"Oh right, sky-roads. Why didn't I think of that?"
"Some of the streets here are so narrow you can practically step from one roof to the next. If I shape bridges across the wider gaps, we can take the roofs all the way to the soldiers. It'll require a short detour, but it'll still be a lot safer and faster than trying to fight our way through what's coming up on us."
"Good thing we had the foresight to bring our flying horses. They won't have any trouble getting up to the roofs."
"You and Gladdic are going to take the horses somewhere safe. As soon as I've delivered the evacuees, I'll find you. And then we'll go do the thing we should have already been done with."
"This is what you want to do here? Go with them by yourself?"
"Hell no. But it's the situation we've gotten ourselves in, so it's what I have to do."
He dropped back into the crowd, giving them a quick explanation of what they were about to do. He led them through the streets as long as he dared, but with the eastern force of Blighted approaching within three blocks, Dante brought the people inside an old tenement and up the stairs. As he did so, Blays and Gladdic took the four horses and rode north.
As the bunch of them tromped up the building's steps, a few people peeked out from their doors, hurrying to join them. Dante came to the roof. It was still cloudy, but what sun there was felt weaker; they were well into the afternoon, and an unsteady wind was blowing in from the sea, cooling the air and filling it with the smell of salt.
Dante jogged to the north edge of the roof and extended a bridge of stone across to the next building just six feet away. He kept an eye on the nearing Blighted as the evacuees crossed over. As he formed the next bridge and crossed it, the enemies bent course to the northwest, as if hunting for something. The mass of Blighted to the west, meanwhile, had spread out but was still coming eastward as a single free-ranging group.
The block of buildings they were on stood shoulder to shoulder, and they were able to walk nearly two hundred yards before Dante came to the next gap, a proper though small street that required a bridge nearly fifteen feet across. He curled the right and left edges to stop the younger children from falling, then quickly moved to the other side.
The Blighted and the lesser lich who was leading them came to an intersection a block to the north. There, they swerved south, advancing directly toward Dante and the others. Dante gestured to the ground and flattened himself against the rooftop. The evacuees followed his lead. Within moments, the Blighted were loping along beneath them, bare feet slapping the cobbles.
A few glanced up, but they didn't slow. Another minute and they were past, heading in the general direction of the first building Dante had entered.
He hurried the others across the roof over to the next, splitting the shadows he needed to shape the bridge between his own and those within the shaden. With the enemy several blocks away and headed in the wrong direction, he took his charges back down to the street. Many other citizens were on their way toward the walls as well, and Dante gathered them up as he went.
They jogged the last of the distance to his soldiers in their proud black and silver. Seeing him, his troops lifted their swords and cheered.
"Get these people out of the city," Dante told them. "I've got one last thing to do. I'll rejoin you within the hour."
Many of his soldiers looked dismayed, but they composed themselves and got to work, splitting off a detachment to escort the evacuees outside the wall. Dante turned and headed west, jogging at first so as not to damage their morale, then breaking into a run as soon as he was out of sight.
Almost every street now held at least a speckling of Blighted, and he had to kill several on his way back to Blays and Gladdic, who had taken shelter in a courtyard a short ways from where they'd parted company.
Blays rode toward him, bringing his horse. "Well, I'd say we've done our good deed for the day. Are we ready to go rescue our flowers?"
"Sure." Dante pulled himself up into the saddle. "But I'm not sure how. In the last few minutes, at least two thousand Blighted have filled the streets around the palace."
"Oh," Blays said. "Shit?"
"Yes."
"Are they holding it?" Gladdic said. "Or migrating past it on their way to claim the eastern half?"
Dante observed through his fly for a moment. "Some of both. We can see if it clears up more, but if we wait too much longer, we're going to find ourselves alone in a city of a hundred thousand enemies."
They headed west, ducking around the larger swaths of undead and riding straight past the stragglers.
A mile from the palace grounds, Dante shook his head. "It's no good. It's still completely surrounded."
Blays ran his thumb along his jaw. "What about inside the palace itself?"
"It's practically empty. It's almost like they're waiting for more support before they try to break through."
"Then it sounds like we'd better get in before that support shows up."
"You mean like forty minutes ago if we'd gone there in the first place?"
"Yes, that might have done it."
"What are the chances that Winden is still within the grounds?" Gladdic said.
Dante shook his head. "Not much. But even if she's long gone, we still need the dreamflowers."
"If she has already retrieved them, then we are in the midst of a fool's errand."
"A fool's errand? How will we ever navigate such uncharted territory?"
Blays grasped his right hand with his left, stretching out his wrist. "Hey, do you suppose the Blighted are guarding the tunnel you built? Because I'm no dig-master, but it seems to me that while you opened the passage for people to escape the palace, it should be theoretically possible to use it to enter the palace instead."
"I doubt there's any of them inside it. But the tunnel entrance is miles outside the city."
"Oh no! You mean you used up all your tunnel-building power to build the initial tunnel, and could never open a secondary tunnel into it right now?"
"I was just testing you," Dante said, not meeting Blays' eyes. "Of course that's what we'll do."
