The Great Rift

The second book of the Cycle of Arawn. The Great Rift follows The White Tree and is followed by The Black Star. It's available in ebook, paperback, and audiobook (narrated by Tim Gerard Reynolds).

Synopsis
Five years after Samarand's fall and Cally's return to the Council, Dante and Blays find themselves in the middle of the Norren Territories, helping the norren edge towards independence from the Gaskan Empire. They are seconds away from being caught transporting a wagonload norren-scale swords by Gaskan soldiers when Mourn appears, posing as their slave and convincing the soldiers that the three of them were taking the swords away from the norren.

After making camp for the night, Mourn reveals that he is from the Clan of the Nine Pines, the clan rumored to possess the Quivering Bow, a weapon capable of shooting down entire buildings. Dante wants it to threaten King Moddegan into freeing both the norren and Narashtovik, and Blays doesn't believe it exists. Mourn promises to ask his clan about it. He meets them three days later on Kerrin Hill, where he tells them that the clan doesn't know if they can trust the two humans. When Mourn leaves, Dante and Blays follow him back to the Nine Pines. There, Orlen, the chieftain, and Vee, his second, tell them that the Bow had once belonged to the Nine Pines, but it was currently lost, last seen in the hands of a Gaskan nobleman along with their cousin clan, the Green Lake.

The next day, a part of the Nine Pines start out for the town of Cling. Dante and Blays go with them. The Nine Pines set up camp in the middle of town while Orlen and Vee go up the hill to talk to the mayor of Cling. Mourn, designated human babysitter and go-between for the clan, tells Dante and Blays to just wait for Orlen and Vee to get back, so the two humans ditch Mourn and sneak up to have a brief, fruitless conversation with the mayor themselves. Convinced the old norren knows something, they turn to blackmail- they discover that Mayor Banning no longer creates his own paintings thanks to the drain on his time running Cling demands, a scandal among norren. They go to confront Banning as he returns to Cling from his hidden workshop. Mourn, having given up on controlling or minding Dante and Blays at all, goes with them. Banning tells them that the Green Lake had been transported downriver by the Bloody Knuckles, a gang of river pirates, and that they had threatened to attack Cling if he revealed the fact, a credible threat.

Dante secures a barge called the Boomer to transport the Nine Pines down the river in pursuit of the Bloody Knuckles and their lead ship, the Ransom. Several days into the trip, they come across a wrecked ship. Blays insists that they stop to look for survivors. No one on the Boomer really expects to find anyone, but in the wreckage of the Notus they find an injured woman. After Dante heals her, she tells them she is Lira Condors, a mercenary, and shares what she knows about the Bloody Knuckles and the Ransom. She also swears a life-debt to Dante despite his protests. Several nights later, the Boomer encounters the Ransom, which had been hidden by a shadowsphere, making it nearly impossible to see at night, a fact which had doomed many ships before them. In the aftermath of the battle with the pirates, Dante and Blays search the Ransom 's captain's cabin and find a drawing of the Boomer. The Bloody Knuckles had known to target their ship. Orlen and Vee don't say much after being told this, but they do get Dante and Blays to agree to act as their human face once the clan arrives in the split city of Dollendun.

In Dollendun, they set to tracking down Perrigan, a 'beefer', a slave trader who would have sold the Green Lakes. The man tells them nothing, insisting that his discretion is one of his biggest selling points from a business perspective. However, he does say he could be persuaded to share the information if they are able to convince the norren artist Worring to weave a tapestry for him to hang beside his forefathers' likenesses. This is an issue, since Worring has specifically sworn not to do exactly that, on account of Perrigan being a slaver. Dante spends the next two weeks learning the game of nulladoon so that he can challenge Worring, beat her, and get her make the tapestry so that Perrigan will tell them who he sold the Green Lake to. The answer ends up being Cassinder of Beckonridge, a powerful Gaskan nobleman close enough to the throne in the line of succession to make him ambitious and dangerous.

The clan heads to Beckonridge next, where Dante and Blays pose as noble Mallish transplants looking for labor for their shipping business. Lira, Mourn, and Gala accompany them when they present themselves to Cassinder, who is polite enough but also refuses to even entertain the idea of selling the Green Lake. On receiving confirmation of the location of the Green Lakes, the Nine Pines attack Beckonridge in the night, freeing their cousins and razing Beckonridge to its foundations. Dante's group, on a tip ostensibly from Josun Joh (but really on instructions passed to Mourn through his loon), make their way up into one of the towers in pursuit of the Quivering Bow, which is not there. In fact, it doesn't appear to exist, but it did work as wonderful bait to get Dante's help. When the Nine Pines make their attack, they run. Gala is killed in the escape and Dante reveals his ability with the nether attacking Cassinder. With little to show but what's practically an invitation to war for their trip, they head for Narashtovik.

