The White Tree

by Edward W. Robertson

  It expanded from his body so fast Larrimore was knocked down before he could cry out. It whipped the dust on the floor into billowing clouds. Rugs flapped and spun into the walls. Vases and statues flew sideways from tables like an invisible tablecloth had been yanked from beneath them, smashing on walls, clattering on the ground. Servants and students spun from their feet to land on hands and knees or hard on their backs. The sphere met the walls then, striking so hard it boomed like cliffside surf, like a battering ram swung into a great gate. Dante sunk to his knees, seeing black and white through the slits of his eyes. Then the crash of the nether was gone, replaced by a silence interrupted by the clinks of glass and pottery ringing to rest on the ground, by the slow crackle of stone flaking from the nearest wall, by the light sobbing of the servants and his own ragged breathing.

  "How insightful," he heard Larrimore say, distant as a cloud. The man rolled to his feet and brushed dust from his worn clothes. Around them, the other men who'd been knocked down dragged themselves up and suddenly remembered tasks of calamitous importance, disappearing through doors and around corners. Dante made no move to get up. His whole body tingled as if it were no longer just his but belonged to all the world. His mouth was a loose O of dumb shock and simple exaltation. Larrimore toed a broken shard of glass. "As if we didn't have enough work already."

  "I don't need you," Dante slurred, dreamlike. He laughed, the low, breathy laugh of an idiot.

  "Shut up, you clown," Larrimore muttered. He crossed to the wall and fingered the cracks that had appeared in the stone. "I want you to go to your room and think about what you've done. Tomorrow your true purpose begins."

  He'd walked back to his cell in a daze. The world felt as close and translucent as the time he'd been drunk back in Bressel. He lowered himself to his pallet, heavy as a boulder. It was a long time before his thoughts became shapes he could understand or control.

  "Cally lied," he said when Blays showed up after night had fallen.

  "He's pretty old," Blays said, turning his back and hanging his sword from a peg on the wall. "Maybe he just forgot the truth."

  "Gabe, too. He said Samarand led a coup, killed the old priest. Cally was the leader, and the council forced him out, not her. And obviously she didn't kill him."

  Blays frowned down on him, noncommittal. "Were they both lying? Or was Gabe just repeating the lies Cally'd told him?"

  "I don't know," Dante said. He stared at the ceiling. "I don't suppose it matters."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Did Cally send us here to exact justice, or to execute a personal vendetta that's twenty years old?"

  Blays' face clouded up. He shuffled his feet around the straw and dirty stone of their cell.

  "You're thinking maybe it's a good thing it's taken so long to get things in place."

  "I no longer have any idea what the good thing may be."

  "Whenever I have that feeling, I try to go with whatever I haven't tried before." Blays sighed through his nose, ruffled his hair. His eyes shifted to Dante's prone form. "When did you learn all this, anyway?"

  "Today."

  "Not a week ago? Not a month ago? You haven't just been sitting on this while you let them teach you all their fancy tricks, have you?"

  "No."

  Blays stuck out his jaw. "I'm not stupid. I know you pretty well. You've been enjoying this. Playing them with one hand and me with the other."

  Dante sat upright. "That's not true!"

  "Isn't it? You're not putting off what we have to do so you can puff yourself up with power?"

  "Blays! I'm not using you here." Dante told him about his conversation with Larrimore, how he'd asked the man what the order of Arawn was up to and how it had led to their talk of the history between Samarand and Callimandicus. He left out the part at the end, when he'd blown up the keep, and Larrimore's promise about his "true purpose," whatever that meant. "I didn't know," Dante said, clasping his hands in his lap. "You see? I'd been looking for a way to get to her. I had. And now it's all been swept away."

  Blays blew up his cheeks and knocked his knuckles on his forehead.

  "I'm going to ask a question," he said carefully. "It's going to sound crazy, but I want you to think about it before you answer. Okay?"

  "Okay," Dante said.

  Blays raised his brows. "Does this change anything?"

  "That's crazy!" Dante said. Blays sighed again. Dante bit his lip, wincing when his teeth found the raw split where he'd bitten it open hours earlier. He lowered his voice. "We came here thinking she's a usurper. That if she died, reason would take her place. If her place in the council's legitimate, how can we expect things will be any different just because she's gone?"

