The Wound of the World

by Edward W. Robertson

  They were halfway to Gladdic's room when the shouts sounded from outside the keep.

  Dante pressed himself to the wall, straining his ears. "Tell me that's not about us."

  "Someone could have seen the bridge was down to the Blue Tower."

  The shouts were growing louder by the moment. They'd passed an intersection a moment before. Dante backtracked and moved to the southern window, which had a view of the walls, the moat, and the city beyond.

  Torches flapped from the entrance to the moat. Canoes were streaming into the water. Dozens more waited to follow them. Flames bloomed in two of the leading boats; flaming arrows darted forward, lodging inside a lone canoe speeding out to meet the disturbance.

  "Strange," Blays said. "If I didn't know better, I'd say that was a revolution."

  Dante wanted to deny this out of hand, but guards were racing along the outer walls, shooting bows down at the water. Lanterns flared to life in the towers. Dante had a clear view of the gates through the inner curtain wall. Against all reason, these were currently cranking open. Guards rushed in from the sides to push them closed, only to be fired on from the top of the wall.

  Dante pressed his knuckles against his forehead. "Couldn't the people have waited to liberate themselves until tomorrow?"

  "On the other hand, it makes for great cover for an assassination. We have to hit him right now. Before someone comes to bring him to the fight."

  They hurried away from the window and toward Gladdic's room. As they neared his door, Dante bit the inside of his lips and surrounded himself in great clouds of nether. He ripped the door open and charged inside, flooding the room with pale light. The room was as sparely furnished as everything else in Tanar Atain had been. It took no more than a glance to know that Gladdic wasn't there.

  "Ah." Blays' voice was thick with disappointment. "Back to Riza's with us, then."

  Dante nodded numbly, hating the taste of the idea, but knowing that he had no choice but to swallow it. Just in case Gladdic was using sorcery to hide himself, he sent probes of nether to every corner of the room, but he felt nothing.

  He closed the door and headed for the servants' stairs. "The Blue Tower's away from the fighting. If we hurry, we can get out the same way we came in."

  Blays opened his mouth to reply. A door banged open. Sandals clapped down the hallway. Before Dante could tell which way they were going, four men spilled into the corridor across from him.

  Two were dressed in the green of Tanarian soldiers. Another wore a long white shirt and white trousers, both of which were baggy and flowing. And the fourth was a tall figure in a gray robe with the sunken eyes of a man who saw evil wherever he looked.

  Dante's heart took a flying leap from his chest. Before anyone could say a word—before any sense of recognition had entered Gladdic's eyes—Dante hurled a swarm of black blades at the Mallish priest.

  Beside him, steel flashed as Blays drew swords. Gladdic's head jerked back. He lifted his right hand. Piercing white light blazed down the hallway. The shadowy blades slammed into the priest's ether, obscuring the hallway in black sparks, white shards, and gray dust.

  The maelstrom of thwarted energy winked away. The floor and walls were blasted with grayscale streaks. Gladdic stood with his feet together, left hand at his waist, his right hand lifted in benediction.

  "Galand and Buckler," he said. "Why are you here? Is that which is foul so obsessed with spoiling that which is pure?"

  Blays spun his sword in a circle. "You're pure now? Is that as in, 'I'd like to purify the Collen Basin of everyone who lives there'?"

  "I would have brought peace. You, however, are true servants of the nether. You bring nothing but death and war. Just as you have brought it to this place."

  Dante locked eyes with the man in white, who he suspected was a local priest. "Do you know what he is? This man you work with?"

  Gladdic scoffed. "You are the font of lies. The decay that rots not only flesh, but souls."

  "He likes to be seen as the sword of the faith. The storm that will wash the heresy from the world. But when he thinks no one's watching, he uses the nether to create monsters—and commit acts that would sicken the gods. He is the heresy he fears."

  Gladdic's face tightened like a fist. A transparent cube of light shimmered beneath his right hand.

  "It's true, isn't it?" The priest in white turned a doleful eye on Gladdic, then smiled. "And that is precisely why we need you."

  "These men are working with the rebels." Gladdic narrowed his eyes. "Every second we waste talking is another second their comrades spend slaughtering the innocent. For the heart!"

