The scarred man waved the point of his ponderous sword at knee-level, as if it were too heavy to lift without great cause. "Strangers who come to the Clan of the Nine Pines are required to leave as ash on the wind."
A dozen norren lifted their weapons. Further back among the trees, others nocked arrows, sighting down the shafts.
"Why does everything have to be a fight with you?" Blays said sidelong. He bared his teeth and raised his blades. Dante summoned the nether to him in a great and hungry rush.
For months, he had spent his free hours practicing the creation of lights and illusions—bending the nether into gigantic patterns, letters, and symbols that could be seen and interpreted from miles away. If some of Narashtovik's priests and monks were placed along the border, they could fling up the signs at the first sight of Gaskan troops. Other scouts could then recreate the signs with fires and mirrors, passing the information deeper and deeper into the territories. Enough of these signalmen in the right locations, and in the span of hours, crucial news could be transmitted hundreds of miles to Narashtovik and the territories. Those in the path of the coming storm would be given precious extra days of warning.
This was the theory. In practice, men and women able to bend the energy of ether and nether were somewhat too rare to exile to mountaintops across the countryside. Yet the potential of this notion compelled Dante to look past the impracticalities, and he'd spent many nights, when he wasn't too bone-tired to do anything at all, turning the darkness of the nether inside-out, painting the air with blazing red letters spelling "BLAYS IS DUMB" or with crude animations of the blond man getting repeatedly whacked on the head by a succession of hammers. It was a challenging task, more subtle than skewering an enemy with a sudden spike of raw energy, and at first his concentration had been unable to sustain a moving image with any level of clarity for more than scant seconds. Yet he kept at it. Recently, he'd been able to illustrate whole (if short) stories above his head while grinning norren bards chanted the poems his pictures matched.
He hoped it would be enough.
With the clan's warriors closing in, he dispelled the creature that had dogged Mourn for two straight days. A light bloomed amidst the darkened treetops. The norren tipped back their heads, eyes narrowed. At first the image in the sky was nothing more than simple color, silvery yet soft to the eye, but it quickly took on the shape of a young boy: black-haired, blue-eyed, his features, even at the age of five, sharp enough to skin a pear.
High in the air, the glowing boy toddled through windy fields, overturning rocks at the edges of streams. By candlelight, a middle-aged man wearing a cassock and a kindly if impatient smile ran his finger along lines from a book of fairy stories. The next moment, the boy grew chest-high on the man, reciting unheard words from a book three times thicker. The boy grew taller yet; his dark hair flowed from his head, lengthening until it suddenly queued behind his head. By night, he walked down an overgrown lane—around him, green outlines suggested dense trees—where, in the basement of a ruined temple, he found a black book whose cover bore a stark white tree.
The image shifted again; the young man sat at a library table, reading and rereading the book's opening pages. The scene leapt to a city street, cobbles and a flickering torch. A blond-haired boy stood beside the black-haired one, sword drawn against two armed and faceless men. The dark-haired boy, face twisted in terror, threw up his hand in a theatrical gesture. The group disappeared in a globe of darkness. When the scene returned to light, the two attackers lay dead.
The images came fast—an old man lecturing the young man from inside a tomb, the blond boy with a noose around his neck, then racing away on horseback. The two boys riding north through the outlines of snowy mountains. Arriving at Narashtovik, the dead city, a sketch of ruins and a high citadel at its center. A stark-faced woman lectured from a cathedral podium; at the fringes of the crowd, the boys failed to fire their bows. But then they were inside the citadel where the woman lived and ruled; and then stood on a snowy march with her priests and soldiers, who battled rebels in a dark wood before arriving beneath the boughs of a monstrous white tree, its heavy limbs grown of sleek and solid bone.
Light flashed beneath the tree; chanting faces summoned a black door; the old man reappeared in a scrum of bloody chaos. When it cleared, the woman was dead alongside dozens of others. The image pushed in on the dark-haired boy's face, closer and closer, his blue eyes frozen on something far away, more cold and forlorn than that icy hill.
He meant to do more—their return to the hills of the territories, the grain they'd delivered to the village on Clearlake Hill, their pursuit of the men who'd slaughtered a norren wagon train—but his strength faltered. The illusion vanished. Dante dropped to one knee, panting. The norren looked down, blinking. Several dropped back a step.
