The 13th God (The Cycle of Galand Book 8), page 44
"Which again points to a portal, or something else that can save his skin while all the rest of us succumb to what's coming." Dante picked up a rock and threw it as far as he could, watching it soar along its arc before vanishing into the trees far down the slope. "Back to the canoe, then. Whatever he's after, we have to get to him before he gets to it."
~
The attack came in the middle of what Dante had determined was the Crossing.
There was no firm, fast line where the swamp ended and the hills began; the islands grew more frequent while the channels shrank in both width and depth, to where they grounded the canoe several times. But even without advance notice from his scouts, Dante would have known they were nearing the border of Tanar Atain. The only question was when they should drag the canoe ashore and continue on foot.
It was twilight and they seemed to come out of nowhere. They were as tall as a king's horse, but aside from that, they bore no resemblance to any beast of Rale. Instead they looked to be a jumble of massive, broken swords, joined by some foul art into a great many crooked, stabbing limbs, which they used to propel themselves forward just as readily as they would to disembowel a man. Their skin, if that's what it was, was both dull yet shiny in the way that charcoal was. Dante saw nothing that could be called a face or even a head.
Somehow, though, they made a whining, hissing sound as they skittered their way toward the canoe.
"Out of the boat!" Dante yelled, flinging himself into the knee-deep water.
The other two were already in the process of doing the same. The three of them dash-slogged their way to a spot of dry land. Dante and Gladdic gathered their sorcery while Blays extended the Spear of Stars. Undeterred, the creatures of the Becoming slashed into the water, limbs scything them onward.
Dante lashed into them, sending roostertails of water high in the air while limbs shattered with a steely spang. The water was frothing so hard he could barely make out the beings within it. But that meant it would be hard to miss them even if he was essentially firing blind, and he laid into them with wide chops of nether, retreating a few steps further up the bank.
The first of them sprung from the water like grasshoppers. Landing on the soft earth, their pointed feet sank deeply, but they yanked them free and scurried forth. Gladdic and Dante hammered at them, leaving a trail of broken shards in their wake, but the things appeared incapable of fear or pain.
"If you can feel regret," Blays told them, "you're about to."
He swung the spear like a staff. It clanged into the entire front line. Those he struck flew backwards, pieces of them wheeling away from their bodies. Yet they didn't seem to fly as far as they should, and for as heavily as they landed, they picked themselves back up, if shakily, and unfolded fresh limbs from their core to replace the ones they'd lost.
The same general thing had been happening with the ones Dante had been attacking, he realized. It was like they could heal—or more accurately, repair—themselves in just a few moments' time. Changing tactics, instead of haphazardly chopping into them, he sent curved blades of shadows directly through the three closest to him. They broke in half and fell to the ground with a metallic groan. Yet they too swung out more sword-like legs from somewhere within them and struggled back to their feet.
Dante fell back further. "Are we even hurting them?"
"The ground looks like a blacksmith's rejects." Blays slashed the spear back and forth through the crowd, shredding loose a small armory's worth of pieces, yet still had to drop back alongside Dante. "It doesn't seem to bother them, does it? We'll see if they like this any better."
Having something of an idea what Blays was about to do, Dante scrambled backward. Blays cocked back the spear, then swung it overhead, slamming it to the ground with all his might. A blinding flash and a deafening boom ensured Dante couldn't tell much about what happened over the next few seconds, but it seemed to involve a couple dozen of the things spinning through the air in a way that would have been horrifically gruesome if they'd been made of flesh and blood.
Again, though, they fell back to earth in much shorter arcs than looked natural, as if they were far denser than they appeared. Two of them, at last, stayed down, too shattered to do more than twitch weakly. The rest gathered themselves and hurried behind the throng that had advanced past them.
"What the hell?" Blays shook the spear. "This thing killed the White Lich. These things can't possibly be tougher than he was!"
All three of them hacked into the creatures, who seemed entirely mindless, even more so than insects, who at least showed a desire to survive and the capacity to feel pain. When the enemy pushed too close, Blays reared back and slammed down the spear again. Yet the weapon hadn't had enough time to regather its power, and the strike only blasted back the very closest of the vermin.
Those just behind the ones that had been knocked aside skittered across the pounded ground and launched themselves at the humans. Dante knocked back three of the creatures as they jabbed at Blays. Something flew at him from his left and he spun to face it, rattling off a slew of bolts, but the creature's momentum kept it moving forward even as he sheared off limb after limb. It stabbed down at Dante with two of its crooked limbs. One scraped painfully down his chest and torso while the second jabbed into his hip.
He shouted in pain. Ether zipped into the thing and kicked it away from Dante hard enough to yank its blade out from him, which hurt worse than when it had gone in.
"Enough of this." Dante drew a mass of nether to him. "Fighting fair is for losers."
He delved into the earth and ripped it downward. Scrambling away from the crumbling ledge, he pulled the ground dozens of feet lower. The beings fell from view, landing among each other with thuds and clanks. Before they could try to stab their way back up the walls, he swept the earth back over the hole, burying them all far below the surface.
