"We're absolutely not using those," Dante said.
Adi shot him an affronted look. "Yes, they are uncooked meat compared to the meals the Talso once made. They are dirty and old, but they will still float."
"I'm not concerned about the boats. I'm concerned about what will be in the water beneath them. I've got a safer way to get us to shore."
He exited the small cavern into the driving rain, took a look around, then extended a low shelf of red rock along the bottom of the cliffs, working his way shoreward at a walking pace while keeping one eye on the deepness just to his left. The air smelled wonderfully of fresh water. He soon delivered them to shore, red rock washed bare of any earth where no plant could grow.
Blays adjusted his hood, turned around, and tipped back his head. "How long d'you think that would've taken us to climb down?"
Even a few hundred feet away from them, the cliffs hung overhead like a wall the gods had dropped on the edge of the world. Ribbons of clouds clung halfway up the heights.
"I'm glad we didn't have to find out," Dante said. "And I don't even want to think what it would take to climb back up it."
"That is just why we built the Undazim," Adi said. "Now, we show you to the Emerald Titan, just like we did with visitors before the days of war."
She led them across the slick flat rock and into the forest. The trunks of the trees were pale and creamy while the immense leaves were the color of a blue jay's back. Broken branches littered the ground so heavily they had to pick their way across what should have been open forest floor while dim beams of light jutted through the storm-wrought holes in the canopy.
"Taga?" Adi said to Tono. "Or the Ugan?"
He gave himself some time to think. "Ugan, perhaps. But Taga has benefits also."
"Myself, I think Taga."
Dante walked faster to put himself beside them. "If you're making a decision about us, would you mind letting us know what the hell it might be?"
"Two paths can take us to the Titan," she said. "Ugan is faster. But it will be river-spawned."
"River-spawned?"
"Full of others, as a river when the fish return to breed. Meanwhile there should be less trouble on Taga. But it will also take longer."
"The entity could be working to bring down the Titan as we speak. We'll take the Ugan unless and until there's too much unrest for us to continue."
"Understood."
Some mist drifted around, but they were far enough from the Greatfall that only stray drops were now sprinkling down. The air already smelled more like smoke. Here and there a tree stood cracked and blackened from a strike of lightning. Some birds curved through the air, and packs of odd creatures with big eyes, long tails, and striped fur watched them from the branches, but they saw no other animals.
Until two hours later, when they came around a low mound and skidded to a stop. Hundreds of human bodies lay among the trees. And dozens of harsh-furred creatures chewed on the remains. The animals looked similar to the urdu, but they were the size of dogs instead of bulls, and their eyes were much wilder. They chewed manically, but much of the meat spilled from the side of their mouths to the ground, as if the constant calamities had robbed them of their appetite, leaving them unable to swallow. The beasts made no move to back off as the humans drew closer. The sound of their chewing made Dante's stomach bend.
Adi glanced between the dead. "Mogo," she announced.
Tono gestured his agreement.
"And only some are soldiers."
"Mogo?" Dante said. "These are a different people?"
"Yes. Allies to the Talso."
"Do you think the Dunites did this, then? Is your war happening down here, too?"
Adi grimaced. "These are the lands in which it started."
She skirted around the field. The creatures whale-eyed her as she passed by but every one of them kept chewing. The dead looked to be wearing robes instead of the tabard-and-skirt combo of the Talso, but they were so torn up and bloody Dante couldn't be fully sure.
As soon as the grim feast was behind them, Dante slew six long-bodied iridescent silver beetles and sent them buzzing off to make sure their party wasn't about to blunder into any disasters—or, more reasonably, given the situation on the ground, that they would only have to contend with the minor ones rather than the major ones. His connection to one of the beetles was snapped just ten minutes later. In normal times, he would have assumed some predator had nabbed it out of the air, but he feared it had been caused by something more sinister.
The smell of ash hung on the air. They passed one of the Painted Ponds, a near-perfect circle of purple water, but Adi didn't let them approach it and Dante supposed they didn't have time to anyway. The sky brightened considerably, but not because the sun had finally broken loose from its prison: instead, the region of forest they'd just entered had been so thoroughly burned that even the ground was torched, with not a single blade of grass to interrupt the carpet of blackness, and no leaves above to block the light. Dust stirred in the low wind and charred matter crumbled under their steps until they came to a trail of bare dirt: the Ugan.
Dante's loon pulsed in his ear and he touched it involuntarily. "Yes?"
"Lord Dante." Nak's voice was as tight as a hide on a rack. "I have done as you ordered. I sent an attack against the portals we discovered within the caverns."
"Tell me they were able to collapse them."
"Every single one of our people was killed."
Dante stumbled on the bare ground. "You're that sure they're…?"
"Once it started to feel as though things were taking too long, we sent in scouts after them. Undead, of course. They'd turned the tunnels into pools of blood."
"What did?"
"We haven't the foggiest idea."
Dante took a moment to absorb this. "This is not good news."
"I don't know what to do, lord." Nak's voice grew quieter. "We could make a second attempt. But we've already lost so many people over the last few months. On the other hand, if closing these portals is that vital, I could send everything we have left against them."
