Dante adjusted their course toward it. Sometimes they had to hack their way through vines and brambles, and once they came across the black grass that they'd been warned never to step foot on, but the way was otherwise as clear as it had been in some time, and he soon caught a glimpse of their destination through a gap where something (a giant lightning strike, perhaps, but who could be sure) had blown the trees apart. Within another few miles, they stood before it.
The string-plucking in his head had grown stronger as well, though it was nowhere near the intensity of when he followed someone's spilled blood back to them. He started up the naked hill, feeling exposed after the cover of the woods, but he had three scouts circling around in the skies, and they saw no looming demons or disasters. By the time he crested the hill, the string in Dante's head was going off as regularly as a heartbeat.
He cut his connection to it and made his way to the entrance to the shelter. "Adi? Tono?"
There was no response. He descended to the earthen chamber and found it was empty. He went back aboveground to call into the boughs of the towering tree and to examine it with his scouts. But unless the twins were playing some very strange joke, they had left the Eye-Hill, and he returned to the shelter to see if they'd left any messages on the walls or the like.
As they stepped from the dirt ramp to the main chamber, Gladdic crouched by the wall. "Have you seen this?"
Even though the dirt obscured its color, Dante recognized it at once. "Blood. Not very much of it, though. It always looks like more than was really spilled."
"I have spilled enough to know that myself."
"All I'm saying is that whatever happened to them, it probably didn't kill them. Not here, at least."
"If you've got their blood, we can find them, right?" Blays said.
Dante sent the nether into the stains in the dirt, then shook his head. "I can't feel them."
"We know where the Emerald Titan stands," Gladdic said. "We do not need guides to reach it from here. It is possible that is the very place we will find them, for that is where you told them to meet us."
Blays held up a finger. "After three days, not two."
Dante stood. "We can't even be sure they're still alive. Or that this is their blood, and not from whoever came to attack them. We get to the Titan, and we end this."
He had a clear view of the monument through his undead flies, and they tramped northward toward it. As if the entity was watching their progress, black clouds began to park themselves across the sky, multi-colored lightning flashing between them. Once they'd had enough of this, the bolts lashed at the ground instead, setting fires wherever they touched down. Its fury faded away, but the peace only lasted for a few minutes before the lightning began anew several miles to the west of where it had first appeared.
The wind picked up, stripping leaves from the trees and carrying with it the smell of smoke and nostril-stringing acid. Through the eyes of a dead wasp, Dante watched a team of demons scurry from cover to assault a band of Dunite refugees. They were close enough that the three of them might have been able to reach the battle in time to make a difference, but he didn't mention it to the others.
The day grew short. They walked through a long false twilight brought about by the thickness of the clouds, but once it grew darker yet, it was clear that nightfall was almost upon them.
"How tired are you feeling?" Blays said.
"Not," Dante said.
Blays laughed. "The nerves?"
"You'd really think they'd have stopped showing up by now."
He laughed some more. "I suppose you never really get used to the idea of throwing yourself into something that might well kill you. No matter how many times you've done it."
"This isn't even a battle, though. That's what comes next."
"In any event, if we've got the nerves, we might as well make use of them. Think you can get us to the Titan in the dark?"
"My scouts would already be above it if not for the winds," Dante said. "Once they're above it, it doesn't matter how dark it is. All I have to do is follow my connection to them."
As confident as he was of that, he was rather less sure of his ability to spot threats in the dark. He was comforted by the thought that most of them would either be highly visible (due to the flames) or highly noisy (due to being giant stomping monsters).
Night fell. It was the first one they'd traveled through in the belowlands and every call and shriek from the trees made Dante startle. Two of his wasps made it to the Emerald Titan, which stood alone in a circular clearing within the woods. They could only just make out its shape, but as far as they could see, nothing stirred around it.
Lightning kept flashing in the distance, tight clusters where the bolts could be any color of the rainbow and the thunder was crisp and metallic. It jumped from one part of the sky to another without reason.
For four or five hours, it didn't come particularly close to them—until it was suddenly right on top of them, shooting orange and green and lavender bolts that blew the trees apart with terrific claps of raw noise. Dante bit his lip and tore open a hole in the ground for them to fling themselves inside. He lowered the earth beneath them until they were twenty feet below the surface, then thought again and lowered them another thirty feet.
"Pray it doesn't start raining," he muttered. "Or else we'll end up like Bagrad."
"If your Great Navel winds up plugged, you're on your own," Blays said.
Still, they were well-insulated enough that if not for the small holes he'd left in the entrance, he wasn't sure they'd be able to hear the storm unless it hit directly above them. It would have been a good time to try to sleep, but he didn't feel like it, and apparently neither did the other two. They sat in silence, lit wanly by a dab of ether that Gladdic chose for reasons only he knew to make flicker like a candle.
"Once we have dealt with the Titan, and put the plagues to an end," the old man said. "What is your plan then?"
"Get back to our people as fast as we can," Dante answered. "Secure enough food for them to last this out. And then ally with as many other kingdoms as we can to crush Nolost's forces and bring the war against Rale to an end."
