What Lies Beyond, page 46
part #6 of The Cycle of Galand Series
"Help," Blays blurted. "Help now fast."
Dante hurled his mind into Blays' vine. It was fraying around the falcon statues, which had sawed into it under the duress of the winds. Dante sent the nether racing upward to mend it, but it felt like it was about to snap at any instant, so by pure instinct he also reached into the stone just below Blays' feet, meaning to extend a shelf for him to stand on.
The stone didn't move an inch. But something else inside the wall stirred. All of Dante's guts seemed to drain out of him. He made himself stay focused, reaching the fray and harvesting it hard. Three new vine-branches shot out from beneath the fray as well, groping upward to find a hold among the rain spouts.
"There," Dante said. "That ought to do it."
Blays was staring at him. "Then why do you look like a boy who just cut off his own finger with his dad's wood axe after being warned not to touch it?"
"Because I should have been paying better attention to your vine. Now be quiet. We're almost to the next window."
As he unspooled more vine, Dante's entire body stayed rigid, like a mouse frozen by the screech of an owl. They came to another ledge of statue-spouts, which Dante secured them to. They were now halfway down the tower. Another few hundred feet, and everything was about to get a lot easier.
A bell tolled.
This was not the glassy, melodic ringing of the hour. Nor was it from one of the cathedrals. Instead, it came from overhead. And it was deep, and slow, and menacing. It sounded the way a thunderstorm might if it was a living thing—and if it was hungry.
Blays tipped back his head. "Why does it sound like the underworld just woke up and is very cross with whoever disturbed its sleep?"
Dante dumped shadows into the vines, sending them skimming along the face of the tower. "When you were about to fall, I reached into the stone. To put some ground under your feet."
"The warded stone?"
"I forgot about the wards. I thought you were about to die."
"Then maybe you were just predicting our immediate future."
"Hush!" Gladdic spat.
The bell was still ringing its belching tone. Dante was still feeding nether into the vines. Above and below them, heads poked from windows.
"We've been spotted," Blays said. "Next comes the part where we get shot full of arrows."
"Gladdic, make sure that doesn't happen," Dante said.
Shadows darkened around Gladdic. A good choice, as the light of ether would only have made them a better target. They passed another window; inside, men were arguing in loud confusion. Nether flew up from Gladdic's hand, striking a man forty feet above them. He slumped over the window sill. A bow tumbled from his hands.
An arrow whisked past them from below. Before Dante could react, Gladdic killed the archer dead. More and more soldiers popped from the windows like well-armed gophers, but they had a terrible angle of fire on the climbers, and their arrows flew wide. Gladdic neutralized them moments later.
The three of them were still eighty feet from the base of the tower when someone reached out a window and cut Dante's vine with a hatchet.
This wasn't just bad, it was double-bad. For they were climbing down the back end of the tower, where there were no platforms of the Upper City beneath them. Just the long, long fall to the plains.
Blays started shouting; his vine had been cut too. Gladdic's was in the act of being cut and there was nothing he could do to stop it, but that didn't rattle him enough to stop him from killing the man with the hatchet. Gladdic fell in silence, resigned to his fate, perhaps even looking forward to it.
Dante was rather less thrilled. The smooth stone of the tower wall flew past his face. He reached into the vines that were flapping around like they were in a panic and launched fresh growths from them, searching for any structure jutting from the tower.
Unfortunately, they were now soaring past the bottom fifty feet of the tower, which was completely featureless. Dante slapped their vines against the wall anyway, shooting out as many tendrils as he could make the plants produce.
His loop of vine jerked against his foot. He slowed to a stop as the dozens of tendrils hugged themselves to the rock, but they were already pulling loose from their tenuous hold. Dante and the others were now almost level with the base of the tower. Dante dived his mind into the unwarded rock underneath it and lifted a platform to meet him just as the plants ripped free.
