They raced past the alley. More Blighted were running down it toward the broader street. With no eyes above to show Dante the way, Corson knew the path toward the Gods' Plaza better than he did, and he let the ethermancer take the lead, following a street as it curled north along a row of housing blocks only to straighten back out to the east.
Light blinked to Dante's left. It was bright enough that he at first took it for lightning. It was followed by a crackling sound, but rather than thunder, it was the familiar roar of breaking stone. A tower had been staved in at its middle and was now sliding forward like a man shot through the heart with an arrow. The tower fell from sight behind the row houses, landing with such a calamity that Dante would have sworn he could feel the rumble through his horse.
He cursed. "That was one of the buildings we meant to defend if we were pushed from the walls. They're looking to rip out our fallback defenses before we can take shelter in them."
"Awfully unkind," Corson said.
They sped past another pack of Blighted. The undead flung themselves at their horses' flanks and fell to the street with fleshy slaps.
"We can't ride in like dashing knights," Dante said. "Not unless we want to get outnumbered two thousand times over. Once we get close, we'll take to the roofs."
Corson nodded and swung down a fork in the street. After a short diversion, he cut eastward again. Men fought with Blighted at the intersections, bashing at them with sticks and rakes and mattocks and hammers. There was screaming everywhere, both distant and close, and men and women shouting orders and calls for help. Smoke began to rise a half a mile to the north. It had only been a few minutes since whatever was happening had begun, but it already felt like it was tipping beyond a point where it could be stopped.
"This here's our best bet." Corson came to a stop in a twisting road that ran behind a block of connected brick buildings. "But it won't put us as close as you'd like."
"Then I may have to perform some house surgery."
Dante hopped from the saddle and ran under a pitted iron ladder affixed to the side of the building. It stopped twelve feet from the ground to discourage thieves, but all he had to do to reach it was extend three shelves from the brick. He climbed them and grabbed hold of the last rung of the ladder, hauling himself upward.
The spires of the pair of proper cathedrals in Gods' Plaza poked into the sky. One was just five hundred feet away, but the other was across the square, which he couldn't yet see into. The rooftop they were on was gently sloped and he crossed it quickly. The building opposite was a few feet lower and only separated from them by another narrow alley, allowing him to jump it. He landed with a tingle of pain in his ankle, but nothing serious enough to require the nether.
Corson made the jump, but came up with a wince. He jogged forward, face set in a way that made it clear he intended to fully ignore whatever pain he was in. Dante crossed the roof. A proper street separated them from the next row of buildings that fronted Gods' Plaza. Much too wide to jump. Corson gave him an interrogative shrug. Dante ignored him, waiting until the Blighted currently chasing a man down the street had disappeared around a curve.
He moved into the bricks at the building's edge, liquefying them and drawing them forward in a thin bridge to the granite structure across from them.
"One at a time," he said.
Corson eyed the rickety crossing. "I was about to suggest the same thing."
Dante walked across, holding his mind within the bridge, but he didn't feel any cracks forming. Once he was on the far side, he waved Corson over.
Corson crossed, resolutely not looking down until he'd rejoined Dante. "I've seen onion skins thicker than that. I'd rather have taken my chances with the plaza."
"Oh, I was pretty sure it was going to be fine. Now come on."
Dante made his way forward. Unlike the other two roofs, which had been featureless plains of shingles with barely any slope to them, this one was angled up toward the center, and tiled with gray clay that looked like it might have been brought in from Collen. It was studded with chimneys and three short towers with conical roofs, too.
Harder to cross, but on the plus side, more cover. Dante leaned forward, using his hands to help him ascend. As he neared the peak of the roof, he got down and crawled up to it on his stomach.
They were sixty feet in the air. The Gods' Plaza was crowded with Blighted, and more of them were spilling from the foggy portal every second. Before, he hadn't gotten a great look at it except to see what it wasn't—which was to say a part of this city—but he was much closer than the dragonfly had approached, and could now see that the city on the other side was both strange yet familiar.
From the view through the rift, the cathedral of Lia was no longer there. Instead, it was replaced by a flat-roofed building held up with stone columns. The design was much older, but the construction looked newer than the arches and spire of the cathedral. Several of the buildings around it matched it in style, but there was then an abrupt break in the architecture where the designs shifted to soaring wooden structures that looked almost more like the keels and hulls of ships than temples.
Corson sucked air through his nostrils. "What exactly are we looking at?"
"If I had to hazard a guess, I wouldn't, because I have no fucking idea."
"I thought you and your people had seen everything there is to see in this world—and half of what there is to see beyond it."
"Well, none of it's been anything like this."
Corson steepled his hands over his nose. "Now that we've got this wondrous mystery in front of us, how do we destroy it?"
"This is obviously supernatural. Let's take a look at it and see if we can't figure out where to start swinging the hammer."
The portal was aglow with ether, so Dante quieted his mind, letting it be filled with light. As it flowed through him, structures emerged around the portal like a ship resolving from a dense fog. The doorway seemed to be a sphere with its lower edge flattened against the ground, but peering into the ether, it seemed to contain another dimension to it, as if it was both a sphere but also something stretched out into a tube or a pipe.
