The 13th God (The Cycle of Galand Book 8), page 9
"On?"
"Which route you wish to take," Kelen said. Dante gestured him to go on, which caused Kelen to scowl. "There are two choices. Well, in truth there are many more choices than that, but they are all variants of the same basic ones, just at different places in Gothon that are further away from the two choices in question. The first option is to travel to Harasphont, the nearest kingdom with an entrance to Pholos. This option is safer, though that is not to say that it will be safe. The regent isn't about to just let us walk right up to the doorway. It will also take longer. 'Exactly how long?', you are about to ask, because you think I know everything and you want to know everything. At least a few days, if everything goes as fast as possible. But if it takes some maneuvering to get to the entrance, it will take longer, possibly an awful lot longer. Is that specific enough for you, or would you like me to speculate senselessly while pretending to hold expertise I don't have?"
"That sounds like it covers things for now," Dante said. "What's the alternative?"
"We try to cut straight there. Through a wildway. It looks as though one might be as little as a day's travel from here."
"What's a—"
"A wildway is just that, a wild way into the heart of the world. But it's dangerous. 'How dangerous?' If we're very lucky, no more dangerous than a walk through a forest. But I don't imagine we will get that lucky."
"And if we don't get that lucky?"
"Then we will be very lucky to escape with our lives."
"If we were to luck out, how long do you think it might take to get to Pholos?"
"Another day," Kelen said. "No more than that."
Dante glanced at the others. "Well?"
"Everything keeps pointing to the idea that the longer we stay here, the less our chances of pulling this off," Blays said. "I say we go fast and dirty."
"That was my thinking. All right, Kelen, take us to the wildway."
Kelen tilted back his head, watching a bird soar over some finger-like spires projecting from the upward-curved land off to their right. "As you wish."
The way he said it gave Dante immediate doubts. Still, the thought that they could be at their destination—and perhaps even done with their mission altogether—in another two days was very heartening, and he set forth with brighter spirits than he'd felt in some time.
Kelen worked his way forward in a direction Dante decided to think of as northwest. Sometimes the sky above them was more or less like a normal sky, though the color was pinkish instead of blue, but there were other times when the land abruptly wrinkled on itself and hung over them like a giant wave, and no matter how many times he tried, he couldn't convince his mind nor his heartbeat that it wasn't about to crash down and obliterate them. So it was a fairly big relief when they entered a forest and could no longer see any of that. The tree trunks were striped like tigers, black and white, bearing leaves like long-fingered hands.
It was a gloomy forest with a lot of moss and ominous birds calling back and forth to each other, and Dante kept the nether close, anticipating a sudden attack. Yet even after night fell, and they walked by the light of a small point of ether, they were left alone.
"How did we get away with that?" Blays said as they started to make camp. "I thought this world was supposed to be a hellscape of torment and slaughter."
"That is mostly in Ardos," Kelen said, "which helps to keep outsiders out of Gothon, where the people are, and where there isn't as much danger except from the people. And then it becomes dangerous again in Pholos, but for other reasons."
The night was as uneventful as the day of travel had been, and Dante woke feeling energetic. Their path soon crossed with a rocky stream that Kelen followed as it veered westward.
Blays jerked his thumb at the tumbling water. "There any fish in there?"
"There are," Kelen said. "But if you ate one you wouldn't like how it came out."
"I'm not going to ask which way you meant that."
The stream widened as a few others fed into it. By the time Kelen stopped to read his device, glancing about himself with his mouth hanging half open, it had swelled to a small river, though rather than smoothing out, it was even more frothy than it had been before. Announcing they were close, Kelen began to canvass the area, sprinkling blue light around various spots before coming to a slab of damp, mossy rock hanging a few feet over the river. When he touched it with his sorcery, a doorway stabbed up at them like the head of a spear, causing all four of them to step back in alarm.
This one was different from the others. Where they had been rounded, this one was rectangular, more like a proper doorway. Its surface was a deep black that would have made it look flat if not for the unknown symbols that kept appearing within it, sliding across the uncertain space until fading away.
"This is it," Kelen said.
Blays scratched his forehead with his thumbnail. "Why don't you sound happy about that?"
"On the other side, there will be rules. These aren't rules you can question. They're rules you must follow. So if you must ask your many questions, ask them now."
"Sure. What, uh, are the rules?"
"Do as little as possible."
"Now that I can do."
"Meaning what?" Dante said. "No poking around?"
"Yes, no poking around. No touching anything except that which can't avoid being touched. No speaking, either. The simplest way to put it is this: just follow me, as fast as you can, and do nothing else."
"What are these rules meant to avoid?"
"This isn't like the other passages. In the wildways, there are people. Only they're not people. They're something different. Different and much worse. We don't want to attract their attention."
"What happens if we do? Can they be killed?"
"Yes, but that won't make any difference. We'll just have to hope we can trust it."
"To do what? Not kill us?"
"Yes," Kelen said, quite seriously. "They are not all of the same mind, or in the wrong mood. Sometimes they are not bloodthirsty. If we are fortunate, the being will want to travel with us to the end of the wildway, where we can then access Pholos."
"How do we convince it to do that?"
