The Red Sea (30 page)

"Never," she said. "There is nothing like this on our island."

"Can you regrow a new tree from a piece of this one?"

She shut her eyes. Nether flickered around her hands. She shook her head. "This tree. It's dead. I can only Harvest what lives. Or seeds that yearn to."

Blays pointed at the grayed trunk. "Where was the tree that grew the seed for this one? Was it on the main island?"

Sando gritted his teeth. "The other trees, they all died in the tribal wars before the Mallish came. When our people came here, they had a single seed. They used it to grow this Star Tree."

"So we'll search this entire island," Dante said. "There must be a lost seed somewhere."

"We've shown you the tree." Aladi's voice was firm again. "That was our deal. Now go. And tear down the bridge."

"We can't go yet. We still don't have the cure."

"We promised we would show you the answer. There was no promise you would leave with a cure."

"She is right," Sando said. "We showed you our land. Now be gone from it."

Around them, the warriors moved toward their weapons. Frustration pulsed in Dante's veins. At last, he had his answer, but the path had led him to a cliff's edge. Nothing lay below but vacant sea. His hope was wearing thin.

But hope wasn't the only thing being eroded.

"This land," Dante said. "It won't be yours for much longer."

Aladi stepped in close, face inches from his. "Do you threaten us?"

"I'm telling your future. You once had an earth-mover, too. Someone like Loda. That's how your people built this place. Only that sorcerer passed away like the Harvesters."

She slitted her eyes. "How do you know that?"

"Your lagoons. The protective jetties. It's obvious this place was sculpted. Except the Currents are starting to wear it away. You haven't been able to repair what's been damaged."

Aladi stepped back. "Make your point."

"The Currents will devour this place. They'll eat through the rocks and spoil the lagoon. Next, they'll flood your fields. Spearpoint Rock won't last forever."

"Much longer than I will."

"How much longer? Fifty years? A hundred? Surely not a thousand. Look how much wear this place has taken since its creation. Boot us out, if you want. But you're damning your descendants to a miserable end."

"What do you care for them? You only want your cure, yes? So that you can get away from here."

"I can make this place bigger for you. Rebuild your barriers. Just let us search the island."

"And if you make it bigger, then what? It holds a few hundred years longer? What you said, it's true. This island won't last for long."

"Come back to our island," Winden blurted. "
Your
island."

Aladi and Sando exchanged yet another of their looks. Sando turned back to them. "Then we will have it back. All of it. The sons and daughters of Mallon will take the cure—and then they will leave."

Silence fell across the clearing. Dante looked to Winden, but she was staring at the ground.

"There's a minor problem here," Blays said. "We can't make a promise like that. Are you aware of the charming people known as the Tauren?"

Aladi smiled thinly. "We keep watch. We know they make war."

"And their goal—backed by Mallish steel—is to take the whole damned island for themselves. They'll never give it back to you."

"But you would?"

"Sure.
I
don't own the place. If you want, I'll give you all of Mallon, too."

Aladi laughed with genuine happiness. "You are more honest than most. But we need more than hollow words."

"I hate this," Winden whispered. "But I hate what my ancestors did to you more. The Kandeans will leave. Our lands, they're yours."

Around them, the warriors murmured. Sando chuckled and raised a brow at Aladi, who nodded.

Sando reached for Winden's hand. "I have made a decision. You are not a rixen. So perhaps you will deal fairly and honor your bargains."

"What will you have us do?"

"We don't want Kandak. You have made it your own. But we will have our piece of the island. Promise me that you will defeat the Tauren. That you will make it safe for us to return. And I will tell you where you might find another Star Tree."

Winden eyed Dante. "If you want your cure, you will need to help us face the Tauren."

"If that's what it takes?" Dante said. "I'm yours to command."

"It is good to agree." Sando smiled. "Well then. Do you know of Durado?"

"Winden told us the story. He led a rebellion against the Mallish. When that failed, his daughter Eleni brought the Dresh here."

The portly man chuckled. "It is also good to hear their names have lived on. When Durado brought all the peoples together, they found they had much knowledge they thought had been lost. With the help of all the chieftains, Eleni cultivated a plan. They would come here, cure the sickness, and wait for the Mallish invaders to die.

