The 13th God (The Cycle of Galand Book 8), page 15
They couldn't just let themselves get eaten, could they? He moved his hand to his sword. The sound stopped, but the smell kept growing stronger. Until it felt like it was right in front of—
The sky glimmered. Glowing green spots moved across it. It was impossible to tell how high up they were and thus how big they were or how fast they were going: they could have been fireflies, or they could have been the size of wagons.
Whatever they were, they gave off just enough light to silhouette the creature in front of them, which stood ten feet tall and ten feet away. Its upper half was vaguely humanoid. Its lower half wasn't. It shielded its eyes against the barely-there light, spun about, and wriggled off through the grass.
The green spots played against the mile-high ceiling, swimming through the darkness in indecipherable patterns. In time, they broke away, drifting to east and west, and passed beyond the rims of land raised to either side of the wildway. Dante braced himself for more pitch black, but the sky filled with pink, which brightened to yellow before returning to a cloud-spattered blue.
Kelen stood and nodded them onward.
The portal was nestled within a split boulder. Dante was first to go through. He emerged back in Gothon. On a mossy and extremely slippery rock. He fell, throwing his limbs wide to stop himself from plunging into the boisterous river right below him, and was then promptly stepped on by Blays as he crossed through the portal.
"What was that thing back there?" Blays asked once Kelen was through.
"It was a delor," Kelen said. "Servant of the Xonos. Some say they were once normal people who dared to take a wildway, and were captured by a Xonos. But instead of killing the trespasser, the Xonos held him by the legs while shoving his upper half through a doorway into a lower world, resulting in…that."
"Do you believe that?"
"I don't know. But it's hard to think where else such things might come from."
"So how are we getting to Pholos from here?" Dante said. "You said it involved a nearby kingdom?"
Kelen nodded. "Harasphont. It will have passage to Pholos. But it won't be easy for us to attain."
"Get us on our way. And then tell us everything you can."
Kelen oriented himself to the brain-hurting folds of the landscape, then headed in a direction that felt like north to Dante. All in all, they had lost half a day traveling back and forth across the wildway, and a full day waiting out the Xonos in Crimsonwood. The relative lack of destruction in Crimsonwood made Dante think they still had some time to pull down the portals and evict Nolost from their world—at least a week, maybe two—but even if that was true, they'd just lost something like a tenth of the time remaining to them. He doubted they could afford a second such loss.
"Crossing the fields of Gothon as we travel to Harasphont, seeking entry to Pholos," Blays said. "What are we looking for in Harasphont? Something else with a ridiculous name?"
Kelen eyed him. "Everything worth talking about has a name. If the names of this place sound ridiculous to you, that's only because you don't belong here."
"I fully agree with you there."
"It's called an aida, which simply means gatehouse."
"What's the best way to get to it?"
"What kind of a question is that?"
"I think we have reached the point where if I'm asking you a stupid question, that's because I am stupid, and you should just accept it. That's what a smart fellow would do."
"Maybe you're not so stupid, Blays. Maybe we're just different."
"Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves here," Dante said.
Kelen stepped around the mouth of a small burrow, keeping both eyes on it. "But difference is exactly what I'm talking about. The aida is kept away from the public. Worse than the public, we're strangers, and you three are foreigners, which means it will be kept away from us twice as vigorously. The best way to bypass this vigor depends on what you are best at. Are you best at bargaining your way to it? Lying your way to it? Sneaking to it? Killing your way to it?"
"The truth is we're probably best at killing," Blays said. "We've certainly got more experience with it than most. The problem with violence, though, is that once you start to use it, if it doesn't work out, it's really hard to go back and try one of those other things instead."
"How is the gatehouse in Harasphont protected?" Dante said.
"I've never seen it." Kelen sounded more thoughtful than normal. "But the two I have seen were both deep in the palace of the king. I know this much: we will have to earn our way to it."
Night fell not forty minutes later, but they were decently rested and were traveling across open fields without any available shelter, and they didn't stop until they came to the ruins of a crude hilltop fort, which Kelen explained was the last landmark he'd spotted before they'd lost the light, and that they would need to wait till morning to continue.
The night was a quiet one. Day broke little different than it did in Rale, except for the somewhat unnerving fact that there wasn't a sun, at least not one that Dante could see. Their march brought them to a bright green land where a dozen different streams wound through the strange folds of the earth before converging at a cliff. Rather than cascading down it in a waterfall, though, the river flowed straight across the ravine to a second cliff, where it then flowed on in normal fashion, as if there were no laws of nature at all here.
Fortunately for Dante's sanity, the ground smoothed out greatly after that. And became speckled with a comfortingly familiar sight: farms.
These ones were remarkably large, though. Each one was the size of an important lord's, with no family farms or serf-holdings between them. In one field, a group of forty people, both men and women, picked clusters of yellow berries off of bushes and stowed them in big wicker pouches slung over their necks. As they edged along the rows, their movements matched each other so well that it was as if they were working to the tune of some unheard music.
