But the point hadn't been to hurt him. Just to make him look away for a moment.
Nether streamed from Winden to the broken and trampled remnants of the palisade. Dante had thought that harvesting required seeds or living plants, but some spark of life must have remained in the recently-hewn logs, for they sprouted branches and leaves like mad, expanding across the gap as quickly as the arrival of a marine fog, crackling and groaning. The Blighted who'd been pushing through were crushed and impaled between merciless boughs and trunks. In the span of seconds, a wall of living wood had grown across the breach, sealing it shut.
"Slaughter them all!" Dante yelled. "Sorcerers, do not let the lich break through!"
The Blighted trapped on their side loped toward Winden, tearing at her cloak. Blays' swords glowed as he cut down the undead and cleared a path for her escape. With a roar, Mallon's soldiers charged against the Blighted who had been pushing them back only moments before. Priests of both Arawn and Taim turned their powers to the defense of the wall of trees, knocking down the attacks from the lich and his lieutenants.
Dante hurled a host of black darts into the crowded Blighted, opening holes for the soldiers to pierce through. He sucked the last of the shadows from his shaden and slung them at an incoming column of light. The ether burst apart, burning sparks landing on the leaves of the wall but failing to catch fire.
The troops churned their way forward, pushing the last of the Blighted against the trees and putting every last one of them down. Again the soldiers yelled out, this time in the triumph of blood, and ran to take position on the defenses.
There was a moment of relative calm, as if the world itself was taking a breath. Then the Blighted on the other side of the wall fell back like a down blanket yanked from the end of the bed. The ground they opened behind them was awash in bodies and blood, the soil dirtied and churned. Archers loosed irregularly at the retreating foe.
Dante ran over to Winden, whose well-tanned face was grimed with dirt and blood. "What are you doing here? I told you to stay at the palace!"
She snorted, looking him up and down. "You are mad at me for saving you?"
"You did more than enough to bring us the dreamflowers and shaden. This isn't your fight."
"In the islands, the Tauren were not your fight. But there, you fought for us. So now I fight for you."
"Well, thank you for disobeying me. Now please don't do it again, unless you're about to save everything again, in which case do whatever the hell you want."
Winden peered at him. "You are saying to agree with you when you are right and disagree with you when you are wrong?"
"That would seem to be the most efficient way to do things, yes."
The Blighted withdrew to the fourth ring of defenses. They and the liches spent some time there, tearing down the palisades and pulling apart the earthworks as best they could, leaving nothing resembling a defense for the city's soldiers to return to. A few undead scouts roamed around the periphery of the ramparts, following the earthworks around the northern and then western ends of the city, but Lord Pressings kept them well-shadowed by soldiers while the nethermancers watched from above with a motley assortment of insects.
While they dug in, waiting for the next attack, crews of citizens gathered up the dead, treated the wounded, and distributed supplies brought from the city. Dante ordered half his priests to catch two hours of sleep, then return to spell the others for two hours.
He didn't expect the first shift to pass without a renewed attack from the lich, let alone the second. Yet by the time the dawn broke, the field of battle remained as quiet as the skies above.
18
Curdled yellow light oozed across the land.
Thousands of bodies were strewn across the reaches, as if a titan had walked across the ground with a basket full of them, casting them about to sow a field of the dead. Most were Blighted: perhaps three or four thousand in all, though they were piled so deeply around the ramparts that it was impossible to estimate well.
But there were many bodies of defenders left where they'd fallen, too, especially on both sides of the fourth ring of fortifications, where they hadn't dared to venture forth to retrieve their dead. These included Mallish, Narashtovik, and Tanarian alike. Birds were already seeing to them while shunning the Blighted, hopping among the copious remains without the slightest sense of urgency.
The entire eastern stretch of the fourth ring had been dismantled. The gouged earth was damp and dark brown, like the viscous blood of the city itself. The tree trunks that had formed the palisades were downed and shattered, cast about like the wracks of a once-great fleet on a now-dried sea.
The space between the fourth ring and the third was trampled by feet and cratered by magics. The turf that had carpeted it was now completely demolished, churned into bare dirt. Yet if it were left undisturbed, it would only take a few weeks or months before the grass grew back, and all signs of the violence of the night before would vanish from sight, lost to time like so many other struggles and wars.
Dante still hadn't decided whether this element of time was a mercy or a cruelty.
"What are they up to?" Blays wandered beside him, puffy-eyed and deeply annoyed at the arrival of the sun, which had spelled the end of his sleep. "Still worshipping the trees?"
After the long night, Dante's throat was dry, forcing him to clear it. "Yep. He's still Blighting the captives."
"After he does that, he gets kind of tired or something for a while, right?"
"He seems to need to recover from it. This isn't a very big session for him, but I doubt we'll see another attack for at least a couple of hours."
"Then I'm going to spend those next couple hours in the nearest hammock."
Blays wandered off. It had been a long night, but he seemed more worn out than after battles of years past. Dante wondered if the Odo Sein blades had all but exhausted his trace, leaving him sluggish.
Either that, or they just weren't as young as they had once been.
