The Red Sea (9 page)

"Really? Because it looks like they're keeping them unconscious."

"Those people? They're the luckiest ones on the island."

"Here's my question," Blays said. "Why'd we have to use shells to bribe our way through? The way those guys are snoozing, we could have cartwheeled through here and they'd never have known."

She glanced around them, but they were alone again. "I don't know why I'm telling you this. Where we go when we die. Do you remember what I said?"

"Despite trying very hard not to."

"The Dreamers. When they eat the flower, they sink deeper than sleep. To the brink of death. Once they are there, they fight to rescue those who Kaval damned to be torn by the birds and the crabs."

"They're saving souls?" Blays said. "How does Kaval feel about their efforts to defy his will?"

Winden shrugged. "The Dreamers, most spend their lives here. Some die without saving a single one of the damned. Even Kaval respects their dedication. For us? There is no higher calling than to free those who have been burdened. That is why we bring the shells. Shaden treats the poison they take in order to enter the Dream. They do our holiest work. It is our duty to support them."

A cold wind ran down from the peak. Dante tugged up his collar. "What was the old woman saying? 'He forgives'?"

"Kaval must have freed one of the damned. A rare event."

"Do they ever visit the dead? Speak to them?"

"So they say." She stepped around a length of masonry that had fallen across the unpaved road. "For what the Dreamers do, the Tauren leave them alone. But the monk I spoke to said the raiders have been more active than ever. We'll have to be far more careful from now on."

The land before them widened out. To their right, a stream cut down from the cloud-swept mountain, gashing a frothy, white channel eastward, then spilling over the cliffs. A wooden bridge spanned the roiling waters. Within minutes of crossing it, they were back in the wilderness, with no sign the island had ever contained anything else.

* * *

As they descended the southern face of the Dreaming Peaks, Dante got a clear look at the way ahead. The island, as far as he could make out—and Winden confirmed this—was essentially two land masses, bridged by the peaks. The southern lobe was roughly circular, with jungle on its higher east side, savannah on the lower central regions where the Tauren held sway, and a scrubby desert on its west.

The molbry flowers grew in the lower elevations of the southeast jungle. Particularly around a formation called the Bloodfalls, which Dante dearly hoped was just a historical name. Winden set a relentless pace, breaking from the jungle wherever possible to strike out across the grassy middle of the southlands. When questioned, she seemed less worried about them missing their return trip on the
Sword of the South
and more concerned that Larsin Galand wouldn't survive to see their return.

To try to save two days, she intended to stop in to see the Shigur, who lived on the way to the Bloodfalls and might have the molbry flowers on hand. On the way, she continued to teach Dante the Taurish language. Once, they saw white smoke pluming from the coast where the Tauren held a village under siege. After that, Dante used the nether to kill a handful of jungle rodents (rats with long, powerful back legs like jackrabbits), then used the shadows to revive them, bonding his eyes to theirs. He sent them loping ahead to scout for Tauren warriors. A part of him wanted to recruit some of the four-handed, golden-furred tree creatures—Winden claimed they were a species of monkey—but he couldn't bring himself to hurt them.

On the second day, his undead scouts spied three men in the jungle carrying bows and spears. Long bone daggers hung from their hips, curved like scythes, serrated on one edge. When he described these to Winden, she identified them as coming from sawteeth, a species of shark that swam around with their mouths always open. Along with these, the warriors wore dark hoods. Winden said they were wandren, people attached to no particular clan or settlement who roamed the island as traders. In desperate times, they often turned criminal or sold their services to raiders. Wary of being betrayed to the Tauren, Winden cut a wide berth around them.

The morning of the third day, as their jungle trek continued, they came before a matted wall of branches and thorns eight feet high. Red-striped hornets as big as Dante's thumb lumbered between the flowers growing from the kudzu. They diverted around it. Dante sent his rat scouts bounding ahead. Five minutes later, he still hadn't found a gap in the growth, but for some reason, Winden was smiling.

"What are you so happy about?" Dante said. "The fortress of thorns in our way? Or the kitten-sized wasps guarding it?"