"There," Dante said. "We're no longer strangers."
The scarred man glanced at the orange-eyed woman, then back to Dante. "Can you do more than find loopholes and paint pretty pictures?"
"Yes." Dante let out a shaking breath; his head throbbed, overwhelmed. He blinked the blurriness from his blue eyes, swept sweaty black hair from his forehead. "Come at me, and I'll reduce you to the Clan of the Three or Four Pines before you bring me down."
The woman gave the scarred man a small nod. "Why don't we take a walk to camp."
They led the way, distancing themselves to speak in soft, rumbling tones. Blays elbowed him in the ribs.
"I look much better than that."
"At least I omitted the warts," Dante said.
"Did you actually think that would have any chance of working?"
"It seemed smarter than fighting. I don't think a dead body can tell me where its bow is no matter how long I yell at it."
Leaves crunched underfoot, smelling of sap and must. The afterimage of his work lingered in Dante's eyes, silvery flecks that flashed whenever he blinked. A pair of norren followed them on either side, two more at their back. Blays did nothing to disguise his stare. The norren paid them no mind. Woodsmoke sifted through the budding branches.
They were directed to a patch of clear, bare earth not far from where the lake lapped softly on the muddy shore. The scarred man was named Orlen, the orange-eyed woman Vee. They disappeared inside a leather yurt to continue their conversation while Arlo, the young norren who'd detained Dante and Blays in the woods, brought out fried trout and raw greens. Blays swallowed the crackly tail, then dug into the sweet, steaming white meat with bare fingers, plucking out ribs.
"This entire trip is now worth it," he declared. "Even if we die, my ghost will agree."
Dante dug his thumbnail against the scraps of green onion in his teeth. "I think we've reached the point where if they wanted to kill us, they'd kill us."
"Maybe we're being fattened."
"They're nomads, not cannibals."
"Maybe they're branching out."
Around them, the norren ate their own meals, stopping at the end to rip off the heads of cooked fish to suck out the eyes, then flinging the bony remainder into the lake.
"Imagine those fish are you," Dante said.
Orlen and Vee emerged from the yurt and approached the main bonfire. Without a word, ten others joined them. The rest of the clan didn't look up, continuing to pick their teeth with fish bones and mend the nets they'd pulled from the lake. Dante raised his brows at Blays and joined the norren at the welcome heat of the bonfire. Orlen stared at them without blinking, even when the shifting wind drove stinging smoke into his eyes.
"I don't know what you've heard about us," the scarred chieftain said finally. "Likely you have heard several things. When a thing is unknown like our clan, people will rush to fill the void of knowledge with whatever stories they like best."
"We understand you want the same thing we do," Dante said. "An independent norren state free of tribute to or dependence on the nation of Gask."
"Vague enough to be a diplomat," Vee said. "Watch out for his promises."
Dante scowled over the fire. "We know your clan has a long history of resistance against the capital. That's all we
know
. We've heard you possess a weapon called the Quivering Bow. If it does what rumor says it does, I think it could be a critical piece in forestalling a war—or in winning one, if the nobles at Setteven decide they've had enough of what's gone on down here."
Orlen inclined his head. "The bow. Yes."
"Then it's real?"
"It has been a relic of the Clan of the Nine Pines for so long none of us actually knows how we got it."
Vee folded her large hands. "Perhaps it was strung with the guts of patriarch Boh's first son. Or maybe we stole it from lesser people who weren't worthy of it."
Dante's head tingled. "It can do what its name says, then. Shake down walls."
"If you know how to use it," Orlen said. "And if you will use it to help free our people, you may have it, because what greater purpose could it serve? But there is a problem with it."
"Not an insurmountable problem," Vee added. "It is not like the problem of why we are born only to suffer and die."
"Really, a rather minor problem. A dim constellation in the vast starscape of all that is wrong."
Blays pressed the heels of his hands to his forehead. "Have you ever considered this problem only exists because you're too busy talking about it to solve it?"
"You see," Orlen said, "we don't know where it is."
2
"I see," Blays said. "Do you remember where you put it last?"
