What Lies Beyond, page 47
part #6 of The Cycle of Galand Series
They touched down at Pulley's Landing. Dante had never been so glad to be standing in mud. He raised the nether to the top of the vine, cut it loose, stepped back to let it fall, then gathered it up and cast it into the water, which at this spot was almost more like a lake than a river, although there was still some current to it.
"We're heading east, right?" Blays said.
Dante called for more nether. "Right."
"Then I hope you're wearing your sneaking shoes. Or your killing gloves. Or both."
Dante was about to ask him what the hell he was talking about, then shut his mouth. Lanterns bobbed across the fields to the east. The patrolmen or farmers there had heard the foreboding bell. They were some ways away—difficult to tell in the night—but judging by the number of lanterns, there were scores of men, possibly hundreds.
"There's lights to the north, too." He gritted his teeth, running down their options. Every second mattered. "We'll go south. But not overland. We'll take the river."
He took off jogging.
"Interesting plan," Blays said, "except you seem to have hit your head during one of our falls. You're going north."
"They'll try to track us. We're leaving a false trail."
"Not bad. But if we head south, that leads us away from the horses."
"We'll see if we can come back for them later. If we can't, we'll head south. There's another portal not too far from here. We'll do our best to get to it before Taim's forces track us down."
"Great. More cave worms. Or worse. Say we cross through it and it spits us out on the other side of our world?"
"It doesn't matter if the portal sends us to the Mists on the moon. We'll wake up from the Mists in the same place we entered them: the forest outside Bressel."
He was almost certain this was true. He jogged on a little further, then messed with the ground some to give the impression they might have tunneled somewhere. With a trail nice and falsified, he backtracked to the river, got their pack from Blays, and took out the apparatuses.
"Gladdic, freeze a chunk of ice around the far ends. But be sure to leave the exits clear."
Gladdic dipped the flexible breathing tubes into the river, shaping a generous portion of ice around the ends opposite of the mouthpieces. They slipped the straps over their heads, pressed the mouthpieces tight, and waded into the water. It was early fall and it ought to have been decently warm, but it had spilled almost straight down from the mountains, with only a few miles of prairie to heat it up.
The loose ends of the apparatuses, encased in ice, would float. Allowing them to stay underwater and thus out of sight indefinitely as the current carried them along, though they might need to gather some driftwood after a while to give their muscles a break.
Dante waded up to his waist. "If anything goes wrong, the signal will be 'Arrgh.'"
"That sounds like one I can remember." Blays gave a thumbs up and ducked under the water.
Dante followed, letting the current do its work as he got used to breathing through the tube again. It was incredibly dark, but using the ether to light the way would defeat the entire purpose of what they were doing, so they simply stayed very close together.
It worked every bit as well as Dante had hoped. The current was far gentler than the rapids that had delivered them in their bins to the plains, yet still had enough speed to it to sweep them away from Chronus. Dante tried to exert no more energy than was necessary to stop himself from sinking, but gradually swam away from the west bank and toward the east, straightening out once he was thirty feet from shore.
Dante used the nether to drive some of the chill from their bodies. After a while Gladdic added ice to the apparatus' melting floats. They still had several hours until dawn, and as well as things were going, Dante thought they'd let the river carry them until, say, five in the morning. At that point they'd emerge to see if there were any horses around to steal. If not, they could find a log, hide their apparatuses within it, and use it as camouflage to continue drifting downstream by daylight.
Something tickled his mind. He went still. It was so faint he wasn't sure it was real. If it was, it wasn't actively searching for them—or seemingly doing anything at all. After five minutes of waiting, he started to doubt he'd felt it in the first place.
They made a quick trip ashore for a bit of driftwood to help them stay neutral in the water, then carried on. The current was sending them along at a moderate walking pace. An hour after beginning their trip, Dante cautiously broke the surface. They'd put three miles between themselves and the towering city. The plains were spangled with lanterns and the harder glare of ether, but the searchers weren't putting any special attention on the south.