Though they were slight of build like Kelen, their skin had a little more blue to it than Kelen's, presumably because they spent all day working outside, and his features looked more refined. Although that likely had something to do with the idiotic smiles draped over the laborers' faces.
When Kelen first caught sight of them, he froze. A look of utter disgust spread across his face, but this was soon replaced by something like pity or sorrow.
"Those are the people you were telling us about?" Dante said. "The potion-swillers?"
"The dalaxa," Kelen said. "People of the dalax."
"They do look happy."
"They are."
"But I mean really happy. Like they just had their first child."
"Or just finished conceiving it," Blays said.
"There is no one to mind them," Gladdic said. "No field hand with a stick ready to beat them should he catch them sleeping or stealing. For no peasant here ever does sleep or steal on the job."
A few of the peasants looked up as the four strangers walked down the road that had begun at the edge of the fields. At the break in the rhythm of their labor, others glanced up in confusion, but before any of them could say a word of rebuke, the oglers returned to their work, taking berries from the branches and adding them to their slings.
Dante tried not to stare too much. "One way or another, somebody has to work those fields. At least they're happy about it."
Kelen blinked at him. "What did you say?"
"I understand your objections, but in all my travels, the only places that didn't have a great heap of peasants to work the land were the ones that used a great heap of slaves instead."
The blue tinge to Kelen's face deepened. "You are saying your own peasants are miserable. That they might even change places with the dalaxa."
"After seeing these people, I think some of them sure would."
"They would only do this if they misunderstood everything as badly as you do. Do your peasants work hard? Sacrifice their bodies to feed the kingdom? They do. But I've seen them and their lives. They draw pride from their work. They're poor, yes, but they're part of the land and live with the cycle of the seasons.
"And their work isn't the only thing they have in life. They have gods to honor, along with feasts and festivals that bring all the village together. They have lands to cultivate and homes to grow. They have families to cherish and provide for and protect. Their lives are rich in many ways. The peasants you speak of, the dalaxa you see here—they are not the same." Kelen gave him a disgusted look. "If you believe your peasants would be happy here, that's only because you would be happy to do this to your peasants."
"That's enough." Dante took a step toward him. "I know your feelings about this are…strong. But if I speak ignorantly, you must forgive me—and you must remember that while I let others speak far more freely to me than most do, I am still a lord."
The two of them stared at each other.
"You can't hurt me," Kelen said. "Or else you'll never make it to Pholos. But we're not going to make it there by standing here, either. Come on."
He trudged forward along the road. Dante headed after him. Their voices had been heated, especially Kelen's, but not a single one of the dalaxa had looked up from their work, or stopped smiling.
"We've entered Harasphont, in case you hadn't guessed," Kelen said. "We should reach the king's capital by tonight."
It was a pleasant day, spring-like, with phalanxes of gray clouds scurrying about through the sky. Wherever these rammed into an upthrusting fold of land, the clouds poured down rain in outrageous torrents. The road unrolled through pastures sprinkled with sheep-sized horned animals with great fluffy manes. The livestock showed much more interest in the travelers than the dalaxa had.
On Kelen's advice, they left the road and passed around the first village they came to. The buildings were fewer in number but significantly larger than in a Ralish village of comparable size.
"Each compound is owned by a Gorgos and his family," Kelen told them. "Here, they will be worthy tradesmen, merchants, minor lords, and retired soldiers of quality. That kind of man."
"And they're all so rich as to have manors like that?" Dante asked. "Even in a sleepy place like this?"
Kelen shook his head. "Not in the sense that you mean. Their properties are large to accommodate their dalaxa."
"They own them? They're just slaves, then?"
"Strictly speaking, no. They can all leave, if they want."
"But they don't want."
"Almost never. In some places, the dalaxa live apart from the Gorgos, in structures like barns for humans. But some find it more convenient to arrange themselves like this."
The streets weren't exactly packed, but there was moderate traffic near the village crossroads where the merchants were clustered. Most of the men and women there were dressed in shapeless skirts. The women wore shawls draped over their shoulders while the men were mostly shirtless. Few of them wore shoes, and when they did, these were just scraps of leather strapped to their soles.
"I'm guessing the vagabond-looking crowd are all dalaxa?" Blays said. "Are the Gorgos in hiding? Or are there just that few of them?"
"It varies by a place's wealth, and how much labor it needs," Kelen said. "But usually there are about ten dalaxa to every Gorgos."
While most of the people were obviously running about on various tasks, a minority of the dalaxa were seated under little pavilions sipping away at bulb-shaped cups and moving markers around on painted boards. They looked to be enjoying themselves—their expressions were outright dreamy—but as Kelen had told them, there was none of the boisterous revelry of drunkenness. It looked a bit dull, in fact. But apparently this was what they did every day.
The village fell behind them. The surroundings got rougher, with tiny little hills sprouting up everywhere, some as little as five feet high and none taller than twenty, so that the entire ground was pebbled like a lizard's skin. The road slithered between them like the course of a snake and most of the time they could only see ten yards of the path ahead of them. It was within this blindness that they curled about one of the hillocks and all but ran into a uniformed man on the back of an unknown beast. It was nearly the size of a pony, and generally shaped like one, but it had paws instead of hooves, and its face was more dog-like, with front-facing eyes, tall triangular ears, and a distinct black tip of its snout.
