The Spear of Stars

by Edward W. Robertson

  "You're quite serious." Yoto put his palm over his mouth, as if afraid to breathe in dark spirits. "What lies beyond this life?"

  "I'd be happy to tell you about it at a time when two of my people aren't being held and possibly tortured by our enemies. Naran, make preparations for a trip to the Plagued Islands. Everyone else, let's go find Sorrowen and Raxa."

  "If that means you've decided on a strategy to pacify the city, I would certainly like to hear it."

  Dante paused. Once upon a time, he would have taken the Drakebane's statement at face value, but he'd ruled for long enough to recognize this was in fact a tactful yet still threatening way for the emperor to warn him that he wasn't in charge.

  In response, he gave a slight nod. "We don't seem to have one yet. Since the situation has turned out to be too complicated for us to figure out here on the docks, I'd like to go find my agents before they show up facedown in the bay."

  "This could be one of those situations that sorts itself out," Blays said. "If we can talk the two of them free, maybe there's hope for diplomacy. But if our swords have to do the explaining to Adaine's neck, I suppose we'll just have to kill the rest of them, too."

  Gladdic made a murmuring sound. "If confronting Adaine risks eliminating all diplomacy, perhaps what bests serves our interests is to understand that these agents of yours were merely tools who have served their purpose, and are now better discarded."

  "We don't leave our people behind," Dante said. "Loyalty is the only principle that can never be violated. Everything else depends on it."

  Dante pulsed Sorrowen's loon, but the boy still wasn't responding. Dante unhooked the loon from his ear and delved into the nether within it. It had dabs of both his and Sorrowen's blood in it, meaning he should be able to use it to track Sorrowen down.

  He cursed. "We have a problem. I thought I could use the loon to track Sorrowen, but I was stupid and wrong. Either his blood's gotten too old, or it's become part of the loon instead. We're going to need a different way."

  Blays shrugged. "If all you need is some blood, might I suggest checking the place where they slopped it all over the floor just last night?"

  "Where did the meet take place?"

  "The great hall of the Exchange," the Drakebane said. "My men will show you the way."

  "There is no need," Gladdic said. "I have lived in this city since I was a child. I know its ways still."

  The old priest stalked forward. Dante gave a nod to the Drakebane and a wave to Naran and followed after Gladdic.

  Blays flanked him, taking a deep breath through his nostrils. "No matter how much time I spend in Narashtovik, Pocket Cove, or whatever ridiculous place we've been dragged to most recently, somehow, this place still smells like home."

  "Dead fish and sailor sweat?"

  "Still better than the swamps."

  There was no arguing with that. As they exited the piers, which were quite active with both Tanarians and Mallish, Dante drew his antler-handled knife and nicked his arm. The nether wandered close, ready to be fed and put to use.

  Once the docks were behind them, the city grew as quiet as Narashtovik during a midnight blizzard. A few people speckled the afternoon streets, but far more lurked in open windows. Small groups of men crouched on stoops, muttering to each other. It had always been illegal for commoners in Bressel to carry weapons other than knives or small clubs, but judging by the staffs, spears, axes, and in some cases swords propped against the walls behind the muttering men, that law was no longer in force.

  Whatever the quiet unease boded for the city's future, it allowed the three of them to reach the Exchange without hassle. Dante motioned them to a stop and sent two dead beetles flying inside the building. It was empty. The front door was locked and bolted, but Gladdic brought forth the ether, his fingers plucking at the air like harp strings. With a series of dense metal clicks, the doors opened.

  They came to the great hall where the battle had broken out. The ceiling hung a dizzying sixty feet above them. Sunlight filtered down from the windows set into the roof. It was still a bit dim, and Gladdic lifted his index finger, filling the space with the pure light of the ether.

  The walls of the great room were a gray and quite expensive granite, but the floor was white marble veined with blue and green. Dante drifted to a stop and turned in a circle, blinking in dismay.