"We don't, and you must not try. Either it will or it won't, and if it won't, we will have to go."
"Back through the doorway, you mean?"
Kelen shook his head. "There will be many other doorways along the way. Watch out for them and remember where they are. If we need one, and can't get back to one, we will die."
Without another word, their guide turned and stepped through the doorway. He disappeared with a silvery flash. After the things he'd just said, Dante didn't think it was the time for hesitation, and he followed right after.
Silver light flashed across his eyes. A sharp hard pain stabbed into his heart and he would have yelled out in pain and surprise but remembered just in time to clamp his jaw shut. Motes of light swept across his eyes.
And cleared. He stood within a tunnel. A very wide one. His instinct was to stand there like a fool and gape at it for a while, but Kelen had thrown himself into cover behind a spiky red shrub that resembled what fire would look like as a plant. Dante hunkered down next to him, joined by Gladdic and Blays.
Dante was about to ask what they were looking at, but Kelen shot him a venomous look. Dante pressed his hand to his mouth and took it in for himself. The passage was much wider than the others, as much as three miles across, and who knew how long. To both right and left, the land curled up above them, much more quickly and sharply than it did in Gothon, the geography of which he suddenly had a much better conception. The upper half of the passage was made of sky, including flocks of clouds that traveled steadily from west to east. In all, it was like they were inside a giant hollow tube, with the lower half made of solid ground while the upper half was made of empty air.
He looked to Blays, who shook his head, as if to ask what Dante expected. Gladdic looked contemplative. Dante could almost read the old man's mind. He was thinking something about how much of creation existed beyond what they knew of, and what it might mean that the gods had decided not to tell them about any of it.
Kelen took a few moments, watching the wind stirring the grass, the soaring birds with their long slim wings, birds that looked blurry even when Dante stared right at them. Kelen rose to a low crouch and beckoned to the others without looking back at them.
The guide veered forward, heading for another of the thorny shrubs, pacing himself at a fast jog that made little sound besides the rustle of grass. Kelen hesitated behind the shrub for just long enough to see that the way forward was clear before loping toward a gnarled protrusion of rock that looked like something that had been squeezed out of a sore. He paused again, then moved on.
Stop-and-start as it might be, they made steady progress, and had advanced a mile in less than a quarter of an hour, bringing them to a stretch of rocky ground. Still, strong as their progress was, Kelen had thought it would take them a day to reach the end of the wildway, and Dante was under no illusion they were going to stop for anything more but the briefest of rests. They had many, many miles ahead of them before they were able to pass through into the Knot.
Twice in the course of that first mile, Kelen stopped and got down and pointed off to the side, once toward a lump of rock, the other toward a cluster of short trees. Within both, in shadows that looked much too deep given the light around them, subtle blue lights bobbed in the air like fireflies. At the first one, Kelen met Dante's eyes and drew a circle in the air. A portal. Dante fixed the location of the rocks in his mind. Luckily, it was the only formation like it anywhere nearby, making it very easy to spot. Luckily, again, so was the stand of trees that housed the second portal.
The rocky ground ahead of them crawled like it was alive, and for a moment Dante was afraid they had once again found themselves walking across the surface of a gigantic living being. The truth turned out to be a shade different: the rocks before them were carpeted with ants. Tens and tens of thousands of them, all of them thumb-sized or larger, a living river of countless creatures.
Blays began to groan, then cut himself short. The ants' carapaces were transparent maroon, shiny, more like glass than like chitin, the fluids within them stirring like eldritch potions. It might almost have been pretty, if not for the fact it was also a disgusting teeming swarm—one that was completely blocking their path.
Dante caught Kelen's attention, then spread his hands and arms wide. He pushed his hands toward the ants, palms splayed, pantomiming annihilating them with the nether.
Kelen shook his head hard enough to strain something.
Dante swore silently. This might not be the end of the world—Blays was already motioning to the left, "west," implying they should walk parallel to the swarm until they found a gap in it—but if they ran into any direct threats, what were they supposed to do? Would they even be allowed to use their swords? What was Gladdic to do, bludgeon the enemy with his stump? Dante continued along this line of thought as they tramped westward through the grass. Clearly, Kelen thought it was a terrible idea. Even so, if it became a matter of life and death, he would use the nether. It was as simple as that.
Reaching this conclusion gave him a sense of comfort. As comfortable as he could be while he was walking just a few yards away from a mass of hundreds of thousands of grotesquely large insects, at least. The closer they came to the horizon, though, the more his attention shifted away from the ants and toward what was in front of them. As they walked forward along the curve, more sky wheeled above them. Yet the ground felt as steady underfoot as ever.
The end of the earth grew closer and closer. More and more of their field of view filled with clouds and empty blue. Dante glanced continually between it and the writhing carpet of ants. Yet they came to the last of the land without finding a single gap in the insects.
In front of him hung nothing but sky. Dante looked straight up and saw the far end of the land dangling directly over his head. A wave of vertigo crashed over him and he sank into a crouch out of fear he would suddenly fall forward into the open sky straight ahead of him.