He had built the passage to run north from the palace, meaning they needed to strike west to intercept it. He wasn't one hundred per cent sure where it would be, but as they neared it, he sent his mind down into the ground. After the false positive of a catacomb, and then an underground stream the city used to flush sewage out to sea, he came to the tunnel he'd bored out two weeks before.
He sucked more nether from his shaden, which was close to running dry, and opened a hole in the ground, slanting it down to meet the main tunnel. As he did so, Blays smacked the horses on the rumps and yelled at them, sending them running off to the north.
"Good idea," Dante said. "What possible use would we have for four creatures capable of running much faster and longer than our enemies can?"
"My mistake. I assumed we'd just take the tunnel all the way out of the city and never be seen by any enemies at all."
"That's what I'd like to do and it would be nice if it happens. But I think we're far past the point where we can count on anything working to plan."
He entered the hole, which he'd made just big enough to crawl through. Once all three were inside, he closed the entry behind them, then crawled and slid until he was disgorged into the main passage. Gladdic snapped his finger, a marble of ether appearing above them to cast its light across the darkness.
"Save your strength." Dante reached into his inner pocket, got out his torchstone, and blew on it, lighting them up. "We may need every last drop before this is over."
Gladdic snuffed his light. The tunnel was a mix of dirt and rock and smelled like both. After the last couple hours of bloodshed, the scent felt incredibly pure. There was no sign of any life, no spiders or rats, not even mold. The lack also felt pure, in its own way, yet there was something unsettling about it.
Though they seemed to be completely and utterly alone, Blays walked along with his hands loosely gripping
the handles of his swords. "Now that we're almost to them, are you going to tell us why the dreamflowers are so important?"
"I already told you. The White Lich is somehow using the Mists to open these portals."
"But why do you think that?"
"Corson and I got close enough to one of them to try to close it. When I looked into it, it looked like the version of Bressel we saw in the afterworld."
"You are certain of this?" Gladdic said. "The Eiden Rane has never shown any ability like this before."
"Maybe he wasn't powerful enough then. But I don't think that's it. I think someone betrayed us. Brought him new information that he exploited to pull this off."
"You speak of Adaine."
"Corson's people found his body in a shrine of Urt. They thought he'd been murdered, but when I investigated the scene, it was my conclusion that he'd killed himself."
"To travel into the Mists?"
"As far as we know, the lich doesn't have dreamflowers. Or any other alternative way to access the afterworld. The only way to get there would be to die."
"But how long had Adaine been dead?"
"At least twelve hours. Quite possibly a full day."
Blays grunted thoughtfully. "With the way time works in the afterworld, that'd be plenty of time to get up to something awful."
"That's what I'm thinking," Dante said. "Once we get the flowers and get to somewhere safe, we're going back to the Mists. Then we'll find Adaine and figure out how to prevent this from happening again."
Gladdic eyed him. "And if there is no way to prevent it?"
"Then we'll find out if we can use the rifts against the lich. Preferably by opening one right into his brain."
They continued through the tunnel. Dante was starting to tire, but not enough to deplete any more of his nether, nor his more limited supply of ether. Several minutes later, the tunnel gently sloped upward. They came to a plain wooden door. When the White Lich had first been closing on the city, Dante had sent a soldier down here to lean a twig against the base of the door. The twig was still standing upright: the door hadn't been opened.
He reached for its ring handle and swung it wide. Gladdic moved quickly into the chamber beyond, ether flickering around his hand. Blays was right behind him. Dante followed them in, shutting the door. It had been disguised to look like part of the wall and when it was closed you wouldn't have seen a seam unless you were searching for it and had a lot of light.
"There are a few Blighted hanging around the yards," Dante said. "Which means that nobody's here to defend it. We're in hostile territory."
"I feel like that's been true for about seventeen of the last eighteen months," Blays said. "What about the interior?"
Dante let his fly buzz through an empty feast hall, scanning it from front to back. "Hardly any Blighted to be seen. Which seems odd, considering there are hundreds of them waiting outside the walls."
Gladdic brushed a cobweb from his robes. "That would suggest they are not waiting to enter, but rather that they are there to stop anyone else from getting inside."
"Then we'd better not let ourselves be seen." Blays stepped forward. "And not let ourselves not stab anyone who does see us."
They crossed several large storage chambers on their way to the stairwell. Dante opened the door and they headed up. Three flights up, a Blighted was posted at the exit to the ground floor, but Gladdic dropped him with a well-placed dart of ether. Blays kicked the body out of the way and opened the door.
They were in a broad, high-ceilinged hallway. Outside, they still had three hours until sunset—and two hours before Lord Pressings was scheduled to withdraw his men from the city—but more clouds had rolled in, and the windows spared little light. They walked quietly into the gloom, heading for Yardley Wing, where Winden had been quartered in one of the towers.
The hallway delivered them to the feasting hall Dante had scouted earlier. The chairs were tucked neatly against the tables. Candles waited to be lit. Tapestries depicting scenes from Mallon's many wars hung from the stone walls. Though it had been occupied by the Tanarians earlier that same day, the palace already felt as though it had been empty for a long time.
