The Wound of the World

by Edward W. Robertson

  Or with little mouths.

  Swallowing down the urge to vomit, he scrambled for a handhold. The water frothed around him, red with blood. Silver scales flashed. A small fish darted for his hip, only for a whiskered red fish to dart forward and snatch the smaller fish in its teeth. Unseen others continued to tug at his legs. He grabbed tight to a knob on the beast's flank and tried to pull himself up, but the pain in his ribs was so punishing he slipped. He poured nether into his side and heaved again, kicking his way up to the top of the monster's back.

  He looked down at his legs and fainted.

  After a period of warmness, he could see again. No thoughts yet, just a dull sense of confusion. People were screaming, but it wasn't him, was it? Right: his legs. They were still bare, but they were now pocked with dozens of red divots. Some ran deeper than they looked. He tried to wiggle his toes. His left foot did fine, but his right wasn't responding very well.

  Beyond the screen of trees, a man yelled out in triumph. Dante turned in time to see Blays falling from the roof of the war canoe and diving into the water. But he was still holding onto both his swords: good sign of life. A few bodies in green uniforms were floating facedown by the canoe, the water around them boiling with fish.

  Others in the canoe took aim with their bows, trying to pick Blays out from the dim water. Dante gathered the shadows in his hands and packed them into a ball. He sent it skimming along the water to plow though both hulls of the enemy vessel just at the waterline. Splinters twirled through the air. Soldiers yelled out.

  One leaned over the hull to inspect the damage. Volo popped up from the arrow-riddled prow of her boat and loosed a slim arrow. It took the man in the ribs, dumping him into the water. Soldiers fired back on her, forcing her out of sight.

  Blays reappeared inside the war boat, stabbing a man in the back. Volo stood again, shooting a soldier as he charged at Blays. Dante gestured to the nether, meaning to rain hell on the remaining enemies, but his vision went gray and he crumbled to his side.

  He was bleeding heavily, inside and out. Woozily, he sent nether streaming to the holes in his legs, filling them with drops of darkness. He'd mended countless cuts and broken bones, but replacing lost flesh took ten times the effort. After healing a few bites, he stanched the bleeding in the rest and turned his focus toward the damage to his chest.

  His jabat was hanging off him in shreds. A row of puncture marks traced his upper chest, with another cutting across his hips. One by one, he erased the cuts in his skin, then delved beneath to mend the punctures to his organs. Once these felt stable, he glanced back at the war boat. Only a handful of soldiers were still standing. With Blays blinking in and out of the shadows, and Volo sniping them from her canoe, the enemy would be wiped out within the minute.

  Though his torso wasn't fully mended, Dante switched back to the gouges in his legs, fearing they might never be healable if he didn't take care of them now. Shadows rolled to him in great waves and sank into the ragged bites, filling them with pale new flesh that left his legs spotted and dappled. Sweat broke across his forehead. Head swimming, he finished his right leg and moved to the left, starting with any damage deep enough to hobble him.

  His hold on the nether grew looser and looser. As he neared the end of his powers, he made a rough pass of the remaining bites, stopping up the remaining bleeding.

  Hearing a splash behind him, he turned. The boat was silent, bodies draped over gunwales and floating in the water, jerking as fish plucked at them from below. Volo stood in her canoe, looking forlorn. There was no sign of Blays. Dante tried to stand for a better look, but the corpse of the monster bobbed beneath him and his wobbly legs gave out.

  Blays snapped into being in front of him—he'd shadowalked across the waters to avoid the storm of fish within them. Blood spattered his limbs and clothes.

  He cracked a smile. "Don't suppose you've got any arrow medicine left?"

  He wavered. Dante's eyes lowered to his torso. A broken stick projected from the right side of Blays' chest. A branch? How had he gotten a branch stuck to himself? And there was a second one in his stomach. Both spots sopped with blood.

  Realization flooded over Dante's reeling mind, horrific and ashamed. They weren't sticks. They were snapped-off arrow shafts.

