The Shattered Path (The Cycle of Galand Book 9), page 1
THE SHATTERED PATH

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
What Lies Beyond
The Twelve Plagues
The 13th God
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.
To Summer, who was born on the very same day I finished this book.

Mallon, Gask, and other lands.
1
They were three miles into the tunnels when they heard the first voice.
Dante snapped off his torchstone. It had been their only source of light, yet a faint blue-white glow still illuminated them: and it was coming from his skin. He marshaled his mind and doused it too, plunging them into a darkness so thick he could have spread it on bread. He reached for the wall, fingers brushing the dusty, ancient stone, and drew himself against it. Then he reached into his pocket, fished out two dead mice, and dropped them on the bare ground. With a string of nether, he reanimated them and sent them scampering down the pitch black hall.
In their previous visit to the mines, he'd discovered that undead flies, while generally more useful, had a hell of a time in total darkness: sooner or later, they'd bang into a wall and get turned around, leaving him with no idea if they were still headed in the right direction. During the hike up through the hills, then, he'd killed the mice for a contingency like this, where the undead could keep themselves oriented simply by sticking tight to a wall. They did so now, trotting silently away down the long-vacant tunnel.
A couple of minutes later, however, he hadn't spotted any lights ahead or heard any other speaking. He would have begun to suspect he'd imagined the voice if not for the fact that Blays and Gladdic hadn't raised any complaints when he'd snuffed the torchstone, and had instead looked alert and concerned. On the hunch his mice had gone too far, he turned one of them around to head back toward him—and, in another moment of insight, he had it cross the tunnel to the opposite wall than the one they'd been running alongside.
It had loped no more than twenty feet forward before Dante brought it to such a sharp halt its little paws skidded over the naked stone.
It still couldn't see anything. But all of its other senses worked just fine, and it had just felt wind. The draft was so faint it barely stirred the mouse's fur. It was coming from the seam where the wall met the ground; dressed in their trousers and boots, they would never have felt it themselves.
"There's another passage," Dante murmured. "And it's hidden." He blew on his torchstone, reigniting it, and strode toward the waiting mouse.
"You want to go toward the weird voice coming from a place where no one should be able to live?" Blays said, catching up.
"It could be more survivors. More Tanarians."
"Yes, or it could be vampires."
"The White Lich said he killed them all eight hundred years ago."
"We're taking the word of the White Lich now?"
Dante scowled. "If there were any vampires left here, they would have starved to death centuries ago."
"You're a master on the feeding habits of vampires? Or is the ghost of the lich telling you more old secrets again?"
In truth, it was neither: but Dante had had enough experience with demons of all stripes that he found it absurd to think that, back when the vampires had finally gathered the strength to burst free from their long and hungry captivity, some would choose to stay behind while the others gorged themselves on the Tanarian populace. No, they'd meant to overrun the world again. None of them would have forsaken that opportunity for anything.
His mice watched him arrive. He sent his mind into the wall where the one had felt the draft.
"The passage is right here," Dante said. "But it's sealed."
Blays folded his arms. "Then maybe we should leave it that way. Besides, I thought we'd thoroughly agreed on a 'no more helping anyone until Nolost is dead' policy."
Dante felt further into the rock, following the walls of the hidden tunnel as far as his power allowed. "If we run into anyone, we're not going to do any helping. We'll tell them to stay put, that's all."
"I get the idea they're well ahead of you on that one. Why bother with distractions?"
Dante motioned down the tunnel. "The path's been turning the wrong way for a while now. I was starting to doubt it would ever get us back on course." He tapped the wall in front of him. "This new one looks to be going right where we need it to."
This was no small matter: if they hadn't found this second tunnel, their only options would either have been for Dante to dig them out to the surface to cross the mountains on foot, or for him to carve a way forward through countless miles of rock. Neither would be nearly as fast as traveling through a mine that others had dug out for them centuries ago. While it was likely true that they'd bought themselves more time by destroying the portals Nolost had been using to inflict his plagues on Rale—an act that, unfortunately, had also trapped Nolost in Rale with them—and while it was also true that their new plan fully relied on the existence of that additional time, they didn't have any idea how much more of it they might have left. Speed was still of the essence.
Dante brought his mind back to the wall in front of him and groped around in it for a minute. There was probably a catch or lever somewhere that would open a concealed door, but he simply placed his hand against the stone, took hold of the nether inside it, and pushed the wall to the side, revealing another tunnel.
Keeping the shadows in hand, he stepped through the doorway. The new passage looked just like the one they'd been following but had a little more smell to it. Nothing immediately offensive, but like something that had been closed up for ages. It appeared just as empty, however. The torchstone didn't cast light far enough for undead scouts to be able to see any further ahead than he could, so he kept the mice trailing a short ways behind them.
