The 13th God (The Cycle of Galand Book 8), page 4
The stretches of sand absolutely felt like something that something huge and horrible could pop out of at any moment, so they stuck to the forests as much as they could despite how annoying the monkeys were. Wan yellow light speared past the trees. Night would soon fall, but there was no question of stopping. They had only been awake for a few hours (for the time of day was different here than in Yent), but even if they were about to drop dead from exhaustion, Dante still would have pressed on. Judging by the tingling in his head, they were getting close to halfway to Kelen. Which, at the current pace, meant they'd have to survive something like ten more attacks on their lives if they were going to complete their mission.
"The apes." Gladdic came to a stop and tilted his eyes upward. "Something agitates them."
"What are you talking about?" Dante said. "They've been trying to kill each other ever since we got here."
"He's right," Blays said. "Listen to how—"
The primates had been doing a lot of shrieking and jumping up and down in a way that it wasn't clear to Dante was more frenzied than before. Now, they all began to run along the branches, and all in the same direction, having seemingly forgotten they were fighting each other just a minute before. Some were so terrified they lost their grips and fell, tearing across the forest floor, their little hands ripping compulsively at the grass and dark flowers and flinging them about their own faces.
Without a word, the three humans bolted in the same direction. The monkeys outran them, churning up a trail of torn leaves and weeds behind them, racing toward the swath of sand that surrounded the woods.
The ground shook underfoot. Dante swore, biting himself to draw blood. Shadows poured to him as the branches of the tall trees began to shiver.
"Not again!" Certain what was coming, he shaped the shadows into wedges. The trees reached for him and he blasted the branches into shreds.
Yet this only cleared the way forward for a few more steps. Then the entire canopy descended on them, a thicket as dense and impassible as the swamps of Tanar Atain. Branches straightened like spears—and then stabbed at them like spears.
Dante launched a hailstorm of nether at the incoming formation. Ether glared from Gladdic, casting dizzying shadows as it cracked into the trees. Boughs shattered and thumped to the ground, pelting them with flinders. Dante went to the shadows for a third time. The way forward was now clogged with broken leaf-filled branches and they hadn't gotten clear of them when the next wave of tree-spears jabbed toward them. Dante and Gladdic poured an immense volley into them, snapping scores of them. A handful of smaller branches snaked past their defenses. Blays had his swords out and slashed through every one he could reach, but two spindly spikes pierced Gladdic, who grunted in pain.
Dante severed the two branches as they made to withdraw and stab Gladdic again. Gladdic pressed ether to his side, stanching the blood.
"Let's see how they like this." Blays moved to the front and removed the ball-capped rod from his belt.
He thrust his arm to the side. The Spear of Stars shot to its full length, painting the forest with blinding light the color of the moon and the stars. He swung it before him. With a second flash, all of the debris in their way went flying off into the trees. He ran forward, and Gladdic and Dante followed in his steps.
The boughs bent inward again, streaking toward them like a barrage of arrows sent from the heavens. Blays swept the spear back and forth. It struck them down with searing crackles, sending branches flying and leaves spinning.
"Keep at it!" Blays yelled at the sky. "I have the feeling you'll run out of forest before I run out of spear!"
He ran onward. Dante flicked his vision over to one of his scouts; they were less than a hundred yards from the field of sand encircling the woods. There, the monkeys were coming to a stop and turning around to stare back at the trees, seemingly out of harm's way.
Again the branches jabbed at them. But the spear dashed them apart as easily as waves against sand. The earth rumbled again as two huge boulders burst from the soil and swung together to either side of them, attempting to crush them like paste in a pestle. Blays broke to his right, charging straight towards one of the huge rocks, and drove the spear forward. It clacked into the stone with such force Dante winced. The boulder shivered and tumbled apart. Blays batted away a melon-sized hunk of falling rock, darting through the debris and realigning his course toward the field of sand.
"We've know you're alive!" Blays called out. He spun the spear about so its tip was aimed at the ground. "So you might want to give it a rest before I find out if you can feel pain! In fact—"
He crumpled, spinning about. A tree root had shot up from the forest floor and gored him in his hip. Others were rising up like striking snakes. Dante cut through them, heart pounding. Gladdic splayed his hand and salved Blays' wound with ether. But Blays had dropped the spear, which then shrunk to its inert form, fallen somewhere among the carpet of leaves and twigs and mulch.
More roots stabbed at Dante from below and he danced back, smashing them apart with the shadows. Sharp branches dived down at him, too. And as he readied himself to destroy them, the earth heaved and fell beneath them.
He staggered away, casting nether into the air at the incoming branches, hearing them pop and snap as he hacked at the roots. Another boulder shoved free of the ground. It was as round as a trimmed log and twenty feet in diameter, like a toppled pillar from the palace of a giant. It rolled toward them, obliterating everything under its crushing weight, blocking the path out to the sands.
"The spear!" Dante yelled at Blays. "You have to find the spear!"