"I'd almost feel bad for them if not for the fact they're horrible monsters." Blays stared at the damp, bare dirt. "Maybe Nolost heard us calling the little ones bladelings and decided to show us what the big ones look like."
"Something's sure stirred them up," Dante said. "But I think it's just a blind response. If the entity knew that we were here, I think he'd come for us himself."
He healed his wounds. Somehow they hadn't bled into his clothes, making him fear the things' claws might have injected him with some strange venom, but his blood looked clean of such things.
"Well," he said. "I suppose this is as good a place as any to ditch the canoe."
"Finally." Blays turned to regard the steep hills. "I've been wondering how much longer it would be before I could stop abusing my poor arms and start abusing my poor legs instead."
They backtracked to the canoe to drag it ashore and marked the spot by cutting down a few branches and arranging the makeshift posts in a pattern they may or may not have been able to find again. Then they started uphill.
The last of the light died in the west. It already smelled better than the swamps. The first half hour was brutally steep and rocky but after that it eased off enough that they could speak without panting at each other. The temperature dropped noticeably, though it remained comfortably above freezing.
The forest came and went. On three separate occasions, Dante thought he saw some small dark animal scampering through the fallen leaves and bare branches, but when he turned his head for a better look, they'd already vanished.
He doubted they'd be sleeping much until this was over. Yet they couldn't forgo it altogether. After midnight, they stopped to catch a few hours. Dante woke still tired. He had dreamed that a dark figure had leaned over him in his sleep and he'd woken up but been unable to move as it whispered something his talisman wouldn't translate and a gray mist extended from it to him. It had felt so real that he checked around where he'd slept for footprints, but didn't see anything besides his own.
"How's our lich?" Blays said.
"Not yet out of range," Dante said. "And once we get moving, he won't gain on us as fast as he did on the water."
"Seven days?"
"And just three more for us to follow him before we've gone too far to get back. Now if you'll excuse me."
Dante left the bare-bones camp to find a good shrub to water. The very first hints of light had begun to creep around the mountains and everything was lined with the faintest hints of gray. As he put a respectable distance between himself and the others, the edge of his left hand itched. He scratched it, and immediately stumbled, though he hadn't tripped over anything.
He knew something was wrong before he knew what it was. He moved his fingers back to the spot he'd just scratched. Something was stuck to his hand. Fearing it was a leech or the like, he brushed hard at it, but a spike of pain ran up his arm.
Stomach squeezing on itself, he pulled forth a sliver of ether. And almost fainted. To the side of his pinky, a sixth finger was growing from his hand, small and bent.
His head rushed and he had to crouch down and steady himself against a tree until he was no longer in danger of fainting. He had no idea what he was supposed to do.
But there was only one thing to do.
Hands shaking, he reached for the nether. He shaped it into a blade, fine enough to use for surgery on a man with a bladderstone, braced himself, and cut through the finger at the root. He had been ready for pain but a shock shot up his arm to the base of his skull and he clenched his teeth so hard they squeaked. Clasping his right hand to the cut, he sealed it with nether, but it was still another minute before the pain dulled enough for him to untense his stiff muscles.
He shined the ether on the ground. The severed finger lay on top of a dry leaf. Its cut end oozed blood. As he stared at it, still not quite accepting what it was, it twitched.
His instinct was to stomp it into the ground and bury it. Instead he kneeled over it, putting his back to the camp to cut down on the light, and burned it with a gout of flaming nether. Only then did he grind it into the dirt until there was nothing left to be seen.
Another rush came over him and he waited for it to pass. He took a few deep breaths, relocated to a shrub a little further away, and undid his belt. It took nearly a minute before he could bring himself to urinate. Recovered, somewhat, he returned to camp.
Blays glanced up from the twist of dried meat he'd been eating. "Everything all right?"
"It's fine."
"What was that flash of light?"
"Thought I saw something," Dante said. "But it was just a shadow."
They gathered themselves and continued upwards. Should he tell them what had happened? It was one of Nolost's plagues, it had to be, which meant that if it had happened to him, it could happen to them as well.
Yet something told him that he shouldn't. If it did happen again, they could just take care of it then. It would only worry them in the meantime. They needed to keep their minds on the task at hand.
Once it got light enough for his flies to be of use, Dante found what must have once been a road, centuries ago, but had since degraded to a shallow depression across the land with a half-grown-over dirt path running down the middle of it. It was hardly the king's road, but it was much better than wheezing their way up the rocky incline.
"Bit of good news," Dante said. "I think I can see the mines ahead of the lich. He's still miles away, but he should reach them by day's end."
Blays glanced up at a crow. "It's good news he's going to beat us to his secret hidden treasure? That could be an escape portal he's got stashed away?"
"Maybe he'll come back this way once he's got what he's looking for. Either way, unless he really does have a portal, it means we've got a chance to run him down before time runs out."
Clouds swirled overhead, both in the form of a gray sheet tacked across the sky, and as individual lumps that skimmed low over the hills like cogs on the sea. It looked like Nolost's work, but whatever threat it bore didn't yet manifest.
Later that morning, as they worked their way through a landslide that had buried the path in rubble, Blays came to a sudden stop. "Did you just hear that?"
Dante cocked his head. "The wind? Or the other wind?"
