The Red Sea (23 page)

The candle in his lantern sputtered, then steadied. The lantern's glass was bubbled and unevenly thick. He gazed at it, tears stopping. Everything he could use to write had disappeared. But they'd missed one thing.

He removed the candle from the lantern and set it on the table, then smashed the lantern to the floor. Setting his parchment beside him, he picked up a large triangular shard and pressed it to the back of his arm. Blood welled from the wound. He dabbed his finger in it, intending to scrawl his message to himself in crimson.

Shadows flicked from the corners of the room, coating his hand. As they touched him, he remembered. He looked up. Tod stood before him, mouth agape.

"My dad didn't go west," Dante said. "He went south. Toward the sea."

"You can't go south. Past the meadow is the Racing Woods. You can't enter it at anything less than a run. It's miles and miles across. And if you slow down, even for a second, you'll be spit back out to wherever you started your day."

"My father must have made it through."

"He had a horse to carry him across the forest. You'll never make it on two legs."

"I have to try."

Tod reached out his hand. "At least wait until morning. It's too dark, and you've broken your lantern."

Dante looked at him a long moment, then nodded. "Okay. Don't worry about the lantern. I'll clean it up."

Tod kept watch on him as he swept up the broken glass and dumped it into a bucket. As he finished, Dante picked up two small slivers, tucking one between his fingers and dropping the other into the bucket so it would make a sound. Back in his room, he cut himself again, and wrote himself a note in blood.

When he woke, it was still there on his table. He went outside. The full moon peered from the morning sky. Tod brought him his drink and his food.

"Well," the monk said. "Ready to return to
Soaring Vale
?"

"I'm going south," Dante said. "Into the forest."

"I'd forgotten all about that. Just be careful."

Dante walked out of the yard and into the meadow. It was a long ways to the forest, but he had to save his strength. Crickets chirped from the grass. Doves called sadly. Flies buzzed. The forest rose ahead. He stopped at its edge, took four deep breaths, and jogged into it.

The noise of bugs and animals faded behind him. Within a minute, he could hear nothing but the wind in the trees and the rasp of his boots in the fallen leaves. He saw no squirrels, mice, or spiderwebs. He was the only living creature in the Racing Woods.

Tod had said the forest was miles across, but Dante was fit from so many days of hiking and exploring. A path ran south, firm and mostly clear. Good for running. Five minutes in, and he was barely breathing any harder. After ten, he'd crossed at least a mile and he still felt good.

His heart beat faster. A stitch started in his side, hurting worse by the moment. A hundred yards ahead, an oak tree leaned over the trail. He promised himself he'd stop when he reached it. He passed it and kept running, telling himself he'd stop at the stand of birches ahead. He meant to trick himself again, to keep on going like that until he was through the entire forest, but his side hurt too badly. He grimaced, slowing.

Around him, the woods warped. Light flashed.

He was in his bed. He threw off the sheets. Out on the porch, the moon was still out, but it had climbed higher; it was still the same day. He felt exhausted.

"So?" Tod said. "How far did you get?"

"It's hard to tell," Dante said. "But it had to be two miles."

"It's at least twenty! You'll never make it through. You should look for the key."

"I could search forever and never find it. Besides, I don't have to cross the forest tomorrow or the day after. I just have to make it a little further each time. Until I make it to the other side."

Tod looked skeptical. "Well, you can't go back today. It'll kick you right back out. So we might as well read, hm?"

He agreed. He fell asleep early and slept straight past dawn. In the morning, he ate, drank, and went back to the forest. This time, he ran more slowly, pacing himself. By the time he reached the oak, he was breathing hard, but he felt good enough to keep going. He made it past the birches. His legs were so tired. When he reached an outcrop of limestone, he stopped.

The warp of the forest. The flash of light. And he was back in his bed. Too tired to get up, he fell back asleep, drenched in sweat.

The next day, he made it past the outcrop. The day after that, he made it at least another half mile, all the way to a burbling stream. The morning after that, though, he hadn't even gotten to the outcrop before a stitch stopped him short. Before he knew it, he was thrust home to bed. He lay there, miserable at his failure, then went out to see the monk.