"So they stole the seed—our seed—from where they were kept. No one knew how to grow it, but they brought dreamflowers as well. When they came here, they traveled into the Mists. Spoke to the ancestors. And learned how to grow the seed. Our people no longer had the sickness. But the Mallish refused to die.

"Our people, they were too few. Not enough had the talent to call out to the darkness or the light. To Harvest the trees or the rocks. When our sorcerers died, there were none to take their place. The Star Tree died, and the generations that came after were stricken with sickness. This island, this haven, it became a prison."

Dante licked his lips. "Do you know where Eleni stole the seed from?"

"The First Basket."

"And where is that?"

"You'll soon be on your way there." Sando seemed to find this very funny. "The First Basket—it is within the High Tower of the Tauren."

Blays groaned. "Should have guessed. The object of desire is
always
in the enemy tower."

"How do we know the Tauren haven't used all the seeds?" Dante said. "Or that the Basket is even still there?"

"The Basket remains," Winden said.

Sando shrugged. "The Mallish, they had no idea what the seeds were for. But they knew the tower was of great value. As was the Basket inside it. They preserved everything."

Dante let out a ragged breath. "Yes, but it's been
four hundred years
. Surely someone's done a little spring cleaning since then."

"It might be a long shot," Blays said. "But so what? There are no seeds here. Besides this one, there haven't been any living Star Trees for what, six hundred years? Seems to me this First Basket is the likeliest place to find what we're looking for."

Dante took another look at the dead husk of the tree. "True enough. Then we'll head to the tower."

Sando and Aladi led them back to the village. There, Aladi trekked to one of the houses. She returned with a smooth purple stone that fit in the palm of her hand. One side of the stone was etched with a star. One of its five points wasn't quite closed.

"The Star Tree," she said. "This is what its seeds look like."

"I will find one," Dante said. "And once it's grown, the Dresh will have the cure, too."

They continued back to the bridge Dante had summoned from the heat within the earth. From its edge, it looked as though a god had taken a quill to the map of the world and drawn a line connecting Spearpoint to the main island.

"Stop," Aladi said. "Before you go. You will remove the bridge."

Dante frowned. "Those two acts would be mutually exclusive."

"If you die at the tower, we will fall to the Tauren as well. Erase the bridge. You will take a canoe home."

"How about we cross, and then I get rid of the pathway?"

"Because I don't trust you."

"It's possible to sail," Winden said. "We'll be moving with the Currents, not against them."

"Which means there's only
some
chance we'll be drowned."

It was an unnecessary risk. Dante had the information he needed and had every intention of dismantling the bridge once he was across it. He was tempted to walk right on out of Spearpoint.

It seemed, though, that after centuries of lies, a fragile trust was blooming across the islands. Niles and Winden had shared the secret of the Mallish invaders. The dead woman in the Mists seemed tired of their ancient grudge. Here, the surviving Dresh had given them the key to changing everything. The bloom of trust needed a thoughtful Harvester. Walking out would be safer, but it would stamp the seedling into the dirt.

"Go get the canoe," Dante said. "And I'm going to need more shaden."

Erasing the bridge was a much simpler affair than creating it. All he had to do was soften the stone to mud and let the tides take care of the rest. Even so, he didn't eradicate every inch of the passage. Only the upper ten or fifteen feet of it. More than enough to render it impossible to cross by foot. He made a mental note to inform Captain Naran of this change in the local coastline.

With his work complete, he made his way down to the island's only beach, a strip of sand on the south side of Spearpoint protected from the worst of the Currents. The Dresh's canoe was long and very narrow, with outriggers bracing it to either side.

"I've always known everyone here," Sando said as they climbed aboard. "This is the first time I've ever met a stranger. Or said goodbye to one."

Aladi looked down on them. "What you've seen—keep it safe. If you've been to the Mists, you know there's a hell."

Inside the canoe, Blays stood and bowed to her. "Your secrets will never leave our skulls. Not even if the Tauren crack them open and use them for chowder bowls."

The Dresh helped push the canoe into the water. The currents swirled crazily, threatening to toss them back ashore; the Dresh extended long poles, their tips padded with cloth, and pushed the canoe away. Dante grabbed a paddle and thrashed at the water. Winden and Blays were both considerably more skilled. They directed the boat away from the rocks. As soon as they were out of the island's lee, the canoe straightened and tore south, borne along by the madness of the Current.