  "Uh," Blays said. "Was this one of those bloodless sword fights?"

  Dante paced across the floor, hunched low to search for blood stains. "Maybe some idiot came around and cleaned the place. There will still be traces of blood in the grout, though. Then it's just a matter of figuring out which belongs to the Drakebane's people, and which will lead us to this Adaine fellow."

  He tugged the skin of his arm, reopening the small cut he'd made earlier, and sent the nether into the floor. After a few moments, he pulled back his head and took a long breath through his nose.

  "There isn't any blood here. At all."

  "That's impossible," Blays said. "I can't get the tea stains out of my floor with anything short of a hammer, but the maids got this place completely clean of blood in less than a day? What kind of magic is that?"

  "That is precisely what it is," Gladdic said. "Sorcery. If Adaine captured Sorrowen and Raxa, then he would know that there are nethermancers operating against him. He anticipated that the blood spilled in the skirmish might be used to trace him, and sent an underling to scour it from the room."

  Dante gritted his teeth. "Wonderful. Then I suppose we'll just go around to Adaine's house and knock on the door. And if that doesn't work, we can try his temple, which he'll definitely still be at after the Drakebane mounted an invasion and turned half the clergy against itself."

  "He always claimed he could speak to the gods through the language of the light." Gladdic walked slowly across the room, his robes hanging from him like a shroud. "Perhaps they warned him we would be coming for him."

  "Then we'll have to bribe them," Blays said. "Does anyone have a fatted calf?"

  Gladdic continued his course across the room. He uttered a pleased chuckle and swooped to pluck something from the ground and hold it up to the light. "Those who are not fond of Adaine would sometimes call him 'Old Scrape' behind his back. This moniker was on account of the noise he produced when walking across stone floors. The noise itself was caused by shards of glass that were regularly embedded in the soles of his boots—left there by the figurines he stepped on in order to better hear the messages within the ether."

  "You've found a shard?" Dante said.

  "Indeed."

  "You can track someone's blood through the nether because it was once part of their body. Can you use the ether to track a piece of something to the larger object it was once part of?"

  "I would not think so, or else I would have expected my order to know this trick already. But perhaps this trick only works on objects that have been thoroughly infused with ether, because I have already attempted to open a link between this shard of glass and the rest of it. And there is a signal."

  "Well done!" Dante paused with his fist mid-pump. "Wait a second, what's this connection actually going to do for us? Lead us to all the other bits of broken glass in this room?"

  "Yes," Gladdic said. "But I assume we will be much more interested in following the ones that are still embedded in the bottom of Adaine's shoes."

  "Better hurry. He's just had his city taken from him. If he thinks they were involved, there's no telling what he'll do to Sorrowen and Raxa."

  Without another word, Gladdic jogged toward the doors out to the street.

  5

  Adaine sat in a chair and the interloper sat across from him. She was bound in blessed iron chains and she was giving him a look of utter contempt you would normally reserve for a pile of dog feces upon your doorstep. This was highly inappropriate: he was the displaced one, overrun by foreigners from the south and infiltrated by foreigners from the north. By all the rights of man, he was the one who deserved to
rage.

  She was simply being held to account for her treachery.

  For a moment, the fury did rise in him, the chill of the ether washing across him like a leap into a mountain lake. But that anger was chaos, and chaos was what he was fighting.

  He smoothed the front of his robe, gently clearing his throat. "You're from Narashtovik. There's no point denying it. It's written in the features of your face. Your accent, too. Your young friend looks and sounds Mallish, but he isn't, is he? He uses black powers that no true Mallisher would touch, knowing he'd be damned for it."

  He stopped, giving her the chance to respond. She didn't take it. He continued calmly. "You work for Dante Galand. Don't you?"

  The woman laughed. "If you're that sure, why bother asking?"

  "Why are you working for him? What is your purpose here?"