"It wasn't wind. It sounded like a woman screaming."
"There are not supposed to be any people here," Gladdic said.
"So they say. But I know what I heard."
"I'll send a scout to look," Dante said. "But even if there's someone in need of help, we don't have time."
Blays frowned, then gave his head a little shake and followed after Dante. They'd just gotten free of the loose rock covering the road when a scream carried up to them from somewhere to their left.
"I know you heard that one," Blays said. "But it was different from the first. There's—" He was cut off by another one, from a third voice.
Dante took a few more steps, but Blays stayed put. Another scream, fainter, lifted to the northwest.
"I think it's coming from that ravine over there," Blays said. "Can your scouts see anything?"
"No," Dante said, though he didn't actually have any in that particular area just yet. A cold wind flushed down the slope. "Let's keep moving. We're almost keeping up with him."
"But something bad's happening over there."
"Something bad is happening everywhere. Even if we knew for sure we had time to go take a look, it could be a trap."
"A trap? Set by who?"
Dante gestured around him. "The murderous entity we're battling?"
"He doesn't even know we're here."
"But some part of his senses knows that people are here, whoever they might be, and he's started manifesting things to kill them. Blays, you know damn well we don't have time for this. I'm done arguing."
Dante turned and plodded up the trail, which was barely visible any longer. Gladdic joined him.
"I'm just trying not to become a monster myself," Blays said. "We'll be hearing those in our dreams tonight."
As if to prove him right, a small chorus of screams opened up in the distance. It was enough to lift the hair on Dante's neck and he finally diverted a fly to go see what was going on. Not that he intended to do anything about it. He just wanted to know if there were any dangers they needed to look out for.
Without warning, a sheet of water dumped over their heads, causing Blays to shout, Dante to swear, and Gladdic to grunt. They all pulled up their hoods, but the rain was already over. Just as Dante lowered his hood, he was drenched with another blast of water. He lifted his hood and left it up.
The rain-sheets were coming down for miles around and he rapidly lost half his scouts. The one he'd sent toward the screams had managed to survive the first few flash downpours, however, and once he understood what was happening he sent it to fly under whatever cover the mostly-leafless trees could provide. Somehow it made it all the way to the ravine Blays had pointed to.
Its bottom was raging with muddy water, a flash flood from the rain-bursts. Almost absently, Dante noticed a couple of bodies getting flushed downhill along with a torrent of leaves and sticks.
His interest of them was absent because of the scene on the banks of the brand-new stream. There, diseased-looking creatures with tumor-riddled bodies and teeth like broken glass carved up women's bodies with claws as long as table knives and chewed their limbs down to the bone.
He thought about telling Blays this, and that they were too late to do anything about it, but Blays seemed to have forgotten about it already. No sense riling him up again when he had been acting so unreasonable.
It had felt wonderful to get out of the swamps but now everything was muddy and uphill and cold. For that the lich truly deserved what they were about to do to him. Dante was envisioning scenes of vengeance in his mind when Gladdic grabbed him by the shoulder and threw him into a thorny shrub.
"Do not move!" Gladdic whispered. "And do not reach for a single drop of sorcery."
The old man was staring at something behind them. Though he had once been quick to anger, these days he was slow to any emotion at all. Now, though, his face was rigid with fear.
Slowly, Dante lowered his head to find a clear spot through the brush. He saw it at once. It was hard not to when a gigantic eye was staring back at you.
"Tell me that's just a cloud," Blays said.
"I wish that I could so deceive myself," Gladdic said. "But if that is what I believe it is, such self-deception would lead to our deaths."
It wasn't an eye in the sense of a literal disembodied eyeball peering down from the clouds. It could even, as Blays had suggested, be made from clouds—its edges and lines shifted steadily, and none of it was as clearly defined as, say, the thorns on the shrub in front of them. But it had a definite pupil, iris, and white—and while the latter was actually more of a light gray, it was laced, vein-like, with darker threads, while the iris was marbled with medium-grays, and the pupil was so black it was almost shiny.
There was also the fact that it was slowly looking around.
"You act like you know what that thing is," Dante said.
"There is only one thing that it can be. The Eye of Rathar."
"Can't say I've heard of it."
"For it is not a thing that was ever taken seriously. It was the late-life obsession of Thereter. Or, as you may know him, the Goat-Man of Cygris."
"Oh, I have heard of him. But wasn't he considered…"
"Insane. Yes. Everyone believed him to be so. Possibly even a heretic. It was the latter issue that brought him to my attention, for I was once assigned, in my youth, to determine whether he and all his works should be denounced as profanations against Taim. At the time I suspected this was meant to punish me, for even those of Thereter's own time had considered him eccentric at best, and in our time, he was only ever referenced as a jest, if not an insult.
"Late in his life, he claimed to be visited by visions from the angels of Taim. He spoke of many things, but the one that matters to us is what he called Erasure. In this vision, Arawn decided that if the process of life would always end in death, then life itself was superfluous. So he decided to cull all of it. To do this he sent many agents and demons to scour Rale of all life by whatever means they could: floods, fires, eruptions, or simply by killing whatever they found.