"This is foolish." Tod did nothing to hide his peevishness. "He'll be back in time. Why don't we go swimming at the falls? You used to like that."

"I have to keep searching."

The following day, with his only audience the man-in-the-moon smiling overhead, Dante ran all the way to the stream and kept on going for another two miles. The day after that, he barely made it as far, but he'd reached a new peak. By week's end, he could run for a full hour without stopping.

Each day, he ran further and further: sometimes no more than an extra hundred yards, but sometimes as much as a mile. His heels were callused, his legs lean. He reached ninety minutes straight. Then two hours. Then three. And one day, he ran on and on, breathing calmly all the way, with no aches or weakness in his legs. The disc of the moon slipped behind the trees to the west. He kept going. The sunlight grew more and more yellow, then red. He kept going. It sank away and the forest turned blue and gray.

He kept going.

Full night. There were still no crickets. No owls. Only the thump of his feet on the trail. The Racing Woods were even wider than Tod knew, but it didn't matter. Because Dante could run forever.

The night was cool and windless. It seemed to pass in no more than two hours. With the coming dawn shading the world gray, the land sloped up. It was the first change in elevation he'd encountered on his entire run. Around him, the trees thinned. A smile broke across his face. The ground leveled. He ran free of the woods.

And found himself in the yard outside the house. The moon hung in the sky like a stone. Tod wandered onto the front porch, cup of smallbeer in hand.

Dante stopped, sank to his knees, and wailed until he passed out.

When he woke, he was in bed and it was three days later. Tod entered the room and patted his knee. "Are you okay?"

"It's over," Dante said. "I'll never find him."

"Now, that's not true."

"I ran all the way through the forest. And wound up right back here. I know he went south. If I can't go that way, then there's nothing I can do."

"Not so." The monk's eyes twinkled. "I found something while you were out." He extended the first two fingers of his right hand. Between them, he held a golden key. "Want to give it a try?"

Fresh hope rose in Dante's chest. They went outside to the staircase down to the basement. There, a long, narrow chest sat in the middle of the floor. Dante put the key into the lock. It fit. Tumblers clicked. He opened the chest. A brilliant steel sword rested on a bed of red velvet.

"Go ahead," Tod said. "Pick it up."

He seemed very eager. For Dante to move on? Or for him to forget what he'd just been through? He reached for the sword. There was something else in the box: a shadow coiled around the blade. Tod didn't seem to be able to see it.

Show me
, Dante willed it.
Show me the way
.

The shadow fell into the sword. The blade shortened by three inches. The ends of the crossbar curled into little balls. He knew this sword, didn't he? It wasn't his, or his father's. Instead, it had once belonged to a friend of his. A friend whose father had died when he was a child.

"I remember now." He closed the chest. "He's gone."

Tod screwed up his face. "Well yes. That's why you need to pick up this sword. So you can go slay the wolf. And start the business of finding him."

"And after the wolf, there will be a bear. Or a bad man. Or I'll have to find a shield next. It will never end. Because he's gone."

"You can't say that. Or he
will
be."

Dante slowly shook his head. "He already is. No matter how long I go on searching, I'll never find him. I'll just be wasting my life reaching for something I can never touch."

Tod's face went as cold as a tomb. "You could have been happy. It's in your blood to try to climb heights you can never attain." He moved forward, looming over Dante. "I can make you forget. You can read. And explore. And search. Forever."

"I can't do that. Because it's also in my blood to know the truth. No matter how much it hurts."

He turned his back on the monk and climbed up the stairs from the basement. Halfway up, the steps shot upward, expanding for hundreds of feet. The exit was a pinhole of light. He turned around, but there was nothing behind him. He climbed on. There was no sound but the thump of his boots on the treads.

The light ahead brightened, expanded. A cold wind rolled down the stairs. The light beyond the doorway was too bright to make out anything on the other side. He stepped out.

He stood in a white valley. Mist flowed to all sides, blocking out the sky. To his left, a gap looked down on the craggy crown of a mountain, black rock capped with snow. To his right, and hundreds of feet above him, another gap looked up on a wind-tossed sea. Struck by vertigo, Dante staggered back a step, holding up a hand as if to stop the onrushing upside-down tide.