  Dante reached for the shadows, but it was like trying to pick up the floor. He tried again, then a third time, working with the patient deliberateness of a barber shaving the king's neck. His next efforts were increasingly frantic. On other occasions, he'd been able to channel beyond his capacity at the cost of damaging himself, but he had nothing left to prime the pump with. As he understood what he was facing, cold panic prickled up his spine.

  His throat closed on itself. "I'm out."

  "Ah," Blays said. "Well, don't let Volo stick me in one of those cages, will you? There's no room to build a statue underneath."

  Blays fell to his knees, clutching the broken shaft jutting from his stomach. He slumped backward, bent awkwardly. Volo was calling to them from the other side of the trees, but Dante barely heard it. Bile crept up his throat. He had nothing left. Too wrapped up in undoing the horror that had befallen him to imagine the others might wind up hurt, too. Sick anguish curled around his bones. For all that they'd been through, all of the ludicrous odds and fearsome powers they'd defeated, they'd been undone by a patrol of common soldiers, a wild animal, and a school of fish.

  He had healed himself quite thoroughly. But in that moment, he wanted to draw his knife, open his veins, and sink into the warm darkness. He would be alone in the Pastlands, but once he muddled his way through to the Mists, he could rejoin Blays on their next journey.

  A memory snagged in his mind. The whiteness of the Mists, glimpses of mountain and ocean through the gaps in the fog. The light that came from everywhere, because everywhere was light.

  He closed his eyes, inhaling deeply, exhaling through his nose. Light shined through his eyelids. He blinked. A glowing speck hovered above his bloody palm. It was smaller than one of the fireflies they'd seen dancing in the night, but the dot expanded with every breath, growing to the size of a marble.

  His focus shuddered. The light twinkled, growing translucent, shrinking on itself. Dante stared into it, his will hard enough to shatter steel. The light steadied. Became opaque. And swelled to the size of a plum.

  Holding the light in his hand and mind, he saw the shape of what Blays had been, unhurt and whole. The ether yearned to restore it. That was its entire purpose: to hold fast to order no matter how hard the storms of chaos battered against it. Just as Dante was doing as he gazed down on his dying friend.

  He nodded. The ether streamed toward Blays, moving not with the turbulent torrent of the nether, but with linear precision, exactly like a shaft of sunlight beaming through a knot in a barn wall. It gathered around the base of one of the arrows and absorbed into Blays' skin.

  The broken shaft pushed free from his chest and rolled to the side, landing on the hide of the dead beast. The arrowhead was a cruel wedge of shaved bone. Dante sat back. While the nether was something you guided and channeled, he now saw that the ether was a process that unfolded on its own, like the blooming of a flower. Or better yet, like a magical book where, if you opened it to the page you wanted, it would begin to read itself.

  Carefully, he pointed the ball of ether down toward the arrowhead in Blays' stomach. The light sank toward the wound, entering it. Though Dante didn't need to guide the healing process, while it was ongoing, he did have to continue to maintain the ether itself.

  This maintenance was demanding—almost frighteningly so. Fresh sweat beaded his temples and chest. His hands quivered. He could feel the core of his being wearing out, ready to collapse on itself. Already, he was nearly done for, the ball of light evaporating down to a hazelnut, then to a delicate firefly.

  Dante was shaking like a leaf in a storm. But with a calm mind, he rode the winds. And hung on to the light.

  With a fleshy pop, the second arrowhe
ad extruded from Blays' gut.

  A pall of silence rolled across the swamp. It was the silence of the space between breaths, the silence of the moment after creation, the silence of a mind gone still in the wake of exhaustion.

  Blays coughed himself upright. He spat blood, looking impressed at the volume of mess he'd created, then grinned at Dante. "That was just a joke? 'Oh yeah, sorry about you bleeding to death, but I'm totally out of nether.' You asshole!"

  Dante tried to smile, but he couldn't seem to feel his face. The world was tilting. As he fell, his last thought was the hope that he wouldn't roll into the water.

  ~

  A bird was screeching like it had just been robbed in the street. He woke piece by piece: first his ears to the cry of the bird; then his nose to the smell of mud and flowers and decay; then the sweet ache of his muscles and the jabbing pain in his legs.

