He got out his knife, took hold of Adaine's collar, and cut downward through the robe. A hole had been jabbed straight through the priest's heart. Dante leaned closer.
Without looking up, he said, "Are you sure this wasn't done by one of your people?"
"As sure as their word is worth. Why?"
"Because he was killed by ether."
Corson stepped forward, crouching next to the body and peering at the wound. "Looks like a hole. Through his heart."
"It is."
"Couldn't a hole through a heart have been made by anything capable of punching a hole through a heart?"
"Different weapons leave different wounds. Like a signature."
"I've healed enough wounds to know that much."
"Have you healed wounds caused by sorcery?"
"Sure." Corson took a closer look at the hole in Adaine's chest. "Even if it was sorcery, what makes you so sure it wasn't nether?"
"When nether punches through a body, it leaves little patterns in the flesh. Swirls and things. The sort of thing you might see decorating a fine tapestry, or the blade of moon-forged steel. Sometimes the patterns are more like the markings of the scales of a fish or a snake. But this is perfectly smooth. Only ether leaves wounds this clean."
"Well that's a hell of a thing." Corson leaned back on his heels. "Don't think it was one of my people. But it could have been one of Adaine's own. Turned on him after Adaine didn't join the White Lich or some such."
"They must have taken him by surprise. He was stronger than any of you but Gladdic."
Dante went still for a moment, suddenly suspicions that it had been Gladdic, then got up and walked around the body. Something gold gleamed dully from Adaine's left hand. It was his chain bearing the Hammer of Taim, looped over his fingers. Dante paused, staring at it. As he did, he noticed a bulge under Adaine's right arm. Carefully, he lifted it. The priest's copy of the Ban Naden had been clenched under his arm, concealed by his robe.
Dante was about to set it aside, but the red ribbon sewn to the top of its spine was tucked between the pages. On a hunch, he opened the book and began to read. He'd read the Ban Naden twice, and some sections multiple times, but it had been a while since he'd studied it and it took him a few paragraphs before he remembered which part of the book it was. He skimmed the rest to confirm.
"Adaine wasn't murdered," he said. "He killed himself."
Corson sputtered. "The hell you say. Suicide is forbidden!"
"Oh, that explains why no one ever does it. Or steals, which is also forbidden. Or murders. Or—"
"Adaine wasn't some bloodthirsty brigand nor a lecherous lord. He was a priest."
"A life of devotion may help protect you from the corruption and venality that's afflicted humanity since the cracking of Arawn's Mill. But it doesn't make any of us immune to it." Dante held out the Ban Naden. "Do you know what he was reading before he died? The Story of Kenner. Who, after losing his wife and children to a fire, schemed of a way to end his life that wouldn't violate—"
"I know the Story of Kenner, northman."
"Look at the evidence in front of you. Why was he holding Taim's Hammer in his hand and not wearing it around his neck? His copy of the Ban Naden—he had it tucked under his arm rather than keeping it on his hip. He knew he was about to bleed a lot and he didn't want to stain the book after he was dead."
Corson set his jaw. "You don't know Adaine half as well as you think you do. He was the holiest of us all. He wouldn't defy Taim's law like that."
"Or Taim's law against using the nether?"
Corson's face went tight. "There were those who believed it was allowed if they used those skills in service of fighting your kind. But nobody believes you can commit suicide and still find your way to Taim's Garden."
"Except Adaine knew he doesn't have to fear being left out of Taim's Garden. That's not how the afterworld works, is it? Saints and murderers all go to the same place."
"It's clear as day that there was a fight in here, you fool! The windows are busted out!"
Dante turned in a circle, regarding the shards of colored glass cast across the stone floor. "He broke the glass. He was desperate to look into the ether and speak to Taim. That's why he came here, to the shrine of Urt."
"But Urt is the keeper of mysteries!"