On their way home their ship stops in the port at Keyote and Dante visits the Hanassans on Mount Sirini, above the port itself, hoping for information on how to construct a loon, after Mourn hands his over for Dante's inspection. Dante has a mostly-functional model by the time they make Narashtovik, where an assassin tries to kill him on the docks. Cally is excited about the loons, but significantly less so about the attack on Beckonridge or the chase for the Quivering Bow. The Council decides to stay out of the impending war in the Territories to protect the city, but Cally elects to ignore them and sends Dante and company on a roadtrip to try and secure allies for the norren. The plan is to visit Tantonnen, Gallador Rift, and Pocket Cove. Dante, Blays, Lira, Mourn, and Fann, a cultural advisor, leave after the end of Thaws. Cally gives them a set of four loons before they set out, three of them paired to the first.

In Shan, capital of the subregion of Tantonnen, they meet with Brant, the local baronet, to secure extra grain from their extensive fields for the norren. A handful of other local lords come to meet with the contingent from Narashtovik. They aren't in a good position to take any deal, with Setteven's taxes and the needs of their own granaries. There have also been several bandit attacks on their caravans, which Mourn reveals are being carried out by a local norren clan, having seen their signs in the fields as they rode through. They agree to clear the roads in exchange for a steep discount on the grain that would otherwise be taken by the bandits. Mourn leads them into the fields where they meet the Clan of the Golden Field, led by Waill. Mourn challenges her to sollunat, a duel to convince the Golden Fields to stop preying on the Tantonnen grain caravans. After they both survive shooting each other with arrows, Waill agrees to stop her raids and ensure no other bandits decide to fill the void.

In Wending, regional capital of Gallador, they stay with the salt merchant Lolligan and manage to get invited to a large, opulent dinner for members of the TAGVOG to present Narashtovik's case. Jocubs, the head of the Association, assures them that they will likely have a positive outcome after the vote in two weeks. After consulting with Cally via loon, they decide to leave Fann in Wending and head for Pocket Cove.

At the Pocket, they find an impenetrable wall of black stone that stretches to the sea on either end, walling off the Pocket from land approach. Eventually, Dante finds a narrow staircase up to the top, hidden by an illusion. The staircase is too narrow for Mourn, but the other three enter the Pocket and are nearly buried in a mudslide. They're spared a fight with Asher, the woman on guard that day and the one who nearly buried them, by Lira's knowledge of 'worlds within worlds', a code she learned after a ship she had been on was attacked and she kept her tongue under torture, protecting a group of the People of the Pocket. Instead of a fight, they are taken to see Ro, who refuses to give them any aid beyond not killing them then and there. Once Asher sees them securely outside the walls, she collapses the staircase they'd used.

Back in Wending, little to no progress has been made in the direction of persuading Setteven to not go to war. At another dinner with the members of the Association, Dante and Blays run into Cassinder, who had gotten to the Galladese first, and with a much more convincing argument. On the way out of the building, Dante receives a note asking for a midnight meeting on the roof of the Cohben Inn, where they are given a proposal- kill Jocubs, and allow the next head of the TAGVOG to be more in favor of not letting the King stomp all over the norren. They decide to assassinate Jocubs. They infiltrate his home by climbing up the toilet shaft that empties directly into the lake. They almost get away, but Cassinder finds them as they're leaving Jocubs's room. Cassinder reveals himself as an ethermancer, and Blays, Dante, and Lira jump out a window and swim back to Lolligan's island, which is soon after attacked by a shipful of Gaskans led by Cassinder. After repelling the attack, they leave Wending and return to Narashtovik.

