What lies beyond, p.1
What Lies Beyond, page 1
part #6 of The Cycle of Galand Series
WHAT LIES BEYOND
ALSO BY EDWARD W. ROBERTSON
THE CYCLE OF ARAWN
The Cycle of Arawn: The Complete Trilogy
THE CYCLE OF GALAND
The Red Sea
The Silver Thief
The Wound of the World
The Light of Life
The Spear of Stars
THE BREAKERS SERIES
Breakers
Melt Down
Knifepoint
Reapers
Cut Off
Captives
Relapse
Blackout
Cover illustration by Miguel Coimbra.
Text and additional design by Stephanie Mooney.
Map by Jared Blando.

Mallon, Gask, and other lands.
1
They set forth from the shining city with the determination of champions. The Realm of Nine Kings spread beneath them, verdant and unknown, waiting to be conquered. Dante felt as if he could reach down and grab it in his fist.
"So," Blays said. "Do you have any idea where we're going?"
Dante straightened the collar of his cloak. "Define 'idea.'"
"Oh good. For a moment there I was afraid we might actually have a chance of stopping the White Lich from annihilating our world."
"I don't quite know where we're going, but I know who we're going to see."
"Please tell me it's a mercenary we can pay to steal the Spear of Stars for us while we sit about in the shade with cold drinks."
"Not quite. We're going to find Arawn."
"You want to steal his part of the spear first? Why?"
"I want to see if he'll give us it. Or at least let us earn it, like Sabel did."
"And if he won't?"
Dante took a few steps down the well-kept cobbles before replying. "Then we'll borrow his piece."
"Without him knowing about it."
"Hopefully."
"Or consenting to it."
"If we have to."
"In other words, you're going to rob your own god."
"And then un-rob him once we're done putting down the son of a bitch who's menacing everything we hold dear."
"Just making sure you're not deluding yourself about what you're doing," Blays said, completely unconcerned. "So where is Arawn?"
"That's the part I don't know. But there looks to be a gate in the wall down there."
He pointed far, far down the switchbacking road. Half a mile below them, the slope at last settled into flat ground, quilted with farms. Past these, an old forest grew, but it was no more than three miles wide. A black wall had been built around the outer boundary of the woods, circumscribing the entirety of the spur of the mountain that hosted the shining town. The road ran down the center of this territory, beginning up the mountainside, through the city, down the slope, across the farms and forest, and coming at last to the wall. There, it was interrupted by what appeared to be a large gate, then carried on through the wilderness beyond the fortifications.
"Gates tend to have keepers," Dante went on. "I thought we'd ask them."
"We could do that. But we'd be better off finding some horses."
"To ask them for directions?"
"To borrow them."
"You mean steal them?"
"Acquire them against their owner's will. Consider it practice for the spear."
Dante reached the first turn of the switchback. The road steepened. Many of the stones were so smooth he could hardly see the seams between them, as if they'd been set by master norren road-wrights. This made the footing slippery in places, downright treacherous, which the locals counteracted by scratching and scoring the paving-stones to allow for some traction. It made him wonder what kind of fool had decided to make such a steep incline so smooth in the first place, but after a minute he noticed the curb running along the cliffside edge of the road was neither smoothed nor scored. The builders hadn't polished the road: countless feet had, across countless years.
"I've committed theft enough times to understand the concept," Dante said. "I'm just surprised that you're leaping at the chance to steal some guy's horses rather than insisting we compensate him with a year of charmaidery to salve your conscience."
Blays nodded politely to a pair of women climbing up toward them, stepping to the side to let the pair pass. "The lich is about to devour everything, isn't he?"
"Yes," Dante said.
"And Taim and the other wise fellows who run this realm are about to let the Mists be destroyed, too."
"Also yes."
"Then it seems to me there is nothing more important than assembling the Spear of Stars before either of those dooms has the chance to calamatize us. Horses will make us faster, and faster is good. Thus horse-thieving, while normally the act of a total scoundrel, is in this case an act of great valor. You might even say we'd be heroes."
"When you put it in those terms, everything we do is justified. If it got us the spear, we could kill every person in the Realm and it would be an act of heroism."
"We won't try to kill everyone. But what's the good in having principles if you can't understand when it's time to violate them?"
The length of the decline gave them more than enough time to survey good candidates for horse theft. There wasn't a lot of traffic on the road, but Dante thought that had less to do with the trouble it took to hike up it—for a hardship was no longer a hardship once it became a routine—and more that all of the merchants, farmers, and worshippers had arrived at dawn for the opening of the gates.
He and Blays were obvious foreigners and just about everyone they passed gave them a good long assessment, rarely bothering to disguise their stares. The people's gazes lingered on their swords as much as their faces. While there was plenty of suspicion, Dante saw no outright hostility, and he and Blays came to the bottom of the switchback without being held up or questioned.
Down on the plain, it was several degrees warmer than it had been on the ridge that hosted the city. The wind was noticeably softer and the smell was different, too. Much greener. And, as they got closer to the farms, much more livestocky. The odors of which were being greatly heightened by the morning heat.