"Where are we going?" Dante yelled into the wind. "Joladi?"

Winden gestured along the coast. "This is far faster than our feet. We could be at the High Tower by day's end."

"Is that remotely safe?"

"We just booted the Tauren out of the Dreaming Peaks," Blays said. "How safe do you think we'll be if we try to hoof it across their lands?"

Dante's paddle slushed through the water. "Canoe it is. But if we wreck, I reserve the right to ride your corpse to shore."

Swells jarred them, rocking the outriggers. Spearpoint shrank behind. Ahead, the jagged green cliffs waited to smash them to bits and feed their remains to the crabs. Dante was clumsy with the paddle, but what he lacked in skill, he made up for in terrified enthusiasm.

He soon got into the rhythm of it. The tides pushed them steadily toward the cliffs, but by paddling hard on the same side of the canoe, they kept their distance. Within fifteen minutes, they were rounding the northeast side of the island. There, the Current ran parallel to shore. They pulled in their paddles and rested. The canoe skimmed along. To their right, a massive turtle broke the surface, blinking at them.

Blays watched it pass. "Are we really going to battle the Tauren?"

Dante smiled. "We made a promise, didn't we?"

"Yet for some reason I suspect your other promise carries more weight."

"Which promise is that?"

"The one to yourself to never, ever die."

Dante glanced at Winden. "I'm not sure what we'll do. I know this much: it doesn't make any sense to regrow a Star Tree only to die before we can make use of its fruit."

Winden wiped spray from her face. "You swore an oath."

"And before we came back here, I swore an oath to kill a man named Gladdic. If I die here, I won't exactly be able to fulfill that, will I? So which takes precedence?"

"The one that allows you to leave here and see to your other one."

Dante reached for his oar, meaning to take out his frustration on the waves. "If all of your people aren't enough to take on the Tauren, what difference will the two of us make?"

"There's nothing to say we have to destroy them in battle," Blays said. "It seems to me we've got two other approaches. The first is to cut off the head. Specifically, Vordon's."

"And the second?"

"To cut off the arms. Without Mallish steel, they can't conquer this place."

"Ah yes. Defeating the Tauren is too hard, so we'll take on the entire nation of Mallon instead."

"We don't have to wipe them out, either. Just their interest in the Plagued Islands."

Dante tapped his nails on the paddle. "Winden, when did the Tauren start dealing with the Mallish? Before or after Vordon came to power?"

"During," she said. "Their support was what let him kill his enemies and seize the High Tower."

"If he's dead, do you think his armies will continue to fight?"

"The Tauren, they're very proud. They may keep warring simply to prove Vordon was right."

Blays scratched his neck, which had gone stubbly over the last few days of travel. "If they're that proud, surely some of them are less than pleased to be under the thumb of the Mallish."

"You want to back one of his rivals," Dante said. "Bump off Vordon in exchange for a promise of peace."

"It would sure beat trying to bump off hundreds of troops in the field."

"What do you think, Winden? Feasible?"

"The city of Deladi—this is where the Tauren live—it's ruled by many tolaka."

Dante crinkled his brow. "War-families?"

"They squabble just as much as the name suggests. Very rare that they're united. That's why the Tauren don't rule the island already. There will be cracks in their front."

"Then it's a good thing we're accomplished chisels," Blays said. "I say we go to work on one of these tolaka."

Something the shape of a giant kite was swimming to the right of the canoe, flapping like a bird. Dante watched it pass. "Pulling off a coup could take weeks. Our first goal is getting the Star Tree seeds. Once we've got those out of Deladi, then we'll go to work on throwing a rod into Vordon's wheel of war."

"We need to stop in Kandak." Winden looked at them in distaste. "Your clothes, they're for rixen."

Hurried along by the Currents, it was less than an hour before they looked on the arm of land embracing the Bay of Peace. They took up their oars and paddled hard, drawing the canoe into the calmer waters of the outer bay, then crossed right over the reef. To Dante's relief, Kandak didn't appear to be on fire or otherwise under siege.

They put in at the shore, drawing glances from the fishermen and the shell-divers. Winden led them to a wooden house where a man, a woman, and their many children were beating fibers and stretching out cloth. Dante and Blays were soon kitted out in the short pants and simple shirts favored by the islanders, along with long green garments that were more than a cape and less than a cloak. They were lightweight, but the woman went to great lengths demonstrating how well they kept off the rain. For the final piece, they swapped out their boots for rugged, strap-heavy sandals.

