The 13th God (The Cycle of Galand Book 8), page 1
THE 13TH GOD
ALSO BY EDWARD W. ROBERTSON
THE CYCLE OF ARAWN
The Cycle of Arawn: The Complete Trilogy
THE CYCLE OF GALAND
The Red Sea
The Silver Thief
The Wound of the World
The Light of Life
The Spear of Stars
What Lies Beyond
The Twelve Plagues
THE BREAKERS SERIES
Breakers
Melt Down
Knifepoint
Reapers
Cut Off
Captives
Relapse
Blackout
Cover illustration by Miguel Coimbra.
Text and additional design by Stephanie Mooney.
Map by Jared Blando.

Mallon, Gask, and other lands.
1
Perhaps it was the pain on the goddess' beautiful face that looked as though her heart might shatter if she had to speak one more word.
Perhaps it was the alien fronds of the eerie jungle of Yent that surrounded them, reminding him that if they succeeded, they would never again be able to return to this place, nor the Realm of the gods—even, perhaps, to the Mists, the land of their own dead—and would remain forever isolated to their one land.
Or perhaps it was simply that they'd come to their solution so swiftly that he hadn't had time to take in what it meant.
Whatever the cause, a weight folded over Dante's shoulders so heavily that he thought he might crumple to the ground.
Blays shifted. "Should we, ah, take a moment on that one?"
"Why?" Dante managed to utter.
"Well, because of the thing Maralda said. About it damning us for all time and all that."
"Destroying the portals is the only way to stop the entity from destroying Rale."
"There's still another way."
"Exile to the Realm. Death for all the world except the few people we get across, who will live the rest of their lives as Taim's slaves, and all their descendants the same."
"I didn't claim it was a fun way."
"We do not know the consequences of isolating ourselves," Gladdic said, clearing his throat. "To do so could be to pull down some great horror on the world. And you would be to blame for it. Then you would learn what it is like to live as the villain."
Dante eyed him. "I've been chancing that my whole life."
Blays frowned at Maralda. "Is he right? Are we about to do something unspeakable to our world?"
"I've already told you it will separate you from your creators for all time," she said, voice ragged. "If you mean to ask if it will cause some other tragedy as well, I don't know. Nothing like this has ever happened before."
They all fell silent. Carvahal, who hadn't spoken a word, watched them closely. For the first time, the ever-present twinkle in his eye was nowhere to be seen.
"One choice leaves us in eternal bondage, bearing the knowledge we sacrificed untold souls to the entity," Gladdic said. "The other choice could fail, annihilating us altogether; and even on what slim chance we triumph, it could then crush us with an unseen tragedy. And yet we must decide."
Dante pressed his palms into his eyes. Just a minute ago, he'd been certain what they must do. But both Blays and Gladdic were right, and the degree to which they were right couldn't be known, or even really guessed at. Something moved up in the boughs behind Carvahal: a mass of long thin legs spurted between the leaves, writhing like the green strands of the Wailing Plague that had presaged the arrival of the entity known as Nolost. A centipede the size of a cattle dog emerged from cover and ambled along a branch.
He was no stranger to authority and its use. He had led Narashtovik for over a dozen years, and while in his youth he'd leaned heavily on the Council to guide him, there had been many times when he'd been much too far away from home for them to advise or aid him. That had been the case for approaching two years straight now, ever since he'd been lured to the Plagued Islands in search of his long-lost father. Many of his judgments since then had put whole kingdoms and even the entire continent at risk.
But kings and high priests made decisions on that scale often enough. That was what caused the very need for such leaders. What he faced now, though, wasn't just about the future of a given patch of land and the people who lived on it, but no less than the future of all things, for all time. That was not a decision for any mortal. That was a decision that only a god could make.
How many times have I asked for your help, Lord of Death? he prayed. The immense centipede came to the trunk of the tree it was traversing and made way to a new branch, heading steadily toward Carvahal. If ever there was a time for you to finally give me some answers—
DO YOU BELIEVE I HAVE NEVER BEFORE GIVEN YOU ANSWERS? The voice rang in his mind like the clash of two greatswords and Dante staggered, casting out his arms for balance. EVEN THOSE WHO WOULD BE MY BEST UNDERSTAND SO LITTLE!
Is that…is that you?
YOU ALREADY KNOW THAT WHICH YOU MUST DO. IF IT IS POSSIBLE TO MAKE SUCH A THIN HOPE REAL, YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE CAPABLE OF MAKING IT SO.
I understand. But what I don't understand is how this is happening. Can you always hear me?
He waited. Insects chirped from the trees. The centipede dawdled along its branch. But the voice—one he'd heard just once before, and with just a single word—had gone silent. Dante knew it wouldn't return.
Carvahal was giving him a funny look. Had he sensed it? Even heard it? Or—and Dante knew at once that, however outrageous it might sound, it was still quite possible—had he been the voice, and was now trying to feign innocence?