The war has begun in earnest, and Cally soon sends Dante, Blays, Lira, and Mourn back to the Territories to distribute loons to as many clans as will take them, hoping to help unite against Setteven. They meet the Clan of the Broken Heron on the way back to Dollendun, and after some run-around thanks to Hopp and the rest of the Broken Herons, including a swimming challenge where Blays nearly drowns, they're formally made a part of the clan. Eventually, Hopp brings Dante and Blays to meet the chieftains of several other clans, who were eventually talked into taking loons from Dante, each paired with one of Cally's in Narashtovik. The alliance of clans grows until they have enough to seriously consider an assault on Borrull, a norren village grown up inside a fort recently occupied by a relatively small contingent of Gaskan soldiers. During the assault, Dante is shot in the back while bringing down the fort's gates. In the aftermath of the battle, Orlen, who had brought the Nine Pines to join the clans' alliance, is revealed to have told the Gaskans specifically to target Dante. When Mourn hears this, he kills his former chief and is immediately promoted to the position by the rest of the Nine Pines. The norren alliance then lure a group of Gaskan reinforcements into the fort, splitting the force in two with Dante's earthmoving abilities, newly acquired after examining a very bloody, very death-y patch of earth after the first battle. Those inside the fort are massacred. Over the next few days, the alliance grows as new clans trickle in. Among the newcomers are Hart and Somburr, Councilmen from Narashtovik with a large number of norren gathered from the northern stretches of the Territories. Encouraged, the alliance marches on a number of smaller towns before eventually turning to Dollendun.

The Gaskans desert the norren shore, and for weeks there is a standoff. Blays, Lira, and Dante cross the river that divides Dollendun once to find and rescue Corra, Banning's granddaughter kidnapped by Gaskans. The norren numbers are bolstered by several more clans and a dozen nethermancers from Narashtovik, including Wint, Nak, Ulev, and Varla. Gaskan reinforcements arrived in much larger numbers, and included no less than fifteen war galleys. When the battle finally comes, the norren give a good fight but the numbers against them are simply too overwhelming and they retreat before Cassinder and his army- though not without dropping Cassinder off of a balcony and making his day significantly worse. Less than an hour after the retreat, Dante hears Cally's assassination over their loons, and he takes Blays and Lira and runs for Narashtovik.

Narashtovik itself quickly descends into infighting. Kav, who has taken over the Council following Cally's death, has Dante arrested for the murder. Dante and Blays work to find some evidence that it was Kav who ordered Cally's death. Finally, they find a man named Amwell, sent by Cassinder to work with Wint, who is revealed as a traitor. It was Amwell who actually killed Cally. Wint tells the Council that Dante had actually been the original target, but when his assassin on the docks failed, he went for Cally instead. Finding no sympathy or quarter from the Council, Wint throws himself from the balcony of the Council chambers. Dante kills Amwell as the assassin tries to escape. The Council throws itself into preparations for Setteven's inevitable march on Narashtovik.

During the preparations, Mourn arrives in the city with a number of norren and join the defense. The day of the battle, Cassinder appears and reads out King Moddegan's demands. He is summarily ignored, and the battle begins. Narashtovik's defenders give ground as strategically as they can, but are eventually pushed back all the way to the Sealed Citadel, where Cassinder blows down the gates. In a last-ditch attempt to save the city, Dante tells Olivander to pull back anyone he can from the gates and begins summoning nether. As he works, Cassinder runs forward to kill him. Lira runs past Dante and engages Cassinder, and Dante opens a massive rift in the ground that swallows almost all of the Gaskan army, as well as any of Narashtovik's soldiers that got too close or stayed to defend the gates, Cassinder, and Lira.

Dante collapses immediately afterwards, having channeled far more nether than his body could safely contain. He can't respond to Blays at all when he emerges from the Citadel, having been stabbed in the stomach on the walls earlier. Dante is netherburned, and remains unconscious for a week afterwards, and when he wakes Blays is gone, having left in the night the day of the battle, careful to leave nothing behind for Dante to track him with. Dante spends another week repairing the rift and drinking. Eventually a treaty arrives from Setteven, declaring an end to norren slavery and the war, eventually called the Chainbreakers' War. Per the treaty, Narashtovik would remain a vassal state of Setteven. Dante convinces the Council (or what remains of it- the war took a heavy toll on their numbers) to reject the treaty altogether and declare Narashtovik's independence. Gallador has also entered into the Lakeland Rebellion, providing a buffer between Setteven and both the Territories and Narashtovik. Dante is later chosen by the Council to be the next High Priest, despite his protests. He finds Cally's notes and forges a new set of loons to take to the norren, since their last ones died with Cally. He spends a long time talking with Hopp when he and his contingent find the Broken Herons, and has to tell Hopp that Lira is dead and Blays is in the wind, where he stays for three years.