As Dante and Blays kicked away rocks and bedded down on the dirt, Gladdic sat upright, gazing off into the mists. On his face was a look of private awe.
"No need to linger," Blays said. "The lich will probably send us right back here soon enough."
Dante folded his arms beneath his head. Within moments of closing his eyes, exhaustion fell on him.
He slept: and at the same time, he woke.
~
He stirred on his bedroll, stretching his painfully stiff limbs. The tower room was dark. And through the windows came the shouts and clamor of battle.
Heart pounding, he jumped to his feet and ran to the window. A man gave a cry of surprise; it was the Drakebane, who'd been seated in near darkness.
"What's going on?" Dante said. "Are we being attacked?"
"Attacked?" the emperor looked puzzled, then laughed. "We're drilling the men. The Blighted are less hampered by the night than we are. I am concerned that's when they will launch their initial attack."
"Right. Good." Dante leaned out the window, confirming the battlements weren't getting ripped apart by storms of ether. "We found your sorcerer. Palo."
"Were you able to learn what you went there to learn?"
"Your sorcerer is certain that the Realm of Nine Kings is a fantasy. The spear was used up killing another lich and there's nowhere to go to get a new one."
The emperor nodded. "Do you agree with him?"
"You knew he'd have nothing for us, didn't you?"
"I held hope that I was wrong."
"Bullshit! If he'd had any real information, anything that could actually help us kill the lich, I think you would have remembered!"
Yoto straightened to look down at Dante. "Would it have mattered? If I had sworn on the heart of my own mother that your venture was a waste of time, would it have stopped you from traveling to see Palo and hear about the spear for yourself?"
"No." Dante forced his voice to go calm. "Excuse me. I thought we had the opportunity to stop this war before it reached the city. But now it's clear there's no escape—and that a lot of people will be dead before this is over."
"But for you, the matter is more personal. You don't just want the lich dead. You want revenge."
"Do you think that makes me less devoted to our cause?"
"It means your mind is not always as clear as it should be."
"That's just it. He didn't only enslave my physical body. He enslaved my very mind. And I will destroy him for that."
Footsteps rustled faintly on the stone. Gladdic was walking toward them. Most likely he'd been listening this whole time, as had Blays, who was sitting up and yawning in his bedroll.
"There remains one slim hope," Gladdic said. "If we can find the metal from a fallen star, we might be able to forge it into a new spear."
Dante wrinkled his brow. "No we won't. What good is it to have the materials if we have no idea how to work them?"
"I think you're on the same page here," Blays said. "You see, when Gladdic said the chances were slim, he didn't mean a little bit bad, like the chance that a roll of the dice will hit on your number. He meant as bad as the chances you'll ever find a wife."
After a bit more talk, the lot of them went their separate ways. Though Dante felt as tired as if their journey to the other city had been real, before he allowed himself to rest, he rode out to the ramparts to expend his nether expanding them.
That night, he dreamed of the second Bressel, the one they'd seen in the Mists. The range of the city's history displayed by those who'd lived there across the ages had been a revelation, an inspiration to become a part of that deep history as well, and ensure that it would continue to survive into the deep future.
At the same time, though, it had reminded him that history wasn't a river, but an ocean: and in its grand sweep, any one man was no more than a drop.
~
Leven was quite good with sixers, the common term among his cohort for reanimated animal scouts and spies—so-called because they gave you the sixth sense of observation from a distance. His skill was why High Priest Galand had chosen him for this mission, just as he'd been partnered with Perra for her ability to inflict raw damage on buildings and stone.
But for all Leven's practice with such scouts, he didn't think he'd ever used a fish.
"They're passing underneath us right now," he murmured, peering down through the drifting fish's eyes at the dim horde walking across the sea floor. "Just another minute. Then it's time to drop Taim's hammer."
"Got it," Perra said. She gazed out at nothing, arms wrapped loosely around her knees. "I've been thinking."
"What?"
"Are we sure this is…just?"
"Killing the lich's abominations to live? I think the gods will forgive us that one."
"What comes after. Luring his legions into the towns." She gestured across the low, rolling hills behind them. "These people. They're innocent."
"So is everyone in Bressel. If we don't do this, these people die anyway. It's just a matter of when."
She was watching him, her gray eyes pained. "I understand that. What I don't understand is how you can be so callous."
"It has to be done. There's no changing that. What good is it to cry about it?" He grunted, jerking his chin toward the sea. "It's time."
She hunched there, motionless. For a moment he thought she was going to call off the whole thing. Then she closed her eyes and reached into the nether.
They'd spent a lot of time and energy weakening the rocks ahead of time and it didn't take nearly as much nether to finish the job as he would have thought. Even so, as the cliff gave way with a crack like the breaking of the bones of the world, a thrill of sheer power raced up Leven's spine.
A hunk of earth the size of a small hill broke free, rotating slowly as it plummeted toward the water. He and Perra were hundreds of yards back from the cliffs, but when the rock hit the sea, the splash as loud as any thunder, the spume of water it spat into the air flew so high he was sure they were about to get drenched.