  "I don't know!" Blays hissed. "Gask seems peaceful enough. There's no more murder out there than in any other city. No towns were burning on our way through. But they are burning down in Mallon. If we can do something about that, how can we hold back?"

  Dante looked down. Whetton, Bressel, the village he'd left the year before, they were just places he'd once drifted through for no reason more special than that they were near where he'd been born. He didn't miss any of the people he'd known from those times. Who were they? Faces, fragments of memory. That was all. Did the fact he had once known them somehow make them more important than the people in this city, in this kingdom? There were people in Mallon who wanted to worship Arawn shoulder to shoulder with the devotees of Gashen or Lia or Carvahal or Mennok. That was somehow a crime? Who'd made that decision? He shook his head at Blays.

  "Killing her won't change a thing. It'll be like Gabe said. Someone else will take her place and the wheels of history will roll right on."

  "Not if you're the one who takes it," Blays said. Dante squinted at him until he was certain the boy was serious.

  "Did someone hit you on the head while you were sparring today? Let me see," Dante said. He stood and reached for Blays' head. Blays wrestled him away.

  "I'm serious."

  "So am I. Let me see your skull. I bet it's got a big fat crack."

  "What's stopping you?" Blays said, shoving Dante back again.

  "An army of men and an order of priests."

  "Then here's what you do." Blays narrowed his eyes and tipped back his head in an owlish expression. "Get Larrimore or someone from the council to back you. Divide them up against each other and promise your supporter you'll be their cat's-paw, that you'll do the thing they wouldn't dare and so claim her seat in their name. Even if they throw you out right after, they'll be too busy squabbling to keep screwing up the south. And if they leave you in her seat, then you can rule like a king and end it all yourself."

  Dante sat down and chortled into his hands. "You're right. Your question wasn't crazy. That's crazy."

  "Only if you lack the vision to see it through."

  "Let's suppose I give it a shot," Dante said, exaggeratedly stroking his chin. "I'll have to expose my plan to off Samarand to whoever I want to back me. What if they don't go for it? How well do you think that's going to fly?"

  "Like a cat in a trebuchet?" Blays shrugged. "Someone's got to hate her. Just figure out who."

  "Good gods. Sometimes I think we should just sneak into her chambers in the dead of night and fight our way outside."

  Blays' brows knit together. "Do you think that would work?"

  "I have the strange suspicion the high priest of Arawn is smart and strong enough to use her eerie powers to make sure nobody just stabs her in her sleep."

  "So that's a no."

  Dante squeezed his eyes shut. "You're supposed to be the reasonable one. This is going to be a disaster."

  "You're going to do it!" Blays said, looking as if he couldn't decide whether to be enthralled or horrified.

  "No. Maybe. Larrimore's got something in store for me tomorrow. Something important. I want to see what it is before striking down the road to madness."

  "Ah! Cowardice."

  "Cowardice! You're right," Dante said. "I'll
have the whole place taken over by tomorrow, then. I'm naming you my Secretary of Parades. It had better be grand, or I'll redub you Secretary of Getting Eaten to Death by Rats."

  They argued nonsense until Blays claimed exhaustion. Dante lay in bed for a while after Blays had fallen asleep, laughing softly at Blays' plan, its tempting confusion of absurdity and daring and total stupidity, until the darkness of the night and the talk he'd had with Larrimore bubbled back into the fore. Why hadn't Cally just told him the truth? Why send him all this way on a false story of Samarand's treachery? Didn't the old man know Dante would have thought the way Blays did now—that it didn't matter how she'd gained her power, that legitimate or not, the things she was doing with it were wrong?

  But he knew why the old man had lied, of course. Because Cally didn't trust him to make the right decision. And so he'd used him in a way he knew would get the results he desired. Dante wanted to feel angry, to rage at the fact he'd once again been used as a piece on someone else's board, but all he felt was tired. For the first time since he'd touched the book, he wanted it to stop. He wanted a moment to catch his breath, perhaps to run away from all these schemes and live for himself, free from the snares of the ambition of other men and himself.