She gestured at the brambles. "This wall. Does it look natural to you?"

"Not especially. But neither does the island's perpetual summer. Or those golden monkeys that keep following us around."

"This is new. It must have been put here by the Shigur."

Blays examined the wall. "Well, their tactical error was making these plants out of wood. That blade of yours should be through it in a minute."

"You think they'll be eager to trade with us after we've torn down their defenses?"

"If they get mad, remind them their wall will regrow on its own."

"Grow a vine over it," Dante said. "We don't have time to spend all day hunting for a gate."

After a moment's thought, she did just that. Ten minutes later, the three of them stood on the other side of the wall, picking burrs and thorns from each other's clothing and hair. The forest inside the wall was significantly thinner than the jungle outside it. Almost every one of the trees bore fruit of some kind, few of which Dante recognized.

"If you see someone," Winden said. "Stop. Let yourself be known."

She'd no sooner said this than a young man appeared a hundred yards ahead. He froze, gaped at them, then turned and ran.

Winden halted. "We wait here."

A great number of birds flitted around the trees, snapping up any bug that attempted to land on the fruit. Blays left his blades sheathed, hands folded over his stomach. Dante pulled the nether closer. Where the young man had run off, five warriors emerged, approaching them. They were armed with spears, at least two of which bore metal tips. Two of the soldiers were men and three were women, but they all wore the same purple-trimmed yellow tunics. After a conversation Dante could almost but not quite follow, the warriors escorted them to a trail through the trees.

After a few hundred yards, the fruit trees fell away. Lone trees stood isolated from each other among patches of manicured grass. These trees were graceful, trunks rising like the necks of swans. They were bent downward at the tips, each one burdened by an enormous seed pod. Long, narrow ovals, the smallest were three feet in length, with some upwards of twenty. The largest were supported by scaffolds erected around them.

Blays nudged his shoulder. "Do those look like bananas to you?"

"Oh yeah," Dante said. "Especially the part where they're as long as a house."

"Those aren't bananas," Winden said. "Look."

She pointed to the left. Beneath an open-walled thatched roof, four people swarmed around the shell of a nut that was thirty feet long if it was an inch. It had been split in half along the seam. Two workers scrubbed dark brown fiber from the outside of the shell while two others scraped the interior.

Dante craned his neck. "Is that a
boat
? Like you have in Kandak?"

Winden smiled faintly. "Shigur. Boat-Growers. The ships they make are seamless. Hard as rock but as light as bamboo. Finest on the island."

"They grow boats. On trees."

"Wait until you see their houses."

Just as Dante began to glimpse them—they were round and onion-roofed, and though they were asymmetrical, that only made them look more solid—a woman moved to intercept them, accompanied by four more armed locals. She wore a leaf-like green cape that tapered to a point. As she neared, Dante saw it
was
a leaf, clasped around the neck by a thin curling vine like a pea plant.

Winden offered a greeting, which Dante understood, then said a lot of words he didn't. There was much gesturing, particularly to the southwest. The direction of the Tauren.

"We have bad news," Winden said. "This woman is a Harvester. They have no molbry flowers and know of none between here and the falls."

Dante folded his arms. "I suppose it would be too much to hope to catch a break at some point."

"Also, they were attacked. By the Tauren. Some died. Others maimed."

"All right," Blays said. "That's slightly more tragic than not being able to find a flower."

Winden glanced at Dante sidelong. "Would you help them?"

"Why?" Dante said. "Not to say I won't. But is there some reason you want me to do this?"

"The Tauren. If they keep pressing, we won't be able to fight them by ourselves. We'll need every ally we can get."

The woman wearing the leaf-cape gazed at him steadily. Dante inclined his head to Winden. "Tell her I'll do anything I can."

The two women spoke briefly. The woman in the cape gestured Dante on, leading them into town past the round houses, which appeared to have been grown from the ground. In different circumstances, he might have marveled at this, but he was too busy being led into one of the black stone buildings that speckled the entire island. Inside, three people lay on pallets. Each was in the fetal position, right arms clenched to their chest. Their wrists terminated in wads of bloody bandages.