He was disoriented by more than just the ocean in the sky. He was a grown man again. And he remembered.

He turned in a circle, taking in his surroundings. Figures walked toward him, silhouettes in the blowing mist. Dante reached for the nether. Nothing came. Heart racing, he drew his sword.

"About time you showed up," Blays said. His cloak billowed behind him like the hero from an old poem. "Now what say we go grab us a ghost?"

Dante ran his hand down his face. "It felt like I was in there for months. How long did you have to wait?"

"Er," Blays said. "Well, apparently you don't have to sleep here. Unless you want to. And there doesn't appear to be a sun. Not one that moves, anyway. Also, time's kind of funny here. So…"

"So the answer is you have no idea."

"Approximately two relative days," Niles said. "Long enough for the three of us to figure out where we're going next."

Dante folded his arms. "Why did you have to figure that out?"

"Do you think the afterworld has maps? The geography of this realm is no more fixed than its sense of time."

"But don't worry," Blays said. "Time goes a lot faster here than for our bodies back in the real world. So we probably haven't pissed ourselves yet."

Dante continued to hold Niles' gaze. He'd spared the man's life, but the decision had done little to quell Dante's anger with him. "You spoke like you'd been here before."

"Years and years ago," the older man said. "They don't like us to come here. The Dreamers spend years building up enough trust to get the deceased to talk to them. If I'd visited more often, I would have disrupted their work."

"I don't suppose we could go back to Kandak and find someone with more experience to guide us."

"We may be able to do that. Though if word gets out that we've let you come here, they'll tie rocks around our ankles and toss us in the bay. So we can risk that, if you like. Or we can move our damn feet and get underway."

Anger spiked up Dante's spine. "Let's move, then. The sooner we find the cure, the sooner I can leave your wretched island."

Wordless, Niles turned and walked ahead. Their movement stirred the fog, revealing bare black rock with one step, spongy green grass with another, and inch-deep tide pools with the next. In such a place, it was hard for Dante to care about Niles' deceit. For years, he'd wondered about what lay beyond the mortal realm. Now, he walked in that place.

"This is much different than what's described in the
Cycle of Arawn
," he murmured.

"Your accounts may not be wrong," Niles said. "This place seems to be for the island alone."

Buffeting winds tugged at the mists, revealing glimpses of palms and pod trees, then soaring, knife-like green cliffs. The air had been a neutral temperature, odorless, but it began to warm. On occasion, Dante smelled the briny tang of the sea, or the pleasant scent of sunlight on leaves.

"So," Blays said. "What was so fascinating about the Pastlands that you had to stay there for months?"

Dante stepped over a thick root that didn't appear to be connected to anything else. "Mostly the fact that I could hardly remember that the socks go on your feet and not your hands. Let alone that I was adrift in a dreamworld."

"What did they show you, then?"

Dante was about to give a glib answer about visions of short dresses and high winds, but something stopped him. The Mists were, as far as he could tell, as real-feeling as reality, with none of the swimminess or fuzziness that came with normal dreams or his time in the Pastlands. Yet despite the clarity of the Mists, there seemed to be something about the place that compelled him to be more truthful. Less hidden. Separated from his life, the cares of that place seemed less real.

He explained how his father had sailed off on a journey to find his mother. How Tod the monk had looked after him, but seemed to be trying to keep him stuck there. And how, after a long search for Larsin, Dante had realized there was no finding him, and had finally been able to step out of the trap.

"Huh," Blays said. "Was this the same monk who raised you?"

Dante shook his head. "Not exactly. It was a lot like a dream. Some things were true, but others were more like wishes or fears. What about you? What did you see?"

"I was a kid running around in the hills saving smaller kids from trouble," Blays said. "Same as the last time I died."

Niles led them onward. After several seconds, Winden spoke up. "I was with the Tauren. I was a great warrior, but I'd lost my way. I had to find it again. And lead my people to honor."

Blays made a thoughtful noise. "Your big dream was to be a member of the Tauren? You mean the guys who drop babies off by the riverside to fend for themselves? I'm afraid you just lost my support for mayor."