They were headed for whatever lay beyond the mountains that hemmed in the swamps of Tanar Atain from the north. They didn't yet know what that was: hopefully, a place that held whatever the Burdan rah Saylan was, or where whoever the Quannish people were still lived. Dante's inherited memories from the lich still hadn't told him anything further than that. Nak was at work trying to collect more information to hone their search. He hadn't turned up anything yet, but it had only been a few days. And as for Dante, Blays, and Gladdic, not knowing what the hell they were looking for hadn't stopped them from starting off after it.
Hence why they'd returned to the mines where Nolost's plagues had killed the lich's brother Wate. Not only for the probability they'd allow for faster travel than hoofing it across the mountains, but also for the cover they provided. However much Nolost's power had been diminished by the unraveling of the portals, it was a certainty he still commanded all kinds of spies.
They didn't know how long it would take the entity to recover from their battle in Olastar (at that moment, there was a lot they didn't know), but it was a dead certainty that as soon as he was ready, Nolost would come for them. For they were the only force left on Rale that had any hope of killing him. If he could put them to their deaths instead, then he could still bring Rale to its end as well, without any worries of how long it might take him to do so.
The tunnel bent to the right for a while and Dante stopped to check his compass. Just east of true north, their destination. The previous tunnel had been getting even further off course than he'd realized.
They passed several side shafts, each one silent and dark. The main tunnel expanded into a chamber wide enough to host a small town. The light of the torchstone could no longer reach the far walls.
Blays knelt and picked something up from the ground. A rock, somewhat shiny. Not exactly unusual in a mine. But this one was carved in the likeness of a Tanarian frog.
"This look like something a miner would carry around?" Blays said.
"Its eyes are big enough to choke a heron," Dante said. "Looks more like a toy."
"Suppose we've found the Mara Taub's disaster shelter?"
The chamber was lightly scattered with supplies and household objects that strengthened this possibility: bundles of clothes, a stack of pots and pans, cords of wood, some bone knitting needles and rolls of fiber, a painted playing-board, wooden toys, and so forth. But many of these things were so old and brittle they began to fall apart when they tried to inspect them. Dante didn't know who they'd once belonged to, but he didn't think it was the Mara Taub.
They still hadn't seen sign of recent habitation, let alone any living people. Unless the voice they'd heard had come from a long-dead spirit or the like, he was starting to suspect that whoever was here had seen them and rushed into hiding. That was prudent enough, considering whoever was here was hiding in the depths. Which meant in turn that they didn't need to be warned about the dangers outside, since they were already living like they could be killed by intruders at any moment. This thought lifted a slight burden from his shoulders. While it was enormously clear they could no longer risk their time and lives helping others, it was still somewhat troubling to think about letting people die when they could easily have stopped it.
The mine pierced deeper and deeper into the hills, descending so gradually that Dante rarely felt it. For a while, he'd been able to feel into the nether of the surface high above them, but that had passed beyond his reach. The tunnel sometimes wandered to the east or west, but it maintained a generally northerly course, and though its meanderings slowed their total forward progress, they advanced as fast as they would across a flat and open field.
They had no way to measure time except for their own bodies, and when Gladdic at last began to flag (though he spoke not a word about it), it could as easily have been the next dawn as it might be late evening. They spread their blankets in a side shaft. Dante sent one of his mice to stand sentry at both sides of their camp.
Blays tugged off his boots, then pawed through his pack for some of the fish they'd smoked when they'd neared the edge of the swamps. "How far do you suppose these tunnels actually run?"
"The stories we were told implied they ran into the bones of the earth itself," Gladdic said.
"That sounds like the last place we'd want to go. I mean, besides going on a mission to kill an evil invading god."
"The plan was always to let the tunnels take us as far as they could, then continue over the mountains. Even the short distance we have traveled so far has likely shaken any spies Nolost had set upon us."
Blays gazed toward the main tunnel, though it was too dark to see it. "Unless he infected us with parasites again like he did with the Eye of Rathar. We'd carry spies like that wherever we went."
Such a thing had never occurred to Dante, and before he and Gladdic snuffed the ether they'd been using to light the way after his torchstone faltered, he conducted a head-to-toe search of himself. Everything looked normal, yet the idea that he was infected with parasitic little spies stopped him from falling asleep for some time.
They hadn't seen the slightest shred of danger in the mine but they kept watch anyway. When Dante's turn came he sat with his back against the wall. It was utterly, perfectly dark and his eyes strained against it so hard that he tried to close them, only to find that only made him feel more exposed to anything that might be watching them. Some time later, he would have sworn he heard something furtive moving within the walls, but when he felt inside them, they were motionless and solid.
