EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (310 page)

“You’d make a good magistrate,” Dante snorted. George pried another dirty-haired youth from the crowd around an impromptu wrestling match and they padded back to the older two.

“He’s my brother,” George said.

“We need you to watch the west gate,” Dante said, bending down to put his face level with theirs. “We’re looking for two riders. They look like—“ He stopped. They’d never
seen
the men, other than the one they’d killed by the river. Doubtlessly pairs of riders filtered into the city a score an hour. “What do they look like, Blays?”

“How the hell should I know? One sounded nasty and one sounded like a princess.”

“One’s going to look weak and the other will look strong,” Dante said. He rubbed his face. How could he have made an oversight like that? How had they planned to ambush them when they had no idea what they looked like? “The weak one should look like a priest. Wearing a robe or something.”

Blays scratched his neck. “At least the nasty one will have a sword.”

“And they’ll be on horseback,” Dante added lamely. “Only two of them.”

“Okay,” George said. “What do we do when we see them?”

“What’s the closest inn to the north gate?” Dante asked.

“The Foaming Keg,” Barnes put in. He was a few inches shorter than his brother, bore the same moppish dark-brown hair, a year or two younger. “It’s the one with the picture of the foamy keg over the door.”

“Right,” Dante said, squeezing his eyes shut. “If you see them, one of you comes and tells us right away. The other one follows them and sees where they go. Another chuck’s in it for you if you do.”

“And the fist if you run off,” Blays put in, shaking his under their noses.

“Ask the innkeep for Dante.”

“Or Blays.”

“Okay,” George said. “When do we start?”

“Now,” Blays said. The brothers looked at each other and trotted off toward the west. They weren’t wearing shoes. “That may have been very stupid.”

They made haste for the Foaming Keg and spent ten minutes arguing with the keeper about the vacancy of windowed rooms on the second or third story facing the north gate. Back in Bressel, Dante would have given in at the keeper’s first sob story or breakdown of expenses, but after the last few weeks, facing limited silver and an uncertain future, he accepted no terms until he was paying only half again what he thought fair. Both parties left angry, which struck him as the mark of true sophistication in the intercourse of society.

Blays installed himself in the window to watch the streets. His tanned face grew murky in the twilight. Dante lit a candle and holed up in the corner, spreading the
Cycle
over his knees.

“There’s a couple riders,” Blays said, leaning forward. “No, wait, that one’s a woman. A woman riding outside a carriage? What kind of a town is this?”

“Couldn’t say.”

“There’s a couple...but that guy looks like he’s a billion years old. He looks like he died about five miles back.” Blays laughed and clapped his knee. Dante scowled at his pages. “And those two look like they’ve bathed in the last month. Can’t be them.” A couple minutes dragged by. “Oh, there’s a—“

“Enough,” Dante said.

“Hey, at least I’m doing something here.”

“Do it quietly.”

“There’s a couple,” he stage-whispered, then laughed at Dante’s glare. “All right. Fine. Read your damn book.”

“I will.”

“Good.”

“It is good,” Dante said, and found he’d lost his place. The skies grew dark. With fading frequency Blays would crane his face out the window to meet the clatter of hooves. Dante lost himself in the book, flipping between sections to make certain he was matching names to lineage and king to kingdom. A knock banged against the door and he bit his tongue.

Blays pointed at him, mouthed “You.” He lowered himself from the sill and stepped to the side of the thin door. Noiselessly, he drew his blade.

“Uh, who is it?” Dante called, giving Blays the eye.

“Barnes, sir,” a small voice said from the other side. Blays let out his breath and Dante unbarred the door.

“Did you see them?”

“George says to say we saw the two people you wanted us to see,” Barnes said.

“Where’s George now?” Dante asked.

“Following them.”

“Where’d they go?” Blays said.

“I dunno,” Barnes shrugged.

Dante looked at Blays over Barnes’ greasy head. “Shit.”

“It’s okay,” Blays said, eyes darting. “Uh. We should have at least a couple hours until they’d go to sleep. Barnes, do you think you can find George before midnight?”

“Yeah. He’s my brother!”

“Then go find him. You two keep following until they go inside an inn. Then George stays there while you come back here. You got that?”