  He splayed out his hand as if he was releasing a dove. Radiant lines shot down the hallway. Dante slung bolts of nether to intercept them, showering the ceiling with dark and fast-fading stars.

  Blays charged forward, dropping into the netherworld. Gladdic lifted his palm and crushed his fingers together as if he were squeezing an orange. Blays stumbled bodily out of the shadows, crashing into the wall and sliding to the floor. Seeing him exposed, one of the soldiers lunged, jabbing toward Blays' ribs with a thin, quick sword. Still on the floor, Blays shoved off from the wall and rolled to the side, hacking across the back of the soldier's ankle. The man spasmed and dropped. Blays thrust his sword into the man's heart and popped to his feet.

  The second soldier turned and ran down the hall. The priest in white dropped into a low stance. Ether lanced from his right hand, nether flowing from his left. Gladdic followed this with a blast of crystalline light that glinted with rainbow facets. Blays scrambled back, diving past Dante as Dante met the assault with a brute wall of nether. The energies collided with a thunderous whoomp, scorching the floor and sending everyone staggering back.

  So far, the battle had been little more than a raw back-and-forth of power. The Tanarian priest was only moderately skilled, but Gladdic could turn back Dante's efforts with finessed doses of ether, while Dante was forced to club down Gladdic's attacks with awkward torrents of shadows. In a war of attrition, he'd be on the losing side.

  He reached into the stone beneath Gladdic's feet, meaning to wrench it open and drop Gladdic to the story below. Gladdic snapped forth with snake-like speed, ripping the nether apart. The priest in white smiled and strolled forward, harrying Dante with a flurry of low-strength but constant attacks.

  After two exchanges, Dante had picked up the man's pattern. He waited for the third flurry, then counterattacked with an arc of darkness that split apart as it neared its target. Blays, poised for an opportunity, speared forward, ready to gut the priest while the man was distracted by the nether.

  Gladdic thrust needles of ether directly at Blays. Blays swore and dropped into the shadows, the light shredding into the wall behind him.

  Blays reappeared beside Dante. "I'm no use here. I'm going for help!"

  Blays turned and ran. For a moment, Dante felt Blays sliding through the shadows, but he lost all feel for him as Gladdic and the Tanarian hurled dancing geometries of ether down the hallway. Dante lashed out at each shape and line, casting the passage into a pall of dark mist. As Gladdic held his ground, the priest resumed his advance, decreasing the time Dante had to deflect his attacks. This was a sword that could have cut both ways, but Dante was too busy fending off Gladdic to make a serious offensive against the priest.

  Dante fell back a step, then another. His foes pressed harder yet, flakes of deflected ether dashing against Dante's face. As the Tanarian took another step toward Dante, Gladdic paused to gather a mighty pillar of ether. The hair stood up on Dante's arms. When the blow came, he wasn't sure that—

  Blays stepped out of the wall right beside the priest. His right-hand blade wheeled through the air. The priest yelled out in surprise and anger, the sound abruptly silenced as Blays' sword cut through his throat and spine. Blood painted the ceiling. Nether swarmed to the toppling body and the stump of its neck.

  Gladdic's face grew long in surprise. He loosed a symmetrical sto
rm of ether at Blays, who sprinted back toward Dante as fast as he could, his eyes bulging with effort and his face streaked with blood. Dante met Gladdic's assault and diverted it into the walls, battering them so hard that dust shot down the passage.

  "Beheading?" Dante said.

  Blays snapped his sword to the side, whipping off the blood. "I've spent enough time around sorcerers to know how to deal with you. I'd have cut him in half if I could."

  Rather than slamming Dante with the column of ether he'd been gathering, Gladdic let most of it disperse, beginning a thoughtful and measured assault. They tested each other, feinting and probing, searching for holes in the other's guard.

  Yet no matter how subtly or misleadingly Dante structured his attacks, Gladdic turned them aside before Dante had had the chance to develop them. Blays made a few trips into the nether, trying to flank Gladdic, but each time, Gladdic ejected him nearly instantly. While Dante had to look out for both light and shadow, and was thus unable to fully commit to defending against either, Gladdic seemed attuned to the slightest twitch of nether.

