EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (343 page)

Dante licked his lips. “And when he says no, remind him who killed him.”

“Exactly!”

“I wonder who Will Palomar was.”

“Who cares? He was somebody around here, that’s clear enough. And you can be damn sure they wouldn’t be treating
him
like a trained bear.”

“Just ask them,” Dante repeated.

“Really, it’d be suspicious if you didn’t. How’s this look right now? The first day you barge in here and throw their most prized possession in the dirt like it’s a used whorerag, all the while threatening their lives, and two weeks later you’re bumbling around saying yessir no sir? You’ve got to act like a prick again! For the good of the land!”

Dante laughed, buried his face in his rough cotton bedclothes. “If this gets us killed tomorrow, I’m blaming you.”

Blays snorted. “Then when it goes off like a dream, I get all the credit.”

“No way. I’ll be the one that got it done.”

“Based on my brilliant idea.”

“I could have thought of that.”

“But you didn’t,” Blays said, lobbing straw at him. Dante grabbed some from beneath his pallet and threw it back. “You were over there, woe is me, I’m adrift in a cruel sea. Blays, won’t you be my anchor? Bring me back to shore, Blays!”

“That’s not what I sounded like,” Dante said.

“Maybe not to your ears,” Blays said. “To mine it was all I could do to keep from slapping you.”

“I’d have turned you into a toad first. Then chopped you in half with your own sword.”

“You’d have to turn yourself into a man first so you could actually lift it.”

Dante had no answer to that. He closed his eyes and swiftly fell asleep. He brushed Nak off the following morning, and before Larrimore could find him and make him play sheepdog to letters and people for another day, he found Larrimore. He was in the room of the keep he considered to be his business quarters, drilling a bevy of servants in Gaskan. Dinner. They were talking about dinner, Dante understood. The particulars of this dinner remained obscure, but Dante felt a faint thrill to know Nak’s lessons hadn’t been a waste.

“I need to talk to you,” he called from the doorway to Larrimore.

“Do you want our guests to starve?” the man tossed before turning back to his orders. Dante waited in the frame until Larrimore dismissed the servants and waved the boy over. Dante closed the door and took up a chair.

“There shall be no mistakes regarding the gravy tonight,” Dante said, trying to remember how he’d acted that first day.

“Indeed not. I presume you came here for higher reason than mocking the skillful administration of a home this large.”

Dante steeled himself. “What’s going on here?”

“Yet another banquet,” Larrimore said, waving a hand. “Fine fare is terribly important when you’re a man of noble concerns.”

“I don’t mean dinner, you oaf. What’s Samarand preparing for? What’s gotten the Citadel so busy?”

“Oh, that.”

“Yes, that.” Dante said.

Larrimore clasped his hands beneath his nose and regarded Dante for a moment. “I wondered when you’d stop skulking around and come see me. I thought, Why the secrets? Why is the boy of infinite hubris creeping around like a mouse in the larder?”

“None of that is any kind of answer.”

“Well, it’s no great secret,” Larrimore said.

“Yes, I know.” Dante leaned back in his chair. “You wish to release Arawn.”

“You see?” Larrimore said, tipping back his head. “Everyone knows.”

“And rather than involving me in what must be the most important moment in the history of the house of Arawn, you believe my time’s best spent toting letters and playing wet nurse to fat idiots from faraway lands.”

Larrimore pressed his hands to his face and chuckled into them, his whole body bobbing with laughter.

“Anyone else would have you whipped for that,” he smiled.

Dante rolled his eyes. “Do you have any explanations for anything? Or does your existence consist entirely of sitting around approving the chef’s plans for supper?”

“I should be so lucky. All right. What is it you wish to do, exactly?”

“Be involved!” Dante yelled, long past the need to pretend to be frustrated and scornful. “I’m not even in the same sphere as the other students I’ve seen here. I can help if you’d let me.”

Larrimore laughed happily. “You really believe you’re a boy of destiny, don’t you? You think you’re the one in that prophecy you quoted me.”

“I’ve made no such claims.”

“You certainly hinted, implied, and danced around them.”