"No. It's time for you to leave Gallador."
"I'll admit the thought has crossed my mind. But without the lakes and fields, we'll starve."
"We might be finished with the Emerald Titan within the next day. That's all the longer you'll have to hold out. After we bring the Titan into the fold, we'll bring all of the plagues to a stop. That means we'll be able to grow food again. Food that won't poison us. The storms and volcanoes will stop, too. That means we'll be able to devote our full strength to the only threat that will remain: the armies of the Becoming."
"Yes, High Priest. We will do as you say." Nak's tone strengthened with each word. "We have full faith in you to deliver us."
He closed down the loon. The beetle flying along the path ahead of them caught sight of unburned forest, then a settlement within it, but before it could get close enough to make out anything more, it was snuffed out as suddenly as the first one had been. Dante shifted one of the others to take its place, but the five humans reached the town before the scout did.
It was so quiet that it had to be abandoned. Unlike the other settlements they'd happened across, though, it was in reasonably good shape, all things considered; only a third of it lay in utter ruins instead of all of it. The quality of what remained was less than impressive, though, little more than shacks made from boards cut from the pale blue-leafed trees. The ruined parts had clearly been much larger and more competent structures that had been built with red stone. Some only had a few holes in their roofs and walls while others were no more than slumped heaps of broken rock.
The Ugan ran right down the middle of it. Dante held the nether in hand as they advanced between the silent structures.
"Adi," he said, "I thought you said this was where the war began. So why is this town in such better shape than the Vault of the Sky?"
"The war must have moved on from it." She gave one of the shacks a di
sdainful look. "Things as these can be built with as little skill as they take time."
"I'd say so," Blays said. "Most of them don't even have windows!"
Gladdic frowned. "Even with no windows to watch us through, I still feel as though we are being observed."
Dante could feel it, too. But if anyone was watching them through the cracks and knots in the boards, they stayed hidden. Once the town was out of sight behind them, Adi called for a halt to rest and gather some oval orange fruits from a tree whose soft bark was patterned with black and white spirals. Dante took the opportunity to venture a short way into the woods, loosening the laces on the front of his trousers.
As he approached a thirsty-looking shrub, something rustled from behind it. It sounded large, but animals always sounded much bigger than they were when they were flailing around in a bunch of leaves. Which was why he was so surprised when he peeked around the side of it and saw a man crouched in the dirt.
The stranger was dressed in rags and had both hands clenched around the handle of a broken dagger that he pointed at Dante. "Stay back!"
"You've been following us?" Dante curled a wisp of nether around his outstretched finger. "Why?"
"To see what new pain you would cause my people."
"You're a Dunite."
"You have good eyes, for an amber-bringer." The man swallowed with as much difficulty as he'd have with a mouthful of bad meat. "You are the ones who come to stop the breaking of the world, aren't you?"
"How do you know that?"
"If you come to do good, then why do you walk with the vile ones? The betrayers?"
"Vile betrayers?" Dante almost laughed. "Aren't your people the ones who betrayed the peace? And betrayed it by teaming up with the demons that are trying to kill everything?"
"Yes," the man hissed. "For that is what the Talso deserve for what they did to us in the age of peace. We served them loyally, growing and gathering much food, raising animals, paying the taxes asked of us. We thought our protectors the Talso were loyal to us also. That is why, when a blight struck the crops of the Mogo people, and the Talso asked us to allow them into the lands-that-have-always-been-Dunite, we agreed.
"They were only supposed to live among us for a season or two. But when the blight left, the Mogo stayed. They began to replace their straw huts with wooden houses, and sowed crops that wouldn't be ready until the next year. Some among us started to ask questions. Others of us seeded themselves in Talso halls. It was in this that we stripped the leaves from their plan.
"The Talso had carved a deal with the Mogo. For the promise of paying more in taxes than the Dunites had, and of spending more time tending the queen's fields, the Mogo would be allowed to stay in Dunite lands—and to take Dunite lands, until they stole everything that was once ours, and we would have no choice but to wander off and starve, and the Talso's crime would be forgotten.
"That was the plan as planned. When we were certain of this, we accused the Talso of what they meant to do, and they took scared, and then wrathful, and they attacked us, thinking we weren't ready and that they were great masters while we were lowly servants. But as we had sent roots through their plans, we had prepared ourselves also: and instead of a fast slaughter, the lands fell into a grim war. And have stayed in it ever since."
During his telling of the tale, the man had gazed steadily at the ground. At the end, however, he lifted his eyes and glared into Dante's.
"If the Talso were telling the story, I'm sure it would sound much different," Dante said. "If they really did intend to commit a crime like that—and then attacked you over it—why were you about to make peace with them before the plagues came?"
The man gave a slow blink, the local equivalent of a shrug. "Why keep fighting when there is nothing left to destroy?"
"Are you telling the truth?" Dante held his palm up and conjured shadowy figures to dance across it. "I am a powerful sorcerer. I will know if you're lying to me."
"If any word was a lie, let my eyes roll from my skull and my bones crumble in my limbs."