Short-legged dogs chased sheep around pastures that remained green despite the onset of late summer. Farmers and their families milled through the fields, hoeing weeds and digging up gophers, gathering unfamiliar orange berries from the shade of trellises. They were clearly simple and hard-working folk, and Dante might well have felt bad about having to rob them if he hadn't already decided to rob someone much wealthier.
That someone in question resided another two miles down the road, down a rutted and unpaved path and past an orchard of trees bearing fruit with pebbly green skin. There, Dante killed a pair of flies—and was tempted to kill hundreds more, the damn things were everywhere—and reanimated them.
He stayed behind the treeline while sending the flies to the closer of the two barns on the property. He'd had troubles with his undead scouts at the caverns of Talassa, but the flies were doing all right for now, and quickly ascertained that the barn held several horses in it.
"Got your stealing shoes on?" Dante said.
Blays glanced at his feet. "I never take them off."
"Then let's put them to use."
The peasants they'd seen in the other fields had been wearing a garment so loose and blousy it was practically a sack, cinched tight at the wrists, waist, and above the boots to allow them to work. Before leaving the cover of the orchard, Dante swaddled the two of them in an illusion of the garment. It wouldn't look right from up close, but if anyone got up close, the ruse wasn't going to survive anyway.
Blays held out his arms, assessing his new "clothes." "No one's ever going to believe this. It suits you well enough. But I'm afraid my bearing is just too regal."
Dante walked swiftly through the grass, which was studded with star-shaped blue flowers. It might have been his imagination, but some of them seemed to turn to watch him pass. He entered the barn. It smelled quite horsey and flies hummed about in the shade, landing on the animals' backs only to be scared off a moment later by the swish of the horses' tails.
Blays was more of a horseman and Dante let him pick two mounts from the multiple options available to them. Quick as a wink, they had the saddles on. Dante was in the act of stepping into the stirrup when a man appeared in the brightness of the barn door.
"Who are you?" His middle-aged face bent with outrage. "You're thieves!"
"We're far worse than thieves." Blays swung into the saddle. "Now stand aside before I decide to add barn arson to my lengthy list of crimes."
The man laughed and stepped into Blays' path. "You're a madman. Once I summon the King's Own Rangers, they'll be on you within minutes. You'll be swinging from the gallows by sunset!"
"I wouldn't do that," Dante said. "Not unless you want to watch the King's Own Rangers get executed in front of you." To add some heft to his words, he brought the shadows to his hand, making them buzz and swirl like a storm of black bees. "Better yet, I'll save these Rangers the trip and kill you before you can call them."
He expected the man to back down. He didn't expect the fellow—who had been made strong by farm labor, and just a moment before had been quite forcefully threatening them—to collapse to his knees, bar his arms over his head, and begin to sob.
"Don't kill me! I don't want to die. You can't kill me!"
Dante stilled the swarming nether. "I don't want to, you crazy idiot. I just
"Take them! Please!"
"We'd pay you if we could," Dante muttered. "As you've seen, I'm a sorcerer. If anyone in your household is sick, I can cure them. Or if they've been lamed in the field—"
"Take the horses!" The man lifted one hand from his head, which he'd been cradling this whole time, and waved at the doorway. His face was covered in tears and snot. "Just take them and be on your way, I beg you!"
"All right, we're going." Dante mounted the horse and prodded it forward. He kept his eye on the farmer in case it had all been an act to get them to let down their guard, but the man lay in the dirty straw, rocking back and forth on his side.
Dante rode from the barn at a trot, ready to kick into a gallop, but the only sounds coming from the barn were those of a grown man sobbing. He exchanged a look with Blays and headed back to the cobbled main road.
There, Blays twisted about to stare back in the direction of the farm. "What was that all about? He pissed himself!"
"You're one to throw stones?"
"Yes, but not because I was scared. I was drunk."
"And what about the time at Kandak?"
"Also drunk. Anyway, what just happened? Was he just a coward?"
"He didn't seem like it. Well, until he did."
"Maybe you were too cruel with him."
"This was your idea."
Blays put his hand to his heart. "It was my idea to relieve him of some of his yearly hay expenses. Not to frighten him until he wet his breeches."
Dante turned, ready to hit Gladdic with a jibe about how much he must have loved watching the farmer grovel and cower, but the words caught in his throat. For Gladdic wasn't with them. He was buried high on the mountain, above the doorway into this realm. The feeling Dante got from remembering this was unfamiliar, for he still wasn't certain they'd truly been friends.
But they had been companions. And after all the grueling battles they'd fought—first against each other, and then together—Gladdic had become, in his own way, as steadfast and loyal as Blays. That was a hard thing to find.
And a harder thing to lose.
They rode past the remaining farms and reached the forest, which protruded from the earth as abruptly as teeth from gums. The trees stood gnarled and tall, draped in moss like women in lace, almost all of them old and untouched, suggesting this was a king's wood, and untouchable. Then again, he and Blays had already incurred penalty of execution when they'd taken the horses, so he supposed there was no reason not to do a little poaching if the moment called for it.
