The 13th God (The Cycle of Galand Book 8), page 12
"There was."
Blays glanced at Dante, lips pursed in the exasperated way that had been so common to them all in response to Kelen's intractability. He leaned back against a tree, ready to let the matter go rather than bothering to try to wring anything more out of the fellow.
Unprompted, Kelen hunched forward, gazing off at nothing. "There are reasons why there isn't more of the anarchy and chaos Gladdic was so certain must be our natural state of affairs. And why people don't just kill themselves in despair. But it is nothing as wholesome as a love for family and home, or the virtue of tending one's own farm, or mastering a craft, or any of the other things you might think would give the people meaning.
"A long long time ago, there lived a sorcerer named Manas. He was the greatest alchemist of his age, and ever since. Despite living so long ago that no one can agree when it was, there is a reason we still know his name. That reason is the dalax. You have nothing like it. The closest thing would be your beer and your spirits.
"But that is such a poor comparison that it's almost evil to make it. Dalax, when drunk, does make people happy, even giddy. But it doesn't result in drunken stupidity or sloppiness. Its supplicants are still useful, as functional as you or me. Try to take it away from them, though? They will go mad. They will try to kill you for doing that. If they can't, they'll kill themselves instead. Almost no one can stop once they've tasted the dalax. Not that they would even want to. And all of the serfs and laborers are made to drink it.
"It has other properties as well. Those who consume it have little interest in anything besides gossiping and playing frivolous games. Aside from tending to their labors, which they are quite devoted to, both because that is what secures their dalax rations from the Gorgos—you could think of them as the lords—and because of some quality within the dalax itself that makes the tending of fields and the mucking of stalls a pleasant experience. It's almost like they're dreaming as they do their duties. Dreams that are deeply enchanting. Ones they wouldn't want to wake up from, except they know there's more dalax waiting for them when they do."
He drew a little knife from inside his traveling coat and considered its tip. "It makes them so they have no interest in having children of their own. Instead they raise the Gorgos' children, and that's part of their labors too. When a child reaches a certain age, it's given a test of sorts. If its qualities are promising, it is returned to the Gorgos to be raised and inducted as one of them.
"And if its qualities are found to be displeasing, it is given its first drink of dalax instead."
"And it's like that everywhere?" Blays said quietly.
Kelen nodded. "There's no one to oppose it. Everyone's happy about it. More than happy: delirious, ecstatic. It's a system that has lasted since the year after Manas first brewed the dalax, and for whatever feuds and betrayals have happened between the Gorgos down through the centuries, and how many changes the countless kings and queens and tyrants have made to their own specific practices of it, the system itself has never been seriously threatened. There were many times when I wondered if my hatred of it was the true evil: that if I were somehow able to break people from it, I would just make their lives miserable, and I would be the greatest villain in history.
"Sometimes in the years I spent wandering in the Realm and the lands beyond it, I thought it would be better if I never came back to Olastar at all. Why fight when you can't win? Why fight at all when your victory would damn those you fought for to lifetimes of gloom and despair? So I walked away for years. I've never told anyone that before." He glanced up at the crimson canopy and snorted. "They say it's a great relief to make confessions like this. But it isn't at all. I don't feel any better or worse than I did ten seconds ago. I think that's just a thing people say to trick others into telling them their secrets."
He drew up his shoulders. "Still, it's the truth that I walked away. So it's fine to say that even if there's no real virtue to saying it. And that idea is what finally brought me back to Olastar. The gods were true. I didn't know if that would make any difference to anyone or anything. But I thought it was possible that if people knew our creators were real and we were squandering our lives on frivolous lies, then maybe someone—the kindest of the Gorgos, the wisest of the mystics, I don't know—would listen to me. Would believe me. And would deliver something new to our world.
"I spent two years journeying through Gothon. I traveled from one kingdom to the next, to the grandest cities and the humblest hamlets. I spoke to every mystic I could. All of this took time. Meanwhile, every Gorgos would have been happy to kill me if they got word of what I was saying. So I was as careful as I could.
"But it's impossible to speak treason to so many places without it catching up to you. Rumors began to follow me like packs of bay-dogs. I should have left then and gone back to the Realm to wait for it all to calm down. But a woman named Ea, a mystic of the Tiades, had been taken by my stories of the Realm and its gods. She pledged to convince the master of her order to reform their doctrine and preach the truth. None of us knew what would happen from there. But all we needed was one ruler to convert to our new faith to start to bring an end to the dalax system.
"Of course everything she told me was a lie in the end, but I wanted to believe it too badly to see that. They arrested me. They…were unkind to me. But they wouldn't let me die even when it was clear I'd told them everything I knew and had betrayed everyone I'd ever spoken to. If Maralda hadn't found me and broken me free, I'm sure I would have gone insane.
"So I fled to Etis. Where other exiles like me had built a new home for themselves. One that had nothing to do with the dalax. It seemed far enough away to be safe. It wasn't. You know the rest from there. So that's why I'm here. That's why I want to tear Olastar apart. Because it will never, ever change. If only one of the two worlds can live, then yours is the only one that deserves it."