“I think,” Barnes said, twisting his hips and swinging his arms.

“What’d I say?”

“You said go find George, then when they go to sleep come tell you.”

“That is what I said,” Blays said, giving Dante an impressed look. “Well, go do it, damn it!”

The boy disappeared without a word. Dante stared through the open doorway, wondering how many of them died before they reached his own age. His older brother’d been among them. Sending Barnes and his brother to spy on killers for a chuck apiece. But they were willing to take it. To them it must feel like the wealth of dragons.

He rebarred the door and yawned. The dawn in the woods felt like ages ago. He slumped back in the corner, massaging the back of his head. The rears of his eyes felt like someone were pressing against them with a thumb.

“I’m going to nap,” he told Blays.

“Switch you in a couple hours.”

He settled down on the pallet, wrapping up in his cloak. Some time later a knock stirred him from sleep and he drew a deep breath. There was the tick of a lock, a muted conversation, but in his half sleep he couldn’t make out a word.

“Get up, dummy,” Blays said. “Barnes is back.”

Dante sat up straight. His brain felt like it had been left in the thoroughfare for a season. He blinked at Blays’ wiry height, at the squirming Barnes who didn’t rise past his rib cage.

“Hello,” Dante said, scratchy.

“Hi,” Barnes waved. “The two men went to their room a while ago.”

“How’d you find George?”

“I asked the other boys if they’d seen him until one of them said yes.”

“Oh.” Dante got up. He emptied his pack of everything but the book and a knife and relooped his sword belt around his waist. He had no idea what time it was. He felt worse than when he’d gone to sleep. “What’s everybody standing around for?”

“Lead on,” Blays said, shoving Barnes lightly between the shoulders. They tramped down the streets. The night was cold. Wind channeled down the empty streets. Overhead the stars watched with blank eyes. For ten minutes Barnes led them through an impossible tangle of alleys, stopping briefly to greet other small boys who looked up at Dante and his sword with round and gleaming eyes. Barnes stopped in the mouth of a sidestreet and pointed across an avenue to a wooden building with a painting of a frog’s head above the door.

“They’re the third room on the second story,” said a voice behind them. They whirled, swords out, and saw George. “Don’t hurt me!”

“Sorry,” Dante said. “Get up already.”

“Do we get our other chuck now?” George said, scooting toward them, ignoring the fresh dust on his breeches.

“How long ago did they go to their room?” Blays said.

“A while,” George said. “First they had some drinks. I got thrown out but I sneaked back in.”

Dante handed him a blackened piece of silver. “Go buy yourself some bread.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” George said. He jogged into the depths of the alley. Barnes waved at them and ran to catch up to his brother.

“Did you hear what he said to me?”

“You’ll get over it,” Blays said. He put away his sword. “Sounds like they’re drunk. Couldn’t ask for more.”

“You ready?”

“Are you?”

“It’s the only way to get them off our backs,” Dante said.

The common room was stifling, rank with smoke and the sweat of men and the vinegary odor of vomited wine. The innkeep glanced up and they kept their eyes front and beelined for the stairs. At the second floor Blays brought out his blade and Dante followed suit. Blays counted off the doors, pointed to the third. Dante nodded. Blays squared himself in front of it, paced back. He waited till loud laughter pealed up from the first floor, then barreled forward, leveling his shoulder against the wood. It splintered to chunks and he hurled right through into the darkness. Dante yelped and leaped over the wreckage of the door, whacking at the first figure that wasn’t Blays, who was busy extricating his sword from the chest of the same man Dante’d just stabbed. The dying man gurgled and a candle flared from the far end of the room. They paused, wrists flexing when the dying man slumped forward on their blades.

“Dante Galand,” the remaining man said, and they heard the high, reedy voice from the stream two mornings before. He had a long, pale face, black hair queued at the base of his neck and falling past his shoulders. He was wearing nothing but a dirty gray set of underclothes which sagged at the ass and elbows.

“Some son of a bitch who won’t leave us alone,” Blays said back at him, twisting his sword in the other man’s body and hauling it free. Blood sprayed over his hand and the corpse dropped onto Dante’s feet, pulling his sword from his grasp. The man splayed his fingers at them and Dante saw the air go dark. By instinct he punched back and a black gout rippled like flame from his hand. The two forces met and became nothing.

