The Spear of Stars

by Edward W. Robertson

  Gladdic groaned; his upraised arm fell limp. His knees folded beneath him. He sprawled to the ground, limbs bent lifelessly. The lich fired another bolt of ether at him. Gladdic's body rocked.

  The lich turned about and gazed at Dante. "You are the last. There should be a measure of glory in that. But there are no witnesses to your deeds but myself, and I will have no reason to speak of them after this day."

  He lifted his hand, the first two fingers raised, pure white ether spinning about them.

  Dante ripped out another tangle of cords, racking his mind. "After you rebuild, do you really think you can hold a whole world of people together as one? You big glowing fool. They'll split apart as soon as you turn your back. They'll splinter into fighting tribes just as they always—"

  The lich laughed softly. "I am much too old to fall for such a ruse. Goodbye, little sorcerer."

  Power poured from his hands. Dante pivoted from the portal. Even after he stopped attacking it, it continued to quiver, straining at its cords. Dante prayed that the weight of it would prove too much, that the doorway would tear loose on its own, but not a single strand gave way.

  Dante screamed in frustration, sweeping his shadows toward the coming light. The ether rampaged through, forcing him to grope for a second wave to defend himself with. The lich's attack banged into this, knocking Dante backwards. He got to his knees as fast as he could, throwing a knife of nether at the last strands holding the portal.

  But the lich was already striding toward him and brushed aside the black knife as easily as he might tear down a cobweb. He placed himself between Dante and the doorway, protecting it from any further attack. He filled his hands with angular lightning and sent it blazing toward Dante. Dante parried it, feeling his hands prickle with the threat of a netherburn, but was smacked backward again. He drew his chin to his chest, skidding over the stony floor.

  Dante pushed himself up on his palms. The next assault was already on its way. He called the nether to him, silently screaming for it, but his command was wavering, as sloppy as a drunken swordsman. He threw what he could at the light. Fragments pierced his shield, slicing into his skin. The concussion of it sent him tumbling head over heels. He found himself lying spreadeagled on the ground. His head rang.

  He pawed at the nether, drawing what he could; the glare of the next strike grew in the lich's hands. It would be the last strike he'd need.

  A ghastly figure arose to the side of the White Lich, as if one of the Blighted had stepped through the transparent tube connecting the two portals. He was bleeding heavily from its neck and shoulder.

  Gladdic lifted his hand in beseechment. "All your works will be undone! It begins now!"

  Light was already raging from his left hand, darkness from what remained of his right arm. Scythe-like, the paired forces swept toward the lich, pulsing and boiling so intensely Dante suspected Gladdic had drawn them from within himself. The lich gathered the ether he had brought forth to finish Dante, preparing to launch it at the twinned attack instead.

  Yet as the two powers neared him, they bent sharply downward, plowing harmlessly into the ground. Dante's heart fell with them.

  Rock groaned and broke. A shelf of it tilted up in front of the lich, sending him reeling backwards; he flailed his arms to catch his balance, the glaive slashing at nothing. He might have caught himself, but his boots skidded on the scattered gravel. He fell backward. Into the portal.

  Gladdic dropped to the floor.

  Now in the Mists, the lich fell to the ground. Dante found that he was standing. He spread his arms wide, singing to the nether. It answered his call. He curved it, honed it, and slashed into the remaining bunches of strands. Those he struck popped loose as if relieved to have their burden removed from them.

  On the other side of the portal, the Blighted rushed to aid the lich, who was still bleeding from a great many cuts, some of them slight, but others deep enough to have crippled or killed a mortal man. The lich rose to his knees, waving the Blighted away.

  Dante swung at the tethers over and over, the way he'd seen the now-gone villagers of Tanar Atain swing their broad, squat blades into the trunks of banana trees. The portal seemed to pull back, then it sprung forward to its original position. The lich stood, ether shining from his elbows to the tips of his fingers.

  A braid of cords gave way. The swirling circle dimmed, flickered, then returned to its former brightness. Blue eyes smoldering, the lich ran toward it.

