The Spear of Stars

by Edward W. Robertson

  "We're not here to attack you," Sorrowen said. "We're here to help. We're all on the same side!"

  If Raxa could have moved her arm, she would have slugged him.

  "Is that so?" Adaine squatted over Sorrowen. "What side would that be?"

  Sorrowen's eyes darted back and forth, the valor that had been burning in them receding quickly. "The side that doesn't want the lich to win."

  "What an incredibly noble goal, destroying my homeland in the name of stopping the terrible and malevolent lich. How kind of you. And now that you've slain my king and toppled everything I held dear, it's downright saintly of you to come and help me further."

  Adaine stood, gazing down on the paralyzed young man. "Heavens, I've just had a thought. Those who truly wish you well don't have to work in secret, do they?" He lifted his eyebrows. Sorrowen stammered a bit. Adaine motioned to his men. "Bring them along. I'll soon find out their true purpose here—and who is working from the shadows to destroy us."

  4

  Dante meant for them to leave right after his dramatic exit of the tower, but Gladdic, of all people, insisted they ask Lady Vita if she could send one of her sky couriers to the Keeper in the Collen Basin to warn her about the lich's victory in Tanar Atain and their fear he would soon take his conquest to nearby lands. Vita agreed to do so, and further suggested establishing a cadre of riders who could spread the news of any invasions or defeats faster than the White Lich could advance.

  By the time they'd worked this out, it was nearing three in the morning, but Naran assured them the sailors would be rested enough to shove off. Vita saw the four of them to their carriage.

  There, Gladdic turned to her. "I knew your uncle. Lord Calieva."

  "You knew Uncle Eva?"

  "He wrote to me often when he was harried by a theological question he nor his library could answer. Though his questions often walked the ledge of blasphemy, tempting me to report him, I held back. This was one of the finest decisions I ever made: for in time, I understood that the purpose of his questions was always to bring him to a higher understanding of the Celeset. His unorthodox piety thus led me to better serve Taim myself."

  The rain was still coming down, but Gladdic didn't seem to notice. "There was a daring and vitality to him that represented the best of this land. If the power lies within my hands, I will not let Alebolgia fall."

  He climbed into the carriage. They rattled away down the wet stones. Behind them, Vita watched them descend into the night.

  They reached the Sword of the South without being ambushed or jailed by any local authorities. They cleared the bay and set sail for Bressel. Naran estimated they could arrive in less than two days.

  This meant Dante had time to sleep before delving into the book, which he did. But he compromised by waking far too early, heading groggily to the deck to take in the air. It was a clear, bright, and windy day, the sun twinkling on the sea. Intolerable. He returned to his cabin and opened the book to Sabel and Gent's journey to the Realm of Nine Kings.

  Gent warned me our travels would be neither brief nor safe. He wasn't wrong. We rode through the Forest of Groaning Pines, where we were beset by hooting wolf-men. Next came a desert of pale green sand; it had a name, but Gent said that it cursed anyone who spoke it aloud, and I wasn't curious enough to test whether that was mere superstition. It grew hot enough that the horse's hair began to smoke and curl, requiring constant sorcery to keep them (and ourselves) from burning alive.

  Our care turned out to be all for nothing, for our traitorous mounts ran off on us during a bandit attack at Lyshai Ford on the River Pree. We proceeded on foot through pillars of rock, ambushed regularly by the basilisks that camouflaged themselves among the stone.

  Only once did I voice my growing suspicion that Gent didn't actually know how to get to the Realm. He just smirked at me and said, "Go on and search for your own way there! See if you can find it before you drop dead of old age."

  We entered another forest, then into a canyon, the walls growing higher and tighter with each hour. As darkness neared, Gent came to a stop. "We will enter the Realm tomorrow, I think. We'll need our strength. I'll make the last of our food."

  He proceeded to simmer a pot of soup. This was so spicy my stomach soon resembled a storm-tossed sea. I didn't know how I would possibly sleep, yet I fell swiftly into bad dreams.

  When I woke, it was still dark, the fire was dead, and Gent was gone.

  I sat down and waited. Fog curled at the edges of the canyon. The moon shined dimly above me. It felt like the longest night of my life. When Gent returned at last, I demanded to know where he'd been, but he only smirked at me, merriment dancing in his silver Avinian eyes, and led me deeper into the canyon.

  Dawn broke, cool and hazy. Yet in less than an hour, the sky darkened again. We were heading down, down into a tunnel through the earth. Soon I was obliged to light the way with a sphere of ether, which came readily, as if eager to banish the darkness. I thought we would encounter any number of horrors down in the pit, but we reemerged into daylight without a single trouble.

  "Behold," Gent said. "The Realm of Nine Kings!"

  We stood on the lower slopes of a mountain range ringing a vast valley. Within it lay blue rivers and green vales. Isolated peaks rose from the valley floor as steeply as castle towers. I got out a piece of parchment and began to draw a map of the tunnel entrance.

  Gent snorted. "Don't bother."

  "You might know the way well enough," I said. "But if you should fall here, I'd like to know my way home."