At a time that may or may not have been morning, they resumed the march. The air was still and neutrally cool and smelled of nothing more than rock. They came to another chamber littered with abandoned and disintegrating possessions. The walls bore some simple drawings, mostly of animals from the swamp, or crude figures fishing or paddling canoes.
But one of them caught Dante's eye: a star with seven points, hanging above an arched doorway. There was nothing overtly sinister about it, yet the sight of it froze him. From somewhere as deep down inside him as they were within the mines, he felt a pang of wrath and fear—not his own, but that of the White Lich.
His loon pulsed as they left the chamber. He hadn't been sure if it would work so far underground and he answered it eagerly.
"Nak?" he said. "Please tell me you've found something."
"As eager to get straight to business as always, I see," Nak said.
"Do you want us to ask each other how we're doing first? Because the answer is going to be 'disastrously.'"
"Oh, nevermind me, lord. I suppose I'm just nostalgic for the days when there were other answers to that question. Well then. Our progress in learning more about this so-called Burdan rah Saylan you're after is, regrettably, not proceeding as fast as any of us would like. There are many challenges, of course. Such as that all of our archives are hundreds of miles away. Our monks and scholars have been discussing the matter among themselves, but nobody seems to know anything about either that, or your Quannish people."
"I specifically asked for something else to be the case."
"Fortunately for the both of us, then, the monks I entrusted with the task have already ridden back to Narashtovik and began work on the archives."
Dante likely would have tripped if there had been anything to trip over. "In just three days? In the snow? They couldn't have made it there by now even if their horses had wings."
"Then it's a good thing I had the foresight to send them eight days ago."
"I see. So eight days ago, you knew you'd soon need to learn about a place that none of us had ever heard of before."
"Of course not," Nak scoffed. "I sent them on the hair-thin chance they'd be able to dig something from the archives that would help you kill Wessen. But after you made that moot, I thought it would still be a fine idea to have people in our library anyway."
"Just in case we ran into any further misadventures."
"Just in case."
Dante glanced down a side shaft as they walked past it. "And? Did they find anything?"
"Well, they haven't had time to search anything like the full collection yet. There's only six of them, after all. So it's rather extraordinary that one of them already found a volume with a lengthy section about the Burdan rah Saylan themselves."
"Themselves? The Burdan's supposed to be a place."
"Oh? Then it sounds like you already know more about that than I could tell you."
Dante rolled his eyes. "I can't know that until you tell me what you've learned. Hop to it."
Nak cleared his throat. "The tale is written by one Unkaiden the Traveler, regarding some notable figures in the Kingdom of Alkanos, which as far as we can tell is to the east of where you're headed, and no longer exists. Among these figures was a sorcerer by name of Salaga, who found her order under siege by mysterious powers. When the Alkanids were unable to defeat these powers by themselves, Salaga undertook a desperate mission: to find the Burdan rah Saylan.
"These people—note, people—were highly mysterious themselves, but were said to be willing to grant boons to anyone who was able to find them and prove that their desired boon was worthy of the Burdan's support. Furthermore, while the rumors about them disagreed on many things, all agreed that the Burdan weren't human, but something supernatural. Some went so far as to assert they were in fact evil—that they never granted any boons at all, and used that rumor as a means of luring people to them. Who they then sacrificed and ate."
"As someone about whom many rumors are told," Dante said, "the worst ones tend to be at least a little exaggerated."
"I am merely reporting to you what the text says," Nak said. "Now, if I may? Very good. Regardless of these dark utterances, Salaga set out to find them, traveling west—of her; to you, it would be east—to a realm that Unkaiden calls Ynderhal. Don't bother asking, none of us have ever heard of it, either.
"The Burdan were said to be notoriously hard to find, and that doing so was actually far more difficult than convincing them your cause was worth supporting. Salaga had combed through as many sources as she could, though, and believed that the Burdan couldn't be found because they weren't really there. Not out in the open where you could see them. She thought they could only be reached through doorways, hidden in the dark.
"Armed with this theory, she crossed all of Ynderhal, wielding all of her skills to locate the doorways. But it was to no avail. Various peoples lived in Ynderhal, and Salaga went to speak to them, plumbing them for knowledge. But the people insisted there were no Burdan, and that the stories about them were spread by highwaymen so that they could rob foreign travelers in search of the Burdan, which was in turn where the rumors about the Burdan preying on people came from.
"Unkaiden writes that this discouraged Salaga, but that she couldn't give up on her quest. Yet as long and wide as she searched, she never found any of the Burdan, or the doorways that led to them. She eventually gave up her hunt, three years later, when she heard that her order had been eliminated by the powers she was trying to put a stop to." Nak paused a moment. "I'm sorry, Dante."
"Eh? It wasn't our order."
"Yes, but what you're doing is a dead end."