"That would be one of the king's rangers," Kelen said. "He'll want to—"
"You there!" The man pointed at them with a shiny wooden rod, dancing his mount closer. "Are you citizens of the realm?"
He rode nearer as he spoke. His mount's feet made almost no noise. Kelen looked to Dante, who gave a small shrug.
"No," Kelen answered.
"Do you understand that you are within the borders of the realm of Harasphont?"
The pair exchanged looks again, and Dante gave an even smaller shrug.
"We do," Kelen said.
The ranger lifted his chin high, which Dante took for a kind of nod.
"Why do you knowingly trespass within the borders of the realm of Harasphont?" said the king's man.
Dante met Kelen's eyes, raising his eyebrows. This time, it was Kelen who gave a tiny shrug. Dante raised his eyebrows higher. Kelen stared back.
"What is the meaning of this?" the ranger said. "Do you brew a lie between you?"
Blays snapped the talisman Carvahal had given them from around his neck. When he spoke, it was solely in Mallish, with no overlay of whatever language the ranger was speaking.
"Just pretend we're stupid foreigners who can't understand him," Blays said. "Kelen, make up a story for him."
Dante blinked his left eye at Blays, a signal they'd worked out long ago to indicate the person had just said something totally wrong or idiotic.
"Oh." Blays lowered his eyes to the talisman he'd concealed in his fist. "Now Kelen can't understand me, either."
"Enough conspiring!" The ranger nudged his mount two steps closer to them, pointing the rod of his station at them some more. "I am hereby taking you into custody, to be questioned under the xiri by—"
White light snapped through the air. And into the ranger's forehead. His head jerked back, but he remained in the saddle, as if contemplating the stormclouds presently smashing into a protrusion of land overhead, until he tilted rightward and dropped to the ground with a crunch. They had only just entered Harasphont, and they'd already murdered one of the king's men.
9
"Gladdic!" Dante said. "What do you think you're doing?"
"I am doing nothing," Gladdic said. "For I have already done it. He was about to arrest us, and now he will not."
"But now the next of them sure as hell will!"
"What fault is this of mine? I am merely correcting the error you made when you did not prepare a story for such a meeting."
"I forgot to. There's a lot to take in here!"
"Nobody's going to arrest us," Blays said. "Not when they won't have any body to find. Quit arguing and help me out with this thing."
He moved to the corpse, wrapping it up in the dead man's own cloak with the expertise that comes with much practice. Dante had half a mind to take the man's uniform—it certainly wouldn't disguise them, but it might prove quite useful for Kelen—then decided the risk of being found with it when they entered the capital outweighed the potential value of it. Besides, if they really needed a uniform later, there were obvious ways to get more.
The dead man looked like he couldn't have weighed more than a hundred pounds, but he felt quite a bit heavier than that, and there was something to his shape that made it harder, or at least more awkward, to carry him around, and it took both Dante and Blays to carry him off the road and past a pair of the hillocks, where they decided they'd gone far enough.
Dante could only barely move the earth in the way he was used to, so he brute-forced the nether into chopping a hole in the ground instead. They heaved the body inside, buried it, and returned to the road. The ranger's mount had run off while they were dealing with the corpse, sparing them the decision of what to do with it.
"Now," Dante said, frowning at the dirt under his fingernails. "What was that all about? Why didn't you just lie to him, Kelen?"
"I didn't know what you wanted me to say," Kelen said.
"Anything would have been better than that!" Realizing they were standing around at the scene of the crime, Dante continued along the road, the motion calming him as he went. "Let's just make sure it doesn't happen again, shall we? Why would three travelers from Rale have business in Harasphont?"
"What business do my people have when they travel to your lands?"
"They don't. I'd never even heard of your people until Maralda sent us to you."
"Yes. Exactly."
"Oh. Right. Well that's a problem."
"Yet the solution lies within that same problem." Gladdic gestured about him. "Why are we here? Because Rale is being devoured. We have no way to stop it, so we have come to Olastar in search of safe harbor."
Blays rubbed the back of his head. "You want us to pose as refugees, then horribly betray them after they take us in?"
"That is not my want. But I will."
"That's probably better than anything else we're going to come up with," Dante said. "Now let's try not to kill anyone else on the way there."
They passed two more villages, which looked quite similar to the first one, made mostly of large compounds with a permanent market at the middle. The architecture was the same, too, with lots of arched windows, rounded-off corners, and round roofs capped with grotesque, mischievous tin figures that were either minor demons, or playful spirits.
The only clear divergence between the settlements was in the places where the dalaxa gathered after they were done with their daily labor. In the first village, it had been under prettily-painted pavilions; in the second, it was pergolas strung with flowering vines; in the third, they had big open-sided tents hung with hundreds of little glass bottles and paper lanterns that made the bottles glitter like stars.
