"We won't get anywhere near him. My Blighted will take care of that part. As long as they're not running around right in front of his face, I don't think he'll notice there's anything different about them."
Dante returned inside the tower to swap out the skulls for smaller bones he could carry in his pocket. Whatever they were pointing to was many miles inland. Facing the prospect of a days-long journey, they returned to the sloop for provisions and to make arrangements with the captain.
The captain asked for volunteers to go with them. When no one offered, he drew lots. The three men chosen said their goodbyes like they never expected to return.
They got in the canoe and traveled northeast. Dante was starting to think there wasn't a single human left alive in the swamps, and that if so, being seen by any of the Blighted would tip the lich off to the presence of intruders. He thus had to spend nearly all of his time and focus managing a small army of reanimated scouts both below and above the water.
Despite this effort, as they passed beneath the willows, and pale little flowers shed their petals into the stagnant water, with the steady swish of the paddles and the whirr of the frogs, he couldn't stop himself from remembering how Volo had guided them in the early days after their arrival, when their biggest concerns had been the freeing of Naran and the bringing of Gladdic to justice.
Was she still at the Silent Spires? Still locked in the strange and catatonic state that had befallen her? He wondered, too, about Bel Ara, and how safe they truly were there. For as much protection as the Hell-Painted Hills provided, if the Eiden Rane had the strength to conquer the full swath of the swamp, it was only a matter of time until he came for the Hills, too.
That afternoon he spotted a group of Blighted traveling in the direction of the coast, the first they'd seen since entering the enemy's lands. They detoured around with little loss of time. The day was muggy and long, and though it was too dangerous to travel by night, Dante was still glad when darkness fell.
They encamped on an island, setting up a watch. There were no disturbances in the night. They resumed travel at dawn, avoiding another group of Blighted just a few minutes later. The pressure in Dante's head had increased noticeably since striking out from Aris Osis. Whatever they were headed toward seemed to be staying in the same spot—which was probably good, unless it turned out to be another pile of bones in an empty city, assembled for reasons only the soulless Blighted could understand.
They saw three more small groups of undead on the day. It didn't seem like much. As though the lich was unconcerned about any intrusions other than a full-fledged army.
They woke on the third day to a bank of low clouds that soon began a quiet, steady rain. This hampered Dante's insects and cut overall visibility, requiring them to slow their passage to walking speed. Thunder rumbled broodingly.
The pressure in Dante's forehead grew acute. As they closed on their target, he pulled back his long-range scouts and sent forth his Blighted instead. They seemed intrigued, eager, their eyes unblinking against the fall of the rain.
The crew paddled on as the undead ranged ahead. The pulse in Dante's skull became insistent. Ahead of the foremost Blighted, the undergrowth thinned as the trees loomed taller, strangling everything beneath them. Through the haze of the rain, a white wall stretched across the swamp.
"Found something," Dante said. "I don't think we want to get any closer just yet."
The Tanarians brought the canoe in to the banks of an island. Dante had a pair of Blighted creep closer to the wall. It looked to be fifteen feet high, and even from a distance it was clearly built of grimstone, the bone-like rock he had previously only seen in the deep swamp and the Wound of the World itself. More unusually yet, the ground in front of it was actual ground, which was to say solid earth. It stretched at least a quarter mile in either direction before disappearing into the forest and rain.
Dante described it to the three Tanarians. "What is this place?"
Giza, the oldest of the three sailors, shook his head. "Don't know."
"What do you mean, you don't know? There's a serious wall here. Along with more dry ground than I've seen anywhere in Tanar Atain outside of the Wound. And you've never heard of it?"
Giza insisted it was true. So did the two others. Annoyed, Dante sent one of his dragonflies ahead, soaring hundreds of feet in the air, where he thought it would be beyond the lich's reach.
It flitted in and out of the misty underbelly of the low-slung clouds. From above, Dante could see that the wall wasn't a straight line, but a circle roughly three miles across. The ground within wasn't wholly solid after all; a wide canal split the macabre city in two. Grimstone buildings filled the space within the walls.
And in the streets, thousands and thousands of pale figures stood motionless despite the pouring rain.
"This is it." Although they were miles away, Dante felt the urge to keep his voice low. "It's a city. And it's filled with tens of thousands of Blighted."
Giza bent his thin black eyebrows. "Can't be. There's no city in this part of the swamps."
"Correction: there wasn't a city here. Until the White Lich built one."
The Tanarian licked his lips. "All in the last few weeks? How'd he do that?"
"Likely by virtue of the fact he's the White Lich."
"A lich with tens of thousands of happy slaves," Blays said.
Dante nodded. "There's something more. Here's what the city looks like from above." He got out his quill and made a quick sketch. "Remind you of anything?"
"Er." Blays leaned over the drawing. "That's your map of Bressel."
"Not quite. It's lots smaller. Everything's condensed. But overall, yes: there's the walls, there's the Chanset, there's the palace."
"Why would the lich build his own Bressel in the middle of nowhere? Is he jealous of our great works?"
"Practice."
"For the invasion of the real Bressel."
"He's fought battles in Tanarian cities. But he's never fought one on dry land. I'm not surprised he'd want to test conditions before committing himself."
