The 13th God (The Cycle of Galand Book 8), page 40
On the other side, a small group of people goggled at them. As they passed, the onlookers joined the procession, though they kept even more distance than the two warriors. It was dark under the trees and the air smelled of fish and cut wood. A number of simple shelters were scattered about, most of them incorporating trees and shrubs. The forest floor was littered with fresh wood chips.
The ground began to slope downward. Dante assumed they were going to have to hop in a canoe and travel deeper into the settlement, but a procession of Tanarians was marching up the hill to meet them. As they closed on each other, the spearman held up a hand to the foreigners and jogged over to meet the others.
He approached a woman whose tunic—called a jabat, Dante recalled—was slightly nicer than the others', in that it had only been mended several times instead of a whole lot. Her dark hair was tied behind her head, with small braids woven above her ears.
She stared at the newcomers as the spearman bowed to her three times and then leaned in to speak. After a few seconds, she appeared to cut him off, stalking up the hill toward them as the spearman jogged after her.
She stopped before them. Her eyes were gray and stony. "What are you doing here?"
"We came to stop you from being overrun by a pack of demons," Dante said.
"We would have been fine."
This was among the last things Dante would have expected her to say and he made a coughing noise. "At the risk of being disrespectful, if you go take a look at the pile of corpses we just produced, I think you'll revise your opinion."
"Go away," she said. "You are not welcome here."
"At the risk of patting myself on the back, we just saved all of your lives."
"You are the ones that brought the so-called demons here. We have never seen such things before your arrival."
"These days, wherever there are people, sooner or later the demons show up, too. If this is the first time you've encountered them, consider yourselves very lucky."
"I know how to protect my own people." She pointed south, the direction they'd arrived from. "You will leave our lands and forget you were ever here."
Dante looked to the spearman for help. "Can you tell her what we just did back there? We need your help with something. Without it, we're all doomed."
"Lord Sadan," the spearman said. "The demons would have caught us unaware. They outnumbered us by several times. It was only through terrible weapons and sorcery that the outsiders slew them. I don't know why they are here. But I do know that if they were not here, we no longer would be either."
She turned to look at him. "Do you think that I'm wrong? That they didn't bring the demons themselves?"
"All I know is what I saw, lord."
"So you vouch for them. Then you will pay the penalty if they are here to wrong us."
He nodded, face rigid, not meeting her eyes.
Sadan turned back to Dante. "You are outlanders. You are here because you want something of us. But we have no wish to give a single thing."
"If I were in your shoes, I'd probably be telling me to go to hell too," Dante said. "But this isn't the time for that. The Eiden Rane has returned to Tanar Atain."
"No, you're lying. We saw in the signs that he's dead."
"Until a few hours ago, he was. But you need to check whatever the signs may be, because he's back."
She shot him a lethal look, then turned around and twirled her hand above her head. A spindly old man came running up the hill to join them. Before he'd even done anything, Dante knew exactly what he was: a very minorly talented nethermancer who was highly respected by his own people nonetheless by virtue of the fact that most communities of this size had no sorcerers at all.
He bowed his head to Sadan. "Lord?"
"You will check the signs, Coto," she said.
The man cocked his head and started to ask a question, then nodded. He uttered some words Dante's talisman couldn't translate, likely because they weren't real words, then produced a small bone knife and drew a small cut on his right cheek. Then, though it was completely superfluous, Coto drew a matching one on his left cheek.
Rather than the jabats everyone else wore, he was dressed in an orange robe that ended at his knees. He reached down the front of it and withdrew several snakeskin pouches. Poking among them, he selected one, teased it open, and extracted a pinch of black powder. He set this in his other palm and held his hand away from his body.
In his empty hand, he called forth a glob of nether. He brought it to his mouth and blew on it. The shadows swept toward the hand holding the powder. When the nether touched it, it burst into a dark and eerie flame. Within it glimmered the image of a face: pale, grim, and glowing. And with it, the now-familiar ever-shifting blue eyes.
"He lives," the nethermancer said gravely.
"How did you do that?" Dante said.
Coto stared at him, puzzled. Meanwhile Sadan's face turned bright red. She jabbed a finger at Dante. "You brought him back!"
"Not on purpose," he said. "We had to—"
"What evil have you brought here? He has already killed all but two tribes of the Tanarian people!"
"We're the ones that killed him in the first place. We can do it again—but we'll need your help to do it."
She shook her head hard. "We will not stay and be slaughtered. May you be cursed for what you have done." She spat at his feet, turned about, and walked away.
Dante drew the nether. The other sorcerer jerked his head about. "Lord Sadan!"
She turned back, eyes fixing on the shadows. "What are you doing?"
"I'm killing you," Dante said.
"What?!" Her head jolted back like he'd struck her. "Are you mad? You can't do that!"
"You're about to find out how wrong you are. I need your people's assistance. If you won't give it to me, then I will simply kill you and appoint someone who will."
"My people would all die rather than serve you."