  Dante quashed a smile. Swatting down an incoming beam of ether, he pulled the pillowcase from his belt and dumped his skeletal rats out on the floor. He motioned toward Gladdic. The rats bolted forward, claws skittering on the stone before gaining traction.

  At the same time, Dante pressed hard against Gladdic with a chevron of shadows. Piece by piece, Gladdic carved apart his attack, then turned to the rats, who were almost upon him. With a small twist of nether, he severed their connection to Dante. The bones tumbled apart, sliding over the stone.

  Dante flung a second wave of shadows at Gladdic, exchanging thrusts, parries, and ripostes, guiding the nether to dart and weave in complicated, near-random patterns. As Gladdic concentrated on picking off the screen of black darts, Dante quieted his mind. Touched the ether. And asked it to remember the rats' prior form.

  Scattered bones swept together, cohering into complete skeletons. Focused on Dante's efforts with the nether, Gladdic didn't even seem to notice. The rats raced at Gladdic, throwing themselves at his legs and climbing up his trunk, biting and rending, blood staining their fleshless jaws.

  Gladdic screamed in fear and revulsion. He slapped at the rats in panic, dashing one of them, then blasted three apart with shaky gusts of ether so overdone that the rats' bones sprayed against the walls. The remaining rats burrowed harder, drenching him in blood as he gathered a second round of light.

  Dante yearned very badly to gloat, but that could wait until he and Blays were kicking Gladdic's head around like kids playing sally-ball. Gladdic had wriggled away too many times already. He reached for the nether.

  And felt nothing at all—as if every shadow had vanished from the world.

  23

  Dante's mind locked up. Reaching for the nether and finding nothing was like trying to place his foot on a step that wasn't there. Like grabbing hold of a door handle only to discover the door was painted onto a solid wall. Down the hallway, the light snapped off from Gladdic's hands. He looked startled, then began to laugh raucously, bashing at the gnawing rats with hammer-like fists.

  "Er," Blays said. "What?"

  Dante scrabbled at the shadows, but they wouldn't budge. Neither would the ether. He drew his sword and ran at Gladdic. Gladdic's eyebrows hopped up his brow. The priest got to his feet, tiny bones tumbling from the folds of his robe, and hobbled down the hall, leaving smears of blood behind him.

  Sandals smacked against the floor. A crowd of men swerved from around a corner. The soldier who'd fled the encounter had returned, but all Dante could look at was the two warriors he'd brought with him. Their faces were concealed inside helmets that resembled eyeless heads of swamp dragons. They wore mail vests, bracers, and skirts, but rather than being made of metal, or the lacquered wood he'd seen a few warriors wear in the Plagued Islands, the knights' armor appeared to be made of black scales.

  In their left hands, they carried small shields shaped like black half-moons. In their right, they bore curved black swords lined with silver. The pommels ended in thick black spikes.

  But even more commanding than their arms and armor was their sense of stillness. Their presence felt like the distillation of the dead of night in the dead of winter, when even the wind has found somewhere warmer to hide. At once, Dante knew that whatever force was blocking his access to the nether, they were the ones behind it.

  Gladdic laughed again. One of the rats had gouged open his forehead and painted half his face with blood, tracing the creases of his crow's feet. "You know nothing of this land. How does it feel to know you'll die here?"

  His knees buckled. A soldier grabbed for his elbow, helping him hobble away.

  Dante pointed the tip of his sword at the knight across from him. "You're harboring a man who killed thousands of innocents in the Collen Basin. Step aside and go defend your gates."

  The knight stared back at him, eyes hidden behind his helmet. "Are you servants of the Eiden Rane?"

  "We don't even know what an Eiden Rane is," Blays said. He made a "let's get on with it" gesture with the tip of his sword. "Out of the way, will you?"

  "Do you choose arrest? Or death?"

  Blays sighed. "I should start carrying the heads of my enemies around so you guys will know I'm serious. But I'm not sure where I'd get a big enough wagon."