Orlen narrowed his eyes. Smoke rose from the fire in white walls, screening the stars. "In the hands of a Gaskan lord."
"What!" Dante said.
"It was taken, along with every member of our cousins the Clan of the Green Lake, some weeks ago. When was that, Vee?"
Vee tapped her hairless chin. "Three weeks ago. That was when we found the lake-crabs, remember? On the way back from finding the bodies of our clan-cousins. The empty yurts. The wailing young who'd hidden in the woods."
"Oh yes, the crabs. You do not often find the lake-crabs. I had begun to think they had all died out, or at least moved to another lake."
Dante pressed his fist against his lips, waiting for his anger to subside enough to open his mouth. "If the Quivering Bow has been taken, I pledge our immediate support to getting it back."
Blays cocked his head. "I call foul on that pledge.
My
support is thoroughly undecided."
"If that bow has fallen into enemy hands—"
"Yes, yes, then we'll all spend our next Falmac's Eve watching the bunny races in hell. I'd like to at least know why the clan hasn't already gone after the bow—and their cousins or whoever—before promising we'll do what they won't." He glanced at Orlen. "No offense."
"None taken," the man said. "We were simply waiting on the word of Josun Joh."
"Josun Joh?"
"As in the god," Dante said.
"Oh," Blays said. "
That
Josun Joh."
"He looks out for the people, shows them the way when they're lost. Despite only having one eye."
Orlen nodded. "He lost it in a bet. Over whether he could put out his own eye."
"I thought it was to use it as bait to finally catch Sansanomman, the eternal catfish," Vee frowned.
"That doesn't make any sense."
"You say you
were
waiting?" Dante cut in.
"Today, Josun Joh spoke to me," Orlen said. "Tomorrow, we move."
"Then I'd like to come with you. I can't speak for my friend."
The two norren leaders exchanged an unreadable glance. Orlen considered the fire. "Josun Joh said we'd find an unexpected and powerful ally. If you help us recover our cousin-clan, you may have the Quivering Bow."
Dante extended his hand. "Agreed."
"Good." Orlen waved his thick hand. "Now please leave the fire and go to your tent. Outsiders aren't allowed here."
Dante forced his eyes not to roll. He stood. "I understand."
Mourn appeared beside the fire. "Your yurt's over here. It doesn't smell very good."
He was right. Inside the deer-leather tent, its fluffy cloth padding smelled musty and faintly fishy, conditions made worse by the fact it was notably warmer than the outside air. Dante conjured a soft white light to illuminate the bare interior. Blays slung out his blanket and sat down with a sigh.
"This whole thing could be a wild goose chase, you know. And I don't see how a wild goose is going to do any good if the Territories get invaded."
Dante licked his thumb and smudged away the black fringes of the fresh scab on his hand. "Even if we don't come out of it with a weapon of awful power, rescuing their cousins will only strengthen one of the nastiest fighting units in the entire region. It's the opportunity to put down a group of norren-slavers, too. How is there any downside?"
"First, we don't know the timescale. Second, if Cally needs to reach us, he may as well shout up his own ass for all the good it'll do him."
"Since when did you care about what Cally wants?"
"It's not Cally I'm concerned about." Blays gestured at the wilds beyond the yurt wall. "My worshippers will have a tough time reaching my grave if I'm struck dead in some stupid forest."
"A long trek will just prove the purity of their faith."
"True enough. Make it a tasteful marker, though. No more than twenty statues of weeping women."
Dante woke in the predawn darkness to the sound of feet squelching in the mud. He brought the nether to his hands, lying silent, until he remembered he was among a strange but hospitable people. He had been dreaming of walking through a forest like this one, but beneath the layer of leaves and grass lurked a gaping abyss, and his feet kept plunging into the open nothing, exposing them to the unseen and unknown beings lurking beneath.
Outside, looming silhouettes stalked the shoreline, rolling up yurts and drawing in the nets. Others knelt beside flat rocks, spread cloths to soak up any dew, and smoothed yellow parchment atop the cloths, preparing for the dawn light considered best for their stark line-paintings. Smoked fish carried on the cold breeze. When Dante returned from relieving himself, Mourn waited by the tent. He had clearly been designated the go-between, the buffer between the strangers and the tight circle of the clan.