Cally stamped his staff in the snow. "Why wouldn't I be real? Deceased, certainly, but I'm still present in the Mists, as I understand you've named the place. Very creative of you, what with all the mists there."

  "If that's true, I couldn't be happier to hear it."

  "Is that so? Then why haven't you come to see me?"

  "It's hardly been a year since we even learned about the Mists. We've been more than a little busy since then."

  Cally looked around himself. "Well it's certainly an interesting place, isn't it? I don't know what's funnier: how much we got wrong about it, or how much we got right."

  "We're High Priests. We're supposed to get it all right."

  Cally snorted, thumping his staff again. "I'm glad my death didn't stop you from not listening to a single word I ever said. I always told you that we don't know as much as we think we do, and hence it should come as no surprise when we're invariably proven wrong."

  Dante nodded, examining the old man. Everything about him looked right, sounded right. Acted right. Then again, if Mount Arna was somehow drawing from his memories of Cally, its illusion would match right up.

  "Why are you here?"

  "You see, it seems as though you are about to die. That would be bad for you, obviously, but also for the world you'll leave behind. So I was…summoned, I suppose. Don't bother asking by who. I couldn't even quite tell you what it was."

  "I don't see how you can help me. I'm too tired to go on. So unless you can step over to the mountain and carry me on your bony old back, this is the end."

  "Glum, defeatist, and petulant, just as I remember. Ah, what a constant joy it was to be around you!"

  Dante smiled. "And you're just as long-winded as I remember. Will you get to the point?"

  Cally began to pace. Had Dante picked that habit up from him? Or had they just been alike in more ways than either of them would admit?

  "It would seem, then, that the first measure of the heroic task settled upon my shoulders is to convince you not only that you can persist, but that you must. The logical tool to best achieve this end would be a great prophecy: I tell you that the disaster facing the world has been foretold all along, and that you are the chosen one ordained to avert apocalypse, indeed, that you alone are the only one capable of doing so, as revealed by one of our great mystics, or even by one of the gods.

  "This doesn't leave you with a choice. When ancient prophecy—or the gods themselves—tell you that you must go and do something, you can't stand there and declare, 'Actually, with apologies to the gods, I can't.' No. Rather, you get up off your ass and go do it, no matter how fucking impossible it may seem from where you stand now. Further, a good prophecy lends you the confidence to endure no matter how absurd your present chances appear."

  Dante crossed his arms. "That sounds effectively manipulative. But I'm guessing there's a problem with it?"

  Cally flapped his arms. "The problem is that in your case it isn't true. Well, probably not, at least. I understand you fulfilled the Keeper's prophecy about becoming the avatar of Arawn, which makes the current situation quite interesting, given the nature of the various forces at play. Still, I don't feel like lying to you. Not anymore. Or at the very least not for now."

  "How extremely considerate of you to finally start telling me the truth."

  "If I thought you needed to be lied to, I would do it. But I don't. The truth is, I've long had a sort of prophecy of my own guiding my choices in life. Not that it was a prophecy in the sense of a divine revelation, mind you. Mine is borne out of two parts experience and observation, and three parts extrapolation.

  "The troubles I saw weren't quite so extreme as what you're dealing with in the White Lich, but it was something like the events you're up against. Enough to cause me to understand that the world was much more fragile than it appeared—and that people like us were the ones who might endanger it. I also saw, in my travels, that you could be important in fighting the future I feared might one day impose itself on us. That is why I took you on as my apprentice."

  "Funny, I always thought that was so you could use me as a tool to kill your rival so you could take Narashtovik over for yourself. When I spoke to her, Samarand had the same recollection."

  "Well, that too." Cally cocked a thick brow at him. "But a clever man always has more than one plan in motion, as well as for the useful people and objects in front of him." He turned toward the soaring branches of Barden, scowling at them for some reason. "My vision, if you could call it that, stemmed from an event in my youth. One that took place when I was right around the same age as you were when we first met."