The man curled his lip, gestured with index and middle fingers. Dante felt the nether enfolding him like a cloak. He swung his arm from the elbow as if to say “Behold!” and again negated the man’s power.

“Stop that,” the man said.

“Burn in hell!” Blays shot, chopping the air and spraying the man with blood. He stepped forward.

“Don’t move,” Dante warned.

“They didn’t tell me you shared the talent,” the black-haired man said, fists held out from his sides. A temporary stillness stood between them.

“What
did
they tell you?”

“You’d stolen the
Cycle
.” He smiled with half his mouth. “I can see that much is true.”

“Can you?”

“It’s cleared your mind,” the man said, eyes and voice pinched with suspicion. “Opened the paths to the nether.”

“I see,” Dante lied.

“Indeed,” the man nodded, glancing between Dante and Blays’ blood-slick sword. “This may change things.”

“How’s that?” Blays said.

“They may welcome another into the fold, that’s how.”

Blays laughed. “The only fold’s going to be the one I cleave into your forehead.”

“Then it’s a good thing it’s not your decision to make, because I’d crush you like a bean.”

“You’ve been trying to kill me for weeks,” Dante said.

“That was then,” the man said, drawing back his shoulders. “What you need now is proper training.”

“I’ve stopped you well enough without it.”

“If kicking down a door should impress me, then I’m impressed,” the man said, brushing the shoulder of his underwear. “But I’m not much, really. Nothing compared to the ones who’d teach you, or the ones who’d come after you if you deny me.”

Dante said nothing. To accept would be to part with Blays. He knew there were parts of the book that would take years to untangle, that its pages held knowledge he’d never learn in isolated scholarship—the powers he saw when he slept. He didn’t even know how it had caused him to come in tune with the nether in the first place. He did know he didn’t like this man and didn’t trust the sect he represented. They may not be the amoral, bloodthirsty force the histories tried to paint them as, but Dante suspected a force as primal as the nether couldn’t be tapped without a certain recklessness of spirit that must taint their entire order.

“Who are these others?”

“The holy of Arawn,” the man replied, as if he’d asked which direction the sun rose.

“And what is it they want?”

“Open worship of our lord. An equal place among the houses of the Belt.”

“Their temples are smashed,” Dante said. “Their people are slain.”

“The gods can’t be killed! And neither can the ones who’d praise them. As for temples, we have ours within Mennok’s, with Carvahal’s. Even the houses of Gashen count priests of a deeper alliance.”

Dante drew back his chin. “What? You’ve been seeding them with your own people?”

The man snorted. “Am I supposed to think it’s dishonorable? What’s the honor in getting slaughtered in the open field? What’s the glory in a Fourth Scour when you’re the one getting scoured?”

“I don’t understand,” Dante said, trying to remember all the men of cloth he’d met in the temples and cloisters and cathedrals of Bressel. How many of them served a second god in secret? The very one whose knowledge Dante had been seeking? “How long has this been going on?”

“That’s enough.” The man held up his hand, palm out. From the corner of his eye Dante saw Blays’ arms tense up. “Come with me back to Bressel and we’ll sail to Narashtovik. There, you’ll learn whatever you want. Things you don’t yet even know to ask about.”

Agreement ached in Dante’s chest so hard he’d almost said yes before he could think. He glanced at Blays and the blood sliding down the boy’s sword. Say Dante left now with this man for Bressel, for this Narashtovik. Say Dante had thirty or fifty years left to his life: three to five decades to spend forging a name so bright he’d rival the stars. And every day of which he’d spend regretting the moment he’d left Blays to whatever mean fate awaited him.

“I won’t be bound to anybody,” Dante said, knowing there would be other ways. “Not even the gods.”

“I thought the same thing when I was your age,” the man chuckled. “Have faith in those above and some day you’ll be the one looking down.”

“I’m not much for waiting,” Dante said, and when he flung out his hand he sent the opposite edge of the shadows that would heal. The man jerked his hands up to his chest, but before he could speak his stomach spilled open like a sword had torn across it. His hands plunged to catch the intestines that slithered to the floor. Blays screamed.