  He knew that want was nothing more than fantasy. He was caught up in something that would only get bigger before it went away. All he could do now was ride it out until it came to rest.

  * * *

  "No lessons today, Nak," Larrimore said as he spilled into the chapel. "We've got more important work for our little scholar."

  Nak rolled his eyes over his papers. "I don't see how you expect me to teach him two languages as well as refine his more ethereal talents when you're always dragging him off on your chores."

  "I'm learning," Dante said in Gaskan. "Make me some lessons. I will go over them tonight."

  "We'll start with clauses," Nak muttered. He waved his fingers, dismissing the boy. Larrimore led Dante into the keep and immediately made a left turn for the stairwell into the dungeons.

  "What are we going down here for?" Dante said, peering into the dim torchlight. He had a sudden vision of being forced to torture Ryant Briggs for answers.

  "Nothing!" Larrimore said. "How cunningly I've tricked you back into prison. You thought you'd get away with your insolence?"

  "You could use a dose of sobriety," Dante said.

  "Wrong. In time you'll learn the value of running your fool mouth until no one can tell when you're serious. Only then can you get away with saying anything to anyone."

  "What does that even mean?" he said, but Larrimore didn't seem inclined to explain. The air of the lower levels rose up to meet them. Cool but sturdy, the faint whiff of human filth and things that may once have been rotten but had since turned to dust. Larrimore opened the door to the corridor where they'd hauled Dante not so long ago. Dante skipped his gaze over the thick door behind which he'd been imprisoned, straining his ears for sounds of Ryant. Was he still alive? Alone in the darkness of that empty room? He glanced at Larrimore. The man was smiling.

  The hallway terminated in another door that opened onto a second stairwell. Larrimore grabbed a lit torch from a sconce in the wall and they continued down into the darkness. The walls weighed on Dante's shoulders. The stones seemed to move beneath the shadows thrown by the flickering torch, as if the walls weren't mortared in place but were in the process of a silent and half-stalled avalanche. Dante stared hard at his feet until they hit the landing of the lower level and the walls widened out into an unlit corridor.

  "Here we are," Larrimore said, stopping at the hall's first door. He fit a key to the lock and leaned into the door as it opened, pouring himself into the room. From behind him, Dante saw black shadows, gray stones, the dull white of a floor full of bones.

  "What—?"

  "It's not as bad as it looks," Larrimore said. "Do you have any idea how many people have died in this city over the years? Sometimes after the larger sieges they had to sort of dig up the old to make way for the new."

  "That's barbaric!"

  "Pragmatic," Larrimore corrected. "Egalitarian, even. This way everyone gets a turn in the earth." He stepped forward into the mess, shuffling his feet against the floor. Bones rattled away from his boots. Dante followed in the path he cleared.

  "What do you want me to do with them?" Dante said, shrinking back from the top half of a skull that had rolled within an inch of his foot. "Tidy up?"

  "I said you'd be doing something important, didn't I?" Larrimore bent at the waist and knocked away a few random bones. He made a satisfied grunt, then plucked one up and displayed Dante the jawbone in his palm. "Weird looking, isn't it? Strange to think your teeth are the same substance as the jaw they're embedded in. Yet they're exposed, naked to the air and the eye, while the rest of our bones are buried under all that flesh."

  "Truly a marvel of nature," Dante said. It was a large room, perhaps forty feet deep and just as far across, and except for a small space around the door, the carpet of bones lay ankle-deep from wall to wall. In the corners they were piled to the knee, gathered in drifts like snow in the wind.

  "We've got a few mirrors around the place. You should look at your teeth some day. Quite frankly it's scary when you think about them like that."

  "Is this some kind of lesson on the virtue of looking closely at the things we take for granted?"

  "No, it's a lesson on how disgusting our bodies are." Larrimore tossed the jawbone at Dante. It bounced from his chest and he puckered his face. Larrimore laughed through his nose. "Jawbones, ribs, and thighs. One of each in sets of three. Write Arawn's name in blood upon the bone—in Narashtovik, not this decadent Mallish—and soak it through with nether until the whole thing's bound up tight. Repeat. Gain my eternal praise."