  "So two days after the gods made the world? Or three?"

  "Amusing. Now, as I've said, the event in question wasn't remotely as dangerous as the lich. But it did involve demons, ones that were quite hard to kill, even with the use of sorcery. When I looked at this event closely, it seemed to me that within it was the potential to destroy a nation—if not much more than that. And that the person wielding such powers might not even intend to unleash such devastation."

  "Where was this, Narashtovik? You never told me anything about an event like that."

  "Yes, that's because it was so dangerous. At the time we covered it up and spread misinformation—"

  "You mean lies?"

  "—misinformation about what had happened, so that no one could go and learn to do it again. We destroyed all the information around it, too. And it worked. The knowledge was lost. Purged. A man of lesser insight would have left it at that, but I thought it wise to discover, recruit, and train talents capable of stopping such events in the future."

  "And I was part of that plan?" Dante said. "Apparently it was so critical you waited a hundred years to start it."

  Cally made his dismissive brushing motion. "Of course you weren't the first. And of course other events intervened in the meantime. Like the rebellion down in Collen. And then Samarand's perfidy. Life's chaos has a way of pulling you away from your visions. That's why so little ever gets done.

  "Still, despite all these distractions to deal with and fires to put out, I kept a hand on my plan. And I kept an eye on the world for signs of the threat I'd seen in my youth. Which turned out to be a very smart move. Because we may have purged the knowledge in question from our lands—but the world is a very big place, just immense really. And the same knowledge emerged in a place that had been hidden from my eyes."

  "Tanar Atain."

  "Just so. Though it took a different form than the one I knew."

  "How do you know about what's happening now, anyway? Has it even impacted your part of the Mists yet?"

  "You are aware that the White Lich has entered the north, yes? Where the lich goes, death follows. Those who've fallen have made their way here—to the Mists, I mean—and the upside of their untimely demise is they've brought information with them, which I've been absorbing with great interest."

  Cally had been doing some pacing about, punctuated by the occasional "there you have it" gesture or stamping of his staff. Now, he turned on Dante, staring at him with burningly clear eyes.

  "I found you so that if and when a day such as this raised itself above us, we would have someone with the strength to do something about it. I passed on before I could train you as well as I wished—but you have progressed beyond anything I could have given you. Return. Deliver us, Dante. This has always been your destiny. Even if none of us knew it until it was upon us."

  "I want to. More than anything." A pang of despair pierced Dante's heart. "But I can't go on. I can't even crawl. The mountain has beaten us."

  Cally smiled craftily and reached inside a fold of his robe. "Yes, I thought you might need this. It won't return your strength, not truly, but it will help your body forget its weakness." He passed Dante a corked flask of black liquid. "You'll need to hurry. It won't last long. But I have the suspicion that once you're standing beneath the Mill, all will be made right."

  Dante accepted the flask, which was the size of a large plum. "Even if you're not real—thank you, Cally. I wish we'd had more time together."

  "Oh, we had enough of it to set things in the right direction. Now our time here is at an end, too. But if the world ever stops collapsing for long enough for you to take a breather, you will come see me, yes? I've heard quite a lot of what you've been up to in these last few years, but I'd still like to hear about it in your own words. You can even bring that wretched Blays along if you like." Cally's eyes glittered again. "Who knows! There may even be something left that I can teach you."

  And then he was gone.

  The branches of Barden softened back into a skein of indistinct clouds. Another few moments and these retreated from the deep blue of the sky. It was colder again, and the weight of Dante's exhaustion crushed him like a stone.

  He held something in his hand. He propped himself into a stable position, then withdrew the cork with a squeak and a pop. The smell was like someone had raked together all the matter washed up on a beach, boiled it down to a thick concentration, and then, for some reason, leavened it with orange peel. It would be just like Cally to give him a supposed "healing elixir" that only made him vomit.