"They might think so now. But it's amazing how persuasive a stack of fresh corpses can be." Dante shaped the nether into a dozen black darts.
She swung her head toward her nethermancer. "Stop him!"
"I…" The old man kept his eyes locked on Dante. "Yes, lord."
"Don't," Dante said. "Or you'll die too."
"Then death is my fate." Blood still gleaming from his cheeks, Coto brought the nether to both hands.
Dante sighed and gathered far more. The old man took one step back, then made himself stop. But he couldn't stop the shaking of his hands.
Dante knew it wouldn't be his proudest moment. But talking hadn't worked, and they didn't have time to try anything else, so brute murder it was. He rolled his new nether into more darts and took hold of them.
"Stop this!" Dante had been carrying the light of life in his pocket, but it struggled free, sinking toward the ground. It flickered, then brightened and lifted itself to chest height. "I was sent here…to protect this world. You are about to ensure its destruction."
"I don't have any other choice," Dante said.
"Not you. You." The ball rocked a few inches in the direction of Sadan. "You must listen to him."
"What are you?" she said.
"I am the light of life, that the Eiden Rane betrayed in the swamp's hour of need. If you don't listen to these people, you won't be serving those that you lead. You'll be serving the bidding of the lich."
Sadan glanced between them, then back to the light. Cracks of uncertainty appeared in her anger. "It is said that if one sees the light in the wilds, that one must follow it or be damned. But I won't be a slave to it."
"That isn't what I asked of you."
She drew a long breath through her nose. "What do you want from us?"
"A great power is on the brink of erasing the entire world," Dante said. "Most places have already suffered terribly. But we know how to expel the entity that's attacking us. We believe we're the only ones that can. To do so, we needed to take on the lich's power—but when we tried, he revived himself and escaped."
"What does any of this have to do with us?"
"We don't think we can catch up with him. He moves too quickly, and I don't think he ever gets tired. But he was heavily weakened by death. He's looking to rebuild his strength. He does that by Blighting people and taking their essence into himself. Thing is, there isn't exactly a lot of people left here. You're the only ones we know about."
"You want to use my people as bait."
"Yes."
"How will you do that?"
"I haven't worked that part out yet."
A new kind of doubt began to enter her face. "But you're sure that if you can bring the lich here, you can kill him."
"We did once already, when he was much stronger."
"It is said that if the lich ever lays his eyes on you, you may have just enough luck to escape him once. But if he sees you a second time, death is guaranteed."
"What about when he sees you for the twentieth time?" Blays said. "Because I think that's about what we're up to now."
"I will trust our ways over the words of strangers. If you wave us in front of the lich, and something goes wrong, we all die. I won't be part of any such plan."
"If you don't participate in it, you'll all die for sure."
She shook her head. "There's a reason we've survived for so long while so many others became one with the swamp. We'll do as we always have, and we'll live through it like we always have."
"And how did you survive before?"
"Don't think you'd believe me even if I was to tell you."
"Try me."
Sadan considered him. "The old ones said that in the early years after they came to the swamp, something evil bred in the hills. It was trapped, though. Trapped under the earth. Until the ones that worked the mines got too greedy, and broke them free.
"What broke loose was vampires. What the vampires wanted was human blood. Once they'd cleaned out the mines, and the forts around the mines, they came down to the swamps for more. We tried to fight them, but we soon learned how foolish that was. The clan-fathers met to decide what to do. Wasn't much to talk about. If something's come to kill you, and you can't kill it, there's only two choices to it: run, or hide.
"Decision was made to run. To the southeast, though they didn't have much idea what was there. Only one of them had a different idea. If the vampires had come out of the mines because there wasn't anybody to feed on there, they weren't about to go back to the mines, were they? So instead of dragging everyone to a foreign land that the vampires would just invade the second they finished with the swamps, they led the clan up to the mines instead."
"Now that was some excellent thinking," Blays said. "I hope they gave that man a second wife."
"It is what earned him his wife," Sadan said earnestly. "They came to the mines and found them empty, with all the supplies they could want left behind by those who'd been killed. That's where they waited until the Eiden Rane arose and cleared out the vampires. And that's where they waited until the sorcerers found a way to lock away the Eiden Rane. 'When the swamp ripples, head for the burrows,' they'd say. Only when it had calmed down would they crawl out from the mines and head back to their homes. That's what they did every time the lich broke loose. The last time was no different. This one won't be, either."
"You have a much more accurate understanding of the history of Tanar Atain than most here do," Gladdic said.
"We've always kept to ourselves. That helped. When you preserve your lives, and your independence, it's a lot easier to preserve your history along with it."
"So you're set on doing this again," Dante said. "Cowering in your holes."
She shifted her head toward him. "Call it what you like, foreigner. I'd call it keeping my people safe when they've already been through hell. If you think your insults are more likely to get me to lend you a hand, you're some kind of stupid."
"I can't tell you how many times I've told him the same thing," Blays said. "He's just not a born diplomat, I'm afraid. More of the grunting brutish type."
