 40