"And the teller of secrets. Meanwhile, you'd be hard pressed to find a better object to sacrifice to the ether than the stained glass of a holy shrine. Look there, he didn't even get out that glass-headed mace he carries. If there had been a struggle, why didn't he arm himself?"
"You know, you talk like he'd been forsaken. But what if he did speak to Taim? And that's why he did what he did?"
"Because he got his answer after all," Dante said. "The question is, was the reply he got to his liking? Or to his despair?"
"He was always a strange one." Corson crouched beside the body again, gazing into Adaine's face. "Say he did it, like you said. Why? What does any of this mean?"
"I don't know." A single speck glittered in front of Dante exactly like the motes of dust dancing in the shafts of light falling from the high and broken windows. "But I might be able to find out. I know of a way to look into the past."
"The same way you saw what you claim was the end of the world."
"Right. I'm not sure if I can get anything out of it. Even if I was any good at this, which I'm not, there's so much history in this place that finding what happened to Adaine is going to be like trying to find a grain of rice in a granary full of wheat. But it's worth a shot."
All of Urt's places of worship were known for their spareness—some of his monks went so far as to spend most of their lives stuffed inside barrels—and there were no benches or chairs in the room. Dante seated himself on the cool stone and closed his eyes.
He thought of a time far, far in the past. So far past that there hadn't been any Bressel at all. Just the forest, and the Chanset—although no one called it that yet—and the sea, and the hills to the east and the west. Animals lived there, deer and robins and squirrels and grouse, but no people, at least not permanently. But then came the day when a wandering tribe appeared from the forested hills to the east: the Helods.
The first settlers of Bressel.
Dante imagined how they must have done it. First with mere tents, stretched deerskins, or perhaps the sturdier yurts like the norren used, although he wasn't sure that it was cold enough to require those in this land. But soon they began to build more solid homes: timbers or fieldstone, thatched roofs to keep out the rains from the sea. They cleared fields, sowed crops, the dogs and children playing as the men and women worked and worked.
Dante kept his eyes closed, but he would have sworn he could see golden flecks spiraling around his head.
The activity of the Helods drew raiders. Brigands. The newcomers fought them off, mended the damage to their fields and homes. They built a stone fort on the hill and enclosed it with a palisade of cut trees. They honed their sorcery, too, venturing into the woods by the light of the moon to learn to summon the shadows. They knew little, but between their few tricks and their simple keep, they kept the barbarians at bay. After this came a time of great—
Dante swooned and lurched forward. He felt himself open his eyes, but the view he had was not that of a man seated on the floor of the shrine, but somehow of a more removed perspective. Hundreds of people blurred around him, crowding the room, overlapping each other as they occupied the same space. It seemed to be both night and day at the same time.
The chaos coalesced, or at least calmed down. Now he saw just one scene at a time: it was dawn, and the monks were kneeling on the floor, meditating. The image changed. The windows were dark and the room was lit by candles. Two monks quarreled on the low platform. One shoved the other, who in response drew a knife and stabbed his attacker in the belly. Before Dante could see what came next, the Glimpse shifted yet again, to a woman lying on the ground in labor, three monks crouched about her, ether shining from thei
r hands.
He lurched again. The room calmed and slowed, seeming to grow fixed, the way stepping to the ground felt after a hard gallop or a day at sea. In the room, Adaine—alive and unhurt—dropped to his knees. Across from him, the White Lich stood like a titan, glaive in hand.
Except there was something funny about him. For all his size, he seemed somehow insubstantial, as if instead of flesh he was made of fog. Dante thought he could see the back wall through the lich's long cape.
Adaine lifted his head sharply, as if the lich had spoken, but Dante hadn't heard any words. Mentally, he leaned forward, focusing with everything he had.
Something pulsed in Dante's ear. He ignored it, clinging to the Glimpse, but it pulsed again, two quick pings and then a long surge.
The signal for emergency.
"Nak?" he answered. "This had better be—"
"Dante!" Nak's voice was as frantic as Dante had ever heard it. "It's the Blighted! They're attacking!"