"Have you ever given thought to what you might do in the event that we might stop the plagues and yet still be defeated by the hordes of Nolost?"
"Have I given a lot of thought to what I'm going to do after we're all dead? You know, I hadn't gotten around to that one yet."
Gladdic watched the flickering of his ether. "There is a third outcome that you have not conceived of. One where we are defeated, but not eradicated."
Dante tilted back his head. "You mean like we Glimpsed in Tanar Atain. Back in the deep history, when warring sorcerers were overcome by their own demons, who went on to scour the whole earth."
"Except in the deepest forests and the highest mountains. There, the survivors hid and they waited. Until the last of the demons had passed, and the people went forth into the world once more."
"If it happened once, I suppose it could happen now. Where are you going with this?"
"Look at all the places we have seen since being sent on this mad quest. The strength of Gask and Narashtovik, and of Mallon before the lich, is but a rarity. Even if every realm of Rale were to rally against the entity, it might not make for enough. Before you undertake your war against the hordes of Nolost, you must prepare for the chance of defeat."
"By doing what? Sending some of my people up into the Woduns or something?"
"Just like that. Make your own holdfast. Again, look to the strange places that we have seen for guidance: send to this reserve more than simple citizens and commoners who will be of no use to the war against Nolost, but priests and those who know the ways, and may teach these things to the generations that follow, so they do not descend into disorder and barbarism, as they did on Attahire. Make sure that it is both hidden and deep, and that soldiers are sent there as well: for Bagrad shows us that so long as they have purpose and a means to defend th
emselves, a people will endure for however long it shall take.
"Last, though you will be well-tempted to invite your friends among the norren or your allies in Gallador to join you, you must resist this temptation. Or else there may come a day, as it did in Kalabar, when pressures or temptation sours friendship into treason, and one group enslaves or eliminates another—or even worse, attempts but achieves neither, and instead collapses into ceaseless war that destroys everything both combatants had ever built.
"It might sting your virtue to turn your back on those who have helped you in the past, and who might even be fighting alongside you at that moment. But if our future comes to rely on these deepholds, you and your virtue will be long dead before this project will see its completion. If you refuse to see this, then your virtue is not virtue. It is only weakness."
Dante was staring into the twinkling light of the ether now, too. "I'm starting to understand you a little better."
"These deepholds, are they going to involve harems?" Blays said. "And if so, you did say they'd need warriors, didn't you?"
Outside, the lightning strikes were growing fewer in number. Dante waited five minutes after they stopped to climb up and open the earthen entrance. The storm was flashing miles to the south of them. Around them, sections of the forest had been exploded into smoldering craters. Other than the crackle of small fires, it was entirely silent.
They continued toward the Titan. One of the undead scouts he had hovering above it blacked out. As they crossed a stream clogged with bodies, the second blacked out as well.
It didn't matter. By that point he was oriented to the lands around him, and even if he'd wandered off course, the silhouette of the Titan was tall enough to be seen wherever a disaster had leveled a few of the trees. Sometime that night, with hours yet until morning, they stepped out from the woods into a broad round clearing, and found themselves at the feet of the Emerald Titan.
29
It was so tall he wanted to stagger back from it. By instinct he brought the nether to himself. But it didn't move—although it still gave off the eerie sensation that it could—and Dante braced himself and approached closer.
"Well, I see two legs," Blays said, keeping his voice low even though the wind was still rustling the boughs about and thunder was still snapping in the distance loudly enough to stop anyone else from hearing him. "Which one do you suppose has the ears on it?"
"With any luck, neither. I've seen more than enough grotesque things over the last few weeks."
Still, the left sides of things were often bad luck, and Dante veered toward the right "leg" of the tower even as he realized that he had no idea which way the Titan was oriented and thus which side was its right or its left. As he neared it, it seemed to stride toward him in a great leap, and he startled and threw up his hands.
He rubbed his face. "Did either of you see that?"
"You acting like you were about to piss yourself?" Blays said.
"It looked like it moved. Oh, never mind."
He resumed walking toward it, keeping both eyes on it at all times. It made no more sudden moves, and he stopped when he was fifteen feet from its base.
"One that's now known as the Emerald Titan." He paused, because it felt right to do so. "You must have noticed the troubles afflicting the world. We're here to end them before everything is destroyed by them. We seek your help." He tipped back his head and waited for a reply until he started to feel embarrassed. "Entity of what was begun much time ago but still has much to be done before it's finished," he tried. "The one whose name was once—and might still be—Larisse."
He took a step back, for you didn't always know what would happen when you named a thing, especially one that was very old and carried great power. But the Titan remained silent.
"Maybe it's asleep," Blays said. "Do they do that?"
"None of the others did." Dante lifted his voice. "We have already been to the three others of the Four That Fell: the god Sandrald, that we know as Barden; the goddess Farelin, that we know as the Spire of the Nautilus; and the entity Antole, that we know as the Fountain of Iron. All have already given their aid to us, even Antole, for we saved him from destruction at the hands of Nolost."