All of that was easily the most Kelen had ever told them about himself (or the people of Olastar, for that matter), and when he finished, Dante found himself nodding silently.
"This dalax system of yours," Blays said.
"It isn't mine," Kelen spat.
"This dalax system of the dastardly Gorgos who will, gods willing, soon all be dead. You make it sound like it's endured for centuries now."
Kelen shook his head. "More than that. Just under two thousand years."
"Two thousand years?! And nobody's broken it in all that time? Not anywhere?"
"How could they?"
"Crazy things happen all the time. All it takes is one mad king, or a sorcerer bent on getting revenge on the noble who rogered his wife, and boom, an entire kingdom can be pulled to flinders."
"The arrangement suits the Gorgos so well that not one in a hundred of them is ever troubled by it. Even if one of those few could convince enough of the others to mount a rebellion, and their rebellion actually succeeded, how could they get the dalax-drinkers to stop? The peasants would just overthrow the rebels and restore the old rulers to the throne. If the rebels should somehow stop that, and withheld the dalax from the peasants, the peasants would all kill themselves. The kingdom would collapse overnight, or get taken over by a neighbor who still has fields full of dalaxa to feed his armies. All of these things have happened before. They're rare, but like you said, given enough time, an unlikely event will happen somewhere. Even so, no one has ever found a way to rid themselves of the dalax."
"Well that is just grim." Blays caught Dante's eye. "If we make it through this, don't ever invent any unbreakable slave-potions, will you?"
"But what if I promise to only use it on bad people?"
Dante meant it fully in jest, but he didn't give voice to his real concern: that if a sorcerer had invented the dalax in the first place, it was quite possible that a properly talented and motivated sorcerer would be able to break the cycle as well, by ginning up an antidote or the like. Then again, Kelen was a sorcerer of some kind, and apparently hadn't made any progress on that front, unless it somehow hadn't occurred to him. But in two thousand years, it had to have occurred to someone. Most likely lots of someones. And they hadn't been able to achieve it, either. Which meant there was little to no chance that it actually was possible: which meant, in turn, that he didn't have to feel any guilt about not pointing out all of this to Kelen.
With this lifted from his mind, he found it much easier to settle in for a good long nap, which seemed like a great idea, given that they had nothing better to do for the next day and no idea when they would have the opportunity to get so much sleep again.
He dreamed he was in a burning city: he thought it was Bressel, but he couldn't be sure. Shadowy beings from the Becoming raced through the streets by the hundreds. It was his task to kill them, and protect the citizens fleeing from them, but for all of the nether he assaulted the monsters with, nine out of every ten of his black bolts missed their target, dashing harmlessly apart. All of his movements were much slower than they should have been and he didn't know why and couldn't make himself go any faster. The monsters flooded past him, hacking down body after body.
Fortunately, whenever the beings attacked him instead, whatever sluggish malady was afflicting him struck them as well. Their blows were flailing and clumsy, and he dodged them with ease. Yet he could barely kill any of them, either: and so his role was to struggle uselessly, and watch helplessly as the people around him were slaughtered, knowing he should be able to stop it, but clueless as to why he couldn't.
"Dante!" Someone was shaking his shoulder. It was Blays, of course; Dante had been shoved awake by him so many times over the years he would have recognized the culprit by the feel of it alone. "Get up, you idiot!"
He was about to be greatly annoyed before remembering they were hardly a stone's throw away from a doorway to all kinds of awful things that could be attacking them.
He shoved himself from his blankets. "What is it?"
"Down there." Blays pointed down the slope. A few hours had gone by and sunset wasn't far off and its light lay on the land like yellow glass. The town below them was small, though its pillars and domes were no less elegant than the far larger city miles in the distance.
A herd of creatures was stampeding toward it across the clear land around the town. But they were no animals, at least none native to Rale: the size of dogs, the dim black beings bounded forward on limbs shaped like sickles, the bladed parts just as sharp.
"Bladelings from the Becoming." Blays drifted forward, hands moving toward his swords. "Just like at Attahire. And they're here to wipe this place out just like they did there."
7
Blays bounced on his heels, then gave Dante a sharp look. "Well? What are you doing?"
"What are you doing?"
"Preventing a gruesome slaughter!"
"Oh no. You can't be thinking about going down there. We can only—"
"No time to argue!" Before Dante could say another word, Blays took off at a dead run.
Dante made a strangled noise and ran after him. Behind him, Gladdic followed, looking stoically amused. But Kelen stayed at the fringe of the trees, watching them go. Dante was about to shout at him in anger, but none of this was any of his concern, was it? He wanted Olastar gone, that was it. Intervening in this attack could only reduce the chances of achieving his goal.
Speaking of. "This is insanely stupid!" Dante yelled after Blays. "So let's stop being stupid!"
"There aren't that many of them," Blays said. "We can do this."
"But should we? If something happens to us, all of Rale will be lost!"
"Think of how many horrors Nolost has already brought to the world. Those won't just magically go away when we shut down the portals. We're going to need every last live body on Rale."
"Yes, very compelling. Except for the part where none of this matters if we die first!"
