The White Tree

by Edward W. Robertson

  "Blays Buckler!" he shouted over his shoulder. "And my friend Dante, greatest sorcerer to walk the earth!"

  "That's not very wise," Dante said.

  "Ah, we'll never see them again. This way they can write some songs about us. Make the watch feel like jackasses for years to come."

  They neared the forest fringe at the edge of the field. Blays laughed and cursed a few gods for good measure. As if they'd taken personal interest, Dante saw a spearpoint of men on horseback break from the crowd and angle to intercept them before the woods.

  "Oh, come on!" Blays said, slapping the horse's sweating side. "I didn't mean it!"

  Dante whistled to the other two prisoners galloping ahead. The swordsman glanced back, saw the pursuers, then slowed to let Blays fall in beside him.

  "Can't outrun them," the man panted, and Dante saw it was true. The horses they'd stolen were so bulky they were practically plowhorses. Next to the saber-thin bodies of the watchmen's horses, the ones they rode were like the jewel-fattened swords kings used to ennoble their bravest and richest knights. The watch would be on them before they reached the woods. And once again, they were outnumbered.

  "Don't these people have anything better to do?" Dante muttered.

  "Can't you make the earth swallow them up or something?"

  "Can't you stab them all in the heart wearing a blindfold and women's drawers?"

  "You've got women's drawers?" Blays gave Dante an intensely interested look, eyes going wide when he saw the riders behind them. "Hey, they're really getting close!"

  One rider spurred himself ahead of the pack, intent on Dante's undefended back. If they slowed down to fight, the others would catch them. If they rode straight on, the one would run him through. His eyes felt moist. He blanked his mind and touched the nether. It leapt up easily, ready to return. There was no holding back now. Dante shouted at the swordsman on their flank.

  "Can you hold that one off?"

  "The one, sure," the prisoner said, straightening his arm and slanting his sword at the ground.

  "I just need a few seconds." Dante turned his face from the wind trying to tear the breath from his mouth. The man dropped a couple lengths behind them and blocked the path of the lone watchman. They crossed blades and the other five pulled side-by-side with each other and hurried to his aid. Dante's palm had mostly scabbed up and he sucked in air and cut an X across his hand. Shadows flocked to his blood at once, wriggling around his fingers, coating his skin halfway to the elbow. His body went cold. He could see the individual beads of sweat rolling down the faces of the watch, could smell the horse's sweat and the earthy mulch of rotting leaves. He felt as if he could drop down and outrun their horse on his own two legs. Why hadn't he been doing this more? What was there to be afraid of? Lightning in his veins and vision so sharp it was like he could see into time itself. This was everything he'd ever wanted.

  "Watch this, Blays. I'm going to do something neat."

  He splayed his fingers and released the nether, shaping it to the image in his mind. For a second nothing happened. He looked at his empty hand, expecting sparks or smoke. Nothing. They were going to die, then.

  In the gap between the battling pair and the five galloping watchmen a wall of flames erupted from the earth. It roared twenty feet high, then collapsed to half that, a fire so hot it was white. The five men screamed as one. Their horses bleated, reared back, trying to stop the wild rush of their bodies. One man and mount tried to leap through and the fires scorched the skin from its belly. They tumbled apart. Dante saw the silhouette of another man flying forward, thrown by his horse. By the time he cleared the fire he was a corpse.

  Dante tried to swallow, but none of his muscles wanted to work. Behind them, before his sight started going gray, he saw the sword-wielding prisoner swing forehand, knocking aside the watchman's blade, then backhand, slicing off his hand, and finally swung his shoulders in a second forehand, sending the man's head spinning into the grass. A low branch rushed past Dante's face.

  "Someone kill me while I'm happy!" Blays shouted. "I can't believe you came back, Dante. I didn't know what to think when I saw your face back at the tree. If I'd had a real meal in the last week I probably would've filled my trousers."

  "Unggh," Dante said, meaning something about how he couldn't think either. His vision tunneled. His legs loosened their grip on the horse's flanks. Blays had escaped, he thought, and then the darkness took him.