"You don't understand," Winden said. "I
was
one of those babies. The Kandeans took me in."

"Aha. Dante, you're quite the physician, aren't you? Don't suppose you know any way to remove the foot I've lodged in my gullet?"

"That place seems to be about fixing the parts of us we wish were better," Dante said. "But you have nothing to be ashamed of, Winden. You're one of the Kandeans. You bear no blame for anything the Tauren do."

"It's one thing to know that," she said. "It's another thing to feel it."

They walked on. Dante gazed at Niles. "And what about you?"

Niles didn't look his way. "I was back with Larsin. In the days when we united the island against the Tauren. When we were brothers."

He didn't seem inclined to go on. Soon, the path descended. The air warmed further. The crash of waves sounded from afar.

Blays craned his neck at a tree floating high in the sky and upside down. "Place is a bit quiet, isn't it? What happened to the millions of dead people?

"Most have passed out of the Mists," Niles said. "To the deep place Dreamers can't go. We call it the Worldsea."

"Do the gods ever come here?" Dante said.

"Not that I'm aware of. Though who can say what happens beyond."

Dante had any number of other questions, but Niles knew very little beyond the basics. From what he could gather, the Mists were a sort of waiting room between the Pastlands (where people usually forgot they were dead) and the Worldsea (where, from the sound of it, people forgot they'd ever been alive). The Mists were a sort of conscious and collective dream where people could play out lives similar to the real world, but with fewer restraints. According to Niles, most of the dead got restless and moved on within a few years or decades, but some—like the massacred, grudge-holding Dresh—lingered far longer.

While Dante was still trying to tease all this out, the fog thinned. A green meadow spread before them, leading to a beach of dark purple sand. Houses of black stone hugged the shore, their open walls screened by sheets of lightweight cloth. Canoes bobbed on the turquoise sea. Further out, small round islands sprung from the water, domed like mushroom caps.

A few hundred people scattered the fields, the beach, and the water. Some were up to nothing obvious, but others hacked at plants, scraped canoes, or cast lines into the water.

Blays squinted. "How odd. These people appear to be
working
."

"Working makes people feel useful," Dante said. "I expect those with no interest in it soon move on to the Worldsea."

"Well, when I die, I hope I have the good sense to travel to Hammockland."

"Time to cut the chatter," Niles said softly. "We won't be welcome here."

They entered a field of san, the long green stalks rising from shallow pools. A hundred feet away, a man poked at the roots with a narrow wooden shovel, dislodging the plants and tossing them up onto the bank.

Seeing the four of them, he stood and stared. His skin was the same medium brown as the people on the Plagued Islands, but while most of the living had blue, green, or gray eyes—signs of Mallish stock—this man's were a light brown. His features were smaller, too, except for his jaw, which was more angular. Niles nodded to him. The man turned and walked toward the shore.

Without exchanging a single word, the people in the field followed him. Those along the path joined the flow. By the time Dante and the others reached the village of stone structures, it was deserted.

"We're off to a great start, Niles," Dante said. "What's your next suggestion? Set their houses on fire?"

Niles' brows lowered. "I'm doing the best I can."

To their left, an old woman approached along the sand, supporting her weight on a gnarled cane. Her back was bent like the claws of the bright orange parrot that sat on her shoulder. Her face was heavily wrinkled, but her eyes were lively, contrasting with her utterly plain clothes. She stopped in front of them. Her expression was lightly amused. Closer up, her face appeared to be perfectly symmetrical, right down to the crinkles around her eyes and mouth. She too was small-featured and sharp-jawed. One of the Dresh.

Niles bowed his head. "Good morning."

"Is it?" she said. "What are you doing here?"

Dante stepped forward. "We'd like to speak to your leader, if we could."

The woman glanced at her parrot, as if sharing a joke. "You're troubling my people. Leave us, please."

"We would never have disturbed you if it weren't absolutely vital. If you'll let us speak to whoever's in charge here, we won't trouble anyone else."

Her smile waned. "I ask a second time: leave us."