Blays raked his fingers across the ground. Gladdic fended off another bout of branches. The boulder thundered closer, gathering speed. They couldn't rely on Blays finding the spear in the next few seconds. Dante spread his arms wide, calling as much nether to him as he could hold, and dashed toward the rolling pillar. He shaped the shadows into a giant chisel and threw them at the cyclopean stone with all his might.
The impact launched him from his feet. He landed face-down and skidded to a halt in the damp dead leaves. He opened his eyes. The world was spinning, but the black daisy in front of his face was as immovable as an obelisk. He laughed out loud, uncertain if the blow he'd just suffered had knocked him stupid, or granted him the clarity of serenity.
He snatched up the flower and crammed it in his mouth and chewed it up like a rabid cow. Still chomping away at it, he cast about in a panic—and spotted a cluster of them not six feet away. He yanked up a handful. Gladdic and Blays had retreated from the blast, but they ran toward him, ether glowing in Gladdic's hand. Dante sprinted to join them.
"Here!" He held them out like a bouquet. "Eat these!"
The two others goggled at him, but just as he began to despair that they would think he'd gone mad, they popped the heads of the daisy-like flowers into their mouths and chewed vigorously, running away from the damaged but unbroken pillar at the same time. The flower tasted so bitter Dante's throat began to close and he scrabbled for the nether, delving within himself to see if he'd just fatally poisoned himself.
Overhead, the tattered branches grew still. The rumblings of the toppled column deepened.
"Is the flower giving me visions?" Blays yelled. "Or is that thing slowing down?"
Dante had been readying another attack on it, hoping that would be enough to break it apart—because one more attack was all he'd have time for. When he glanced back, the great stone was no longer gaining ground. As he watched, it slowed even further, bumping around more and more the more it bled speed. At last it had slowed enough that when it conked against a stout enough tree, it rocked back and came to a stop.
The ground shook. Dante gritted his teeth, waiting for the column to be replaced with a second one. Instead, it began to lower itself into the ground, sinking deeper and deeper until it vanished altogether.
The forest fell quiet for the first time since they'd stepped inside it.
"What," Blays said, "just happened?"
Dante wiped dirt from his forehead. "It's the flowers."
"I know, I'm trying not to vomit as we speak. But how did you know?"
"I saw a badger eat one earlier. I thought it accidentally scooped it up alongside the worms it was eating, but the flower was probably the real prize."
"That's it? You saw a badger eat one?"
"The monkeys were grabbing them up, too. But only after they started running away. Like they were afraid it'd stopped working. But beyond that, everything about this place has changed twice now: the landscape, the types of trees, the creatures. The only thing that's been there from start to finish is this." He held up a black daisy by its stem. "They must eat it, or the bugs sip from it, or they rub it on their fur or whatever. Then the land smells it, or senses it on them somehow, and knows not to kill them."
Gladdic frowned. "And the gods who fear entering this place have never been clever enough to discover this themselves?"
"Maybe their divine aura is too strong to hide from the land or something. I don't know. All I know is it isn't trying to grind us into bonemeal anymore."
"Which is why I must believe your explanation, no matter how unbelievable it sounds."
"Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the place just happened to fall asleep. But even if that's true, I suggest we get a move on before it wakes back up."
No one seemed to believe it could be a coincidence, though, for they all gathered a pocketful of flowers before continuing.
Nothing troubled them as they crossed the sands outside the forest, nor in the next section of woods beyond that. Night fell, which put an end to the squabbling of the monkeys. Dante kept his scouts buzzing about, and himself attuned to the nether, but the land felt much calmer than before, when he had been able to sense its loathing of them. Not that that made him the slightest bit tempted to stop for the night. If anything, as the tingling in his head became more heightened, he picked up his pace all the more.
When the sensation got to be so much his eyes were watering and his teeth were itching, one of his scouts spotted something in the moonlight. He tweaked their course. As they came to the crest of a hill covered in black grass, they looked down on the first man-made structure they'd seen since stepping through the portal.
"He's got to be right down there." Dante pressed his palm to his forehead. "My head's about to explode." He started forward.
"Hang on," Blays said. "You probably ought to shine some ether around us. I doubt he's expecting any visitors, given he came out here because it murders anyone who tries to visit."
Gladdic waved a hand, surrounding them with a circle of moderate light. It was too dark to make out the fine details of the parcel, but there looked to be a house set against the foot of a hill, a pair of sheds or perhaps barns, and some fencing, which Kelen must have put in either because he had livestock, or because he was insane. There were no lanterns or candles lit anywhere.
Dante approached at a deliberate pace. When he was fifty feet from the front door he stopped and cupped his hand to his mouth. "Hello! Hello in there, Kelen!" He waited several seconds. "Mr. Kelen? We're friends of Maralda's, and we've come to you on a matter of tremendous importance."
Again he waited, and was rewarded with nothing. He tried calling the man's name louder and louder to no avail.
Gladdic smoothed the front of his robe. "Perhaps he is asleep."
"It's not even eight o'clock."
"Gladdic probably hasn't stayed up past eight since he was 125," Blays said. "Should we go in?"
"We almost died to get here and we will die if we leave without him, of course we're going in."