  He held his nose and quaffed. It tasted as strong but not as bad as it smelled and the brackishness of it reminded him of shaden. Now that he thought to check, nether swirled slowly inside it.

  His legs shook involuntarily, kicking his heels against the snow, then stopped with a shudder. Once the fit passed, he tried to move his legs on his own. They obeyed.

  He grinned, drew himself up, and poked Blays in the side. "Never thought I'd need to encourage you to do this, but it's time to drink up."

  With effort, Blays got up on his elbow. "You mean that appealing bottle of sludge?"

  "I won't lie to you. It isn't good. But it will get us to the Mill."

  "You had this thing that could save us all along and it didn't occur to you to use it earlier? Just saving it for when we're dying on an even taller, colder, more savage mountain?"

  "I didn't have it until just now. When Cally gave it to me."

  "I now suspect that it's a flask of insanity juice. It's got you looking better, though, so I guess I'll just go mad too." Blays took the bottle and drank, making a face. His legs spasmed out like Dante's had. "Well, would you look at that."

  He rose. So did Dante. For what would be the last time—for now they either died on the slopes, or reached the Mill—they marched on.

  Dante was certain the mountain would hurl one last spear at them. Another blizzard. Another vision. One of the deadly guardians that lurked in all the Realm's wildest places. Yet the light of the Mill grew brighter by the minute. It was too glaring to get a good look at what might be there, but he thought he saw it slowly spinning.

  The approach to the peak formed a series of stone shelves. Some were short enough to climb without equipment. Others were a struggle. None would stop them.

  He lost count of how many shelves they climbed. At least a score. They heaved themselves over one more, and then Dante saw something he hadn't seen since he'd first laid eyes on the mountain: there was nowhere higher to go.

  They stood on the edge of a flat, circular plateau. Searing white light poured down from above the center of the peak. The song of the mountain swelled as if taken by a gust of wind, then dimmed, though it remained ever-present.

  "Are we really here?" Blays said. "Because if it turns out we died down there and this is just the Pastlands showing us what we want to see, the gods better hope the Mists get ripped apart before I find a way to cross over and cut their throats."

  "No," Dante said. "We're here."

  He wanted to run to it. He forced himself to walk instead. The light burned from the snow, so potent he could hardly tell one object from another, until he was blinded altogether, reaching out in front of him, shuffling his feet through the snow so he wouldn't trip.

  The light dimmed, still brighter than any sunlight, but bearable. He blinked the dazzles went away. Blays was gawking at the sky. Dante shielded his eyes and tipped back his head.

  He looked on Arawn's Mill.

  17

  The Mill turned with a slow and terrible power.

  It hung above them like a vast slate moon. There was no axle to hold it in place, yet it remained fixed in the sky just as it had since the beginning of time. It was cut from gray stone and its grinding surface was as smooth as glass. There was nothing for it to be grinding against—at least nothing visible—yet ether sifted down from it like the idea of snow, twinkling in the air, short-lived rainbows shimmering into existence, fading away, then reappearing elsewhere in the sky. Its rumble wasn't loud but it resonated within Dante's bones.

  He would have fallen to his knees, but the presence of the thing was so awesome that he couldn't move at all.

  "Okay, I admit it." Blays' voice was hushed. "That's a pretty impressive millstone."

  "I never imagined I'd see it. I can almost touch it."

  Grains of ether drifted around him. He was already feeling better, vigorous and restored. He stood there a little longer, letting it wash over him, then got out the now-empty bottle Cally had given him, uncorking it and holding it up to the air.

  A minute later, and he'd captured three, or perhaps even four, grains of glowing dust.

  "Er," Blays said. "How much of this stuff do we need again?"

  "I was intending to fill the entire bottle."

  "Then I hope you're also intending to build us a cozy little house to live in during the six months it'll take to fill that bottle up."

  Dante visored his eyes, peering at the Mill. "The ether's pouring out of the axle hole. Which is an odd way for a mill to function, incidentally. But by the time it gets down here, it's too dispersed to gather."