He got back under the water. Less than two minutes later, the river flooded with light, illuminating them. He turned around to scowl at Gladdic, but Gladdic had changed. Instead of the gnarled old man Dante knew, Gladdic now looked young and hale.
Ka had found them.
32
"Arrrrghh!" Dante yelled into the water, voice burbling crazily.
He bit his lip, tasting salty copper, and kicked to the surface. Shadows shot to him across the water. He launched them upward, not even sure where his target was yet. Gladdic broke the surface behind him, chasing Dante's nether with a surge of his own. Clearing the water from his eyes, Dante spotted the ether burning above and bent his sorcery toward it, hitting it just as it left Ka's hand.
He pulled a second bout to him, kicking for shore as hard as he could. Blays was already ahead of him, Gladdic lagging behind, in part because he was launching a counterstrike at Ka. Dante pitched in. Ka swatted their attacks away with ease, but at least it stopped her from assaulting them for a moment.
"Archers!" Blays lifted from the water and pointed ashore. "Incoming!"
Dante couldn't yet see the arrows, but he plunged his mind into the soil between Blays and the direction he was pointing and pulled it straight up. The river sloshed violently. He didn't bother to harden the dirt, trusting that two feet of solid earth would stop anything short of a ballista. A volley of arrows smacked into his wall.
Blays swam for the wall, reaching waters shallow enough to stand in. He hunkered down behind the earth. Dante helped Gladdic disarm another one of Ka's beams of light and ran up behind Blays. Blays pointed ashore. A hundred feet away, scores of archers drew their bows.
The earthen wall barfed itself apart: Ka had clubbed it to pieces. The archers immediately loosed another volley. Dante threw himself flat while drawing forth a hasty replacement wall. A few arrows slashed into the water around them before the replacement wall caught the rest.
Ka flew above the archers, ether dancing around her hands. "Relinquish the spear and I swear to make your deaths fast."
In response, Dante hurled a barrage of black bolts at the lines of bowmen. Ka flicked her hands, neutralizing every last one of the darts.
"Do you think you can harm Taim's soldiers when I am their shepherd?" She sneered down at them. "Their arrows will claim your lives before you have claimed one drop of their blood!"
To punctuate her confidence, she lanced her light at Dante and Blays. Gladdic hit it from the side, spraying the air with sparks. The right-hand half of the archers fired at will, keeping Blays and Dante pinned while the left half jogged behind the others to become the new right flank, opening an angle of attack for themselves. Dante took another shot at them. Ka didn't let it get close.
"Ka's right," he said. "This is a classic tactic when sorcerers can't overpower each other. Just keep the enemy locked down and let your archers do the dirty work."
Ka chose that moment to batter the earthen wall again, requiring them to do some quick fixes and scrambling about to avoid being pin-cushioned by another volley.
Blays swabbed dirt from his face. "What can we do?"
"Hope we get a lucky shot at Ka. Otherwise, not much."
"To hell with that. After all the trouble we went through to get it, I'm not dying before I even get a chance to use this thing."
Blays reached up his sleeve, tugging loose the knots he'd tied within it. He dropped the collapsed rod of the spear into his left hand and transferred it smoothly to his right. He punched his hand forward.
A star burst into being.
The spear shot forth to its full length, dazzling and shimmering, blasting forth a sphere of white light that left Dante temporarily blind. The archers yelled out in fear: with any luck, they'd been blinded as well.
At that very moment, Ka delivered another attack of eye-watering beams. Gladdic hit back at them, but Dante could barely make them out, and lashed at them clumsily. Two of the beams diverted to Blays' high-held spear—and were absorbed with a flash.
"I have the feeling I'm going to love this thing." Blays grinned. "Cover my ass, will you?"
Before Dante could respond, Blays sprung from behind the wall, spear gripped in both hands. He sprinted toward the line of archers. Most were still rubbing at their eyes, but a few had recovered to loose arrows at him. Dante struck some down with nether, but the missiles were much too swift for him to catch them all.