"All we need is ten minutes of—"

The old woman's eyes expanded like pools of oil. Her irises were light brown, overlaid by a braid of darker lines. Dante felt as if he were falling into her pupils, that they were growing and growing until they'd swallow everything: the round little islands, the san fields, the fogs—

He splashed down into water, plunging below the surface. He thrashed, choking. Salt slipped down his throat. Somehow, he broke into the open, coughing up fluid. The other three bobbed beside him in a calm, warm sea. Banks of clouds surrounded them on all sides.

"Help!" Dante yelled, pawing at the water, dragged down by his boots, sword, and pack, all of which had accompanied him into the world beyond. "I'm sinking!"

"Oh, for gods' sake." Blays grabbed his arm and steadied him. "Just move your arms and legs. It's salt water. You have to
try
to drown."

"Will yourself to float," Winden said.

Dante calmed his motions, paddling steadily. "What do you mean, will myself?"

"The people who stay here have agreed on the same laws of nature we're used to. But these laws, they'll bend. All you have to do is want them to."

He focused his mind on staying above the water. He rose several inches. After a few moments, he found he hardly had to paddle at all. "What just happened?"

"Same principle," Niles said. "The old woman willed us away."

"Let me get this straight. If someone's bothering you, all you have to do is wish it, and they'll drop right into the ocean?"

"Aye, that's right. When we return to the village, we'll have to will ourselves to stay, or she'll do this again."

Dante slicked the hair from his face. "Can you will someone to die?"

"We're already in the land of the dead. There's no second death."

"But can the dead will us out of the Mists?"

Niles blew his nose into the water. "I don't think that works. The only way we'll leave is if we fall asleep. It'll still take time for the drug to wear off, but we'll pop back into our bodies next thing we know."

Blays screwed up his face. "Can you will someone into a volcano? Or a pit of snakes?"

"Conceivably."

"And keep them there forever?"

Niles glanced at Winden. Winden said, "To keep you in such a place, no one could do that by themselves. To overcome your will to such an extreme would require the focus of hundreds of people."

"Holy shit. Then it is possible?"

"To keep you there, those hundreds of people would have to constantly think of it, and nothing else. They would share the same hell they put you in. It would never last for long."

Blays treaded water with casual skill. "Well, if it's a pit of snakes, any amount of time is long enough."

Dante glanced up, but the fog was so thick he couldn't even find the sun. "How do we get out of here?"

"It's just as we've been discussing," Niles said. "We will ourselves forward. Back to the town."

"Well, why didn't you say so?" He closed his eyes and imaged the village of stone buildings. When he opened his eyes, nothing had changed. "One flaw: I'm useless."

Winden touched his arm. "This willing, it's easiest to pair it with physical motion. Moving the body helps the mind to understand."

Dante exhaled, chose a random direction, and started swimming, concentrating on keeping his head above water. When this proved simple enough, he began to think about the town. The islands. The pale blue water. He swept forward, crying out in surprise as he gained speed, a chevron of water spraying away from his chest.

Blays drifted up beside him, stroking cleanly through the neutral water. "This," he said between breaths, "is a very strange place."

Niles and Winden matched their pace. Within minutes, the fog thinned. A blue hump of land materialized ahead, resolving by the second. Dante soon found himself wading through the shallow breakers onto purple sands. The town was less than a quarter mile to the north.

"I envisioned the town," he said. "But we wound up outside it. Because they don't want us there?"

Niles grunted. "Keep your mind on staying put."

"And if the whole town comes for us?"

"Then focus on running as fast as you can. And this time, let me do the talking. Don't you realize the old woman
was
the chieftain?"

Dante went red. He'd been so annoyed with Niles' presence and awed by the strangeness of the Mists that he'd been acting like a fool. He had to settle down. To let Niles take the lead. The older man was already walking north, shedding water from his clothes with each step. Dante fell in behind him, willing the water to leave his sopping shirt and trousers. It obeyed, leaving a damp trail in his wake.

The town remained deserted. There were no longer any canoes in the shallows between the islands. As they neared, a middle-aged Dresh woman walked toward them, dimpling the sand with a tall walking staff. A golden-furred monkey loped along beside her, regarding the four of them with human suspicion.