  "What?"

  "'What' as in you didn't hear me, or you don't understand?"

  Dante kicked the nearest skull away from him. "Why?"

  "Because Samarand's children are bored with their old toys."

  "Samarand has kids?"

  Larrimore's face bent with a shocking flash of anger. "What are you, some kind of idiot? They have vows of chastity."

  "I thought I was going to be doing something important," Dante said. "You want me to bleed on some bones in a room so low it's under the dungeon?"

  "This is important! Before you volunteered, the council was drawing lots to see who'd have to do it."

  "This is asinine."

  Larrimore plowed his feet through the debris, sending bones clattering over each other. He chuckled without humor, then fixed Dante with a stare emptied of any patience.

  "When the time comes for all the excitement, the council's going to need all the power they can find. Sources they can depend on other than their own frail bodies. These bones? The bones you're going to bleed on? They'll be the fuel for their deeds."

  Dante frowned up at the man. "Are you putting me on?"

  "Big events are always preceded by countless hours of tedious preparation. Like the good book says, proper preparation is the difference between celestial glory and standing around in a field with our dicks in our hands."

  "I don't remember that verse."

  "Obviously you haven't been studying hard enough." Larrimore dug into his pocket and removed a small, thin knife, more of a pick than a blade, and a delicate black quill covered in intricate silver Narashtovik words. He handed them to Dante. "Any questions?"

  "Yes," Dante said, holding the knife in one hand and the quill in the other. "How do I do the things you told me to do?"

  "Lyle's flayed balls." Larrimore rubbed his face in his hands. "Ribs of the watchdog, jaws of the dragon, thighs of the lion. Just like Mommy used to sing about when she'd point out the stars. Give yourself a good nick and write Arawn's name on each. In Narashtovik. Bind blood to bone with nether—I'm not sure how that part's done, but you're a smart lad, figure it out." He sucked in his cheeks. "Don't kill yourself or anything, but we need a lot."

 
"Define 'a lot,'" Dante said, gazing out on the thousands of bones.

  "Drink plenty of water," Larrimore winked. He used his torch to light another by the door. "Don't shut this door, either. We've only got the one key, and sometimes I lose things. Got a lot of responsibilities for one man, you see." He flashed his eyebrows, then picked his way out into the corridor. Dante heard him whistling on his way through the gloom.

  He turned around. Bones from wall to wall. Was this another test? Larrimore had barely told him what to do. The man gave the impression he didn't care about anything, but somehow he was the one who kept the wheels of the Citadel greased and turning. Dante swept an open circle with his feet and sat down. Larrimore wanted bones, did he? He took up a rib, grasping the natural handle where the bone would meet the spine. This bone had once been a part of someone, he thought, then realized he didn't give a damn. That man had been dead for decades. Whoever he'd been, he hadn't even had the simple courtesy not to get dug up and stored in a forgotten basement until his remains could be involved in some morbid ritual.

  Dante set the quill in his lap and with the knife he drew a light incision below his left thumb. His blood gleamed a blackish red in the uneven light from the torch ensconced beside the door. He picked up the quill, glad for the small favor that no one was here to see this bizarre melodrama, then dipped it in the blood in his hand and held the rib close to his face. He painted the letters delicately, one stroke at a time, adding a flourish to their ends. He held out the rib, eyeing it critically. Bind it? With the nether? He blinked back the frustration that was crowding his mind. Shadows sucked up from under the piles of bones, coursing up his arm and wrapping themselves around the rib's white surface. He let his desire become a semiconscious thing, felt rather than verbalized, the way he recognized he was hungry without thinking "apple" or "roast chicken," and smoothed the shadows over the length of the rib. Become one, he thought, and twitched back as the shadows pulsed and then sunk into the bone like water spilled on hot sand. The formerly creamy rib had grown gray, lined with the red-brown letters of Arawn's name, and when he set it aside he had a creeping sense of energy—not warm, not motile, certainly not conscious, but far sharper than the bland feel of the bones around him or the still air or the stones of the wall. He grunted and placed it gently on the floor.