  The wise sorcerer flapped his hand and tramped downhill. "This entrance will soon be blocked off. The lords of the Realm never leave its passes open for long."

  He would explain no more. And so I followed. The air tasted pure; the soil underfoot smelled fertile. In many ways it was not so unfamiliar, yet there was an ineffable quality to the Realm that cannot be fully described. There is something pristine about it, as if it is the mold from which the gods crafted everywhere else…

  It went on this way for some time as Sabel and Gent made their way toward the fortress of the first king, Rosgar of Redkeep. The initial going was slow, but they were soon rewarded with a miracle: the return of their horses, which they'd thought long lost. Hastened, they soon arrived at Redkeep, where the king feasted them as guests—but refused to give them his piece of the Spear of Stars unless they could best him in a wrestling match.

  The request was a farce. King Rosgar was built like a redoubt, with a chest like a cooper's masterpiece and arms that would make blacksmiths weep. Once we were alone, I voiced my outrage to Gent.

  "We'll never get the spear. A bull couldn't defeat the king!"

  "A bull?" Gent chuckled and rubbed his hands together. "We'll see about that."

  The bout was scheduled for morning. Sometime after midnight, Gant woke me from my dreamless sleep and brought me through the warm moonlight to one of the king's cattle fields. There, he approached a massive bull and conjured up his foreign magic—and in defiance of all laws, absorbed the bull within himself, swelling to five times his own size.

  "Well?" he said, turning about and nearly stomping me into the field. "How do I look?"

  "Like an ogre."

  "Then my work is done."

  In the morning, King Rosgar looked surprised to see Gent's bulk, then laughed and clapped. "At last, a challenge! Step forth and show your worth!"

  Servants had drawn a ring of salt onto the earth. The two combatants entered it and charged, feet thundering like a stampede of oxen. They slammed together like the end of the world. Yet they were so evenly matched in size and strength that when they struck each other they stopped cold. For hours, they grappled and strained, heaved and shoved, staggered and bled.

  But in the end, with the earth cracked and broken beneath them, it was King Rosgar who was thrown from the ring.

  He landed on his rump, mouth open with surprise. Then he laughed his kingly laugh, roaring like a river. "You have used sorcery a
gainst me. But it gifted me with the only sport I've had in years. The piece is yours!"

  His majordomo brought forth a golden chest. From it, he lifted a bundle of red velvet. Within it lay an object that, like so much else in the Realm, defied comprehension. The glowing shaft was 36 inches in length, but it was made of no wood or metal. In fact, it had no firm outline at all, as if it was made of perfect glass. Inside its transparent casing, light churned slowly in dense clouds, pulsing and dimming in a steady rhythm, like waves of ether on a starlit shore.

  "Take up the spear!" Rosgar commanded.

  I reached for the haft. When I touched it, invigorating heat shot up my arm. When I lifted it, it was as warm as a rock in the sun, and practically weightless. Had it been forged by the gods?

  Yet for all its wonder, our prize was merely one-third of the haft of the weapon, and was just one-ninth of the Spear of Stars. Thinking of my family back home, and the undead monsters the Vampire of Light had turned them into, I wished to seek the next king immediately. Rosgar of Redkeep had other plans. He feasted us for nine days, holding athletic contests of all kinds between his subjects. So holy and beloved were the events that, for that span, a nobleman might box with the lowest peasant, and afterward, even if the noble was bloodied and bested, the two combatants would laugh and hug and limp off to drink together.

  It was so lively and wholesome that when the feasting ended, and Gent and I were allowed to seek our next piece of the spear, an inner piece of myself asked whether it might not be better to stay there than to continue my doomed crusade against the Vampire of Light.

  The pair of sorcerers' next visit was to the Tower of the High Well, a blue pillar two hundred feet high, the top of which had once pumped the clearest spring water to run down its walls in a constant sheet, but which had run dry some years ago. There, Queen Orissa tasked them with restoring the well, which required them to descend into the labyrinth beneath the tower and clear out the tunnel goblins that had diverted the spring to starve the people above them.

  Once they'd taken care of this, the queen rewarded them with one shard of the spear's ethereal blade. It was a wild story Dante was loath to break from even to break his fast and put an end to his rumbling stomach, but he was starting to get a bit jittery and needed something to eat.

  He thought over what he'd read as he dined. So far, there had been no mention of how the spear functioned or the hard details of how it had been crafted. From Sabel's description, it sounded like it was made of pure ether, but Dante had never heard of anything being formed entirely of shadows or of light.

  Sabel and Gent's next venture was to the Castle of Lead, where King Draylin wouldn't give them his portion of the haft for any price or deed. So they just stole it. At the Unbroken Rampart, Midra XIX tasked them with hunting down the Stag of the Wind, earning them a glowing cord which when wrapped around the wrist supposedly prevented the bearer from ever being disarmed of the spear.

  Noble by noble and piece by piece, they gathered the remaining portions of the weapon: one more piece of haft; two more of the blade; a cap for the butt which when planted in the ground would render the spear immovable, able to withstand any charge. At last they sought the final piece: something called a "purestone," which was inserted just below the base of the blade and transformed the separate eight pieces into a singular, seamless whole.

