The Silver Thief

by Edward W. Robertson

  Blays screwed up his face. "What's the soul made out of?"

  "I don't know. It's just a soul."

  "But everything in the Mists was made out of ether. The people there—wouldn't they be made of ether, too?"

  Dante tipped back his head and gazed up at the gray sky. "When we die, we awake in the etherworld. A part of us must travel there. But whatever comprises that part, we know it isn't all of us. Our body remains here. What if a piece of us travels to the netherworld as well?"

  "What if that's the trace?"

  "Then it's not necessarily going to be in the physical remains. Or even visible in the earthly realm." He pressed his fist to his forehead, which felt like it was about to burst. "Is this completely crazy?"

  "You're the gods' authority on Earth. You tell me. Maybe when we die, a piece of the ether in us goes to the afterworld. And that's our soul. Carrying us with it away from this world."

  "If our soul is ether, what part of us becomes the trace?" Dante glanced up at the Keeper. "What do you think? Are we talking nonsense?"

  She gazed down from the lip of the excavation. "I think you've seen things no living soul has witnessed. Set aside what others have told you and trust what your eyes have shown you."

  Dante gazed down at the carpet of bones. "There's a certain symmetry to it. Ether to ether, nether to nether, and the body to the dust."

  "Question," Blays said. "Are we figuring out the secrets of the world right now?"

  "That depends on whether we're right."

  "A followup to the question. If are right, that means the books of the gods are wrong."

  "The books of the gods were written by mortals," Dante said. "And if there's anything mortals do right, it's be wrong. Anyway, we already know the holy books have…holes in them. For instance, there are multiple accounts of the same events in the Cycle of Arawn. They can't all be correct."

  "So we've flown past questioning and crashed right into heresy. If Gladdic could hear us, he'd skin us alive. And then knit our skin into demon-mittens."

  "Let's get back to the traces. Across the wars, we've seen thousands of people die. Have you ever seen anything leave their bodies?"

  "You mean besides blood and feces?" Blays picked up a jawbone and turned it in his hand. "We haven't seen any ether depart them, either. But we know it must. I mean, unless our souls are already up in the ether hanging out without us."

  Dante racked his memory for anything unusual he'd seen during the deaths of others, but nothing sprung to mind. Not that this surprised him. If it had been anything that obvious, then someone besides Kon would have noticed it long ago.

  Dante frowned at Blays. "Kon's confession says that death leaves a trace in the shadows. Could he be talking about the place you go when you shadowalk?"

  "If so, we won't be able to test that out until tomorrow. I've already burned myself out for the day."

  "For Minn's sake, I hope you're not always that fast." As Dante considered his next move, isolated drops of rain began to fall from the sheet of clouds. Wherever a droplet struck the faded dust, it plumped into a slate gray hemisphere, like a dark mole against the lighter skin of the soil. "I'm going to keep searching for the traces. There's no need for the rest of you to stay here."

  Naran lifted his face to the rain. "I'll pretend it's the mist from the prow. It's been too long since I felt the water on my face."

  "You think you know long?" the Keeper said. "I haven't felt the rain in ninety years."

  He extended his elbow to her. "Shall we take a stroll?"

  She laughed. If Dante hadn't known better, he'd say a touch of red brushed her cheeks. The Keeper accepted Naran's elbow. They turned away from the dig and meandered across the little valley.

  Ozone, dust, and sage: rain had never smelled sweeter than that day in the desert. Dante let himself enjoy it for a minute, then returned to the bones, methodically making his way across the excavation in search of any shadows that stood out from the others. Finding nothing, he moved across the valley, found another mass grave, and opened the earth above it. But the shadows there looked the same as everywhere else.

  By early afternoon, with the rain still falling, he packed it in and returned to Dog's Paw. There, people of all ages danced together in the rain while drummers kept rhythm from beneath the cover of oiled canvas strung along the base of the cliffs. Dante's mood was far from good, but he stopped to watch the locals celebrate the arrival of the water. Coming from Narashtovik, where when it wasn't raining it was snowing, it was beyond odd to see people throw an impromptu holiday for a bit of a drizzle.

  Yet it felt good to listen to music, to watch them laughing, to hear the slap of their bare feet on the damp rock. Even in the midst of an enemy invasion, people found ways to be happy. Dante didn't know if that was stupid of them or inspiring. Probably, it was both.

  When he'd had his fill, he went to their room in the inn and looned Nak to ask if there was any record of a trace of nether left behind by death.

  "A trace left behind by..?" Nak sounded so baffled Dante could envision the wrinkles on his bald scalp. "I've never heard of any such thing. But to anticipate your next question, yes, I will happily devote the next leg of my life to this matter I didn't know existed until just now."

  The next day, the rain had stopped, but the clouds remained, stretching from one end of the sky to the other. Dante contacted Nak, who'd found nothing. Along with the others, Dante returned to the Bloodlake, where most of the moisture had already been wicked up by the ground, leaving it crackly and hard.

  "So," Dante said. "Ready to find the traces?"

  Blays glanced about the site. "Any new tips as to what I should be looking for?"