Blays juked to the side of an arrow as if the archer had called out his shot. He ducked under another, the purestone glinting from below the head of the spear. A sergeant bawled out orders and the portion of the lines that had regained their sight drew back in preparation for a volley. Heart sinking, Dante flung a barrage of nether at them, hoping to intercept what fraction of their arrows that he could.
Running headlong, Blays extended the spear in front of him and jammed its butt into the ground. He jumped upward with all of his strength, using the spear to vault him higher, arrows swishing harmlessly beneath him. One struck the shaft of the spear and disintegrated with a sharp ping.
Blays arced high in the air, the spear pulling free of the ground. Yet he was still traveling upwards, higher than should have been possible; at last he peaked, dropping right at the enemy lines, wheeling the spear overhead and swinging it downward like an axe splitting wood.
High above them, Ka looked terrified.
A handful of archers loosed their arrows, but they were used to tracking human motions, and Blays was traveling much faster than that. His feet hit the ground. So did the head of the spear.
A white sphere erupted from the weapon. Something terrible happened to those caught in its initial radius. It expanded outward from there, booming like crystalline thunder, growing more translucent as it spread. A wave of archers tumbled into the air spraying blood behind them as if thrown by an angry drunk who, on discovering his wineskin has been punctured, hurls it away in a rage.
Before the sphere of destruction had spent itself, Blays leaped up from his knees, twirling the spear about himself. It reaped the enemy down wherever it went. Some men screamed, but others were silent, stunned by the light of the spear and the quickness of the one wielding it. A good deal of them turned and tried to run. Very few had the presence of mind to nock an arrow and take a shot at Blays. Sometimes Blays pivoted out of the way of those who did. Other times the spear darted forth to knock the arrow down mid-flight.
Ka tried to bring him down, but her ethereal lances that made it past Dante and Gladdic's first line of defense were sucked in by the spear—but not instantaneously, making Dante believe it could only handle so much at once. Blays ignored her, carving through the archers. Within a matter of seconds, every single one of them was either running away, injured beyond the ability to fight back, or dead on the ground.
Blays came to a stop, stamping the butt of the spear into the dirt and gazing up at Ka. "Got anything else?"
She hovered sixty feet above him, golden hammer in one hand, her wicked silver sword in the other. "I am not merciful, but my master is. He offers you one last chance to return the spear."
"And what? He'll spare our lives?"
"Yes."
"That offer's not terribly tempting when taking it up means the lich will just kill me a few weeks later. Besides, I don't think you can take it away from me."
He jabbed the spear in her direction. It was only a taunt, but a bolt of ether flew from the tip of the spear. Ka had to twist to get out of the way.
Blays shook the weapon in the air. "You're lucky I don't really know how to use this thing!"
"Are you denying my lord's offer?"
"You know, it's a tempting one. Why don't you come down here where we can discuss it better?"
"You reject the grace of Taim." Ka smiled in contempt. "It is better that way. I prefer to kill you."
Dante readied himself. He felt Gladdic do the same. Blays angled the spear across his body. Instead of coming toward them, Ka drifted backward. Lights bloomed a few hundred feet up the river bank. Dante sent his mind into the earth, ready to draw up a new wall, but the reinforcements weren't archers. Instead, infantry marched forward, swords and spears bristling.
But that wasn't what caught Dante's eye. "Priests. At least a score of them."
Blays glanced over his shoulder. "What do we do?"
"We have to find a way to kill Ka. As long as she's here, we'll never be able to run away."
"We haven't been able to kill her when we've had her by herself. How are we supposed to do it when she's got a small army with her?"
Ether glinted from the hands of several of the priests. As they drew closer, many of the men and women looked too young to be priests proper, monks at best, possibly just apprentices, as if they'd been summoned from a guard-post lower in the city. But more senior sorcerers walked among them as well. It seemed like more than enough to do the job yet not the full strength of what Chronus could bring to bear. Scrambling to get what they could to the field before the thieves found a means to slip away? Or did they fear something? An ambush?