  8

  Pain woke him. This didn't surprise him—some animal part of his brain had been registering hurt even as he slept—but rather than the all-body throb Dante'd slumbered through for however many hours or years since he'd collapsed mid-ride on their escape from Whetton, this pain was in his face: light and stinging, and with it a flat smack.

  "What did I tell you," a nasally voice said, "about streams that want to be rivers? Don't you remember the part about the dying?"

  "Stop it," Dante slurred, pawing at whatever was hitting him. He blinked a few times. "Cally?"

  "No, bearded Gashen himself. I'm here to recruit you as my chief general in the war for the heavens." The old man scowled down on him. "Were you trying to get yourself killed?"

  "Kind of the opposite," Dante said, and before he could say more his lungs spasmed. Cally threw a handkerchief in his face. Dante dabbed at his lips and the mess came away bloody. "Where are we?"

  "Somewhere safe from Whetton's watch and the Arawnites' hounds."

  Dante blinked again, gazed dumbly at the musty stone walls. "It looks like a dump."

  "It's my temple," Cally said. "Show some respect."

  "You blew up that man's sword when I was charging them," Dante remembered. He laughed, quickly clutched his sides. "Ow."

  "At that moment, you weren't looking very capable of not dying."

  "Dante!" Blays shouted, head stuck through the doorway. He poured into the room and shot Cally a black look. "I told you he wouldn't die."

  "Technically it was a bet."

  "You should have seen yourself running onto that field," Blays said, grabbing Dante's shoulder and shaking him like a crying child. "Those rats stampeding in front of you like hell's own army, staff in one hand, sword in the other, face all lit up with light—you looked like a demon come down to earth, or one of those old wizards that used to obliterate a battalion just by pointing at them."

  "Those stories are all exaggerated," Cally said.

  "You're old enough to know."

  "So you admit you're wrong."

  "What happened to the others?" Dante said. "Did they make it?"

  "They're out in the yard somewhere," Cally said, flipping a hand. "Eating up my food and drinking down my wine, no doubt. Why couldn't you have saved a 16-year-old girl?"

  "I wasn't trying to save anyone but Blays," Dante said. He eased himself upright. The blood left his head and he felt as if he were floating in a warm sea. He waited till his eyes weren't full of specks. "I was just using the others to make a mess."

  "I don't think mess' quite covers it," Cally said. He frowned through the snarl of his beard for a moment, then couldn't help chuckling. "All right, it did look ridiculous. They'll be talking about it for generations. Ten years from now, all the people who'll claim to have witnessed the Execution That Wasn't could fill an ocean."

  "How long was I out?"

  "A whole damn day," Blays said. He bounced on his heels. "I'll go grab the others. They've been waiting to thank you."

  "What?" Dante said once Blays had run off. "What do they think, I was trying to save them?"

  "That's exactly what they think," Cally said, running his fingers through his beard and laughing to himself. "They think you have a special purpose for them."

  "That's crazy! In what way is 'dying so I don't have to' a special purpose?"

  "Try to get them to swear you a life-debt. Never know when that might come in handy."

  "Will you be serious for a minute?" Dante doubled over in another coughing fit. He brushed water from
his eyes. "What am I going to tell them?"

  "Obviously not the truth. That would crush them." Cally explored a gap in his teeth with his pinky nail. "In a minute, they're going to bound in here and slobber all over you trying to convince themselves you really do have a meaning for them. The polite thing would be to play along."

  "Well, I'm not going to lie to them. Not about something like that."

  "Oh yes, it would be far more ethical to strip them of their illusions and leave them to fend for themselves philosophically naked."

  "You talk like they're little babies. I think they can do all right for themselves."

  Cally rolled his eyes. "The first time you saw them they were about to be hanged."

  "That doesn't mean anything," Dante said, wriggling upright in his bed. "Those people hang anyone they don't like. The whole thing's a sham. They were going to kill Blays for looking like a scumhole and not having any friends there."