"Wouldn't matter how sweet his words were. When the lich shows up, you run and you hide, or you die. That's all there is to it."
Dante bit his tongue. He doubted killing her and replacing her with someone who'd do his bidding was going to work. Even if he could find a willing and able puppet, the others would just run away to the hills the first chance they got. What was he going to do? Kill them all? That would somewhat defeat the purpose of using them to draw in the lich.
"I understand the wisdom of your traditions, Lord Sadan," Gladdic said. "It is right to follow the old ways, for those same ways are why we live and thrive in the present."
Sadan squinted at him. "Why do I get the feeling I'm about to hear a 'but'?"
"However, when new challenges and dangers arise, sometimes new paths must be cleared to lead the people to somewhere they can thrive once more. I would like for you to see something. Please, follow me."
"Don't know what you think you can show me to get me to throw my people into the mouth of the leviathan."
Gladdic said nothing more, merely held out his hand to the south. Sadan rolled her eyes but started walking in that way, accompanied by her hedge sorcerer and the various warriors that had come with Dante and the others. They made their way across the island until Gladdic stopped them at a vantage on the slope with a full view of the southern banks.
That view was not a pleasant one: many hundreds of dead demonoids. Though in some ways their smooth, identical bodies looked more like mangled clockwork than slaughtered corpses, that only made the sight of them more alien and malevolent. Especially when they were soaking in their own viscera and ichor.
"That is what the entity who besieges the world sent against you," Gladdic said. "And that is but a minute fraction of the horde that looks to scour every kingdom, capital, and village of humankind. There is no mine deep enough to hide from this. Even if there were, it would be futile. In less than nine days from now, the fabric of our reality will be ripped into pieces. Everything everywhere will cease to exist. If you take your people up into the hills, it will do nothing to honor your ancestors. Instead, it ensures the end of their line."
Sadan gazed down on the aftermath of the massacre, the bodies like broken shells jutting from the shallows. Her jaw worked. "You killed all of them?"
"We have fought off far more, and more than once. But he who commands them is even more terrifying a foe than the Eiden Rane."
"Who you claim you killed."
"I'd doubt us too," Blays said. "But it makes a lot more sense once you understand that I've got this." He snagged the rod from his belt and twitched his wrist. The spear shot forth to the fullness of its celestial glory.
Sadan jerked back her head in surprise, but managed not to be staggered. "That looks like a weapon of the heavens."
"Good eye. That's exactly where we stole it from."
She scowled at them, trying to read their faces, then shook her head. "Swear to me you aren't telling me any lies."
"So sworn," Gladdic said.
"Swear that if you are lying, may you be taken by the lich, and tortured by him for nine thousand years."
"So sworn."
She spat again, though this time it seemed to be at herself rather than Dante. "We'll help you lure in the lich, if we can. But the second we're done, I'm taking my people to the mines faster than a ten-legged hop-lizard."
"Gather them up, then," Dante said. "We'll leave immediately."
23
They were on their way in less time than he'd feared it would take to muster a whole village: these people were used to abandoning a place, and quickly, when their lord gave the call. He'd also feared that a full flotilla, including children and the elderly, would travel at the pace of a zero-legged hop-lizard.
But these people were Tanarians, and they were more than used to the waterways of the swamp. They were born to them. As a whole, they weren't able to travel quite as fast as Dante and Blays could. But they weren't noticeably slower, either. With the lich zigzagging around again, there were times when they managed to close the gap a little.
"Okay," Blays said after they'd been underway long enough to get into their rhythm. "Does this mean we have a plan?"
"Not in the slightest," Dante said. "But I thought it was better to figure it out on the way than to wait until we had it to get moving."
"I suppose if we're really lucky, we'll catch up to him without needing any plan at all. But if it comes down to it, we could just light the swamp on fire."
"It's about to be too dark for him to see the smoke. Anyway, unless he's up on a bare hill, of which there are none here, he won't be able to see it through the canopy."
"And some clever trick involving the nether is probably out of the question, too?"
"If it's sorcery, he'll recognize it. No matter how cunningly I disguise it as something else. Not only will it not work, it'll give away that we're on his tail."
Blays pushed his paddle through the water contemplatively. "Then what all does that leave us?"
"A pair of empty heads. Do you have anything, Gladdic?"
The old man gazed ahead. Most of the time, "pretty" was among the last words Dante would use to describe the swamp, but twilight had fallen, and the flotilla was lighting the way with little lanterns whose light danced on the oil-tinged waters, turning them iridescent.
"You are correct that we cannot use sorcery," Gladdic said. "A fire is not a hopeless idea, should we have nothing better; so long as there is moonlight, smoke may still be seen at night. Noise, perhaps. Should we get close enough, some simple shouting would be enough."
"We can't depend on getting that close," Dante said. "What we really need is something that can lure him from afar."
"Or something that can get to him from afar," Blays said, voice gaining speed as the idea came to him. "When you want to catch a big fish, how do you do it?"
"With a big, strong net?"
"I mean if you're using a fishing line."