And at the end opposite of the one that opened into Gods' Plaza, it didn't come to an obvious edge like the clear boundaries of a table or a corner, but rather gradually faded away.
Smaller tubes appeared at the plaza end of the pipe, stretching along its length and angling out into nothing. These began to grow brightly. Pure ether. As they cohered, they appeared to be stretched and taut.
"You see those?" Dante pointed carefully, meaning to avoid notice from any of the thousands of Blighted below them. "The little pipes?"
Corson shook his head. "Don't think they're pipes. If anything, they look more like hawsers."
"Hawsers. To hold the doorway in place. Or else it would be pulled back to wherever it came from." A tumbler in his head clicked into place. "I know the source of this thing. Look at it—the buildings from an older time, the way they jump from one style to the next. This is from the Mists, isn't it?"
"If you're asking me that, you're going to be waiting for an answer for an awful long time."
"How is he bringing the Mists here? How is this even working?"
"Can't say," Corson said. "But the longer we sit here thinking about it, the more monsters it's pumping into the city."
"Hit the hawsers. Hard and fast. If we can cut through them, I think the doorway will snap back into the Mists where it belongs."
"Same one? Or different targets?"
"Same one. That one there. If it cuts easily, then fire at will, but otherwise it's best to concentrate our firepower. Ready?"
Still lying on the rooftop, Corson brought his hands together in front of his chest. Ether filled them. "Yep."
"Attack it right where it connects to the portal. Don't let up until it's severed. Now!"
Dante lashed out with a mighty blade of shadows. Next to him, Corson launched a beam of light. The two forces sliced into the roo
t of the hawser. The entire cord shimmered, rainbows dancing up and down its length. The end began to fray, showering sparks to the ground. The portal itself swayed; the Blighted stepping out of it glanced up in confusion, hissing.
Dante pulled forth more nether, redoubling his efforts. Rather than cutting through the hawser like a knife through rope or a saw through a tree, the attacks seemed to be shrinking its width. They had already narrowed its diameter by half. The doorway was quivering now, the Blighted waiting on the other side stepping back from it, uncertain.
Ether flew at the cord from the east side of the square. The White Lich banged open the door of a temple and stepped out into the overcast daylight.
"Oh hell," Dante said.
The lich's attack bowled into theirs like a charger through a line of unarmed peasants. As before when Dante had stood against the lich, he was rattled, a cold sweat breaking out across his body. He scrabbled for the nether, patching together another blade and throwing it at the hawser of ether with everything he had. Yet the White Lich was already striding across the plaza, the Blighted parting before him, hand outstretched as he doused the cords of the portal with his light. Before these efforts, Dante's nether shattered like the windows of the shrine of Urt.
Corson popped to his feet. "Going to want to run."
"We're so close!"
"At this point, we can't get any closer. Just deader."
The lich broke into a run, quills of light shooting from his finger toward the roof. Dante jumped up and headed down the steep slope as fast as he dared. The ether crashed through the roof behind them, pelting their backs with broken bits of clay tiles; Dante fell, skidding along until he grabbed at a chimney for support. Corson glanced back, but Dante was already back on his feet. He zigzagged downward to reduce the angle of his descent.
Corson came to the brick bridge connecting the roof to the building beyond. He was already dashing across it before Dante thought to reach into it and ensure it wasn't about to break beneath him.
Another salvo of ether flipped over the crest of the roof, ramming down into the tiles just fifteen feet upslope from Dante. He headed onto the brick bridge while Corson was still a quarter of the way from the other side. As Corson jumped onto the flattish roof, the stone spiderwebbed with cracks. Dante mended it hastily, smoothing the brick back together. He shuffle-ran onward, minimizing the impact of his boots.
"At your back!" Corson yelled, jabbing out his finger.
Dante could already feel the ether zipping toward him. He beckoned the nether to him, flinging it wildly behind him. The light hit it so hard it knocked Dante flying. Another arm of ether plunged into the bridge, shattering it with a brittle snap. Pieces rained to the ground forty feet below.
Dante landed on his hands and knees on the stump of brick still extended from the other building. He scuttled onto the roof and glanced back. The Eiden Rane ascended the crown of the building Dante had just fled. Lightning spiraled around his hands, but as he stepped forward, his massive feet crunched through the roof tiles, sending him sliding downward.
Dante eked out a single surprised laugh and ran on. Corson reached the roof's edge and leaped across the alley. He hit the eave of the far roof chest-on, grappling for a hold. Dante jumped, splaying his arms. He was more than a decade younger than Corson and in better fighting shape, and hauled himself up while the older man was still holding on for his life. Dante braced himself and grabbed Corson's arm, pushing himself backward across the roof and dragging the priest up to safety.
"He fell off the roof." Corson loped onward toward the iron ladder they'd used on their way up. "Think he died?"
"Not for a second. But it might have bought us enough time to get to our horses."
They came to the ladder. Deciding that he had superior rank, and would also be faster, Dante descended first. Corson came right after, shedding rusted iron from the rungs down onto Dante's head. The pinched street looked empty, but as he dropped the last few feet to the ground, Blighted sprinted toward them from the north and the south.