“Only to keep the Hand of Samarand from strangling me prematurely,” Dante said. He and Larrimore looked at each other, surprised, then exchanged a chuckle. Dante rubbed his nose and let the new thought he’d had take its course. “What’s so important about the original copy of the
Cycle
, anyway? Aren’t the others just as good?”

“Look,” Larrimore said, flexing his fingers against each other until they popped. “There’s no guide written for what we’re trying to do. At best, we’ve got a rough idea of the procedures involved. It’s important to reduce uncertainties wherever possible.”

“Then why did you leave the book lying around in the first place?”

Larrimore sighed. “We didn’t.”

“Yes, but you thought you had. You locked me up over it. Or don’t you remember that time you locked me in a cell and didn’t feed me for a day?”

“Oh please. You can’t blame us for being suspicious. We weren’t about to take a chance on that.”

Dante bit back his question about why they’d believed him about the fake. Or, he thought queasily, why they’d pretended to. There was something else he needed to know first, something he hadn’t expected to find an answer for when he first sought out Larrimore this day.

“Then how did you lose it in the first place?” he said.

“We didn’t
lose
it. Someone stole it.”

“How?”

“Because he was technically its owner,” Larrimore said, folding his arms and glaring across the room. “A couple decades back, there came a time when the old head of the order was supposed to step down. He didn’t much like that idea, despite his obvious frailty and probable senility, and was even less fond of the idea of Samarand taking his place. After the council forced his ouster, it was found he’d absconded with the book.”

Dante pinched the bridge of his nose. “What was his name?”

“Callimandicus,” Larrimore said. He rolled his eyes. “Needless to say, that’s caused us no end of trouble between then and now.”

“I read somewhere Samarand killed the previous head of the order.” Dante felt as if he were speaking from a point a few feet distant from his body. “That she usurped the position.”

“Hardly. His time was up, figuratively speaking. Though surely he’s with Arawn now. The old bastard had actually fought during the Third Scour.”

“But that would mean even twenty years ago he’d have been a century old!”

“95ish, I think.” Larrimore shrugged, gave Dante an odd look. “This was all before my time, in any event.”

“So what did he do after he left?”

Larrimore laughed to himself. “A lot of intricate but ultimately failed scheming, for the most part. About a year after he ran away he made a rather pathetic attempt to retake control. When that didn’t work, he spent the next four or five years in petty vengeance. Did manage to kill a few of our men, including one who meant something. He disappeared after that last fight. He’s dust and bones by now. If he were still breathing, he’d be trying something even now.”

“I see,” Dante said, groping mentally for the top of his head, which felt like it had floated free at some point in their conversation.

“What’s wrong? You have the look of a drunk lord who’s just discovered he’s shat himself.”

“Perhaps it was something I ate,” Dante said numbly.

“Shall we go for a walk? Cleanse out the blood?”

“Let’s.”

Larrimore was a lively man and he didn’t so much rise from his chair as spring from it. He strolled in the direction of the main hall, passing servants and soldiers rushing about on their business of keeping the castle together, brushing by acolytes and students off on some duty for their instructors. Dante felt their eyes tracking him and Larrimore through the hallways.

“You already have more responsibilities than some men who’ve been with us a year or more, you know,” Larrimore said in a normal tone, not caring who heard.

“I’ve earned it, haven’t I?” Dante said through the screech of his thoughts. Had anything Cally told him been true? How much could he question Larrimore before he betrayed his split interest? What should he be asking now if he were here for no other reason than worshipping Arawn and culling his own power? Did Samarand deserve to die?

“I suppose,” Larrimore said. “You haven’t failed us yet, anyway. I suppose you’re of the school of thought that young men should be allowed to rise until they falter? To ascend like a hawk on an updraft until they can naturally go no higher?”

“That seems fair.”

“Seems fair,” Larrimore laughed. “Then it would be no stretch to assume you think a measured education, promotion through experience rather than raw potential, those are no more than meaningless hoops you have to jump through for the amusement of powerful men.”

“Aren’t they?” Dante said, and he sensed they stood on a peak, that his answers now would determine which way everything else fell. “How close are you to your goal? How badly do you need strong backs to help shoulder the load?”