"I won't risk everything for an existence where our best possible future is to live as slaves to the gods who wanted us erased from existence," Dante said. "So let us be separated, if that's what they insist. We will destroy the portals, and save everything—or falter, and lose everything. But if that's our fate, at least let us die knowing that when we finally refused to compromise, it was at the time that it mattered most."
No one argued. They simply nodded. He had no more ability to know what the gods were thinking, but as for Blays and Gladdic, he thought they understood that neither choice was a welcome one. If both choices were hateful, what mattered then was the act of making the decision, and in having the resolve and the will to see it through.
"Wonderful," Blays said, clapping his hands together with an airy smack. "Now then, Maralda, would you be so kind as to tell us how to do any of this?"
She cocked her head at him. "But you already worked it out for yourself. Or else you'd never have had the idea in the first place."
"Yeah, rip away at it with the nether until it pulls apart into nothing. That worked on the one portal. But I'm guessing we're going to have to rip apart more than one or two more of them to collapse the whole place."
"Olastar."
"Meanwhile, you said you've only got the strength to whip us up one or two more portals. Any more than that, we'd have to hike ourselves across Rale to find and destroy the others, which would take a year or ten longer than it'll take Nolost to finish devouring Rale. That means you know another way."
"You worked all that out from so little?"
"I have a lot of experience figuring out how to break things."
"You're not wrong," she said slowly. "But you won't like the task. You will have to enter Olastar itself."
"Is that going to be difficult?" Dante said.
"It shouldn't be. Unless Nolost or Taim finds a way to interfere."
"Then let's not give them time. Let's go there right now."
Maralda raised an eyebrow. "Oh, I won't be going anywhere with you."
"But all mortal lives hang in the balance."
"Just so: this is mortal business. It's yours to handle and yours to finish."
"'Mortal business'? Which mortal was it that started this conflict, then?"
Her other eyebrow lifted alongside the first. "I walked away from those who persecute you longer ago than your mind can make sense of. I have nothing to do with them. I will not—"
"That doesn't absolve you! You might not have caused any of this, but you're still in position to help. If you don't, tens of millions of lives will be lost! Along with all the lives that would ever have been!"
Maralda's lips drew back. It wasn't a smile.
"You forget who you make demands of, human," Carvahal cut in softly. "Be deeply grateful she's agreed to do anything for you at all."
Dante's pulse pounded in his ears. His nerves were rattling about, for he did understand just who he was speaking to—along with the facts that he could do nothing to make her do something she didn't want to, and that, without her aid, their chances might be as thin as a flea on a sawhorse.
"If that's your decision," he said to Maralda, hoping that his voice wasn't shaking like his hands were, "then there's no sense wasting any more time. Open us a doorway to Olastar—please—and we'll handle it ourselves."
The corners of her mouth curled up and a light sparked in her eyes. "My pleasure." She turned her back to them.
Carvahal beckoned. "I imagine you'll want to stand back."
They backed away from her, and then further yet as she flung out her arms, sleeves flapping. She plunged into both ether and nether with such sudden force Dante flinched, close to pain. She wrenched the two powers to her as effortlessly as he might wring the water from a cloth. They swirled about her, spraying the space beneath the thick canopy with searing white light and the purplish sheen of agitated shadows.
She lifted her hands high above her head. Darkness and light braided together in lattices and grids. This new structure stretched into an oval and then into a perfect circle, one wide enough to march a wing of an army through.
The two shades of light fused into a single shade of harsh nickel. The air dimmed to twilight, the trees and weeds bathed in what looked like wicked moonlight. Maralda punched her right hand forward. More power stirred behind the veil of the real. This time, though, she had to fight to draw it forth, leaning forward, clenching her fist and her neck, her dress streaming behind her in a strange wind that smelled of hot copper. The air warmed, then grew so hot Dante had to narrow his watering eyes.
He could see little more than vague shapes of trees in the false moonlight coming from the wide circle. Yet as an orange-red substance poured from out of nowhere, wrapping around Maralda's wrist and then streaming back into the circle, he knew that it was a sibling of the ether and the nether: a strange power he'd never seen before.
Blinding red light flashed over them. Dante's eyes went dark. He blinked, but the blindness endured. Just as he began to panic and reach into the nether in his eyes, the jungle lightened enough to realize they'd been cast into pitch blackness. As the tree-filtered light returned to that of normal daylight, they found themselves faced with the increasingly familiar sight of a portal: a shimmering, oily black circle, ringed with pearl-and-silver lines bent into subtle geometries.
"What was that?" Dante said. "The red sorcery?"
Maralda stepped back, stumbling, shoulders heaving up and down. "There is…your doorway. Don't let anything happen to it until your task is done, for I'm not sure I can craft you another."
Dante wanted more than anything to press her for answers about the third power, but he'd spent enough time around the divine to know that she had no intention of telling him anything about it—or anything that wasn't outright lies, at any rate.
"Thank you." He nodded to her. "If we destroy this other place, this Olastar…even if we hurry back through this doorway as fast as we can, will we have enough time to make it back to Rale from here? Before all the portals unravel?"
Her eyes grew faraway. "That's beyond my power to see."