  "And for killing all those people."

  "Those people were trying to—" Dante started, then bolted upright, scanning the room. Cally looked puzzled, then his face wrinkled up in a smirk. Dante turned back to him. "Where's the book?"

  "Your pack's on that peg over there," the old man said, tipping his chin past Dante's shoulder. "You wouldn't let go of it even after you'd been knocked out."

  "Praise the gods," Dante said, sinking back into the bedclothes, then glanced in fresh panic at the door as Blays burst back into the room, followed by the bearded swordsman, who Dante now recognized as the noosed-up man who'd asked for more whiskey before they turned him off, and the staff-wielding man who'd made a poor horseman and, Dante noted with a strange thrill, was still carrying the staff, as though Dante's touch had made it into something more than a snapped-off branch. The two ex-prisoners exchanged a smile, then looked back at Dante.

  "Was some talk of whether you'd pull through," the bearded man said, glancing at Blays and jingling some coins in his pocket. "My name's Robert Hobble."

  "I'm Dante."

  "No, I mean, I'm Robert Hobble."

  "And well met," Dante said.

  "Guess I'm not as well known as I thought," Robert smiled. "Thought I was a corpse for sure up there. I had this half-assed notion the mob, once they saw it was me, would rush right up and uproot the Crooked Tree for now and for ever, but I guess they thought I deserved it after all." His face went blank, just a light crinkle around his eyes like he was trying to fight off a headache. "Don't know what to make of getting rescued by you."

  "Think nothing of it," Dante said quickly. The man with the staff stepped forward.

  "They don't tell stories about me like they do for Robert," he said, ducking his head, "but I appreciate what you've done just as much. It's like I've been given a second chance."

  "Then spend it well," Dante said, avoiding Blays and Cally's eyes. "What's your name?"

  "Edwin Powell, sir."

  "We might not have made it if you weren't fighting alongside us, Edwin."

  "Might be," Edwin said. He leaned on the stick and nodded at the far wall. "But I'd be strangled and buried if you hadn't led the charge."

  "I'd planned to die there," Dante said. "I think I would have if you two hadn't discharged yourselves so well." To his ear, his words didn't sound entirely his own. He had the sense he was repeating sentiments he'd once heard from someone else, and while he meant what he was saying, there was something platitudinal in it, a blandness that made him feel as if he were lying. He flushed, and before he could find a way to thank them that felt real he coughed so hard he sat up straight, eyes watering.

  "The young lord needs his rest," Cally said, restraining his smile till the two men had turned back to Dante. "In other words, get the hell out."

  "I pledge to spend my second chance better than I did my first," Edwin said. He tapped the staff against the stone floor. "I won't make you regret what you did for me." He looked down. "My family's worried, no doubt. With your leave, I'd like to go back to them now."

  "Of course," Dante said.

  "No one's eager to see me back," Robert said, scratching the stubble on his throat. "Would probably be best if I stayed out of sight for a while, in fact. Maybe I can pay you two back by teaching Blays all the ways he's embarrassing himself when he waves around that sword of his."

  "My dad taught me how to fight," Blays said, hands gripping his belt.

  Robert held up his palms. "I just mean no education worth its salt ends at twelve."

  "I'm fifteen and a half."

  "My mistake. I try not to pay attention to anyone under twenty. They have the habit of dying right around the time you start to like them."

  "Maybe you've got a habit of boring them to death," Blays said.

  "Enough," Cally said, tugging at sleeves and shoving at backs. "Go yammer at each other out in the yard." He overruled their objections and ushered them out of the room, then closed the door and pressed his back to it. "Country hens. The real crime was not letting the watch turn them off when they had the chance."

  "I couldn't find a way to thank them," Dante said.

  "You sounded fine to me. I once heard a duke say the same thing after a successful siege."

  "That's exactly the problem."

  "You want to be you and you alone," Cally said knowingly. "The key is to be less civilized."

  "What does that mean?" Dante said. The old man just stared at him through the gray halo of his beard and ruffled hair.