He hopped on his horse and rode directly from the shore, laughing in wonder. "It worked! It crushed hundreds of them. The others are scattering in all directions. It's utter confusion!"
Perra nodded joylessly. "Then we did what we had to."
"Not quite. We still have to leave a few clues to coax the lich into visiting Riggata."
He reached into his horse's bags and got out a banner of the town, pre-soiled and rumpled to make the trick a little less transparent. Just as he was about to cast it into the weeds next to the road, he froze in the saddle, switching back to the sight of his fish.
Something was coming toward it through the water. Something frighteningly large. A ring of light surrounded it like a halo.
Leven's eyes flew wide. He found his cord to the fish, meaning to sever it, but a presence was already rushing up it. A presence with the same unstoppable force as the cliff they'd dumped into the ocean.
He hacked at the cord, but under the might of the intruder, he could no more break it than he could chop down a tree with his bare hand.
The being traveled up the cord. And found him.
"The lich." He could barely squawk out the words. "He's found us."
Perra wrenched her head around. "How?"
"He followed my connection to my sixer! He knows exactly where we are!" He gasped; the lich was trying to ram through the cord and fully enter Leven's mind. He could feel that he would be powerless to stop it, but the lich was somehow stymied, as if trying to pass through a doorway that wasn't there. "I can't kill the link. There's no escape."
He felt Perra questing through the nether until she found the cord between him and the fish. She hit it hard, but rebounded like a toddler barreling into the legs of a grown man.
"Why didn't Galand warn us this could happen?" Tears stung Leven's eyes and he blinked, hoping the jarring of the galloping horse would knock them loose so Perra wouldn't see him have to wipe them away. "Because he knew. He knew
this would happen, didn't he? This is the best way to ensure the lich finds and follows the trail to Riggata. He has sacrificed us!"
Perra rode on beside him, watching him from the corners of her eyes. "He did what needed to be done, Leven."
"To hell with this! We can ride off. As fast as we can. The lich's army isn't swift enough to keep up."
"We can't do that. If he's not fast enough to catch us, he'll ignore us and continue on to Bressel. Everyone there will be slaughtered."
"It doesn't have to be like this!"
"It's already been decided. We ride to Riggata. And we hope our sacrifice is enough to save the others."
A wail arose in Leven's soul, so long and loud he was afraid he'd somehow voiced it out loud. But Perra showed no sign of hearing. Then the wail subsided, and all that remained was the serene calm of resignation.
"You're right," he said. "This is what we're here to do."
They hastened along the trail. Behind him, Leven watched through the eyes of his sixers in the sea and on the heights beside it. Light pierced from the surface of the ocean like sunlight spearing through a bank of clouds. It lit upon the base of the cliffs, slanting upwards at a shallow angle, then reversed direction, still climbing gently, only to reverse course again a few seconds later.
The lich was conjuring a path up from the depths. But rather than blasting it from the rock, as he and Perra might have done, it was almost as though he was convincing the cliff to reshape itself in accordance with his will.
As soon as it was finished, the Blighted began to ascend. They were pale and ghastly, dripping and wrinkled from the water, heaving up one after another until their numbers stretched from the bottom of the path to the top of the cliffs.
"What's wrong?" Perra said, seeing the look on his face.
"There's so many of them. The way they look, the anger in them—it's like every person who's ever drowned at sea is coming to take their revenge on the living."
Leven rode on. The lich's presence followed him all the way to Riggata.
~
In the time it took the White Lich to finish ravaging southern Alebolgia, return his armies to the sea, and continue their march, Dante and the Tanarians completed the third layer of defenses around the city. With these in place, Dante and the Drakebane ascended a tower near the edge of the city to assess the works from above.
"Well done," Yoto said. "Do you think you will have time to complete the fourth ring before the Eiden Rane arrives?"
"Barring setbacks," Dante said.
"Then why do you look so troubled? I thought you said that should be enough to stave off the Blighted."
"I did. But I'm starting to doubt."
Yoto's eyes went as icy as the lich's. "If we have just wasted weeks of our time arranging defenses that can't even defend us—"
"Spare me," Dante said. "You invaded Bressel. You couldn't stop the Righteous Monsoon from freeing the lich, or stop him from swallowing your homeland. And you fled from Tanar Atain while my friends and I stayed to fight. You couldn't stop him at any point of this. If we fail, you don't get to blame us. Not when you and your ancestors had centuries to do better."
Abruptly tired of the earthworks and the Drakebane, Dante headed to the river. There was something soothing in altering its flow and watching and measuring the effects of his labor play out in front of his eyes. He'd narrowed the channel quite a ways, and had discovered that deepening and smoothing its bottom made the current run faster, too. It had just topped five miles per hour. He thought he could raise it another tick before the arrival of the lich.
Before he exhausted his strength for the day, he headed toward the core of town, excavating a tunnel beneath two of the buildings they intended to defend if the fighting penetrated in through the walls. With all the work outside the city, he had only just gotten started on this particular enterprise, and he tried not to think about how much more there was to do in the handful of days remaining to them.