  He lifted his swords in a guard. Dante kneeled and picked up one of the bloody rat bones, then edged beside Blays to cover his flank. Dante himself remained a fair swordsman—better than most, but lacking the training or instincts of a true expert—yet the possibility that the knights outskilled him didn't bother him in the slightest. Blays had skill enough for them both.

  The knight nodded once, then brought up his sword along his center. The blackness of it seemed to be moving, like a river on a moonless night. Out of habit, Dante called out to the nether. Its absence made him feel naked. More than naked—more like he'd lost his arms and legs.

  The lead knight swung a diagonal blow toward the intersection of Blays' neck and shoulder. Blays twitched up his left-hand sword, meaning to catch the enemy's blade and guide it past him as he drove his right-hand weapon into the knight's torso, a maneuver Dante had watched him execute a hundred times.

  The black sword hit Blays' blade with a high-pitched metallic chink. Blays' eyes went wide. The knight's weapon sheared through Blays' steel, sending half his sword spinning away. Blays grunted, jerking his hips forward and his shoulders back, yanking his head away from the incoming strike.

  The black blade hissed past his head. A lock of blond hair fluttered to the ground. Blays danced back two steps, gaze shifting between his severed sword, the lock of hair, and the knight's sword, which was now outlined in purple, shadows rippling across its surface. The pair of knights drew their shields closer to their bodies and advanced.

  "Run?" Blays said. "Yes. Run!"

  He turned and fled down the hall. Dante matched him step for step—this time, it wasn't a ruse. The knights gave chase, slowed by their armor. Blays grabbed a lantern from the wall and flung it in front of the two men. It smashed open, the oil going up with a blast of air, shooting light and heat down the corridor. The knights didn't make a sound, simply backed up and waited for the fire to fade.

  Blays swung down a long hallway, breaking right at the next intersection. A few steps in, it became obvious it was a dead end, but turning around would expose them to the knights. His eyes fixed on an open door to a dark room. He rushed inside, Dante on his heels, and closed the door as silently as he could, enclosing them in near-total blackness.

  For just a moment, Dante could feel the nether around him again. As soon as he tried to reach it, it once more clamped down tight.

  "This is the plan?" Dante whispered. "Hide?"

  "Why not? They'll have to go deal with the rebels eventually." Shouts and the ring of iron poured through the window, punctuating his claim. "Or I suppose we could climb out the window."

  Dante mo
ved toward it, then clasped his hand over his mouth and nose. "No we can't."

  "We'll just knot together some sheets or something. Climb down to the window below."

  "Is that before or after you rip the iron bars out of the window with your bare hands?"

  Blays rocked on his heels, then walked to the wall and reached out to feel the dim, X-shaped metal bars running between the corners of the window. "Lyle's twisted balls. Why would they bar a bedroom window six stories off the ground?"

  "How should I know? Maybe they have a problem with giant bats. It's not—"

  He cut himself short as footsteps sounded in the hall. They advanced without haste, steadily approaching their door, as if the knight could somehow see through the walls.

  Blays held out his hand. "The horn."

  "The what?"

  "The swamp dragon horn! Do you still have it?"

  Dante unshouldered his pack and opened the compartment where he kept his more interesting and precious items. He passed Blays the horn. "What are you doing?"

  Blays gripped the horn like a knife. "Ambush."

  Dante was about to ask what the hell he was talking about, but the footsteps had just arrived outside their door, stopping there. His torchstone rested in the same compartment he'd taken the horn from. He plucked out the small white stone, holding it up between his forefinger and thumb. Blays looked at it blankly, barely able to see it in the gloom, then nodded in recognition.

  Blays crept closer to the door. The handle began to turn. Dante gripped the torchstone and brought his fist to his mouth. As the door swung inward, Dante blew into his palm, covering his eyes with his other hand. Blays looked down and away.

  The torchstone flung piercing light to all sides. The knight paused halfway into the room, jerking his shield up to protect himself from being dazzled. Blays sprung forward, driving the horn toward the man's exposed armpit. The knight whirled and lashed out with his sword. Blays adjusted his attack into a block. As the black blade struck the horn, purplish sparks spat into the air.