  "You know everything I do. Try the bodies first, but don't restrict your search to them. If the trace is left by death, then it might remain on the spot where the soldiers died. Or it might have migrated somewhere else altogether."

  "In other words, the traces could be anywhere, including the nethereal equivalent of the Worldsea, which we don't know exists, and couldn't get to even if it did."

  "Is that going to be a problem?"

  "I suppose we'll find out." Blays took a step and exited the visible world.

  "Ha!" Cord clapped her hands. "How does he do that?"

  "I don't understand it completely," Dante said. "But it seems to be the opposite process of how the Andrac enter our realm."

  "What power! If he can move around like the wind itself, then why isn't he already drinking from Gladdic's hollowed skull?"

  "Unfortunately, his talent doesn't work so well against sorcerers. We learned that lesson the hard way."

  In much the same way as he could hear someone moving around a dark room no matter how stealthy they tried to be, Dante was vaguely aware of Blays' movements through the nether. Blays spent a few minutes down in one of the pits, then climbed out and made a slow zigzag across the valley floor.

  As Blays neared the hill's slopes, he reappeared, hands on hips, and glared down into the charnel pit. "Right. This is one of the worst jobs I've ever had. And that includes the time we had to climb up a Galladese toilet."

  Dante jogged over to stand across from him. "Nothing?"

  "Nothing. Unless, of course, I was staring right at it and didn't know it, because I have absolutely no idea what it is."

  "Until we do know what we're looking for, we could search for months without finding a trace." Dante's eyebrows twitched up. "We could always kill someone. I'll watch the nether from out here while you watch from in there. That way, we can see exactly where the trace goes."

  "You realize I have no way to tell if you're joking."

  "It wouldn't be at random. We could take someone who deserved to die. Like a Mallish soldier."

  Blays scrunched his mouth to one side. "That's a curious ethical question, isn't it? If a Mallish soldier has helped seize Collen, but at the moment he isn't doing anything in particular—say he's sitting around playing cards in the city square—does he stil
l deserve to die then and there? Or does that only kick in when he's actively committing violent crime against our friends?"

  "How about we use an animal? Do they have souls? No one gets mad when I kill a rat."

  "Unless it turns out they do have souls."

  "This is the classic scenario where taking one life can save many. Except in this case, it's made even easier for us, because we can choose to take a specifically bad life in order to save thousands of innocent ones."

  Blays pressed the knuckle of his index finger against his chin, scratching his neck with his thumbnail. "So basically, since we're too stupid to work out a real solution to find a trace, our only choice is to murder someone in cold blood. Don't think I can accept that one."

  "Then get thinking."

  Blays turned in a circle, taking in the hills ringing them in. "First of all, these traces could be as small as flyspecks. It's going to help if I know I'm looking in the exact spot where people died. There's plenty of bodies here, but I assume they were moved to be dumped into mass graves. Cord, Keeper, is there any mention in the stories about any specific battle sites within the Bloodlake?"

  Cord tipped back her chin. "It is said that in the end, the last Mallish tried to surrender. But the Colleners wouldn't have it. The bluecoats gathered on Snake Rock to make their last stand. There, they fought so well that the Colleners left their bodies under the sun."

  "Do you normally honor the dead by leaving them out for the vultures?"

  "How else can the gods see their triumph?"

  "Snake Rock?" Dante said. "Please tell me this isn't going to be a repeat of the Spiderfields."

  Cord scoffed. "How can you fear snakes? They don't even have arms."

  She strode to the east side of the valley where Snake Rock was said to have been. Pocket-sized though the area was, the "east side" covered a tract some three hundred yards across, but after a few minutes of poking around, they discovered a jumble of bones, armor, swords, and spears jutting from the dirt around a shelf of rock large enough to host a dozen men.

  There, a five-foot snake sunned itself, its tan body patterned with dark brown diamonds. It looked like a rattlesnake, and did its best to convince them of that by vibrating its tail against the rock, but Cord dismissed it as a gopher snake, chasing it off into a crevice.

  "Looks last-standy to me." Blays pointed to the edge of the rock, which terminated in a four-foot drop. "Right there."

  He blinked away. During his absence, Dante poked around the nether, but once again, none of the shadows looked any different from the others.

  Five minutes later, Blays rematerialized, seated on the edge of the miniature cliff. "We're sure this is Snake Rock?"

  Dante sighed. "Still nothing?"

  "Nope. Not that I can see, anyway. The thing about the netherworld is it's terribly dark. Except for nether, which stands out all silvery. So if the traces are here, they should be as obvious as your attempts to flirt."

  "Your torchstone," the Keeper said. "Give it to Blays. Blays, bring it into the shadows."

  Dante drummed his fingers on his upper arm. "The torchstone? Why?"

  "Do as you're told."

  Equal parts amused and annoyed, Dante passed the torchstone to Blays.

  Blays eyed the Keeper. "Anything in particular I should be doing with this?"

  "Turn it on and look around," she said.