He landed with a painful but non-bone-breaking thump. Blays and Gladdic plopped down beside him. Gladdic's face was excruciatingly neutral, but the ether he summoned and sent into his leg implied he'd been badly hurt, perhaps to the point of a fracture.
"Nice of them to give us a shortcut," Blays said. "What now? I assume we're done with the vines?"
"Very." Dante reached into the massive stone pillar that made up one of the three platforms of the Upper City. "We don't dare try to take the stairs, either. Good thing for us I brought something much better."
He drew out the wall, shaping it into a downward slope that curved along the side of the pillar. He made sure its outer edge was rounded upward by a good eight inches.
Blays nodded his approval. "Ah, just like that time some asshole stopped me from killing King Moddegan."
Dante scooted across the level part of the platform and entered the slide, starting down it—a little too fast, in fact; he gentled its angle ahead of him, decreasing his speed to something less likely to fling him over the side. A glance back confirmed the others were following after him without issue.
They sliced along the face of the platform, spiraling downward. It was going to take a fair bit of masonry to deliver them all the way to the bottom, but in other days Dante had raised entire ramparts and rerouted rivers, and his shadows were still flowing freely. The doomy bell stopped ringing. Sometimes a shout cut through from high above, but for the most part all he could hear was the wind of his passage and the steady sough of his robe against the slide.
In less than a minute, they'd almost completed a full circle of the pillar, the Tower of Taim swinging back into view. As soon as it did, he felt the cold pulse of the ether above them, its light splashing over the dark pillar. But Dante felt the ether rising from Gladdic, too. Lights flashed overhead as the two powers collided.
"We face trouble," Gladdic said.
"Only until we circle out of view."
Gladdic grunted with the effort of holding off another assault. "That may prove to be too long."
Gladdic switched to a nether-heavy defense to better fend off what was now an all-out barrage. Most of Dante's efforts were locked firmly on creating more of the slide in front of them, but he drew forth some stray shadows and tossed them overhead to augment Gladdic's screen. They swung directly beneath the tower, where priests leaned out of windows and against the railings to either side of it, pouring heart-stopping quantities of light down at them.
Gladdic was just barely fending it off. Stray bolts stuck the cliffside, others disappearing into clouds of fading sparks. Dante ran the slide as far ahead of them as he could, then shifted his nether upward just before Gladdic's defense could collapse.
A star of ether smashed into the wall ahead of them, vomiting broken rock into the air and gouging a deep hole in the pillar—as well as obliterating a stretch of slide. Dante rerouted it and leveled it out to avoid the hole, slowing as he did so, which only exposed them to the barrage for longer.
"I cannot last!" Gladdic yelled.
A second globe of ether rammed into the wall. With a growl, Dante opened a passage into the pillar, diverted them into it, and closed the hole behind them.
"Forget the slide," he said. "We're taking the crane."
He swept the stone from beneath them, lowering them almost as fast as the slide would have. Ether thudded dully against the exterior of the column, but they were a good twenty feet inside and could barely hear it. Many years ago, Cally had taught Dante the means of making vacuums out of clever glass pieces, and it occurred to him that extending his originally quite small chamber into an extremely long one would probably reproduce that effect, and then they would suffocate and die. So once they were out of harm's way, he extended a horizontal shaft out to the side. Cold air rushed into the shaft in a gale, the influx calming down as the vacuum was undone.
They calmed themselves as well, catching their breath after the hectic clash at the end of the ride, their robes sifted with stone dust and rumpled by the winds. Gladdic's face was bleeding but he didn't bother to address it. Blays undid his pack, belted on his swords, and handed Dante his own weapon.
"I have the feeling you might need this. What's the plan now?"
"With any luck, they won't figure out what I'm doing. Even if they do, we'll reach the bottom well before any of them can. We'll cut east across the river and get into the mountains as fast as possible, then circle around for the horses."
"I can't help but notice we didn't get our hands on Taim's charm."