Dante gritted his teeth and stared across the foreign trees. "We're not here to do your people harm. Or to help the Talso. We must speak to the Emerald Titan. As soon as we've done that, we'll leave both your lands."
"Is that your word?"
He nodded, then remembered the talisman was no good with gestures. "It is."
The man had been crouched in the dirt all the while. He stood finally, knees popping, darted a look past Dante, then turned and ran through the woods, his grass-wrapped feet landing almost silently. Until he was gone.
Dante finished his business with the shrub, then killed every bug he saw on the way back to the others, explaining that he thought they could use a few more scouts now that they were drawing so near the Titan. He waited until they'd been back on the path for a few minutes before approaching Blays, removing his talisman, and motioning for Blays to do the same.
"Eh?" Blays un-necked his amulet and concealed it in his hand. "Are we about to say rude things about our hosts?"
"Yes, actually," Dante said. And then proceeded to tell him everything that the Dunite man had told him.
"Far be it for me to question the credibility of a man in rags hiding under a shrub," Blays said. "But do you believe him?"
"It would match up with a few other things we've seen and heard. Like that town back there—it probably used to be Dunite, not Mogo. That's why the old buildings looked so different from the new ones, they were built by different people. And every time we've asked the Talso about the war, they've acted like they don't want to say two sentences about it."
"Whereas normally people in a civil war will seize every opportunity to start ranting about their grievances. Even so," Blays said, pointing his chin at the two Talso sorcerers. "They don't really feel like villains."
"I bet most of the people we've had to kill over the years wouldn't have seemed so bad if we'd started out as friends with them."
"Well, what's done is done. Anyway, we're not here to continue the persecution of the Dunites or to cast down their foul oppressors. As a matter of fact, it was pretty rude of you to tell me any of this."
Dante scowled. "What are you talking about?"
"Now I have to carry around this moral guilt when just a minute ago I was blissfully innocent!"
"I just thought it might help us make better decisions if we run into another battle or something."
"I don't think I need to know I'm accidentally participating in atrocities to be able to make good decisions about things."
Dante shut his mouth and went to tell Gladdic instead. The old man didn't ask a single question until Dante was finished.
"Does this surprise you? Those who would commit a great crime never simply state that they have done so. They are compelled always to create a false story to explain what they have done. Once the next generation is raised, who was not there to witness the truth, the falsehood is all they will have: and so they will believe the lie down to the depths of their soul, and violently assault any who attempt to speak the truth."
Dante decided it was time to put his amulet back on and concentrate on walking.
The Ugan came to an abrupt end at a pit of roiling fire hundreds of feet across. Adi led them around it, looking concerned all the while. On the far side, demons, humans, and animals killed each other with wild abandon in a haze of yellow-gray smoke. Adi headed deeper into the woods to parallel the path from afar, but they were slowed by regular tangles of brambles that Blays and Dante had to chop their way through with Odo Sein blades. At other times a black grass grew that Adi warned they should never step upon, sending them into long detours before a way forward reopened itself.
"This is foolish," Adi said as the day wore on; they were all now much dirtier and sweatier than they'd been on the path. "We would be faster to go through Taga instead."
"But Ugan could still wash clean," Tono said.
"Let the amber-bringers decide."
"Sure," Da
nte said. "But first, will you please tell me why you keep calling us that?"
"Because that is what people of your land do when they come to our land."
"What, for trade? You know what, never mind. The Taga will take longer, right? And how much longer would it take for us to even get to it now that we've been on the Ugan?"
"A quarter of a day-march," Adi said, "if the way is clear."
"And we have no idea if the way is clear. It could be in just as much turmoil as this path is."
"That could be so. But there is an Eye-Hill just to the east that we can see much from and then decide. We should hurry to it. It will be dark soon."
Dante gave this the go-ahead and they made way to the east. He used his insect scouts to avoid the worst of the undergrowth and to ensure there were no surprises lurking between them and the Eye-Hill. This turned out to be a steep hill that someone—presumably the Dunites—had set a path into and cleared of all trees. He expected to find that the top was fortified, but it turned out to be empty except for a single tree of dizzying height. It was draped with rope ladders and wooden staircases, and Tono scurried up it without any discussion. Dante frowned. He'd been expecting artifice or sorcery of some kind, but the Eye-Hill looked to be no more than a high spot to see from, which his scouts could do perfectly well. Then again, it was Tono's land, not his, and maybe the young man could recognize signs and threats that Dante would be oblivious to.
In either case, it had only been a short detour. As Tono made his way to the top, the slate-dark clouds overhead took on a greenish tinge, bulging like dead things. Dante felt compelled to stare at them until he realized the hill was high enough for him to see the Emerald Titan from. It was still a good ways away from them, but they'd closed enough of the distance to make out its shape: two huge towers or beams curving gently toward each other until meeting high in the air to form a single rising cone. If you didn't squint too closely, it almost resembled a man with his feet spread apart and his arms held at his sides. Dante kept many gems in the Sealed Citadel, and the Titan's color was the exact match for its namesake.
The Twelve Plagues (The Cycle of Galand Book 7) Page 44