Before they left, Winden asked around about the Dreaming Peaks, but there had been no new developments since their party had struck out for Spearpoint Rock. They returned to the canoe and shoved off, continuing south along the coast. The land ramped up. Waterfalls spilled straight out of the jungle, disintegrating to mist before they reached the sea.

Once they were back in the Currents and relieved of the need to paddle, Dante grilled Winden about Deladi and the High Tower. According to her, the city was the largest on the island. Located on the south coast (which was actually the translation of its name), it was in the lee of the wind, rain, and Currents, making it one of the few places on the island where it was possible to sail around freely.

"During the Dreshi civil wars, Deladi was the capital of the entire island." Winden gazed up at the Dreaming Peaks, which stood so high they looked like they were already a part of the heavens. "That fighting, though, it ruined so much. That must have been when the Star Trees died. The Dresh never recovered. Before that, the Mallish would never have been able to conquer them."

"I've been to many places," Dante said. "The history's the same everywhere. A people rises to greatness. They overreach and get bogged down in wars, or they're stricken by tragedy. And another people cuts them down. Like that, they're lost."

"It's a wonder anybody's alive at all," Blays said. "Sometimes I think the hermits have the right idea." He smiled at Winden. "Then again, if the Mallish had never taken this place, you wouldn't be alive, would you?"

She chuckled uneasily. "I don't think I find that comforting."

The High Tower, she said, predated the Dreshi wars by a few hundred years. A lighthouse and a fortress, the Basket within it rendered it and the city virtually invulnerable to siege. Some claimed the tower had been built during a wager between Loda and Mora to prove which was stronger: mountain or sea. Loda had attempted to raise a peak to pierce the skies, but Mora sent wave after wave into Loda's work, washing it away. At the end of seven days of fighting, Loda relented, but Mora hadn't been able to destroy all her work. The core of Loda's mountain remained: a pillar of stone that the Dresh later shaped into the High Tower.

Dante wasn't so sure about that. He was starting to suspect that some branch of the Narashtovik diaspora had found its way to the Plagued Islands and joined the Dresh. Perhaps the sorcerers had been drawn by Arawn's Mill or tales of the shaden. Or perhaps the Dresh had made all these discoveries on their own. He'd never seen anything like harvesting before, either in person or in his years of research.

The timelines kept matching up, though. It called out to be studied. He wasn't sure when, though. Even if he was able to cure the ronone and topple Vordon, he still had to go take vengeance on Gladdic for the execution of Captain Twill. And after
that
, he surely needed to return to Narashtovik and catch up on whatever had been happening in his absence.

But perhaps he could dispatch a team of monks to the islands. Or carve out time to come back himself. Between the wars, the clash of kingdoms, and the fall of empires, so much knowledge was lost. This tragedy was more than a historical notation. The Dresh had once known how to grow the Star Trees. When that knowledge had been torn up and scattered, it had trapped the islanders here for centuries. It was possible there
were
no more seeds and never would be again. You had to preserve wisdom and history where you found it. Otherwise, the Currents of time and strife would erode it to obscurity.

And if those forces ever grew stronger than those who preserved what had come before, the entire ship of civilization might slip beneath the sea.

They passed below the Dreaming Peaks by early afternoon. After that came the highlands, then Iladi Forest, the jungle where the Boat-Growers made their home. With the Current slackening, they paddled as their stamina allowed. With the sun still three hours from the horizon, the canoe slipped past the hills containing the Bloodfalls.

"When we made this trip overland, it took us a week," Blays said. "And by water, it's less than a day?"

Winden's cheeks flushed. "We still would have had to walk back. Besides, it's as you guessed. Niles wanted you to see the Tauren's crimes. To grow angry enough to wish to fight against them."

"Well, he's going to receive a giant bill from my cobbler."

The coast bent to the right. Following its curve, the canoe was soon headed west. After a bit of jungle, the land cleared out into grasslands of shrubs, with trees clustered around the furrows winding down from the heights. The Current shifted toward the southwest, its speed reduced to a walking pace. Canoes and sailing rigs dotted the blue sea. Villages perched on beaches, the structures a mix of stone and wood.