Rather than continuing to farm a patch of land outside the city, Gladdic relocated his harvesting efforts to various commons and parks near Stark Square. At the same time, he tasked the Drakebane's soldiers with conducting a quick census to get a better idea of how many mouths they'd need to feed.
Dante's spies patrolled the coast, informing him when the undersea army passed Cavana—which had completely emptied itself out and thus offered the lich no temptation to invade—and when it moved past the Strip of Alebolgia and came to the southern reaches of the Collen Basin. It was then that Dante called Nak and his troops in from their camp many miles outside Bressel.
It took two days for the soldiers to arrive. To prevent Adaine from declaring it a Narashtovik sneak attack and stirring up the dormant Golden Hammer, the troops and priests entered the northern gate under broad daylight. They proceeded to the Royal Boulevard and took it all the way to the palace.
Seeing them enter the courtyard, Dante's heart managed to rise and fall simultaneously. It rose to watch Nak arrive with two other members of the Council, another forty nether-wielding priests and monks of various skill, and close to a thousand well-trained men-at-arms, all of them dressed in the black and silver of Narashtovik, which Dante had seen so little of for close to two years. Marching together, they looked like a weapon. One that he had helped forge.
His heart sank, however, to think that he should have called for even more. Even if it had risked a Gaskan invasion of Narashtovik. Yet he had made that decision many weeks ago, before he understood the full threat before them. There was nothing that could be done about it now.
"Lord Galand!" Nak stopped before him and gave a bow.
The other Council members did the same while the monks and soldiers kneeled. Dante nodded, allowing his people to return to their feet.
Nak smiled, taking in the keep and towers of the palace. He looked genuinely happy to be there and was as well-fed as always. In fact, aside from a few dabs of gray in what remained of his black hair, he looked little changed from the day Dante had first met him, when Nak had been a simple monk, and Dante had been a would-be assassin of Nak's master.
"I think I understand now," Nak said. "Did you decide that you had outgrown the Sealed Citadel, and now required grander lodgings?"
Dante shook his head. "Believe it or not, I had nothing to do with the disposal of King Charles. Believe it or not even further, the locals aren't even rioting. Anymore."
"I would like to be happy about that. Except it seems to me that if the people aren't crying out for the blood of those who took their king, then the threat on its way must be terrifying enough to turn justice itself upside down."
"Not untrue. Which means that if and when that threat is removed, the people's nature is likely to rapidly reassert itself."
Nak stroked his chin. "Is that the polite way of saying that if and when the lich is put down, the Mallish will want to plumb their fountains with Tanarian blood?"
"And ours, too. If we win this thing, we won't want to hang around and celebrate."
Dante greeted the others, saying a quick prayer to Arawn in thanks for their arrival and the relative ease of their travels along the way. As the Drakebane's servants led the people to their lodgings, Dante brought Nak and a handful of others up to the top of the keep. There, with a view of both the fortifications and the river, he explained the elements of their defense.
Nak gazed across it like a dog that's heard a strange sound in the distance, his fringe of hair ruffled by the seaborne breeze. "These look to be shaping up well enough. But I have the distinct recollection that walls didn't do us much good during the Chainbreakers' War."
"Yeah, I remember something about that," Dante said. "That's why, unless some insane opportunity presents itself, I want all our sorcery to remain defensive. Neutralize any and all attacks from the White Lich and his underlings, ensuring the walls stay fast. Let the soldiers hold out against the Blighted."
"As for these Blighted, what precisely are they? Zombies?"
; "They're more sophisticated than that. Capable of acting and fighting autonomously. They're more like a savage animal, though they've still got some human cunning in them. But they're not very smart, either."
"Are they capable of independent strategy?"
"Sure, as long as the strategy isn't more complex than 'throw wave after wave of bodies at the enemy until they're dead and we can start eating them.'"
Nak tugged the sleeve of his robe. "This would seem to be a serious advantage for us."
"You have to remember that the lack of brains means they're utterly fearless, too. I'm not sure how that's going to play out on the battlefield. It's a tradeoff that's going to be hard to account for until it happens."
Nak made squiggly gestures toward the ramparts, as if he was tracing them in the air. "It seems to me that if we wind up doing well enough to hold off the enemy's sorcery, that would give us leeway to try out a few tricks. For instance, you could feign a messy retreat, letting a portion of Blighted through the outer defenses, then turn about and slaughter them once they've overextended themselves. Use their aggression and lack of caution against them, in other words."
"Possibly. But I would be very careful about getting too cute with the lich. If we're holding him off, we should consider that a miracle. And you know what you don't do with miracles?"
"Throw them away in a vainglorious effort to prove how clever you are?"
"Exactly. Now before we get too deep into what we'll do if we're winning, let me show you our option if we're losing."
Dante descended the tower, leading them into the main keep and then through three basement floors that were mostly storage. At last, he brought them to a blank stone wall and knocked on it.
"Hollow?" Nak smiled, eyes gleaming in the white light of Dante's torchstone. "You've made yourself a tunnel. Just like at the Citadel."
"It's served us pretty well there, hasn't it?"
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