  "You're right." She lowered her eyes and bit her lip. "I do work for Dante Galand. You see, for years, he's been envious of Bressel. Everyone knows your gardens are the greatest in the world. That just tears him up inside. After years of spying, he's finally figured out why: because you have the best guano in the world. That's what I was doing on the roof. Galand wanted me to steal your birdshit and smuggle it north."

  She laughed again. She had a nice laugh, if a bit rough and mean, and a face to match. He gave himself a moment to admire them both. It was always important to admire beauty when it was in front of you. For one thing, it was easily lost: that was the same reason why, rather than holding this conversation in the spire of a church, they were currently in a rather plain stone room. (Even so, the lighting was nice, spilling in through the slits near the ceiling, dust tumbling in the sun's rays; nature often provided beauty when men could not.)

  And for another, beauty was a virtue in itself. Arguably the very first of them. Thus to recognize it was to pay recognition to the gods.

  "You're a criminal, aren't you?" he said. "A cutpurse. Or is it a common highway thug?"

  She lifted her chin, interest shining in her eyes for the first time. "What makes you say that?"

  "You have a pretty face. Clean. Graceful. Yet there's something malformed about it. Your features have been misshapen by your deeds. It's a shame."

  Her eyes flashed. She tried to scoot forward, but the chains arrested her with a clank. "You don't know me. Don't pretend that you do."

  Adaine laughed, examining her more closely. "Why has that got you so angry? Is it that I impugned your beauty, which is to a woman as his strength is to a man? Or is it that you know I'm right and that you're a fallen spirit?"

  "You've taken me prisoner, you're interrogating me, and you're probably going to kill me. Maybe it's that."

  "No, it runs deeper than that. Then again, everyone from Narashtovik has a deformed look about them. But that's the natural result of worshipping a figure like Arawn, isn't it?"

  She looked his embroidered gray robe up and down. "Look at that. A priest who doesn't believe in a god."

  Adaine laughed again, putting some scorn in it this time. "You think I don't believe in Arawn?"

  "Isn't our faith in Arawn the reason you people hate us?"

  "Yes, but it's not that I don't believe in him. Your faith doesn't bother me just because it's different. That would be ridiculous. You see, I know your faith better than most of your own clergy do. I am disgusted by it because I know it so well."

  "We practically believe the same thing, don't we? The same Celeset, the same set of gods. It's just that you guys think Taim's the best of them and we'd rather bow to Arawn."

  Adaine crinkled his eyes in deep pity for her ignorance. "Do you know what you worship? You worship death."

  "Yeah, but Arawn doesn't want to kill people, he's just there to—"

  "Collect them when their time comes, completing the cycle of life. I already told you I know exactly what you believe. Now listen. When Arawn's Mill fell from the polestar, it cracked. After that, instead of grinding ether, it ground nether; and instead of living forever, humanity became mortal, cursed to die. And how did you savages react to this fall from grace? You decided to worship it!"

  He got to his feet, because there were some truths that could only be fully captured by a body in motion. "Ether is immortality, nether is mortality. Ether is life, nether is death. Ether is that which is pure, whole, the ideal; nether is that which is flawed, weak, and decaying. We worship the strive toward the ideal while you worship its ruin."

  The woman had long since stopped looking interested or even angry. "Look, I'm sure you find this fascinating, but I don't care. At all. So why don't you just stick a knife in me and be done with it?"

  Adaine scratched his cheek. He hadn't shaved in more than a day and he didn't like it. "You're here to destroy us, aren't you? You can't stand life, our reach toward perfection. In your jealousy, rather than letting us exist, you must try to snuff us out, so there's no more beauty remaining in the world to remind you of how ugly you are. The very root of your being is corruption. As long as you exist, you will work to corrupt others."

  She rolled her eyes, sinking back into the chair. "I barely know what's going on here, okay? I'm just a hired knife. But what I do know is we're not here to destroy you. We're here to stop you from getting destroyed by the White Lich. Don't ask me who he is or what he's about. All I know is he's terrible, and he's coming for you next."