  He was lying in a hammock suspended a hand's span above the ground on an island barely twenty feet across. He didn't see the canoe anywhere. The other hammocks were strung between the voluminous trees, but there was no sign of Blays or Volo. His shredded jabat had been replaced with an older and shabbier one.

  He made a tentative gesture toward the nether. It responded cheerfully. Still feeling thoroughly banged up, Dante made a second pass at the worst pains in his chest and legs. There were a few shallow grooves in his left leg, but he no longer looked like a grub-riddled log.

  He stilled his mind. Nothing came. Refusing to let any annoyance or emotion of any kind disturb the pond-like placidity of his thoughts, he stared into his palm. A light glowed within it.

  Focusing on a single divot on his leg, he envisioned how it had once looked. And willed the ether to make reality match his memory. His skin tingled. The divot began to fill, but stopped short of disappearing entirely. Yet he felt like he still had a hold on the ether. Why couldn't he finish the healing? Because he lacked the skill? Or because the further removed in time an object got from its ideal state, the less the ether could do to restore it? Maybe it was—

  Something crashed down from the tall blue-leafed tree in the middle of the island. Dante shot to his feet and reached for his sword, but it was no longer hanging from his hip. Blays dangled from a branch, swinging back and forth before letting go and landing in a crouch.

  "You're awake," Blays said.

  "You're stating the obvious."

  "In that case, you smell bad and you're as pale as a fish's ass. You all right? There was enough blood on top of that lizard to fill a keg of really bad beer."

  Dante took a few steps around, bending his arms and legs. "I appear to be remarkably well, considering I was partially devoured twice."

  "As nice as it is to have anti-insect paste, what these people really need is something to ward off the enormous lizards."

  "Where is Volo, anyway?"

  "Taking a peek ahead. We're starting to run low on a few little things. Like food."

  "We're low on rations? How long was I asleep?"

  "Hmm." Blays did some counting on his fingers. "Well, first there was the first day. Then there was the second day. I was never much for schooling, but I'd say that makes two days."

  After the chaos of the encounter, Dante found the loss of time wasn't particularly disturbing. "What was that thing? The lizard?"

  "Volo called it a swamp dragon."

  "Interesting. The only problem with that is that dragons aren't real."

  "Then apparently you got your ass kicked by your own imagination. I understand the act of getting swallowed can cloud your thinking, but did it ever occur to you to try killing it?"

  "I did. It was resistant to nether."

  "Like the kappers?"

  "The kappers seemed impervious. This was more like I had to hit it with ten times the force to do one-tenth the damage. I've never run into anything like it."

  "This reminds me." Blays' pack was hanging from a branch of a tree. He opened it and retrieved a cloth-wrapped item a foot long and two inches in diameter. "Volo said you should have this."

  "What's this?"

  "Swamp dragon penis."

  Dante dropped it on the ground, skipping back a step. He swore. "Is it actually a penis?"

  "It's a horn. Volo said that anyone who kills one of them should take it and carry it around. Sign of courage and all that. Supposed to protect you from evil, too. So be careful not to burn yourself with it."

  Dante bent to pick it up. The horn was black and slightly tapered, coming to a point at one end. "Someday when I'm looking up at this mounted on my wall, I'll smile and remember the day we finally left this awful place."

  He sat in his hammock, turning the horn in his hands. He brought a tendril of nether to him and probed the horn's surface, meaning to see if he could determine how it had shrugged off his attacks—and, with any luck, discover how to nullify its defenses on the chance they ran into another lizard.

  The probe sank a fraction of an inch into the surface before coming up against an unyielding screen. Blank. Smooth. Matte. But undeniably nether, coating the horn from one end to the other.

  The shadows were stuck fast. Like they were frozen. He could neither withdraw them from the horn nor add to them. That appeared to explain the animal's toughness: this embedded nether was deflecting anything that came at it. You could wear it away if you struck the same spot hard and often enough, but the amount of force required would exhaust most nethermancers before they broke through.