After the retreat and their destruction of the fourth ring, the Eiden Rane had withdrawn his troops to the forest across the clearing. They had stayed there through the night. Perhaps he and his lesser liches had been in counsel, chewing over the realities of what they were up against, or maybe they just needed to rest and regain their strength as well. Dante couldn't know. Any spy he'd tried to send closer than a quarter mile to the enemy had been grabbed up by the White Lich, requiring him to drop his connection to it like it was about to burn him alive.
He was thinking of nothing in particular and had been doing so for some time when Gladdic approached. The old man looked none the worse for wear, although it was possible that was only because he already looked as bad as it was possible to look.
"Why do they not attack?" His tone was musing, with a slight inquisitor's edge.
"Because they were dying," Dante said.
"Why were they dying?"
"Because we, evildoers that we are, were murdering the hell out of them."
"Yet why weren't we dying? Do you believe the lich simply underestimated us?"
"Is it that crazy to think? He's never seen a city the size of Bressel, or fought an army of sorcerers nearly as large as ours. Maybe he didn't think our coalition would hold together, either. I wouldn't blame him on that one."
"Surely he had seen and scouted Bressel, assessing what it might be able to bring to bear against him. And surely he also knew that, once our lives were on the brink, we might be able to hang together as a united whole, if only for the moment. These things were known to him, and he would have thought very carefully about whether he had the ability to overcome them even if each one of these factors broke against him. The only factor the Eiden Rane did not know about was the shaden."
"The stuff that we would have run out of nether without." It was another warm morning, but the hair stood up on Dante's arms and neck. "What happens when we use up the last of the shaden?"
"There is the distinct possibil
ity that that point in time is when the lich's army stops dying and we take up that role instead." Gladdic hiked up his robes. "I believe we should consult with the Mallish."
"About our strategy once the shaden are gone?"
"Yes, if they have answers to that question. But I was more immediately concerned with the matter of whatever happened to Adaine."
Dante's hair stood up anew. Between all the fighting, confusion, and exhaustion, he had completely forgotten that Adaine—and, presumably, some subset of his followers—had been fully convinced that the White Lich wasn't there to destroy them, but to liberate them.
He was a bit sore from riding and chose to walk to the Mallish camp instead. Most of the soldiers were dozing or sitting about listlessly, drinking cups of beer and gambling with brass coins or, in some cases, pebbles. They watched Dante and Gladdic pass by with neutral curiosity, which was a lot better than the suspicion and mistrust they would have shown as recently as the day before.
Word must have gotten to Corson, because he met them on a gentle slope in front of the tents where the priests and lords had made their camp. He had some bruising around his left eye, but it had already purpled and was hardly swollen, as if he'd spent just enough ether to soothe the discomfort, and no more. His hair was matted and flat and the silver streaks within it looked tarnished.
"Lords Gladdic and Galand." He grinned, his left eye squinting shut. "I'd heard you both made it through the night. Most of us over here did, too. How'd that happen? I thought we were all supposed to be dead by now!"
"Fortunately for us, the White Lich overlooked our secret weapon: magic snails," Dante said. "Tell me, after watching him brutalize your people, do you still think he could be the messenger of Taim?"
"Hell no. I know we've let Taim down—especially when it comes to the matter of purging the people like you—but we've never done anything so bad as to deserve this. I don't believe he'd just…kill us all." Corson turned to gaze across the war-torn field and into the trees beyond. "But he's got to be something, doesn't he? No man I ever met could do more than a small part of what he wielded against us. So I don't see how he's mortal, either."
"In a sense, he's not. But he started life as a man like you or me."
"I don't see as how he could be considered human any more, though. There's the divine in him. Maybe he wasn't sent here by Taim, but by Arawn."
Dante snorted. "Arawn? Why would Arawn bother to deceive you like this?"
"To cast down his rivals, slaughter those who worship his greatest enemy, and seize dominion over the land?"
Gladdic chuckled. "There are already times when I forget how poorly we understand the thinking of our eternal foe, the Arawnites."
Corson tilted his head forward, looking up at Gladdic from beneath eyebrows bent to the point of anger. "Being led to question some of what's in the Ban Naden is one thing. But if you're thinking of converting to the faith of the Lord of Death…"
Gladdic waved his gnarled hand. "I have no such designs."
"But you have gone soft on them. What's your thinking? That we should throw open the gates to them? That they're no different or more dangerous than those who praise Lia or Mennok or Simm?"
"I have seen far too much to believe that is so. For their values are not the same as those in this city, and sooner or later this would lead to another Scour, for that is simply the way of things. What I argue instead is very simple: That we do not understand them."
"I don't think Arawn would ever march on you," Dante said. "He sits at a great remove. He doesn't need to come for us. He knows that we're fated to die, so we'll always come to him. But if something did provoke him to war, he wouldn't conceal himself in tricks. Death doesn't need to hide. You would look on his face and you would know him."
Corson nodded slowly, still looking off into the trees. "I suppose you know him better than I. All I know is that this Eiden Rane is in no way a mortal man. Last night, we were down to the end of our strength."