  Adaine nodded in thought. It was the first real answer he'd gotten from her and he thought it was at least partially sincere. "Yes, I've been told about this lich. You're all very afraid of him. But I wonder why I would trust the judgment of the corrupt? Not so long ago, your people tried to bring your god out into the world. Perhaps what you call the lich is an incarnation of Taim come to stop you from trying again."

  "You know what, you should go and ask him in person."

  "Again, you are a warped person. But there is a way out." He leaned forward. "Will you convert?"

  "What?"

  "Set down the decay of Arawn and take up the pursuit of virtue that is Taim. Convert to the church of Mallon."

  "Why would I want to do that?"

  "Your beliefs demean the soul. Mine expand it. Come on now, even a person with the soul of a thief yearns for something more."

  Her mouth tightened, brow wrinkling in uncertainty, a state she seemed uncomfortable with. "I don't care about your faith. I hardly give a damn about my own. But it's what I was born with. You might as well ask me to step out of my own skin."

  "Ah. So you won't convert. I have the niggling suspicion High Priest Galand won't convert Narashtovik, either, even if I tell him I would then be honor-bound to unite with my new brothers in faith against this White Lich. Nor will the Drakebane step down from his false rule to yield to the crown prince of Mallon. It's a funny thing: at every level, you that are here to 'help' me insist that I knuckle under to your ways and give up my own.

  "But you will never, under any circumstances, agree to take on my ways—even though you are in my country, my homeland! You tell me you're here for the good of my people, but everything you do weakens and undermines them. If I can't hear the message you're actually sending, then I'm not listening."

  The wrinkles of uncertainty in her face deepened. Surprisingly few people understood that, along with ether and nether, there was a third form of magic in the world: words. If you combined and formulated them in the right ways, you could change people with them. You could even change the way they saw reality, which in a sense was the same as changing reality itself.

  Adaine liked exploring this form of magic, and in the same way that he practiced with the ether every day, he would often pick arguments with his peers and inferiors that he didn't believe just to sharpen his abilities. But it was still true that the truth (along with what a person wanted to believe) was strongest of all, and thus made the very best magic.

  "You're right about me, okay?" She leaned into her restraints. "I'm just a thief. A criminal. I don't give the orders, I take them. But I can tell you this: if you don'
t let me and the kid go, they will come for you."

  "Oh, your friends are already coming for me. They're on their way right now."

  "Huh? How do you know that?"

  "Because I believe you when you tell me that they're dangerous."

  "You can't hide. They'll find you. When they get here, what are you going to do?"

  "Oh, the same thing I always do." He got to his feet. "Whatever the gods tell me to do."

  He lifted his hand, fingers crooked at the angles that would best channel the light. Ether gathered in the space between his fingertips, growing brighter and brighter.

  At last, he saw fear in her face.

  ~

  Gladdic exited the Exchange with long strides that showed little stiffness despite his advanced age. The effects of a lifetime bathed in the sorcery of the world, which had kept Cally alive past a hundred and twenty, and continued to preserve the Keeper, who was even older.

  "How far?" Dante shielded his eyes from the sun as they jogged from a narrow street and into a plaza.

  "I cannot say." Gladdic's robes swirled about his thin legs. "This power is new to me."

  "Does it feel like you need to pop your ears, but for your brain? Or does it feel more like a smith is pounding a spike directly into your forehead?"

  "It feels as though the spike is dull and the smith's hand is unsteadied by some debilitating illness."

  "He's a couple miles away, then. Let me know when it starts to hurt enough to become a distraction."

  Blays hopped over a trail of horse manure. "Just how popular of a fellow is this Adaine, Gladdic?"

  "There was a time when many thought he would succeed the Eldor himself," Gladdic said. "But he grew too mystical, too arrogant in his claims of hearing the voice of Taim himself. For that very reason, however, he retains many admirers. They are fiercely loyal to him."