Dante approached the front door and knocked repeatedly. The house looked to be dug out of the hill itself, with its outer walls built of mortared fieldstone. It was a large structure and if Kelen was alone it must have taken him years to build. Dante tried the door, which was only as tall as his forehead and looked to be hung a few degrees from true. Unlocked.
As he stepped inside, he felt inconsolably certain they were about to find a dead body in the bed. He sniffed at the air—quietly, so the others wouldn't notice—but the home only smelled faintly of the indescribable scent of the specific person or family that lived within it. The foyer bore a couple of chairs and some shelves with crude shoes and tools. Beyond lay a workshop, a kitchen and dining area, a bedroom, a sitting room, another workshop, and several storage rooms, which had indeed been dug out of the hillside.
All of the furniture and items within looked to have been fashioned by the same hand, and even the most primitive tools like the stone scrapers were slightly off-kilter in a way Dante found it hard to put his finger on. But there was one thing of much greater importance.
"He isn't here," Blays said. "We're sure this is the right place?"
Dante tapped into the honeydrop. "Gahh! It has to be. We're practically standing on top of him."
"What if we are? Literally?"
"A secret door? Down to a basement or something? We did give him plenty of time to hide away."
"Has to be. There's no way he fled here to escape his persecutors, spent gods know how long building this place, and didn't dig out some place to hide in if his enemies ever found him again."
"In which case it is likely an escape route," Gladdic said. "And that he is escaping from us as we speak."
"He can't escape us," Dante said. "But he can waste time that we can't afford to lose. Let's tear this place apart if we have to."
He felt down into the earth to see if he could feel any tunnels or hidden chambers, but it was like trying to feel through a brick wall. Frustration spiking, he pulled the nether to him, preparing to start ripping up floorboards.
Gladdic waved his hand in dismissal. "There is no need for that."
"But there is a want for it. I suppose you've got a better plan?"
The old man glanced at him in contempt, then sifted ether over the floor. Dozens of footprints glimmered forth in response. They often crossed back and forth over each other, making it all but impossible to follow any given trail.
But one set was fainter than the others. And rather than the well-defined boot heels and toes, these were just ovalish lumps. As if wrapped in simple cloth. Gladdic walked briskly along them—they were fading further even by the moment—to one of the storage rooms, where they came to a sudden halt in front of some shelves. Kelen's tools and home might have been crude compared to what they had in Narashtovik and Mallon (or used to have before the lich and the entity, at least), but the hatch was cleverly concealed, and if not for the footprints pointing to the exact spot it must be, they might never have found the little catch that sprung it open as if from nowhere.
Dante led the way down the wooden rungs embedded in the side of the opening, the walls of which were earthen, or whatever the equivalent of earth was here. A short descent spat them into a tunnel that Blays had to stoop to fit inside. Gladdic cast a bit more ether around, confirming the footprints continued forward—and more brightly than those upstairs.
The tunnel bent both to the left and right as they jogged along it, and it was soon impossible to tell which way they were going. It was longer than Dante would have guessed. Long enough that, when they finally reached its end, and emerged back into the night air through another trap door, this one concealed under a layer of dirt and a mat of intricately woven plants and leaves, they found that they could no longer see the homestead.
Gladdic dusted the grounds with the ether. This time, the glowing grains faded to nothing, without revealing any footsteps. Gladdic frowned and took up more light, meaning to broaden his search, but Dante was already reaching for the honeydrop.
"Don't bother." He lifted a hand before Gladdic could expend the ether. "He's not out here. The sense is weaker here than it was at the house."
"One might think that is because he is fleeing from us as we speak," Gladdic said.
"Go back in the tunnel. See if any of his prints are there."
They climbed back down. There didn't look to be any of Kelen's tracks around the base of the ladder, though given how narrow the tunnel was it was quite possible they were just hidden under the three sets of prints they'd made themselves. Dante drew his antler-handled knife and opened a small cut in the back of his arm.
The passage smelled of clay and something else he couldn't place. Halfway down it, he stopped, checked the honeydrop, and then tapped his temple—which turned out to be a mistake, as even light contact was enough to dizzy himself when his head was already tingling so madly.
"I'm right," he said. "It's getting stronger."
"Then he only entered the tunnel as a ruse, and then backtracked?" Gladdic scoffed. "How would he guess we would be able to track him in such a way?"
"Maybe he just had second thoughts. Or maybe he didn't backtrack. As paranoid as he is, I bet that after digging his hidden tunnel, he dug a second hidden tunnel inside this one. All we have to do is pick up his tracks again and follow them to—"
Blue light flared ahead of them, and streaked toward them like an arrow.
3
If Dante hadn't already had the shadows in his hand, he was quite certain, afterward, that he would have died.
Whatever was flying toward them, there didn't look to be too much of it. As he'd done many thousands of times before, he mounted his defense, shaping a black comet and sending it to intercept the blue missile. They struck each other twenty feet in front of him. The result should have been as familiar and routine as the thousands of other times he'd seen such an event: the two forces should have negated each other, bursting apart like snowballs thrown against a barn wall.
When they met, the nether and the blue light knocked a few sparks from each other, like steel scraping flint. But for the most part, they passed right through each other.