  He was still examining the horn when Blays croaked like a frog, indicating a boat was inbound. Dante moved to the north end of the island. Volo paddled toward them, bringing the canoe up onto a muddy landing.

  She hopped out the front and gawked at Dante. "You're a sorcerer!"

  "You're deluded," he told her. "You must have hit your head during the fighting and mistaken the stars you saw for magic."

  "I know what I saw. You blew a hole right through their ship!"

  "They hit a rock."

  "When Mr. Pendelles swam to you, he had two arrows sticking out of him. When I helped him get you into the canoe, he was fine. And so were you—but there was blood everywhere." Her young face twisted with anger and hurt. "I'm not stupid. If you wanted me to not see, you should have blinded me with your sorcerer's tricks. And if you can't let me know the truth, you should kill me right now."

  She stood across from him, feet apart, empty-handed. Dante grimaced. "I need you to swear that this secret stays with you."

  "What right do you have to tell me what to do with my own knowledge?"

  "I attained that right when I entrusted you with our safety—and our ability to complete our mission. If you have any honor in you, swear you'll keep this secret."

  "A smart person once told me honor is just something that powerful people use to stop you from acting in your own interests."

  "In that case, we part ways here. Since you were paid to get us to Dara Bode, we'll take the canoe." He squelched through the muck toward the boat.

  "Fine!" Volo said. "I swear to keep it secret. Bloody scales, do all sorcerers talk like you?"

  "Like what?"

  "Like you rule the world."

  "Pretty much," Blays said. "Although he makes something of an art of it."

  Volo gave Dante a quizzical look. "How many people can you kill at a time?"

  Dante rolled his eyes. "That depends on how many stupid questions they ask."

  "It's a lot, isn't it? Why would an investor send someone like you to chase down some dirty old sea captain? Aren't you worth much more than he is?"

  Dante glanced at Blays. Blays said, "You're right. That wouldn't make sense." He lifted a finger into the air. "But if we're not soldiers, what makes you think the sea captain is really a sea captain? There are mysteries at work here, Volo. Mysteries within mysteries. All shall be revealed when the time is right."

  She regarded him solemnly. "Is this a test sent to stretch my understanding? To remind me that what I'm told—even what I see—isn't always the tru
th?"

  "Could be. That's all part of the mystery, isn't it?"

  "What say we discuss this on the way to the village?" Dante said. "I'm starving."

  Blays tilted his head. "We're still doing this?"

  "Think it's a bad idea?"

  "Some might say that being attacked by a dragon, a squadron of soldiers, and a swarm of carnivorous fish might be the gods' way of telling you it's a good time to turn back."

  "We're alive. And we're not holding back anymore. We can do this."

  They packed up their things and shoved off from the island. Dante killed a dragonfly and sent it whirring ahead of them. Compared to the moths and beetles he was used to dealing with, it was as nimble as a falcon.

  "The fish that attacked you," Volo said. "Ziki oko. World-eaters. That's why you stay out of the water. Well, that's one of the reasons."

  Dante gazed down into the brown murk. "Are they common?"

  "Wherever blood is shed. So you might be seeing a lot of them."

  His airborne scout spotted a number of canoes and rafts, but nothing that resembled a patrol. Within three miles, sleepiness draped itself over Dante like a soaked cloak. He sat up straight, arching his back to ward it off, but his body was still recovering.

  "Dante." Time had passed; someone was shoving his shoulder. "We could be in trouble."

  He swung upright. They were emerging from the shadow of the trees into a sunny clearing. In its center, dozens of rafts were lashed together. Green crops grew from the water. Four earthen mounds had been raised up, one of them supporting a formidable stone tower.

  It had the look of a thriving little community. Yet the only sounds on the air were those of the swamp: the frogs, the bugs, and the birds.

  Dante brought the nether to him; it came easily, sheathing his fingers. Two concentric rings of wooden posts encircled the village, extending two feet from the water. As Volo approached them, Dante made out a mesh net stretched between each pair of posts. Volo came to a gate, opened it, and paddled inside. An inner set of posts and nets still separated them from the settlement.