Dante rolled into the saddle. Corson was just getting to the ground. Dante would have rather saved his energy, but the Blighted would be on them before Corson was ready to ride. He threw a wave of nether down both ends of the street, dashing the Blighted from their feet.
As soon as Corson mounted up, Dante spurred his horse south. "Right now, my only destination is 'away from here.' If you've got a better idea, I'm all ears."
"Away is good."
They headed on at full tilt, reaching a broader street. To Dante's left, ether sprung into being: the lich was standing in the middle of the road just fifty yards away. Seeing them, he broke into a run at a pace that seemed, impossibly, as if it might be able to keep up with the horses. The angular lightning of his strike crashed into the corner of a building just as Dante and Corson scurried behind it.
Corson hooked right at the next alley. The clop of the lich's massive feet echoed from the street they'd just departed. They came to another turn as the lich strode into the alley behind them.
"Don't think we're going to shake him," Corson said.
"Then think better!" Dante's loon pulsed in his ear, but he had no time to answer.
"We split up. You lead him on while I circle back to Gods' Plaza and rip that damn hole out by the roots."
"Good plan. But I'm more skilled. I'll go back to the portal."
"Know how to get there from here?" Corson raised an eyebrow. "Didn't think so. Now go on and get lost!"
At the next intersection, Corson broke right, heading back toward the plaza. Dante slowed, lingering until the glow of the lich filled the street behind him. Dante fired a small bolt at him, then turned left, the opposite way Corson had gone. As he heard the lich approach the intersection, he fired off two more pellets of nether. Ether ripped after him, bashing through the front of a public house and drawing screams from inside.
The lich turned after Dante, rattling off a new volley of light. Dante massed the shadows behind him and turned down the first passage he could. With the lich hooked, he no longer dallied, pushing his destrier harder yet. He made a right, then a left, now utterly lost among the row houses. His next turn spat him out onto a major thoroughfare that he recognized by sight but not by name.
There were Blighted here, more than he'd seen outside Gods' Plaza, but they were occupied with grabbing up citizens and hauling them north. His destrier romped over the bodies of a few Blighted and several more people: a group of peasants had tried to make a stand here, and they had lost. It couldn't have been more than twenty minutes since the lich had opened his portals, but things were playing out so fast it was like they'd been preordained.
The lich crashed into the street behind him, reeling ether from the sky like incandescent yarn. Dante took hold of as many shadows as he could. It was just enough to deflect the lich's assault, yet the blast of the negated powers was so great it knocked Dante halfway from the saddle. He hung on tight, scanning the buildings for an alley to escape down. He saw nothing.
"Sorcerer!" The lich bellowed it like a curse. He cast one last spray of light at Dante, then turned around and thundered back in the direction of the Gods' Plaza.
So Corson had reached the portal. Dante gave half a moment's thought to pursuing the lich, but there would be no point. Either Corson would close the doorway or he wouldn't. And there was much more fighting to be done yet.
Dante galloped onward, putting several blocks between himself and where the lich had last seen him, then slowed to a trot and activated his loon.
"Lord Dante," Nak said. "You didn't answer before. I thought something had happened to you!"
"It almost did. Repeatedly. We've been trying to shut down the lich's portal on this side of the city, which he objected to rather strongly. But that means he's not over there. You need to find the other portal and destroy it while he's on this side of the city."
"I'm afraid we don't have the strength."
"The lich's army is spli
t. We have him distracted. You'll never have—"
"You don't understand!" Nak yelled. "The Drakebane is dead."
"What?"
"We withdrew and began our maneuvers, looking to open a path into the city. That's when they descended on us. We made them pay, but they headed straight for him. We couldn't stop them. As soon as he fell, the Tanarians began to howl. I've never heard anything like it. They said they'd lost their crown—that the Head had been severed, and without it the Body will die. I tried to talk them out of it, but even the Knights of the Odo Sein said they'd been defeated. They thought that if they stayed here any longer, the very last of their people would die, and Tanar Atain would be no more forever."
Dante oriented himself eastward, though miles of city lay between him and the others. "Where did the Tanarians go?"
"Into the northern woods. As fast as they could travel."
"Then there's no time to pursue them even if we thought we could talk them back."
"Then what can we do? What are your orders?"
"We still have reserves. The militias. We need to organize them and get them into the city's internal defenses before the Blighted take total control of the streets. Even without the Tanarians, we still have the advantage of numbers. But if we don't get them together soon, the entire city will fall."
"I will speak with Lord Pressings. He is most anxious to protect his people."
Dante closed the loon. After a look up and down the street, he spurred his horse onward, making for one of the bridges across the river. The streets were already emptying of people, but sometimes he glimpsed them watching him from the upper stories of the row houses, and yelled at them to find arms, gather with others, and prepare to defend themselves.
He soon put a mile between himself and the western portal, yet the Blighted's presence in the streets seemed to grow thicker with each minute. A few were fighting in the street, but most were engaged in breaking into houses and carrying off men and women. If there were children present, they were ignored for now. It didn't take long for Dante to recognize the pattern: every Blighted with a captive was headed northwest. Toward the Gods' Plaza.
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