  Dante waited until the lich was a half step through the portal before he cut the last cord.

  The portal snapped closed, swallowing the Eiden Rane as if he'd never been there. A great spume of glowing white blood shot from where the doorway had been. The shimmering tube the Blighted marched through wavered and collapsed. The second portal across the cavern shrank into nothing.

  The room fell into darkness.

  29

  In the blackness, all Dante could see was the after-image of the portal burned into his eyes. In the silence, all he could hear was the rush of his own blood in his ears.

  "Blays!" Dante fumbled for his torchstone. He blew into his hand. Light spread across the now-quiet cavern. "Blays!"

  Fifty feet away, a pile of mushrooms stirred. Blays sat up, spitting mulch. "Where did it go?"

  "What?"

  "It. Everything."

  "Blays, we did it! We took down the portal—with the lich in it. He might be dead!"

  "Holy winged shit, dead?"

  "I don't know. It might have just forced him back to Mallon. But the Mists are secure—and so are our people."

  "Congratulations to us." Blays tried to stand but wasn't up for it yet. "Where's Gladdic?"

  Dante's heart froze. He dashed across the room, the light of the torchstone bobbing across the rocks and fungus. Gladdic lay not far from where the portal had been. He rested on his back, one leg folded beneath him. His eyes were open. The blood had stopped pumping from the wound in his neck.

  Dante snatched up the nether, finding it clumsy in his hands. He pressed it to Gladdic. The shadows sank into his body, circulating through his veins, reaching his heart and his brain. Dante already knew what he was seeing, but he channeled a second set of nether into the old man, willing his eyes to flutter, his lungs to fill with air.

  He sat back. "He's gone."

  Blays moved beside him. He was grimy with battle and bleeding from numerous nicks and scrapes. He had the posture and stiff movements of a soldier in a lot more pain than he was letting on, but at a glance, Dante didn't think he was grievously injured.

  "How?" Blays said.

  "Holding off the lich. Even after the lich put him down, Gladdic got back up and pushed the Eiden Rane back into the Mists. Otherwise, I would have died. We would have failed."

  Blays didn't say anything for a long moment. "What now?"

  "That depends," Dante said. "I need to speak to Nak. And find out if the lich is dead." He signaled his loon. Then again. "Something's going on. He isn't answering."

  "Okay." Blays sounded very tired. "So what now?"

  Dante shook his head. Just a minute ago, he had felt elated with victory, enthused with the spirit of the divine. Yet he already felt confused. Frightened. And a long way from home.

  He exhaled. "We have three options."

  "To do what?"

  "Get out of here."

  "Ah. That. I'd kind of forgotten where we were. Or that we could get out."

  "The rift to the Mists is right there in the other chamber." Dante didn't want to think or talk or do anything but lie on the ground, but he made himself parse through the options. "We could take it. That would be much safer than returning through the caverns."

  "Are we sure this rift actually leads back to the Mists?"

  "If it's like the other one, yeah."

  "But are we sure?"

  "No. We're not."

  "If it does go back to the Mists, are we sure it leads to the same Mists? And not a sort of parallel version of them, me
ant for the people of another land?"

  "Also no."

  "If it does go to the Mists, and it's the same Mists we came in from, and we travel through it, or use it to return to our world, are we sure we can get back here to the Realm?"

  "No." Dante sighed. "The rift is out, then. That means we hike our way out. But I'm almost spent. Do we sleep here and recover? Or press our luck and try it now?"

  In the dimness of the torchstone, Blays tipped back his head and gazed up at all the rock weighing down on them from above. "Adaine's dead. The lich is gone. The guardians were obeying them. If it's clear we're trying to leave, they might not come for us."

  "Whereas if we stick around, they might start to get cranky. I'd say that settles it."

  Blays nodded. He bent and scooped his arms beneath Gladdic.

  "What are you doing?" Dante said.

  Blays gave him a sharp look. "I'm not leaving him here."

  "He'll weigh us down. We don't know what we may have to face."

  "I do: myself. Every night when I try to sleep and think about how I left the person who saved us at the bottom of a hole no man was meant to enter."