  "We need to get at least eighty feet closer. I could jump up and grab it, but I'd hate to embarrass your weakness like that. Can you build us some stairs?"

  "I don't think it'll work. But I can give it a shot." Dante sank the nether into the ground, which he was alarmed to find was embedded with skeletons, presumably of past seekers of the Mill who'd been driven mad or directly attacked by the mountain. He attempted to lift a small pillar, but the ground would hardly budge, and reverted to its original form the moment he let go of it. "Not happening. Sometimes I hate being right all the time."

  "Pretty rude of Neve not to warn us to bring a ladder. Okay, so rock won't work, but can you build us a platform of ice?"

  "That's more of an ethereal thing. But maybe."

  Dante uncluttered his mind. He'd seen Gladdic use the ether to shape the ice before and had a general understanding of how it worked, and after a bit of fiddling around, he was able to get some of the snow to fuse into a solid sheet.

  "There's no way," he said, shaking his head. "It's not reverting half as fast as the earth, but it's still not stable. I wouldn't have nearly enough power to raise something tall enough to reach."

  Blays put his hands on his hips. "I'd suggest we could pack the snow together by hand, but that'd take even longer than waiting for the bottle to fill. Right, have we failed, then?"

  "This is bullshit. We didn't come all this way to get stuck right beneath the Mill!"

  "Don't suppose you know a way to grow our legs eighty feet long?" Blays got a funny look on his face. "Or maybe it isn't us you need to grow." He opened his cloak and dug around an inner pocket, retrieving a small bundle of what turned out to be extremely well-gnawed apple cores. He extended this treasure to Dante. "Again, I really don't know what you'd do without me."

  "Ah, your trash. How useful."

  "Look a little closer and you'll see the apple seeds that are about to save your life."

  "Apple seeds? Why are you carrying apple seeds up the side of the mountain?"

  "So that you could grow us a tree in case we wound up somewhere weird where there wasn't any food."

  "You want me to grow a tree to the Mill." Dante grinned at the massive revolving stone, then rubbed his face. "Even if I can get a seed to take root, the ether will probably just revert it like everything else."

  "Well, you could quit whining and find out."

  Dante gave him a look, then kneeled. The ground was frozen stiff, impossible to dig, so he swept open a small hole with the nether and dropped a seed inside. The earth flowed back into position on its own. Dante bent his head and sent the shadows into the seed. It held inert—and then unfurled.

  But the frozen earth had it trapped fast. Heart racing, Dante softened the ground around it. Thread-like roots reached downward while a sprout nudged toward the surface. He blinked in surprise as some of the ether swirling around them diverted toward the tiny plant, turning the green shoot silver.

  With the addition of the ether, and more entering it by the moment, the tree shot upward, forcing Dante to scramble back. Roots thickened and cracked through the rock-hard soil. The trunk climbed into the sky, extending boughs and leaves, all of it the same monochrome silver. Dante continued to guide its growth until its mighty crown loomed even with the Mill.

  He stepped back and gestured to the tree. "Your turn."

  Blays secured the bottle inside his cloak, rubbed his hands together, and started up the tree, pulling himself upward from branch to branch. Dante kept an eye on the tree's limbs to ensure they weren't about to snap under Blays' weight, but they showed no sign of strain. The Mill ground onwards, its revolution somehow both ponderous and breakneck.

  Blays came to a stop close enough to the axle hole that he might have leaped inside it. He lifted the bottle to the stream of silver-white ether. The stream enveloped his arm to the elbow. He leaned closer to watch the progress of the bottle. Once he was finished, he lifted the bottle to the light, gave it a swirl, and corked it.

  He made his way back down. When he reached the ground, he brushed some silver bark from his hands and clothes and handed Dante the flask.

  Dante frowned at the glowing ether. "I've never tried to bottle the stuff before. I really hope it stays in there."

  "You'd better make sure that it does. After this, I'm never stepping on another mountain again."

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60