Or the Spear of Stars?
The enemy slowed their advance, deploying into a standard formation for facing sorcerers who were unaccompanied by any armsmen, much looser than military lines tended to be. The common soldiers must have known they were unlikely to serve as more than a distraction, yet their faces were proud, dauntless.
Gladdic jogged toward Blays, robes tossing about his legs. He kneeled among the slaughtered archers and waved his hand back and forth. An Andrac popped into existence, ten feet tall if it was an inch, casting its arms wide and flexing its claws, provoking gasps of disgust and gestures of holiness from Taim's clergy.
Gladdic had just enough time to forge a second demon before the enemy's hands filled with the cruel geometry of ether.
Blays slashed his spear horizontally, sucking in the first beams of light that came for them. Gladdic's power was almost untapped on the day and he met the offensive with masses of light and dark. Dante backed them both, knocking down anything that threatened to get by.
Blays made a series of quick jabs. Ether pulsed forth from the point of the spear. His efforts were clumsy, and most of the light he produced soared away harmlessly or came at the enemy too slowly to be of real threat. Yet Taim's priests still had to contend with the wobbly bolts. At the same time, Gladdic sent his two Andrac dashing forward, the demons screaming with airy rasps that raised the hair on the back of Dante's neck.
He felt Ka readying an attack. But if he didn't strike now, while the line of ethermancers was back-footed, he might not see a second chance.
He dropped to one knee and punched his fist into the ground. The turf bounced upward in a line speeding toward the enemy. Stone cracked and rumbled; the ground broke apart, zig-zagging toward the soldiers and priests like lightning. Dante's eyes widened. He held his breath, awaiting the sight of bodies tumbling into the yawning crevasse.
Armed men turned their backs and fled. Too late. The quake swallowed a dozen soldiers, reaching past them toward the robed monks and priests.
A woman sprinted from the lines, face hidden within a hood. She skidded on her knees over the grass with her palms pushed forward. Nether clouded her hands and sank into the earth.
The stone creaked like a sick old man. One branch of the crevasse jumped forward, dropping a pair of screaming monks into the depths. The other cracks shuddered. And came to a halt right beneath the knee of the woman who knew how to move the earth, who was now breathing hard, her hair spilling loose from her hood.
With the enemy driven in disarray before the earthquake, the Star-Eaters slashed into their lines, shredding armsmen to the ground, fighting toward those in robes. But with Dante's attack stopped in its tracks, the priests gathered themselves and pummeled the demons, tearing ribbons of nether loose from their alien bodies. Gladdic called the pair back to him before they could be destroyed altogether. Dante punched the earth, this time in frustration. Their best hope had failed them.
Led by Ka, who swooped in anticipation overhead, Taim's forces renewed their attack. Steady. Pounding. The three of them were just able to hold it off. Without the power of the spear, they would have been obliterated in moments. Dante fell back, the ash-like residue of neutralized nether dashing against his face. They couldn't make a break for it. Not when Ka could outrace them and slow them down enough for the priests to hit them from behind. Nor could Blays make a charge like he had at the archers. The ethermancers would vaporize him. If they'd had a single one of General Lars' prized horses, one of them could have galloped away with the spear to bear it back to their world. But they'd been caught. And they'd used up every trick they had.
"We're not getting out of this, are we?" Blays said, spear glowing with captured ether.
"Not unless you've got a brilliant idea."
"Fresh out. Shall we charge, then? End our cycle with one last act of glorious defiance?"
"In another couple of minutes, once my nether runs low. Then we'll give Taim something to remember us by."
They fought back a punishing barrage of ether, with so many sparks spitting toward his face he closed his eyes and flinched away. When he reopened his eyes, a stranger stood next to him. He yelled out in surprise and drew his sword, ready to cut her in half.