  Dante drew a breath, then nodded and crouched to help pick him up.

  Moving slowly, the torchstone lighting the way, they trudged down the passage to the chamber of black gems. They'd come in through the ceiling of it and they made a slow circle of the room, hunting for the tunnel up to the cavern above it. They circled the chamber once without finding anything, then a second time. Just as Dante was convinced there was no way out, and that he'd have to risk carving one, he found a tunnel entry twelve feet up the wall, concealed behind broken rocks.

  It looped about on its way up to the violet cavern where the worms had almost killed them. The chittering of beetles clicked through the chamber and they paused, hands on their swords. But the vermin were gnawing on the scraps of the great worms, and while they lifted their antennae as Dante and Blays bore their burden forward, they made no move to attack.

  The two of them paused in the next tunnel to take a brief rest. Dante tried Nak again, but the loon remained silent. The blue-lit cavern beyond was as beautiful as the first time they'd seen it, but having witnessed what waited below, the glow of its crystals and gem-studded ceiling now felt more like witch-lights.

  They exited the cavern and came to the stone bridge Dante had extended across the gap between it and the upper levels. Dante feared the living rock might betray them, but Blays hoisted Gladdic's body over his shoulders and trotted across it. Dante followed into the bone-lined tunnel, and then into the expansive mouth of the Cavern of Talassa.

  For some reason Dante had expected to emerge into broad daylight, but it was still dark, the night chilly and silent. With the unfamiliar stars of the Realm of Nine Kings hanging above them, he had no idea what time it might be. But the air tasted as sweet as he'd known it would, pure with the smell of the deep lake surrounding it.

  As Blays settled Gladdic on the raft Adaine had left on the shore, Dante found the paddles they'd used for the now-melted ice boat. Together, they bore themselves across the black waters. It was only when they stepped ashore in the woods on the other side that he felt the weight of the depths lift from his back.

  ~

  Wary of sleeping near the caverns, they hiked south through the forest. Dante didn't know the stars themselves, but they still seemed to cross the sky at the same rate they did in his homeland. It had been an hour since they'd made their way across the lake and back into the forest when his loon twinged in his ear.

  "Dante," Nak said. "Dante, are you there?"

  "I am." Dante hadn't spoken in some time and the sound of his own voice surprised him. "Nak—is the White Lich dead?"

  "Dead? Should he be?"

  "Is he or isn't he?"

  "Well, no. I have scouts following from a distance right now."

  Somehow Dante had known this would be true, yet that did nothing to salve the sting of disappointment. "But the portal's down, right?"

  "Oh yes, they vanished close to two hours ago. That was your handiwork?"

  "We killed Adaine. Started to rip out the portal. The White Lich stepped through to stop us. He almost did, many times. But we closed the doorway on him. Hurt him. Gladdic died doing so."

  Dante knew he wasn't explaining it well, but he was too tired and out of sorts to care.

  "He's…dead? I'm…well, I'm sorry. It's a strange thing, but I'd grown to trust him."

  "I know."

  "Perhaps he'll live on in the Mists. Do you think?"

  "Maybe so."

  There was a pause. Nak tsked a bit. "The lich might not be dead, but he does look wounded. Do you suppose we should strike him now? While he's at his weakest?"

  "How badly hurt is he?"

  "Somewhat? It's hard to say, really. Whenever we've tried to get our scouts close enough to find out, he's ripped them down. Or invaded the mind of the sorcerer controlling the scout."

  "Then he's still too strong to risk it."

  "Are you sure of this? Isn't this the best chance we've ever had?"

  "He still has his lesser liches, doesn't he? And his army that's much bigger than ever? It might be a better chance at victory, but that doesn't mean it's a good one."

  "Agreed to that," Nak said. "But after what happened at Bressel…"

  "We lost at Bressel because we had a plan to survive, but we didn't have a plan to win. We have one now. The Spear of Stars is real. We will get it from the gods, and I will kill the White Lich. If we get really lucky, we'll be back with the weapon before he's had the time to recover."