  "What are you going to do now?"

  "Sleep," Dante said, stretching his arms over his head and sliding back beneath his blanket.

  "Yes, but I presume at some point, hours or even days from now, you'll wake up and be wanting for something to do."

  "Finish the part of the Cycle I can read. Then learn how to read the part I can't."

  "I see," Cally said. His eyes flickered wide with something that looked bizarrely like hunger. Then he nodded, inscrutable as ever, and went for the door. "First, rest. Once you're done coughing up blood, then you can think about what comes next."

  * * *

  Dante could stand after the first day and walk around after the second. When he felt well enough to hobble outside his room he found the building really had been a temple. A poor one, most certainly, more of a shrine, given that it had only four rooms and the largest of these wouldn't have held a congregation of more than forty. It was a sturdy edifice, though, all mortared stone, with high arched ceilings that stole up the heat even when the main hearth was blazing. The walls were covered in bas relief from Dante's knees to a foot above his eyes, filled with hand-sized figures of bearded men in crowns and robes with stars flaring from their hands and a number of smaller figures who appeared to be getting killed by those stars. Concealed among the kingly shapes was a frame of a man standing in a cell. Rags hung from his shoulders in abstract tatters. At his feet, three rats stood on their hind legs, front paws dangling. His outstretched hand bore four fingers.

  He saw Blays no more than two or three times a day, at meals or when the boy came in from hours of traipsing around the open wood as he'd done when they lived by the pond. In the mornings and late afternoons of the shortening days Dante heard the crash of swords out in the yard mingled with the phlegmy laughter of Robert Hobble as he doled out some new lesson. Cally all but quarantined himself to his room, as if he couldn't stand sharing the same space with other bodies for more than a few minutes a day. Dante sat by the fire reading the last sections of the Cycle that were still in the Mallish tongue and tried to shut his ears to the shouts and play of blades outside.

  By the fourth day he could have joined them, he thought, in that he felt physically well enough to spar. It wouldn't hurt to improve his training; his current worth with a sword was about one notch above being able to take a swing without chopping off his own face. Instead he stayed indoors. He didn't want to slow Blays down. Robert had skill, that much was clear from how he'd acquitted himself in the field. Blays must know that, unencumbered by Dante's clums
y swipes and plodding advancement, he could learn something that might end up saving his life—probably Dante's as well. If they thought it would do any good for Dante to be out there, they'd have asked him.

  So he read and reread, scribbling notes, flipping forward and backward, doing his best to place the fractured chronology in some kind of order, borrowing from Cally's bountiful stacks of blank paper to compose small essays on the Cycle's curious symbolism and authorial shifts and veiled concerns. He wrote these not because he intended to amend or refute in the public arena the other scholars he'd read (though he hoped, with a desperation he could never wholly admit to, Cally would some day read them and confirm he was on the right track), but from a compulsion that felt as elemental as the stone walls and wood chairs that surrounded him. It was trying work, but it wasn't tiring; it was slow and uneven and he was constantly frustrated by how little the words on his pages matched the ideas in his head, but he was propelled by the momentum of a boy's first-found love in the subjects of men. By the end of a week he reached the final page of the Mallish chapters before it shifted to the dead language, and in the last light of afternoon finished what he'd started an age ago in Bressel.

  The final times will come as they began, blinded by the white blanket of the northern snows, settled at the foot of the Tree of Bone where the Draconat spilled the Father of the Heavens' heartblood on the snow and planted his knuckle within the soil. The skies will be black, though it be full day, the winds will howl with the laments of the slain as the starry vault is shattered and all things thought passed once more come forth. A scaled beast will arise with three tails and four wings and lay waste to the land.

  Rivers will reverse their direction and graves will spit the dead to mingle with the living. Fire will consume the cities of man: the gift never meant to be given turned in hot cleansing against those who tainted its power. The beast will make himself known, lashing out with his tails to smash the false temples of men who have forgotten the true faces of the Belt of the Celeset.