Dante glanced across the shrine. With just another minute, he might have seen what had happened between Adaine and the lich—if that had been the lich—but the vision was gone, along with all of the stream that had bestowed it on him.
He sighed and stood. "I'll be at the ramparts as quick as I can. In the meantime, use the shaden if you need them."
"You don't understand, milord. The Blighted aren't attacking the outer defenses. They're already inside the city."
Dante's head lurched just as it had when the Glimpse had swept him up. He ran from the chamber and into the entry. "Did they get in through the river? How many?"
"They're everywhere. They—" Nak yelled out in surprise.
Dante called his name, but Nak didn't respond. Through the loon, Dante heard grunts, shouts, the clang of steel. He dashed to the front door. The two ethermancers guarding it watched him in surprise, but didn't attempt to stop him as he ran outside.
After the gloom of the shrine, even the overcast light was dazzling. People were screaming, but Dante couldn't place the direction. They sounded closer than they should have.
Footsteps ran down the street to the west, approaching. Dante turned, ready to order the frightened cityfolk to bar themselves in their home.
What he looked at wasn't people. Instead, four Blighted ran naked down the street toward him, blood shining on their teeth and claws.
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They were almost upon him already. He backpedaled, biting the inside of his cheek. As soon as he tasted blood, he grabbed up the nether, slinging a small black arrow at the head of each Blighted. They seemed to understand what was coming, grimacing in dismay that they'd suffered the folly of attacking a sorcerer instead of an easy citizen, but they didn't so much as slow down. Each arrow hit one of them in the brow. They dropped to the cobbles and lay still.
"Nak?" Dante touched his loon. "Nak, are you okay?"
"Fighting," Nak said tightly. "Bad. It's bad."
Dante gritted his teeth. Glancing down the street for more Blighted, he moved into the sight of a dragonfly he'd had soaring aimlessly over the northern woods and which he'd been completely ignoring since starting his work with the stream. He sent it flying high to the southeast.
He had expected to see a simultaneous attack on the eastern front and up through the river, which was the only possible way to explain how the Blighted had broken through to where some of them were scurrying about in the streets of the western district. But at a distance, the walls and defenses at the mouth of the river looked unbreached. To the east, meanwhile, there were no legions of undead throwing themselves at the fortifications of the defenders.
Instead, thousands of Blighted were behind the defenders—and they were holding the city wall against the soldiers caught outside. The three forces of Mallish, Tanarians, and Narashtovikers were currently assaulting them heavily, looking for a way past the stout stone defenses. The flash and sizzle of sorcery was like grounded lightning.
The Blighted were in the middle of the city, too. Just across the western bank of the river. Not just a few of them. But thousands and thousands.
"Nak." Dante's mouth had gone dry. "How did this happen?"
A pause. More fighting sounds. Then, "Not sure."
"But they're in the middle of the city! How could so many of them have slipped past our guard?"
"I don't know!"
Dante's head was buzzing. "There are ten thousand of them in the western half of the city right now. And there will be lesser liches among them. If we can't get our people there soon, the slaughter will be horrific."
"Yes," Nak said, clearly distracted.
"Don't fight them for the wall. That only puts us at the disadvantage. Fall back and see what they do—if they abandon the wall to wreak havoc on the city, then you make entry. If they stay there to hold it, dispatch a force around the perimeter to penetrate the city and raise a civilian defense in the western reaches of the city. Understand?"
"Yes."
"Good. I'll be there as soon as I can."
Corson had exited the shrine of Urt and was staring at Dante in concern; Dante realized it looked like he'd been talking to himself. Or to a ghost. Corson was about to say something, likely a question that Dante wouldn't have wanted to answer, then did a double take at the four bodies lying twenty feet away in the road.
"Those are Blighted," he said. "What are Blighted doing out here in the Green Quarter?"