  "You're probably right. His army is still awfully large." Nak chortled. "Although we thinned it out a bit, I have to say!"

  "You did? When?"

  "After you closed the portal! Why, there were thousands of Blighted stranded just down the woods from us. We overran them so badly I almost felt sorry for them!"

  "That was a little risky. Who ordered that?"

  "Well, I did. You did leave me in command."

  "Right. Very wise of me. Well done."

  Nak sounded as though he were stifling a yawn. "So what's our plan from here?"

  "The portals are down and can't be reopened without someone working in the Realm. With Adaine dead, all we have to do is keep watch on the Split Crypt. Have our people make sure no one gets inside it. In the meantime, I want you to harass the lich as you can, but don't put yourself in position to face a full-scale attack. Just do your best to keep him off-balance until I return with the spear."

  "How long will that take?"

  Dante gazed up at the foreign trees and strange stars. "I don't know."

  "Well, I will do everything I can." Nak cleared his throat. "And thank you, Lord Dante. You saved our lives."

  Dante shut the loon. He and Blays found a tumble of broken boulders to hide within and made camp. During his watch, Dante had to stand on his feet to keep from falling asleep. They slept a few hours through the morning. Dante woke feeling tired and battered. The nether helped.

  Knowing it would be impossible to carry Gladdic across the broken rock and rope bridges they'd taken to get to Talassa, they climbed up the mountain instead, all the way to where the snows flocked the pines. There, Dante used a tree and harvested a sled from it. They loaded the body onto it and took turns pulling.

  The cold air and simple work felt good and Dante had the fleeting yet strong urge to walk away from it all and build himself a home there in a realm where no one so much as knew his name. He walked on, the sled smoothing a path behind them.

  He kept one eye open for the icy warriors, but whether due to the death of Adaine, or that they were nowhere near the mountain rift, they were left in peace. They made good time across the day. As twilight neared, Dante harvested a shelter from the trunk of a tree.

  Blays lit a fire while Dante stomped around until he spooked a hare, which he knocked down with an arrow of nether. They cleaned and skewered it, roasting it over the fir
e with some apples and warming the hard bread they had left, which they used to sop up the juices. After they were done, they let the fire burn on, taking off their boots to dry them, steam rising from the worn leather.

  "Do you think he was our friend?" Blays said.

  The question was unprovoked and it took a moment for Dante to catch on. "What do you mean? He gave his life fighting for us. For our cause."

  "So have thousands of soldiers and various strangers. I don't know that any of them were our pals."

  "And how many of them were we traveling with, and working side by side with, for months on end? Across a host of different nations—and even worlds?"

  "Before that, we fought him across a host of different nations. So was he our friend?"

  Dante plucked a twig and flicked it into the fire. "I don't know. I think he considered us his friends."

  "Knowing how crazy he was—or at least used to be—I think we might have been the first friends he'd had in a very long time."

  "Where do you mean to…bury him?"

  "Taim lives here, right? He's here in this realm. I thought we'd take him to Taim's own churchyard and bury him there."

  "Given that we just expressly defied Taim's will, I'm not sure he'll agree to that."

  "Well, he doesn't have to know about it, does he?"

  Dante smiled, then tossed another twig into the fire. "He would like that. But we don't have time for that now."

  "I know that. That's why you're going to seal him in rock near the rift. After everything's over, we'll come back for him and deliver him where he belongs."

  They let the fire burn on a little longer, then doused it with snow and crawled into the shelter of living wood. Dante slept, dreaming that he was back in Talassa trying to find his way out, but that the tunnels and passages were closing behind him, leaving him to travel ever deeper under the earth in search of a way out. He lit his way forward with the ether, but after a long time it flickered and went dead.

  He had gone too deep. There was no light left. Only bare rock, darkness, and time.

  He woke disturbed. At first he thought it was the dream, but he thought he'd heard a noise outside the shelter in his sleep. Bringing a bit of nether to hand, he rolled from beneath his blankets and stepped out of the harvested doorway, which he had curled like a shell to keep out the cold.