The roadway sank until earthen banks rose above their heads on either side and the trees grew together above them like a woody tunnel. He'd seen such hollows before, but only where the roads were even older than any trees.
The light was dim and the air held the smell of moldering leaves, but the birds seemed cheery enough, and no animals or monsters raced out to attack them on the brief ride through to the open fields on the other side of the woods.
The road led onward, uninterrupted, yet Blays drew to a halt. "Where did the wall go?"
Ahead, the land was completely bereft of the territory-encircling wall they'd seen from the heights of the switchback. Dante turned in the saddle just to make sure they hadn't walked through a portal without knowing it. The towering ridge was right where they'd left it, topped by gleaming towers and churches, the mountains looming above the city like stormclouds.
Dante pointed down the road. "The bridge is still right there. And where there is a bridge, there will be bridgemen. Bridgemen are usually reliable sources to ask about what's on the other side of their bridge."
They crossed the last mile to the bridge without seeing another living soul. Nearing the structure, two oddities became apparent: first, the wall had disappeared from sight because it wasn't a wall, but rather a massive moat dug around the entire territory. And second, the bridge, as was befitting a moat, was actually a drawbridge, far and away the largest and most mechanically complicated that Dante had ever seen—so complicated, in fact, that he couldn't tell quite how it functioned.
A stone guardhouse flanked it, housing both the control mechanism and a host of soldiers. As the two of them ambled to the base of the bridge, a lone soldier emerged. He was dressed in a yellow and black uniform and carried a pike in his hands and a short blade on his hip. He stood on the stone steps to the bridge, assessing them with a slight frown.
Blays motioned to the moat. "Nice pit. Just how deep is that thing?"
"Can you see to the bottom of it?" the guard said.
"No?"
"Well, it's even deeper than that."
"We're traveling to seek an audience with Arawn," Dante said, not quite believing that he was actually saying such a thing. "Do you know where his territory is from here?"
"Are you asking me directions?"
"Yes. We're foreigners."
The soldier hooted and stamped his pike. "You don't say!"
"Do you know how to get there or not?"
"Getting near it is easy enough. Follow the road east to the crossroads and take the southern fork until there's no more road to follow. But don't tell me you're so foreign you think you can simply enter the kingdom of Arawn!"
"That would be incredibly stupid of us," Blays said. "But just in case anyone that stupid is eavesdropping on us, why can't they get in?"
"It's forbidden to anyone but its subjects. Seeing as you didn't even know where it is, I'm guessing that excludes you."
Dante gestured to the moat. "What's keeping people out? Another moat?"
"He's got something a far cry better than that." The soldier sounded contemplative. "You won't even be able to see that it's there."
"As discouraging as that sounds, we have to try. So if you'll let down the bridge, we'll be on our way."
"But you've just confessed you're not from here. You have no right to order the bridge down."
"I may not have the right to give you orders," Dante said. "But I do have the power."
The man chuckled, tilting his head. "One word from me and—"
"I'm going to throw him down the pit," Dante said to Blays. "You can figure out how deep it is by counting how many seconds it takes him to stop screaming."
The soldier shut his mouth with a click. "On the other hand, for the same reason you have no right to call down the bridge—being foreigners and all—I suppose there's no harm in evicting you from our land via the bridge." He cupped his hand to his mouth and lifted his head, about to call to the men in the guardhouse, then peered at Dante in puzzlement. "But it's dozens of rowlands to the end of the road. You don't really mean to travel the Claimless Reach with just the two of you, do you?"
"Ah," Blays said. "Because of the giant bears?"
"No, he never comes down from the mountains. Well, almost never. But there are other things out there. Wilders and ramna. To say nothing of the beasts."
"If it's as dangerous as that, how does anyone get from place to place?"
"Caravans. Or by taking the safe routes, in those times when the barbarians are more settled, but there's no safety to be found on the southern road." The man had been looking at them with concern, but annoyance now stole across his features. "Then again, you're troublemaking outsiders, aren't you? So go die, if going and dying is what you're bent on doing. At the very least take your trouble away from our peaceful little holding."
He turned on his heel and shouted up to the guardhouse. Men stirred in the window. Metal squealed; a dull chunking sound boomed across the open ground. With a drumbeat of clanking chains, the bridge rolled forward, extending into the hundred-foot-wide gap. Once it was halfway across, it bumped to a stop. A wooden platform swung forth on its giant hinges, drawn by ropes connected to some unseen mechanism in the far cliff wall. The platform must have weighed several tons, but it unfolded as gracefully as a hawk on the wind, touching down on the far side.
"There, a bridge," the soldier said. "Now go on and use it."
Blays headed up the ramp. "You may have just helped save millions of lives."
The guard gave him a funny look. Dante followed after Blays, though the bridge was wide enough for them to ride alongside each other. The moat fell away beneath them. Dante reached down into it, trying to touch the nether within the earth at its bottom, but it lay beyond his range.