"I know."
"He'll be able to track us."
"I know."
"He'll send Ka after us."
"I know."
"Please tell me you also know what we're going to do about that?"
"Kill her," Dante said. "Or die trying."
He lowered them steadily, keeping the chamber tight to minimize the amount of rock he had to manipulate. They were three-quarters of the way to the Lower City. They were set to emerge from the base of the pillar directly below the tower, but that would put them a good nine hundred vertical feet away from the nearest part of it, out of effective range of the enemy sorcerers.
He was just starting to feel good about their chances when they came to a sudden stop.
Blays glanced up, then at Dante. "Did you forget the people out there are trying to kill us?"
"It isn't me," Dante said. "They've discovered what we're up to—and they've stopped it. One of them knows how to work the stone, too."
"Then be better than them."
Dante shoved his mind into the rock underfoot, attempting the mental equivalent of stomping it down. It yielded another foot, then hardened against him. Dante struggled against it with everything he had.
Instead, the stone began to close in around them.
"There's a whole team of them!" He felt their minds in the rock, working their way toward him. "I can't push them back!"
Gladdic flung forth his arm with a flap of his robe. "If finesse has failed us, we must turn to force."
Ether seared from his hand and into the side of the chamber, slagging an exit toward freedom. The chamber warmed like a cook pot hung above a fire, growing hotter as the walls squeezed tighter, making Dante shuffle close to Blays. The stone pressed against his back. In moments, it would crush them like skinned tomatoes. Cold air punched into the tube: Gladdic had finished his doorway.
The closing of the chamber spat them out into nothing. Dante tried to rip forth a ledge beneath them, but Taim's priests kept the rock clamped firm. They fell.
They were, at first glance, eighty feet above the streets of the Lower City. Not good. Enough to splash them into a puddle beyond any healing of the nether. On second glance, however, there was a high triangular roof underneath them, reducing the distance to fifty feet. Much more survivable. Especially if he took the stone of the roof and softened it into mud to cushion…
Sending the nether into the roof, he swore. It wasn't stone. They were about to crash right into it, then bounce to the street. Either impact could kill any of them. Nothing to do but hold onto the shadows and get ready to heal as soon as they were done falling.
He tucked his chin to his chest and braced himself.
Two lines of purple light snapped into place beside him. Blays gave his swords an exploratory swing. The roof rose to meet them. Blays extended himself, slashing both weapons into the roof—it was thatch, and thick enough that normal steel would have gotten caught up in it. But not the steel of the Odo Sein.
The thatch gave way with a fibrous rip, dumping them into a loft. A couple sat up in bed with a paired shriek.
Blays had already made his swords vanish. Now, he fluffed his robe, making sure the couple could see it was from the tower. "Fear not! Vile, handsome men have attacked our fair tower. But we're hot on their tails. Stay inside and don't say a word to anyone. We'll have the city safe again before you know it."
The woman nodded vigorously, a blanket held up to her face, covering everything beneath her eyes. Blays gave her his most winning smile, turned dramatically, and strode toward the ladder. They hurried downstairs, found the door, and exited as if they were chasing after the intruders.
They were now in the Lower City, the air two or three degrees warmer, the wind not quite as biting, the townhouses more homespun and motley than those above, though still quite venerable and elegant. A lot of hubbub was drifting down from the Upper City, but little of it had spread to this level. Several of the neighbors had thrown open their shutters to see what the commotion on the roof had been about.
Dante did his best to look officious. "Lock your doors! Keep away from your windows! The bells will tell you when the evil has been cleansed from the city."
He stiffened his posture as he walked away from the scene, gratified by the clap of shutters being swung shut. He turned north and put a block of buildings between themselves and the witnesses.
"What now?" Blays said. "I'm guessing any more fancy stonework is out of the question. What does that leave? The stairs? Or do we jump off the edge, spread our robes wide, and try our best flying squirrel impression?"