“We’re close. Very close. Do we really need one more hand to help us shape the nether? Who knows? It would help more to have the book. Failing that, we’re going to need all the aid we can muster.”

“Then stop throwing hoops at me and make me into something that can tip the balance.”

“Indeed.” Larrimore snapped his fingers, looked surprised. “Oh, it didn’t work!” He snapped again, then a third time. He shook his hand at the wrist, scowling at it. “Damn thing seems to have given out.”

Dante stopped mid-stride. He bit his lip, oblivious to the self-inflicted pain, until the metallic taste of blood filled his mouth. He opened the channels of his mind and let the shadows flock through them, calling out through the clear, open pathways Nak had showed him until he could actually see black streaks shooting from the dark places in the room to gather around his hands and at the trail of blood that leaked past his lips. So Cally too had used him and now Larrimore mocked him. Were all men treated this way? Or was it because when they looked on him they still couldn’t see past his unlined, beardless face? They pretended to be wise, but none of these self-important men knew a gods-damned thing. Let Larrimore, at least, look on the full reach of his power.

For a moment Dante didn’t know how he’d make it manifest, simply letting the forces grow until his limbs shook and his blood burnt with a sheer energy he hadn’t felt since he’d strained all his body in the battle to free Blays from the lawmen of Whetton. He saw Larrimore’s natural state of ironic glee melt away, his smile recede until his lips were a taught line, the light of his eyes shift from amusement to alertness, and perhaps to alarm. Dante’s throat felt too tight to swallow. His vision grayed at the edges.
Release it
, Cally would say,
for the love of the gods let it go
. Dante let it burn on until his skin felt ready to peel from his flesh, enjoying every hot second of the pain that held him in its palm. He spread out his arms, as much for the spectacle as for the need, and then he nodded, once, and set the shadows free, not in a focused fire or the bleeding edge that cut people’s flesh, but in a pure sphere of unfiltered force.

It expanded from his body so fast Larrimore was knocked down before he could cry out. It whipped the dust on the floor into billowing clouds. Rugs flapped and spun into the walls. Vases and statues flew sideways from tables like an invisible tablecloth had been yanked from beneath them, smashing on walls, clattering on the ground. Servants and students spun from their feet to land on hands and knees or hard on their backs. The sphere met the walls then, striking so hard it boomed like cliffside surf, like a battering ram swung into a great gate. Dante sunk to his knees, seeing black and white through the slits of his eyes. Then the crash of the nether was gone, replaced by a silence interrupted by the clinks of glass and pottery ringing to rest on the ground, by the slow crackle of stone flaking from the nearest wall, by the light sobbing of the servants and his own ragged breathing.

“How insightful,” he heard Larrimore say, distant as a cloud. The man rolled to his feet and brushed dust from his worn clothes. Around them, the other men who’d been knocked down dragged themselves up and suddenly remembered tasks of calamitous importance, disappearing through doors and around corners. Dante made no move to get up. His whole body tingled as if it were no longer just his but belonged to all the world. His mouth was a loose O of dumb shock and simple exaltation. Larrimore toed a broken shard of glass. “As if we didn’t have enough work already.”

“I don’t need you,” Dante slurred, dreamlike. He laughed, the low, breathy laugh of an idiot.

“Shut up, you clown,” Larrimore muttered. He crossed to the wall and fingered the cracks that had appeared in the stone. “I want you to go to your room and think about what you’ve done. Tomorrow your true purpose begins.”

He’d walked back to his cell in a daze. The world felt as close and translucent as the time he’d been drunk back in Bressel. He lowered himself to his pallet, heavy as a boulder. It was a long time before his thoughts became shapes he could understand or control.

“Cally lied,” he said when Blays showed up after night had fallen.

“He’s pretty old,” Blays said, turning his back and hanging his sword from a peg on the wall. “Maybe he just forgot the truth.”

“Gabe, too. He said Samarand led a coup, killed the old priest.
Cally
was the leader, and the council forced him out, not her. And obviously she didn’t kill him.”

Blays frowned down on him, noncommittal. “Were they both lying? Or was Gabe just repeating the lies Cally’d told him?”

“I don’t know,” Dante said. He stared at the ceiling. “I don’t suppose it matters.”