"But we held on." Dante motioned toward the tents, dropping his voice. "There's something else. Is Adaine here?"
"He bolted like a rabbit as soon as the fighting got bloody. Took a few of his people with him. Looked to be heading back into the city."
"We need to find him. If he's still convinced the lich is the avatar of Taim, there's no telling what trouble he could cause us. I'll do some scouting, but I don't want to provoke him. It's best if you and your people do most of the searching."
"We'll do that." Corson scrunched his mouth to the side as if trying to dislodge a bit of spinach from between his teeth. "How are we sitting? Can we do this?"
"I said before that if we got through the first night, that I'd like our chances. Well, it's morning. And we're still here."
He was about to collapse, however, and so returned to Narashtovik's command tents. Falling asleep felt like sinking into quicksand, as if his mind was frightened of relinquishing the wheel of the ship to others. He dreamed that he was back under the thrall of the lich, questing endlessly to blot out all people from the world and replace them with the Eiden Rane's perfect new order.
These memories were disturbing, but they hardened his resolve. He woke much later than intended—early afternoon—but the lich still hadn't budged from the forest. After a cup of tea, Dante met with Drakebane Yoto and Lord Pressings to discuss what they'd seen over the night and their strategy going forward, but their course seemed the same as before: hold fast, keep to their defenses; stay vigilant; and when the moment came, fight like hell.
The afternoon crawled on. Though he was loath to spend a single wisp of his people's nether, he dispatched a priest and two monks to go see to the wounded, using the same system of triage he'd come up with before: full restoration of their best people, and minimal stabilization for everyone else.
The nethermancers had insects, fish, and rats scattered about the city, alert for any movement, but sunset came without any activity from the lich. It was close to the solstice and twilight lingered for a long time. Once it was over, and night claimed the land, the lights returned to the forest, blue and white and purple and green.
"What are they doing in there?" Dante said. "Honing their firefly impressions?"
Blays shrugged. "Maybe pretty lights is how the lich keeps the Blighted from eating each other."
"Well, I don't like it. And we still can't get anything close enough to spy on them. He senses anything that comes within hundreds of yards."
"It must be very frustrating to not be able to use enchanted bugs to learn your enemy's every move. It's like living as a normal person."
"Which I'm not. So it is frustrating."
"We could always go over and take a poke at him."
"That sounds absurdly dangerous."
"It also sounds more fun than sitting here trying to figure out what a bunch of colored light means."
"So far, we've won both our encounters," Dante said. "We did that by sticking to our defenses. I'm not going to just walk out and hand a victory to the lich."
Wanting insight, he found his horse and trotted over to the Tanarian camp. Servants met him and brought him to Drakebane Yoto.
Dante crooked his finger toward the woods. "Do you know what that is?"
Yoto smiled. "No more than the last time you asked me."
"Why hasn't he attacked again? What does he stand to gain by waiting?"
"The simple answer is that his first plan has failed and so now he and his sorcerers are concocting a new one."
"That's the best you've got? Your people have been fighting him for centuries."
"And we have never managed to kill him. Even if I did have counsel, if I were you, I'm not sure I would trust it."
Dante was about to say something sly about the wisdom of allying with a people who had done nothing but fail against their enemy, but then he recalled that if he and Blays hadn't wound up supporting the Righteous Monsoon against the Drakebane in their quest to kill Gladdic, the Drakebane might have been able to im
prison the lich again and avoid this whole mess. So he just nodded and rode back to his camp.
During the night, their spies spotted Blighted moving through the trees to the north and west, but not in any significant number. Dante napped where he could. Morning brought cooler winds from the sea and a dark spate of clouds that threatened rain. As Dante sat around frowning at the sky and thinking about whether heavy rain would favor them or the Blighted, one of his fish patrolling the coast ceased to be. As he was frowning about this, the one he had a couple hundred yards to the west of the deceased fish blinked off as well.
He got up and ran toward Blays. "Mount up! Right now!"
He sprinted toward his horse, grit flying from his boots. Seeing Nak, he yelled at him to assemble the sorcerers and soldiers they'd designated as their response force, but he didn't wait for them before pulling himself into the saddle and riding like mad toward Marine Street.
"What's going on?" Blays called from a few strides behind. "Are things about to get exciting?"
"Someone's killing my fish."
"Dead fish! Now that is thrilling news. You're sure it isn't the zombie sharks?"
"Definitely."
"What about regular sharks?"
"The fish are being killed with light. If sharks have taught themselves to be ethermancers, we're in even worse trouble than we knew."
Blays caught up, twisting in the saddle to look back at the defenses. "Is their army on the march?"
"If they are, they've found a way to make themselves completely invisible. But something's coming."
They entered the city gates and made way for Marine Street. A neat blade of ether snipped the tether between Dante and a third fish. This one had been cruising along just a few hundred feet from the mouth of the Chanset. Dante and Blays came to the bank of the river and swung south. Dante yelled out to the two ethermancers posted on the walls. They stared back at him a moment, then ether sparked from their hands.
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