Dante unwrapped the rags from the wrist of an unconscious man. The blood was rusty, at least a day old, and the rags clung to the dried fluid. "Why did they do this?"

Winden conversed with the other woman. "They couldn't pay what the Tauren wanted. The Tauren said, if you won't use your hands to work, then we'll take those instead."

"Lovely people," Blays said. "You ought to invite them for a swim in the Current."

Dante cut his arm and fed the nether. He couldn't regrow their hands, but he could smooth over the wounds. Fight off the infections. He did so, then washed his hands and stepped out into the courtyard behind the building, joined by Blays, Winden, the caped woman, and her warriors.

"She thanks you," Winden said. "She says you must be very powerful."

"That sounds like flattery," Blays said.

"She wants your help."

"
Definitely
flattery."

Dante glanced at the other women. "Help with what? Do they have more wounded?"

Winden shook her head. "Two months ago. The Tauren came. When the Shigur couldn't pay their demands, the Tauren took four children. As ransom."

Dante drew back his head. "I see where this is going. No way."

Blays squinted at him. "As in, no way are we going to help these people recover their kidnapped children?"

"Where are they being held? At the tower?"

"Correct," Winden said.

"Which is how far from here?"

"Forty miles. But not much is forested. Two days of walking."

Dante held up a palm. "Which means four days round trip. Plus whatever time it takes to free them. That's too long. We'll miss our boat."

"So we won't walk," Blays said. "We'll run."

"Using the horses that don't exist here?"

"Using our legs. Which you will refresh with the nether. Allowing us to be there in no more than a day."

"And on arrival, my supply of shadows will be as exhausted as our legs."

Blays sighed raggedly. "Remember that year I spent learning to shadowalk so I could hide from you? Well, my plan here—and let me know if I need to slow down—is to use those same abilities to infiltrate the tower and get those kids back."

"And you'll get them outside how, exactly? Give them a quick shadowalking lesson? And then we carry them back here for forty miles? And
then
go look for the molbries, and hope we find them right away, and also that nothing else delays us on our return to Kandak, or that my dad doesn't die in the extra days we're gone?"

The Harvester and her people were staring at him. Dante lowered his voice before continuing. "We came here to help my father. He may be useless to me, but to the people in Kandak, he's a savior. You want to help the Shigur? Fine. But you can only do so by sacrificing the Kandeans."

Blays rubbed his jaw, which was beginning to sport a blond beard. "I hate it when you use logic."

"Do you even want to help these people? Or do you just want to argue with me so you can tell yourself you tried?"

"Some of both. And quit knowing me so well."

Dante smiled. "Don't worry, I'll be the monster for you. Winden, please tell them we're sorry, but we can't help. My father's too sick. If we don't get back to him, he'll die."

Winden stared at him, an unreadable emotion flickering in her eyes. She turned to the other Harvester and spoke in Taurish, her voice heavy with regret. The woman replied sharply.

Winden raised a brow. "She says you must help them. That the Tauren's demands are too high for them to meet."

"We've already faced them," Dante said. "And fared no better than the Shigur have."

She translated more. "They will pay you. Whatever it takes."

"It's not a matter of payment. We don't have the time or the strength to help them."

Winden passed this along. While she was mid-sentence, the Harvester snapped back at her. Their voices rose; within seconds, they were yelling over the top of one another. The Harvester jabbed a finger into Winden's chest and pointed to the south, then spat at Dante's feet.

Winden's jaw bulged. "We are to leave. Now."

She continued to glare into the other Harvester's eyes. Dante touched her on the shoulder and walked southward away from the stone building. The Harvester and her soldiers followed a few paces behind them. Winden was breathing hard, but she kept her tongue. The path led to a gate through the wall of brambles. The gate's edges blossomed with tiny flowers of all sizes. If their mood had been better, it might have been beautiful. The Harvester and her people watched them walk away.