"They found a way inside the city," Dante said. "There are thousands of them between us and the river, and many more holding the eastern wall. We're going to the eastern front to help our people find a way inside. Your men in the shrine, do they have horses?"
"They don't."
"Then we can't wait for them. Tell them to get the people off the streets and into their houses. Hurry!"
Corson reentered the shrine of Urt and spoke to the two priests. Dante had sent his dragonfly on a beeline toward the western portion of the city where the Blighted were thickest, and as he waited for Corson, he sent the insect lower, hunting for any clues as to how they had gotten so many of them inside so quickly. Had the lich spent the last few days boring a tunnel? Or managed to smuggle his troops up the river despite all the sentries watching the banks and the undead fish patrolling the water?
He blinked. His scout was currently passing over Gods' Plaza, a square roughly a mile west of the river and a good two miles east of the shrine of Urt. The space was called such because it included a house of worship for all twelve gods of the Celeset, ranging from two stately cathedrals of Taim and Lia down to one-room chapels for the less-popular figures, including Urt. (The temple to Arawn, meanwhile, had been built as ruins, and was presently heaped with garbage.) The plaza was filled with statues, flower beds, shrubs, and a fountain—and, at the moment, at least three thousand Blighted.
In other words, it was visually busy under normal circumstances, and was presently downright riotous. Which went a long way toward explaining why he hadn't noticed what was happening in it until he was directly above it.
Tentacles of fog reached across the square. Each one spoked from the same place, an eye-bending circle near the center of the plaza. It was some sixty feet across and dabbles of it shimmered like water but moved about like living creatures. The arms of fog reached into it, but they didn't stop there, instead continuing somehow into a place where the day was bright and the ground was paved in silver. There were glimpses of trees, too, except these were equally baffling: some seemed to have been shaved at an angle across the canopy while others were cut off before their trunks reached the ground. If anything, it looked like a giant mirror—although what it was reflecting, Dante couldn't say. But that was impossible.
Because the Blighted were running through the would-be mirror and out into Gods' Plaza.
He sent the dragonfly banking lower, shooting for a better look. The presence of the lich surged upward and grabbed hold of the scout. Dante severed his ties to it, popping out of its sight and back into his own. Behind him, Corson jogged
out of the shrine with the two priests.
Dante made for his horse, motioning Corson to do the same, and activated his loon. "I know how they got inside the city, Nak. There's a…portal. In Gods' Plaza. The Blighted are pouring out of it like a drain pipe!"
"A portal?"
"The White Lich couldn't bash his way into the city, so he opened a door into it instead. I expect there's another one over by you and that's how they got behind the wall. I don't know what these things are, but I'm going to try to shut down the one over here before the rest of the army gets through."
"Then we shall try to find the one close to us," Nak said. "Er, do you have any idea how to shut them down?"
"Right now my plan is to hit it. And if that doesn't work, I'm going to keep hitting it until it does." He closed the connection and jerked his chin at Corson, who was galloping along beside him. "Did you catch that?"
"As much as I'm liable to understand," Corson said. "Speaking of portals, who are you talking to and how in hell are you doing it?"
"Magic, probably. We're headed to Gods' Plaza. There's a portal there and we have to close it. There's already at least three thousand Blighted in the plaza and several thousand others in the vicinity."
"Oh, is that all."
"The Eiden Rane is somewhere close to it, too. He killed my scout a minute ago."
Corson stared at him. "And you think we're going to shut this down. The two of us."
"Yes. Because if we don't, the lich will bring his whole army inside the city while trapping our whole army outside it."
People were running through the streets now, tugging their wives or children behind them. Some had blood on their faces and hands.
"Get to your houses!" Dante said. "If you have weapons somewhere, for the gods' sakes, go and get them!"
A handful of Blighted flung themselves from an alley. Seeing a man and a woman in full flight, they swiveled to give chases. Dante reached for the nether, then let it go. Those Blighted were no threat to him, and he had a feeling he was about to need every drop of his strength.
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