And that it would never be lived in again. The candles and tapestries would turn brown with grime; the shining silver of the candelabras and ewers would tarnish and go gray; dirt would scatter across the tables and floors and harden there. Even to Mallon's mortal enemies, the Palace of Bressel was revered as a place of great beauty, one to inspire their own monuments and capitals.
Yet it was now lost to the grinding advance of the lich, for whom the only beauty lay in conquest.
Dante's fly ranged ahead, allowing them to hide behind the curtains as a pair of Blighted wandered aimlessly past the exit of the great hall. Once the enemy had passed, the three of them jogged lightly down another corridor, coming to Yardley Wing.
The chamber on the other side was empty, as was the stairwell up to the floor containing Winden's quarters. They entered the hallway and crossed to her door. As Dante reached for the handle, Blays drew his swords and Gladdic drew the ether.
Dante pushed the door inward. The shutters were closed, which was why he hadn't been able to scout the chambers in advance, and the room was almost totally dark. Pale light poured from Gladdic's hand. The entry was deserted, as was the bedroom and the sitting room. Sealed for hours, the rooms smelled strongly of flowers, leaves, and soil.
"The dreamflowers are still here." Dante moved to a pot near the window that was filled with the little orange flowers. "Winden never made it."
"Not so sure about that." Blays' voice sounded funny.
He stood in front of the other window, where Winden had set several other potted plants of various kinds. As Dante moved to join him, Blays unlatched the shutter and used his index finger to push it open a few inches, shedding light across the greenery.
Blays stared down into the leaves. Dante was right about to ask him what the hell he was supposed to be seeing when his head jerked back in recognition.
The delicate twigs and vines of a blue plant had been woven into a pattern. More than a pattern: into words. "HELP," and "TAKEN."
21
"She was here." Dante's words felt cold in his throat. "And they took her."
Gladdic looked completely undisturbed by this. "I see no blood nor toppled chairs. If she was taken, it was done so without a struggle."
"Then it had to be a sorcerer. A lesser lich. Or maybe several of them."
Gladdic looked about the room for a moment, then nodded and moved to the dreamflowers. "That is unfortunate. Yet as long as the flowers remain, we can fulfill our duty."
"What do you think you're doing?"
"Securing the dreamflowers. We can be back in the tunnel and on our way to safety within ten minutes."
"We didn't just come here for the flowers. We came to find Winden, too."
"And we have discovered that she is not here—and indeed that she is within the hands of the enemy. Thus to pursue her is to pursue the possibility of losing the dreamflowers, and with them all hope of victory."
Dante turned to face the older man straight on. "Winden's the one who taught us how to enter the Mists in the first place. It was her people's most sacred secret, but she shared it with us. And when we called for her aid here, to help us pursue the gods damned Spear of Stars, she traveled across the sea for us. We owe her this."
"We didn't ask her to come to Bressel," Blays said. "Just to send the flowers. It was her choice to make the trip."
Dante squinted at him. "You just made us risk everything to save a bunch of strangers. Now you want to turn your back on Winden?"
"Those people were right in front of us. We have no idea where Winden is. We don't even know if she's alive."
"If they wanted her dead, they would have killed her here. For some reason, they took her alive. We can't leave her to whatever they've got planned for her. Do you understand what it's like for the Eiden Rane to take you under h
is control?"
"No," Blays said simply. "But I know the future of everything depends on what we do next."
"The two of you will take the flowers and go. I'm going to find Winden." Dante moved to secure the orange flowers into the wooden boxes Winden had carried them across the sea in, which had cunning little straps and tarps to keep the plants and dirt in place.
"We must be sure to take all of them," Gladdic said. "It is possible they came for Winden because they know she is capable of bringing them to the Mists. Even if they do not know this, once she is tortured, or enslaved to the Eiden Rane, she will tell them everything. Then they will return here for the dreamflowers and use them against us."
Dante nodded, closing one box and starting in on the next.
Blays hung behind them, watching. "Do you actually think you can find her?"
"I don't know," Dante said.
"They didn't spill any of her blood for you to track."
"Then it's a good thing I don't need blood when a stray hair will do." Piqued, he turned away from the flowers and relit his torchstone, getting down on his hands and knees to search the floor. As he moved across the room, his guts began to churn coldly. "This makes no sense. I'm not finding any."
Blays looked ready to say something, then got down to help look. "Hang on, there's nothing here. Not even any hairs on the rugs or dirt in the corners. Did they…clean the place?"
Dante got up and ran to the bedroom to check the blankets, but these had been stripped from the bed, leaving a bare mattress. He inspected this as well, but the only things sticking from the fabric were the quills of feathers.
"This place wouldn't be this clean if you sent a maid in to tidy it up for a generation and then raise her children to keep cleaning it until they had kids. This could only be done through sorcery."
Gladdic tucked his thumb into the cord tied around his waist. "The lich knows of the ability to track people through the parts of themselves they have left behind. Perhaps that is why he was so scrupulous with the cleansing of this room."
The Spear of Stars Page 36