Blays glanced back at him. "There's no risk to us here. Not if we make it to that ridgeline and you bury them with it."
Dante squinted against the hard late light. The bladelings were faster, but the three of them were closer to the town and were heading downhill, while the abominations were bounding up a light slope. As Blays had pointed out, a hundred yards outside the town, which was set atop a small hill, the terrain swept up sharply on the left side of the bladelings' path—directly where Blays was running to.
"All right," Dante said. "But if we run into so much as a single surprise, we get out and don't look back. Understood?"
"Sure. But if anybody winds up fleeing in terror, it's going to be them."
Blays tore downhill so fast Dante felt like he was about to fall on his face. They entered an arm of trees, losing sight of the bladelings. When they reemerged half a minute later, the herd of abominations was just romping past the ridge that stood above them.
"Now!" Blays yelled. "Before they get through!"
Dante had already brought the nether to hand, but found himself caught half off-guard. He threw it ahead of himself, sending it skimming over the grass until it came to the ridge that overlooked the herd from the Becoming. He drove the shadows into the ground and snapped it apart.
After having so much trouble earth-moving in other places, it was beyond satisfying to have complete control over it again. It felt like recovering from a long illness and then chopping wood or going running along the shore of a lake; muscles that once hardly functioned exerting themselves against the world. A flood of earth and stone swept down the severely angled slope.
The town was no more than a quarter mile away from the bladelings. Only then did a singular horn sound, its notes wan and tinny. A grille lowered to block the gate while a handful of men took positions atop the eight-foot wall. Others would join them, surely. But even if the entire town took arms against the invaders, not a one of them would live through the battle.
The avalanche thundered toward the bladelings. Just before it was set to sweep over them, pulverizing their indistinct gray bodies, the herd swung about to face the deluge. Those in the front row held their ground, standing as tall as they could. Those behind them jumped up on their backs. Those underneath bucked themselves upward; those on top coiled and sprung. Functioning like living catapults, the bladelings launched themselves impossibly far up the slope.
As another cohort of the things leaped to the backs of those up front, a second line assembled behind the first, moving like a single organism, providing twice as large a platform for the others to launch themselves from. The front of the rockslide smashed into the front line just as another batch of the creatures were thrown high uphill.
But a third line was already taking shape, along with a fourth. No sooner were they in place than a group of bladelings was landing on top of them and getting launched upwards, with another group hopping up on the launchers the instant they were settled back in place. All of this was happening so impossibly swiftly and smoothly that Dante found himself mesmerized by it. The beings were using themselves as both the bows and the arrows, and were reacting as abruptly as a flock of birds in flight that all change direction at the same time.
The first set of bladelings to be launched landed three-quarters of the way up the incline. Anything short of a mountain goat would have immediately slid all the way to the bottom, but they spiked their sickled feet into the bare rock and scrambled upwards. The rockslide plowed over the rows of launchers, smashing them into ichoric splinters, but every other bladeling had either been thrown into the air or had already landed on the slope.
"What are they doing?" Blays said. "They're supposed to be letting us kill them!"
Ether winked from Gladdic's hand, killing a half dozen of the closest bladelings. Dante had gathered more nether in the handful of moments since the start of the assault and he rushed it into the ground in front of the climbers, scooping a deep abyss across their ranks. Three dozen of the things fell down it, disappearing silently, but the ones behind it had already jumped into the air. Dante's efforts had already killed at least a quarter of them, but there were more of them than it had looked from afar, and many hundred remained.
The first of which were about to land right in front of them.
"Drop back!" Blays snapped out the Spear of Stars, its light matched by the ethereal missiles streaking past his shoulders as Gladdic scythed down another cluster of the invaders.
Dante wheeled backward. Either Blays had perfect situational awareness, or he expected Dante to, for he swung the spear through the space Dante had just vacated. It plowed through ten of the bladelings in a single booming blow, cutting half of them in half while clubbing the remainder into pieces. Limbs and heads were still falling to the ground as Blays slashed the weapon backhanded through the next gaggle of them.
Two of the beings threw themselves flat, sliding under his attack. But both Dante and Gladdic had immediately adopted new roles as Blays' bodyguard, and ripped the pair of bladelings apart.
"What do you think?" Blays said. "Will my arms get tired of swinging before their carcasses get tired of dying?"
"They fight like undead," Dante said. "I'm not sure they even know what tired is."
Blays pressed forward two steps, clearing the ground before him with lightning-quick slashes of the spear, his arms hardly moving except for the rapid snaps of his wrists. Every stroke killed several of the things at once, and the counterattack would have broken the morale of any human army within seconds.
But the bladelings seemed totally unbothered that their hacked-up chitin was raining to the ground like a storm in the Cycle of Arawn. And there were still hundreds of them. They packed around Blays like drowning men around a life rope. Even with Dante and Gladdic pounding them with so much light and shadow that it was sometimes hard to make out if the attacks were hitting live bodies or dead ones, the horde pushed closer, forcing Blays to shorten his grip on the spear. One of the creatures threaded through and jabbed its forelimb into Blays' thigh, dropping him to one knee.