  The effort required them to delve deep into a cavern filled with loathsome monsters, find the dragon that dwelled in the cavern's heart, then slay it and return with its three tails as proof. Yet as they fought the dragon—a rollicking, thunderous battle that nearly brought the entire cave crashing down on their head—Gent was wounded so badly that he fell into a coma that no sorcery could revive him from.

  To save him, Sabel had to gather from across the realm a number of herbs, salts, and bone marrows, a process more challenging than any of the trials he'd had to endure for the pieces of the spear. But at last he acquired the last component of his tincture, and used this to wake Gent.

  So it was that, after one year and one day, the two sorcerers claimed the purestone, and completed the spear.

  Dante immediately suspected the purestone was the key to the whole thing, but Sabel only described it as a gemstone "even whiter than white, which not only made the spear whole but which seemed to give it life. The clouds of light now circulated from the tip of the blade to the end of the butt, and there were times when I jabbed or swung that the spear seemed to be leading me."

  Dante looked up and closed the book. He found Gladdic on the aftercastle seated on a chest and staring out to sea. Dante explained what he'd read and showed the old priest the sections regarding the purestone.

  Gladdic peered down his long nose at the words. "It sounds as though the stone is a construct of the ether."

  "With wisdom like that, I finally understand why you made it so far in the Mallish priesthood. Look, it sounds to me like the stone might be what gives the spear its power. Do you know what it could be?"

  "If I knew of a way to store the ether as part of a physical object, where it could be used to lend its power to that object, you can be certain that I would have killed you with it long before you came to know of the lich."

  "It reminds me of the shaden, but for ether."

  "And such things are unheard of. That is precisely why the two of us fought a war over the shaden."

  Dante scowled down at the book. "Okay, but either this book is all nonsense, or such things can be built."

  "By gods, certainly. Hence the solution is simple: if you'd like to build a spear for yourself, all you have to do is turn yourself into a god first."

  "I'm not sure that's true. Impossible things only remain impossible until the moment someone comes along and does them anyway. If we're able to bring Bressel's priesthood onto our side, I want you all to devote part of your time to trying to work this out."

  "A promise easily made," Gladdic said. "For the priesthood will never join us."

  "Oh good. Then we can just skip the whole 'defending Bressel and by extension the world' thing and move straight to surrendering ourselves to the White Lich."

  "My brothers consider you and your shadow worship hardly less of an abomination than he is."

  "I suppose I'm naive enough to think the priests will set aside our differences once the lich starts turning their friends and family into Blighted."

  "They have sought to destroy you and your kind for centuries. Do you truly believe they will overturn their ways so quickly?"

  "You did."

  "Indeed," Gladdic said. "So all you will have to do to bring about a similar change of heart in them is to best them in two different wars, then follow them to a forbidden land, foul up all of their plans, and bring them to the brink of death. Our time is short, so I suggest we begin at once. Where would you propose to hold the first war?"

  "You're just being defeatist."

  "And you must begin to think more deeply."

  "As it turns out, I gave it some thought. I concluded I'd rather work with people I don't especially like than for everyone I do like to be murdered by someone who hates everyone."

  "You are so enamored of your pragmatism that you cannot accept that it isn't common. Belief rules, Dante. The very fact you do not understand why they will not ally with you is precisely why they won't."

  Dante brushed his hair from his eyes, an act that was instantly negated by the fluttering wind. "If you understand the priesthood so well, it sounds like convincing them should be your job."

  "Perhaps it should."

  "Anyway, there's one more thing I've discovered about the spear. Look at this."

  He hunched in the lee of two strapped-down barrels and sketched out the spear as it had been described: the long shaft; the blade, which was asymmetrical, with one half longer and broader than the other; the cord dangling from the middle of the shaft; and lastly the purestone a short way beneath the tip.

  Before he was done, Gladdic was already laughing. "It is Gash
en's Pike."

  "That's what it looks like to me. Nine pieces of the spear, nine stars. It's an exact match for the constellation."

  "And what do you take to be the significance of this?"

  "I have no idea. I feel like I'm going to need a lot more pieces before I can put them together."

  "Yet this small piece suggests something significant."

  "Which is?"

  "That the Spear of Stars was indeed a gift from the gods above, and cannot be duplicated by mere man."

  Dante didn't like this idea one bit, so he went back to his cabin to continue reading the book in hopes of finding evidence to the contrary. With the spear in hand, Sabel and Gent trekked forth from the Realm of Nine Kings. Like Gent had said, the route out was different than the way in, but they had no trouble leaving, and soon found themselves crossing the wildernesses on the way back to the port of Ada.

  There, Gent said it was time for him to return to his home. On seeing Sabel's sadness at this, however, the cantankerous sorcerer realized, to his shock and dismay, that he and the vile barbarian had become friends. He agreed to accompany Sabel on the long return to his homeland.

  The voyage was much less eventful than on Sabel's prior trip. The only snag came at the very end, when no captain would agree to deliver them to Sabel's homeland, forcing Sabel and Gent to complete the journey on horseback.

  When we crested the hill, we looked down on hell.