"The stairs would be suicide. We'd have to fight our way through every checkpoint," Dante said. "We're getting out of here the same way we came in. The cargo lift."
"Not as stylish as the flying squirrel route. Maybe next time, eh?"
They hustled to the north side of the city. The cargo lift that had brought them up in the bins went straight from the plains to the Upper City and Dante wasn't certain they'd be able to get to it from the Lower City without manipulating more stone, something the city's priests would be alert for, but they caught a break. The heavy ropes ran right past the edge of the Lower City platform, with an airborne dock allowing for goods to be moved on and off the pallets used to raise and lower those goods.
Even better, a pallet was waiting there for them. From their planning with General Lars, Dante knew it could be lowered automatically, but that didn't mean he knew how to do so, and they set to understanding the pulleys, levers, and gears that controlled it. Gladdic moved to the dock and probed into the nether.
"Got it." Dante stepped back from the controls and frowned at Gladdic. "What are you doing?"
"Covering our escape." Gladdic slapped his hand to the dock. Before him, a towering black shape seemed to conjure itself from within its own shadow. The Star-Eater grinned, the light of its throat flashing from behind its teeth, then shut its mouth tight, rendering it all but invisible within the darkness.
"Good thinking. But how did you know people would have died and left their traces here? They don't age. I doubt many invaders have ever gotten up here, either."
"It is a work site that uses large machinery. Deaths are guaranteed."
The Andrac took up position within the warehouse next to the dock. The three of them loaded themselves onto the pallet and Dante used the nether to nudge a single lever. The pallet lowered smoothly down the side of the gigantic column of rock. The river gleamed dully in the moonlight, encouragingly closer than the last time they'd seen it.
The sound of orders and questions being yelled back and forth stayed at roughly the same distance, implying the tower's priests and soldiers were making their way down the staircase from the Upper City to the Lower. The machinery controlling their descent made an occasional clicking sound, but nothing too loud. If everything held steady, they'd reach the plain and be on their way before their pursuit would even have time to search the Lower City for them.
Gladdic looked up. "Someone is approaching the dock. It is—"
The pallet rocked, then took a sharp drop. And kept dropping.
"They have severed the rope!" Gladdic yelled.
The pallet tilted, threatening to spill them; Blays scrambled to keep from being dumped over. "You don't say?"
Dante said nothing, as he was busy attempting to prevent their death. He'd been afraid of something like this and as soon as they'd gotten started he'd removed the vine from his robe, which he'd kept with him after getting cut down from the tower. A second rope ran parallel to the one that had been lowering their pallet. He threw one end of the vine at the other rope, harvesting it while also harvesting his end around the rope connected to their pallet.
They came to a sudden stop. This slammed the three of them flat. Gladdic skidded toward the edge. Blays grabbed his robe before he could fall off. Branches of the vine popped loose from the pallet.
"Grab the vine!" Dante grew two extensions of it toward Blays and Gladdic, wrapping one around Gladdic's waist and letting Blays take care of himself.
Just before the pallet ripped from the last of its ties, Dante stood and jumped toward the second rope, reaching for both it and the vine he'd snagged to it. He made contact with both. After taking a moment to let his mind stop exploding, he harvested the vines downward at a rapid clip.
"Gladdic," he said. "What happened to the person who cut the rope?"
Gladdic chuckled. "The Andrac consumed him."
"Oh good."
The pallet, still trailing its rope behind it, smashed onto the shore of the body of water at Pulley's Landing. To Dante, the noise seemed extraordinary loud. He hoped it was less loud up at the Lower City, which was now more than a hundred and fifty feet above them, and had grown increasingly noisy as Taim's soldiers and priests entered it and began questioning the residents and dealing out commands. It would be beyond naive to think they'd give up the search, no matter how long it took them. They'd find the cut rope and smashed pallet eventually.
But an extra hour's head start—or even just five minutes—might make all the difference in the world.