The wind sighed through the grass. The Titan kept its silence. Dante gritted his teeth and contemplated whether he should try to threaten it. Or bargain with it? But what could you offer to—
Leave…here. The voice that stirred in his mind sounded as far away as the howl of a wolf across a valley; Dante felt a presence arrive with it, though this was faint too. There is no hope for… It stopped for several long seconds. Leave!
"We can't do that," Blays said. "We're sort of fanatics about this one, you see. It's probably best to just do what we want so that you can get back to the business of being a very imposing—and might I add quite striking—tower. Or sculpture. Or whatever it is that you four are. I'll admit to being a little confused about that one."
The Titan didn't speak again. And while each of them tried to cajole, flatter, plead with, and even make a few veiled threats toward, it stayed silent.
"I felt its presence when it spoke," Dante said. "That's gone now."
"As I recall, most of the others didn't much want to chat with us either." Blays strolled toward the Titan's base. "Suppose there's a way for us to get inside anyway?"
Dante approached it, putting his hand on the structure's surface. It was smooth and cool and he didn't feel so much as a single scratch on it. He felt about for any hidden catches or the like, then brought a smudge of nether to it. The shadows slid along the rich green surface, unable to find purchase.
"I haven't found a thing," he said some minutes later. "I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to be searching for."
"Which sounds like it could be exactly the problem." Blays had been fiddling around with the ground at the Titan's "foot" and now stood. "The 'Emerald Titan' isn't just a lordly-sounding name, is it? It looks like it's actually made of emerald. Gems are basically just pretty rocks, aren't they? Suppose you can open a hole in it for us?"
"Are you asking me to desecrate the tomb of the god-like entity who our lives depend on liking us?"
"No. Gladdic did that."
"I did no such thing," Gladdic said. "And yet it is a means that must be considered if the Titan leaves us no other choice."
"Let's keep trying other means first," Dante said. "I'll send out some scouts to see if they can find Adi and Tono, too. They'll know much more about this thing than we do."
There were a few moths and flies about in the darkness and he killed them and bent them to his will, sending them off through the nearby forests. This done, he tried to use the nether to provoke any reactions from the Titan while Gladdic did the same with the ether.
Time dawdled on, lost forever. When everything they could think of trying managed to accomplish a grand total of nothing, they tried talking to the structure again, and naming her again, but as this wore on with no response, their voices grew increasingly frustrated.
"This is pointless," Dante said at last. "Time to see if I can't open a door in it. If it doesn't like that, it can come out and say as much."
The nick he'd given his knuckle had scabbed over and he rubbed it back open and sent his mind into the shadows within the wall of the Titan.
"Don't," Blays said.
"But this was your idea to—"
"I've just remembered something from the book. The Troublesome Travels of Riddick Dover."
"What is it?"
"I can't remember."
"You just said—"
"I remember that someone found a way to sneak inside the Emerald Titan. I don't remember how. Give me a minute." Blays began to pace around in the grass, muttering to himself.
Dante cocked his head. "Are you singing?"
"Yes. And you're interrupting my important work. So stow it."
Blays repeated a phrase to himself multiple times, varying it a little each time before deciding on a single form of i
t, then did the same with a second phrase. Dante could only catch snatches of words and he decided to stare at the Titan in the most magisterial way he could muster and see if that was enough to get it to bend to his will.
"When the rains dry up," Blays said—or rather, sang. "The crops still thirst, so to the river we must, with buckets in hand, to fill them up, and tend to our land." He waited, looking up at the Titan, then cursed and went on. "For what was once mere seeds is not yet done: and as those who planted it, we pledged to tend to it, until to the mill and the table its fruits are brought."
He stopped again, looking much more concerned than before. "Come on, that's all—"
With the sound of glass on rock, a door opened in the base of the Titan.
"This has to be the first time in the history of the earth that reading a book ever did anyone any good." Blays drew the spear-rod from his belt and stepped through.
Dante followed, getting out and blowing on his torchstone to light the way. "What was that song?"
They found themselves within a cavern-like space encrusted with huge angular gems or crystals, as if they'd just stepped inside a giant geode, and Blays took a moment to make sure there was nothing lurking among the formations.
"The Song of Summer Tending," Blays said. "But I had to make up the melody."
"How'd you even remember it? I thought you hadn't read it in more than a decade."
"I used to sing it to myself when I was drinking."
"To remind yourself of all that hard work you were doing on all of those farms you owned?"
"To remind myself that I still had lots of night ahead of me, so I'd better not try to get ahead of myself on my cups, lest I find myself in more duels than I wanted." He ambled further into the chamber, swiveling his head at the thousands of crystals and gems that made up the interior. "Surely the Titan wouldn't miss one or two of these?"
"As catatonic as it seems to be, we might be able to smuggle out a whole wall or two."
"Do we know where we are going?" Gladdic said.
The Twelve Plagues (The Cycle of Galand Book 7) Page 48