Blays batted at a fly that had decided to join them beneath the cover of the tree. "I suppose that answers the question of whether he's coming for Mallon next. Does that mean we're free to get the hell out of here?"
"Almost. I want to take a closer look at the city. And to see if my Blighted can walk among the others without notice. If they can, they'll make perfect spies."
"And what happens if it turns out they can't?"
"I'll drop my connection to them at the first sign of suspicion. Then, just to be on the safe side, we'll also do the running like hell."
Blays gazed into the rain. "You're sure this is worth it?"
"Think about what it would mean if the lich can't tell my Blighted from his. We could infiltrate the enemy. We might even be able to find the prime body. And put a knife in its ancient heart."
"Saving thousands of lives. If not the world. Let's do this." Blays motioned to the Tanarians. "But you guys make sure to stretch out your paddling arms in the meantime."
Dante flew the dragonfly away from the city and cut his link to it, letting it tumble down into the forest. Having removed all other traces of himself from the area, he sent two Blighted forward across the patchy ground before the walls, their bare feet splashing through the rain.
As they neared the open gates, four ghostly heads poked up from the wall and stared down at them. Heat crept up Dante's neck as he was filled with the sudden conviction he was making a mistake. The enemy Blighted stared unmovingly, water dripping from their bare heads. As Dante's two proxies slouched through the gate, the Blighted sank back behind the wall.
The pair of false Blighted now stood in a small plaza that was uncannily similar to Marney Square inside one of Bressel's eastern gates. Except, of course, that there were no merchant stalls. And the row houses were made of something halfway between bone and rock. And all of the people were partly or wholly naked, as white as the grimstone,
and as furious as the winter seas north of Narashtovik.
Dante instructed the Blighted to cross the square. They did so. The only glances they drew were brief and disinterested. No alarums were going off, no masses of Blighted were rushing in to rend the interlopers apart with their bare hands. A very good sign: if the other Blighted couldn't recognize the difference, there was little chance the lich would pick up on it without good reason. He now had something like fifty thousand Blighted answering to him. No matter how vast his powers, he couldn't keep close track of more than a small fraction at once.
The two undead continued through a winding street, coming to another small square where teams of Blighted were building a line of stone houses—or perhaps rebuilding them after a mock battle. Looking more closely, several of the buildings showed slight mismatches in coloration, as if they'd been damaged and restored.
The Blighted came to the mimicry of Royal Boulevard. In Bressel, this was a pleasant, tree-lined lane that ran straight to the gates of the palace, but here the trees were hasty growths of grimstone, like grotesque cancers spurting from the flesh of the earth. A pale imitation of the palace waited down the road.
What if he could infiltrate it? Sneak through its halls, find the prime body, and throttle its half-mummified throat? Or, to be slightly less bold, just integrate his Blighted with the ones in the city to participate in the next mock attack, thus learning the lich's strategy for the coming war?
Yet even as he had this thought, the distance between his Blighted and the palace seemed to shrink; lightning flashed across the sky, followed by the roar of thunder, as if the heavens were warning him against hubris. He instructed the Blighted to turn about and head back toward the city walls.
A presence swooped forward like an eagle whose wings were the sky. It grabbed hold of the hidden tether between Dante and the two Blighted and clutched it in iron talons.
Little sorcerer. Though the voice was only in his mind, its coppery ring was exactly as it would have sounded if the White Lich had been standing right in front of him. Have you returned to beg me to take you back into my service?
The lich's mind shot like an arrow along the connection between Dante and the Blighted.
9
Dante uttered a stupid gasp and grabbed at the nether, hacking crudely at the cord of awareness tying him to the Blighted. His shadows struck the cord and bounced away without so much as denting it. He gathered himself, honing the nether into a blade sharp enough to cut itself, and sliced again, this time with the care of a surgeon operating upon the king.
The connection held fast.
"The lich sensed me," Dante said. "In another moment, he'll know exactly where I am. We have to move!"
The Tanarian sailors went rigid and wide-eyed, then took up their paddles and thrust madly at the water. They pulled away from the island they'd berthed at and flew southward, sending birds cawing away from the lower branches.
Dante drew his knife and pricked his arm. He summoned the shadows from the silt and the bones resting within it and came down on the bond to the Blighted like Taim crushing an invader with his maul. The cord shivered, but didn't so much as crack. The presence of the lich shot along it, as bright as the lightning around them, as cold as the peaks of the Woduns.
"Damn it," Dante said. "He's following me through the tie to the Blighted!"
Blays twisted to look behind them. "So cut them loose!"
"Can't. He's protecting the connection."
"Then it looks like our only option is to cut you loose."
Dante couldn't cut the bond to the Blighted—but he could still make use of it. He ordered them to turn on each other and rip themselves to pieces. In the ghastly grimstone recreation of the Royal Boulevard, the two undead bared their teeth and leaped on each other, biting and clawing. Scraps of white flesh slapped to the ground, watery blood leaking from the copious wounds.
They fell to the ground, grappling for each other's throats. Claws sank into flesh. At once, both undead stopped moving: not because they'd slain each other, but because the White Lich, striding down the boulevard toward them, froze them in place with a storm of ether.