"Which means there's a chance we won't. I suppose we'll have to find out what we can do, then." He lifted his hand to her and to Carvahal. "Here's hoping we'll see each other again. If only for a few seconds of total terror as we run back to our own world."
Maralda smiled. Carvahal nodded vaguely. Dante turned toward the iridescent black of the portal and stepped forward, bracing himself for the disorienting rush of the travel.
"Oh, by the wheel of the stars!" Carvahal flung up his hands, head tilted back at the strangling canopy. "You're not really going to let them go like this!"
Maralda sounded peevish. "When did you get so soft?"
"When I saw them put a scare into Taim like no one from their world since Agalbad wreaked havoc across the Green Downs. At least give them a sporting chance."
"You know I can't go with them. Even you wouldn't do such a thing."
"Then it's a stroke of good fortune that we are not the only beings in all the many realms."
"I just told you I can't open any more portals. There's no time for this. Your pets were ready to step through this one just seconds ago. They're right to want to act so fast."
"Then it's a stroke of even further fortune that we are in Yent, and the guide I have in mind is no further away than Etis."
She looked at him blankly, then scowled in disgust. "He's a traitor! The last person you would wish to guide such a mission!"
"But in other ways perhaps the very best man for the job. Even if he sets the whole venture on fire, that would hardly be any worse than sending them alone."
"We don't even know if he's still there." Maralda was muttering now, however. Resigned. She shook her head. "I'll be back within a day."
"I'll have to take your word for that."
She glanced away in annoyance. Then shrouded herself in a haze of nether. The shadows spun about her, faster and faster, all of the forest darkening. Tendrils looped away and dissolved like smoke. The cloud thinned, then dissolved in a great puff.
Revealing a massive black panther the size of a horse.
She blinked at them. The intelligence in her eyes was much different than that in her human form, and Dante was afraid she'd forgotten what she'd just pledged to do, or simply no longer gave a damn about it. As he reached for the nether, though, she spun about and dashed away through the woods in perfect silence.
Blays scratched the back of his head. "I don't suppose you're going to tell us what that was about?"
Carvahal muttered something, watching Maralda go, then gave Blays an odd smile. "Destroying Olastar won't be as simple as stepping through the other end of the doorway and chopping away until it disintegrates. It's more stable within itself than in the portals, which are compromised by having to function within two different realms at once. But if I understand the place—and you shouldn't trust that I do, because it's strange as hell—there is a vital element within it that can be torn apart that will bring down the rest of Olastar with it, just as you guessed."
"But we need a guide to get to this place without getting killed," Dante said. "Just who is Maralda on her way to find? She didn't seem pleased about it."
"His story isn't mine to tell. And I would really avoid asking him about it."
"Sounds great." The portal continued to swirl slowly. Insects chirped from the foliage. "You saw it, didn't you?" Dante said to Gladdic once Carvahal had walked off a few steps for a better look at a singing bird. "The redness?"
"I know no more of it than you do." The old man smiled a little. "Yet even if we were able to study it for the rest of our lives, I doubt we would ever be able to wield so much as a single strand."
"The gods wouldn't bother to hide it from us if we weren't able to use it."
But Gladdic only shrugged, and Dante found himself incredibly tired: they'd spent the last day and a half hiking across the hellscape of Kalabar, stricken by one disaster after another. If they had a day before Maralda returned, he could think of no better way to fill it than being deeply unconscious.
Carvahal seemed to sense Dante's mood just before he was about to act on it. The god made a series of flowing gestures, almost as if he was sword-fighting. Grass sprung up from the ground and wove itself into three thick mattresses. Dante was unsurprised to find his was immensely comfortable.
He dreamed of many things, some good and some ill, almost all of them among people and places he had never seen before, one after the other until it felt like many years had gone by, and when at last he woke he had to remind himself of who he truly was instead of who he'd become by the end of those dreams. Gladdic was awake. Blays wasn't. Maralda was still gone. It had been sometime in the afternoon when he'd fallen asleep, but the scant needles of light that managed to pierce the profusion of leaves were the warm yellow of morning.
He'd been awakened, as it turned out, by the smell of strips of beef sizzling in a pan alongside mushrooms and thickly-sliced potatoes, none of which lived or grew in the Yenten jungle, as far as Dante had seen. However Carvahal had produced it, it was delicious.
"She was going to just let us die, wasn't she?" Dante said to the god. "There's something very dangerous in Olastar, and she was going to let us walk right into it."
Carvahal dug into the hearty portion he'd taken for himself. "Well, you were insulting her."
"So exterminating Rale's last hope is fair game?"
"Our kind will always punish mortal hubris. It's at the core of our nature. Especially when the representative of our kind in question is three-quarters mad from living alone in the wilds and exploring the places that none of the rest of us would ever dare to." The god flicked a twist of gristle into the fire. "You don't really understand us. Even among those who've chosen to take your side, we understand very well why Taim is doing what he does. You consider it an outrage that he'd exterminate you with no more care than you would pour a pot of boiling water into an anthill. Yet I wonder what you would do yourself, if you had his power and position."