He squeezed his eyes shut until his head quit spinning. Just a few feet in front of him, the ground ended and the sky began. What was "under" the sky? What would happen if he reached down into it? Still on his knees, he leaned forward and extended his hand.
Grass whispered behind him. Kelen slid down beside him and grabbed his wrist hard enough to hurt. Dante scowled at him, then backed away from the edge, keeping on his knees until it felt safe to stand up.
The others were just as transfixed by the wall of sky as he was. They took a minute, then pulled themselves away from it and raised their eyebrows at each other. Dante motioned toward the ants.
Blays shrugged and pointed to the eastern end of the land—which was to say, he pointed straight up. Dante considered it, then shook his head slowly, somehow sure that the ants would stretch all the way across the tube of land, and that walking several miles to prove it would only be a waste of time. He glanced around for a tree or something they could use as a bridge. None anywhere close, certainly not close enough to drag all the way back to the ants, though there were a few on the other side of them. He then had the brilliant idea to dig a tunnel to the other side of the swarm, but just as he began to reach for the nether, he remembered he was forbidden from using it.
He mouthed an oath. Blays just shrugged again. Kelen did the same. Dante pressed his palms together in frustration. They couldn't even discuss ideas about what to do? What were they supposed to do—
Gladdic held up his arm for attention. He backed up a good ways from the stripe of ants, swung his arms behind him, and then jogged forward in exaggerated, bounding strides. He leaped into the air, robes flapping, and landed just in front of the blanket of ants, which he then gestured to while raising a white eyebrow.
Dante lifted his eyebrows in response and traced an arc through the air like the trajectory of a bowshot, ending his finger pointing at the ants. Gladdic nodded once. In response to this, Blays shrugged again, but this time he was smiling, lifting his shoulders much higher.
Why not? Because it was a veritable river of ants, that's why! Then again, it wasn't that wide, was it? Just wide enough to make you think that jumping it would be stupid and suicidal. But it's not like it was a stream of lava on the Plagued Islands, was it? It was just bugs. With a good jump, they might only need two more long steps to get across them. It would be over in moments.
Just as he was convincing himself it wasn't the worst idea, and might be an acceptable backup plan if they couldn't think of anything else, Blays ran away from the ants, then reversed course and sprinted toward them. Just before he would have plunged into them, he leaped into the air, flying over the wriggling masses of glass-like vermin.
He landed on one foot, several feet shy of open ground. Yet he hopped forward again so swiftly that the only bugs that would have time to get onto him would be the ones smashed on the bottom of his boots. With a second short hop, he leaped free of the squirming carpet and onto an open rock.
Blays did a little jig, dislodging two ants from his boots, and promptly stomped them. After a more careful inspection revealed that he was clean, he backed off several steps and gave them a thumbs up.
Just jump across them! It was almost too simple to be real. But Blays had just done it, and so Dante backpedaled, gathered himself, and then dashed forward. He landed more than ten feet short, sliding across the loosely packed insects as they crunched underfoot. He could feel their bodies breaking under the sole of his shoe and he bounded forward again before it could unnerve him.
The next hop brought him to the edge of the carpet. One more and he was free. He hopped from one foot to the other, shaking them like a terrier with a rodent, but not a single bug fell away. He retreated to join Blays, who clapped him on the shoulder, but then grew sober as Gladdic, who was much older, and Kelen, whose legs were much shorter, prepared to cross. They made their leaps at the same time. Though it took them a couple more jumps to do it, they made it across the swarm without any slips. They both wound up with several ants crawling up their shoes and legs, though, and Blays and Dante scrambled to help knock these loose and dispatch them.
With this feat of athleticism and foolishness accomplished, the four of them grinned at each other, even Kelen, who rarely broke free from the irritation that seemed to be his natural state of being. They set out north again. It was unnerving to have the landscape suspended above them, though, like walking lengthwise across a wall, and Kelen drifted gradually eastward, back toward the middle of the wildway.
They'd gone no more than a hundred feet when a stabbing, white-hot pain shot across Dante's back. He yelled out, grabbing at his right lower back, and felt something hard under his doublet. He tugged his shirt free of his belt and scrabbled for what he already knew was there. The ant was clamped fast to his flesh, might even have been embedded in it, and as he pulled it free, it took all he could muster to stop himself from screaming again.
He threw the insect down and stomped it. Then he staggered to the side and fell to his knee. The wound was already swollen, the pain of it pumping with his heart, somehow growing worse every second, just like a burn. He grimaced, leaving the nether untouched. It was quite possible he had been in pain more times than anyone else alive—for he would already have died many times over if not for having the nether to heal himself—but knowing he did have the nether, and so the pain would soon be balmed or erased altogether, had always helped him endure it.
Now, it was forbidden to him.
Blays had run over to see what was the matter, but Kelen was stalking around in circles, hands pressed to his face. He drew to an abrupt halt, glanced down at his hands, then shot a look to all sides before darting behind a rock that was wrinkled like an oversized brain. Angrily, he motioned the others to join him.
Blays stayed next to Dante as Dante half-dragged himself into cover. Besides an uncertain breeze through the grass, the wildway was silent. Behind them, the ants continued to stream across the rocks. Grass swayed. A couple of birds floated through the sky.