He stood over them in victory. A bolt of lightning reflected from the ever-changing blues of his eyes and the pale angles of his beardless, ancient face. He seemed even taller than before, at least twelve feet, with the build of an arctic bear.
A cunning effort, little sorcerer, the lich projected into Dante's mind. But as with all you have tried and will try next, it wasn't enough.
The Blighted fight had distracted the Eiden Rane for a few moments, but the enemy lunged forward once more along the nethereal cord, crashing up against Dante. The lich chuckled. He picked up one of the paralyzed Blighted, tucked it under his arm, and ran south in long bounds. Scores of Blighted ran after him through the rain.
"He knows where we are," Dante said. "He's coming for us."
"We're dead men." Giza's voice was as flat as the water. "We're all dead."
"Shut up and paddle. I'll find a—"
His body jerked as the lich moved past the nethereal bond and into Dante's mind. It felt as though the enemy was quite literally digging his fingers into Dante's skull and prying it open. Dante did some more gasping and writhing, sweat breaking out across his entire body.
The lich rooted through his thoughts like Blays would root through an enemy lord's wine cellar. Memories flipped past like shuffled cards: Paddling to the ghastly city. Sailing to the Tanarian coast. Finding the Blighted within the Chanset.
A new image flashed across Dante's vision: an illustration from the Book of What Lies Beyond, with Sabel lifting the shining Spear of Stars against the Vampire of Light.
The rooting and shuffling stopped. Dante could feel the White Lich drawing back in contemplation. He seized the chance to hit again at the ties between himself and the Blighted, but the lich brushed away his efforts as easily as a man at work in the field would brush off a gnat that had stuck to the sweat of his arm.
More rooting, so fast Dante's mind blurred with it. The lich laughed his ringing laugh. Please, go and search for your spear. I will happily claim all the world while you are gone, and laugh when you return with hands as empty as the mouths of the starving.
Things like you have been destroyed before, Dante thought. I will find the way to do so again.
I have let you witness the perfection of the world I will create. No more war nor strife, only the harmony of a united people. Why stand against what must come?
You have already taken all of Tanar Atain. You could build your perfect empire there. Your drive to take everything and turn it into the same gray whole is why I will kill you.
The lich said nothing more, resuming his search. This time, he homed in on everything related to Bressel—especially how they intended to defend it. Dante's eyelids fluttered, his sight swimming with silver specks that soon faded to nothing.
He jerked up his head. "Blays. Make me some stream."
"What, right now?"
"It's not going to do me much good when I'm dead!"
"Right." Blays closed his eyes. "Well I can't go when you're looking at me!"
Dante grimaced in pain and turned away. The lich sifted through conversations with the Drakebane and Gladdic, their struggles with the Golden Hammer. Dante tried to pull away, but he was as helpless as when the lich had bent him to servitude.
But the bond the lich had opened between them ran both ways—and Dante had known the lich's mind before. Rather than resisting, he dived forward, into the head of the Eiden Rane, grabbing up all he could.
"There!" Blays said.
Dante swung his head around. The motion dizzied him so badly he collapsed against the gunwale of the canoe. Between him and Blays, a scatter of golden motes hung in the air like the silver ones he'd seen in his daze a minute before.
Dante grabbed at them before they could fade, melding them into a small chain.
He focused his mind like its contents were a yard of
fallen leaves, then raked them together and blew everything he could across the bond between himself and the lich—thoughts, memories, visions, the older the better, a complete snowstorm of mental clutter. He had heard tales from sailors about how octopuses, when troubled, would eject a great cloud of ink into the water, overwhelming and confounding whatever was chasing them.
With the flood of thought, he hoped to do the same thing.
He took up the chain of stream. Instead of turning it against the lich, who was much too far away, or the connection to the Blighted, Dante turned it on himself.
The nether around him went as still as the solid ground of the islands they were passing by in the canoe. At the same time, all his active links to it went dead.
Including his links to the Blighted.
The mind of the White Lich withdrew from his own like an arrow from a wound—or like a cyst being popped. Dante sagged back against the canoe, breathing hard and drenched in sweat.
"I killed the connection," he panted. "The lich knows where we were, but he can't tell where we're going."
Giza turned, gazing blankly.
"What my friend is trying to say," Blays said gently, "is you should change course right fucking now!"
Giza started, then grunted a command to his men, who swung the boat ninety degrees to starboard. After a few minutes of all-out paddling, they made a smaller adjustment in the same direction. They were now headed west-northwest, and were actually slightly decreasing the distance between themselves and the grimstone city.
If the lich followed their original course, he'd wind up miles in the wrong direction. But Dante had no way to tell. After what he'd been through, he wasn't about to put any more spies into the air or the water. All they could do was pray and wait.
~
By nightfall, they still weren't dead.
They traveled on despite the dark, paddling and sleeping in shifts. Dante drew on the nether to ease the weariness from their muscles. Between that and their even more potent fear of being found by the lich, they were still traveling onward, now mostly south toward the coast, as dawn dyed the clouds pink.
The Spear of Stars Page 13