  Blays gave a little bow and disappeared. Dante's frustration at the Keeper's lack of explanation was overshadowed by his ongoing anger that he couldn't walk into the shadows. What was Blays seeing? When the ether trapped in the torchstone touched a land made of nether, was there anything like it in all the world?

  Less than a minute later, Blays returned, torchstone gleaming in his hand. He looked like he'd just rolled out of bed only to realize an instant too late that he'd spent the night in the bough of a tree.

  He blinked at the Keeper. "How'd you know?"

  She gestured to the sky. "When you light a candle by day, the eye is so overwhelmed by sunshine you might never know the candle was there. In a land of shadows, how can the eye pick out one shade of darkness from another?"

  Dante moved toward Blays. "What'd you see?"

  "Well," Blays said. "Probably easier to explain it like this."

  He crouched on the edge of Snake Rock, torchstone extended before him. In the strong morning light, the stone didn't do much to brighten the basalt beneath it.

  Yet some portions didn't brighten at all. Black. Star-shaped, just two to three inches from point to point. Two were currently visible in the torchstone's glow, but as Blays slowly swept it across the rock, it illuminated a handful more.

  "This is impossible," Dante said. "If these are the traces, and they can be seen by ether, someone would have discovered their existence a thousand years ago."

  The Keeper stood over a star. "Blays, how much of the rock did you inspect?"

  Blays motioned to the ledge. "Just here, where it drops off."

  "Stay in the light and shine the torchstone across the rest of the rock."

  Blays moved across Snake Rock in a crouch, keeping the glowing stone close to the surface. He swept from one end to the other, but didn't see any new stars.

  The Keeper nodded. "Now return to the shadows and look again."

  Blays walked back into the nether. Dante felt him creeping across the rock. Two minutes later, he reappeared.

  "I'm not going to be able to do much more of that today," he said.

  The Keeper shuffled forward. "You may not have to. Did you find more marks?"

  "More than a dozen."

  "Now stay in the light and shine the ether on the rock again."

  Blays crouched near the middle of the wide slab and shined the torchstone over its surface. The last time he'd done so, it had been blank. This time, it showed a black star.

  Dante's mouth drifted open. "Expose it to ether in the netherworld, and then ether can illuminate it here. But why would exposing it to ether make it visible?"

  "Shadows can't be seen without light to cast them," the Keeper said.

  "But we're not talking about literal light and darkness. The ether and nether are distinct substances of their own."

  "You ask and I do my best to answer. These matters might not be understood by anyone alive."

  Blays traced his finger along the outline of one of the black stars. "So it makes sense why nobody knows about this. After all, only the very greatest of us can walk into the shadows."

  Dante placed his finger on a different star close enough to remain illuminated. "Then we'll have to do as the Keeper just did and figure this out through trial and observation. Blow out the torchstone."

  Blays puffed on the stone. The light winked off. So did the black star beneath Dante's finger. Dante sent his focus into the nether laced throughout the rock. Now that the ether had exposed the star, Dante could feel the border between it and the darkness around it. Like slicing the fat from the belly of a buck, he trimmed the nether from the edges of the trace. Once it was isolated, he moved his mind inside it.

  As soon as he touched the star, it shrank back. Dante stumbled back, too.

  "Afraid it'll bite you?" Blays said.

  "If this is what the Andrac are made out of? A little bit, yes."

  "It isn't alive now, is it?"

  "I have no idea whatsoever. But when we die, if the soul goes with the ether, what stays with the nether?"

  Dante approached the trace again. Carefully. Like he was walking up on a strange dog. Normally, the nether was never completely at rest: depending on its mood, it rushed like spring rapids, swirled like gusty rain, or gently expanded and contracted like the tide of a lake. Since jerking away from him, however, the shadows of the trace had gone as motionless as a frozen puddle.

  Or a predator the instant before it strikes.

  He moved his mind toward it, then beyond its outer edge. This time, it stayed put. Typically, nether felt cool to the touch, and substantial yet weightless, no
t unlike a wintry ocean mist. The trace (if that's what it was) felt similarly misty, but also warm. Not as though it were producing heat itself, but more like a rock that's lain in the sun all day that still bears its warmth after the sun has set.

  Dante shook his head in wonder. How was it possible they knew so little about the workings of life, death, the heavens and the worlds beyond? Was truth that hard to find? Or did people not want to find it? There was an afterlife, as the books all promised, but in his experience, it was nothing like what those books described—unless, of course, it had looked that way to those who'd seen it. Its manifestation seemed like it varied from place to place in ways Dante didn't understand. In any event, in the best case, someone had glimpsed the afterworld and written down their vision faithfully.

  They presented that vision as if it were universal. In truth, the experience was unique to the viewer—or a narrow slice of a much greater truth. Because that slice was the only one available to scholars, priests, and laymen, it was taken as the one truth—and the entirety of it.

  Yet so much more was out there.

  It was men like Gladdic, wasn't it? People who needed to control the source of knowledge for themselves. With no new discoveries to correct their course, the beliefs of such men continued down their crooked path, drifting a little further from the truth every year. And the further off course those beliefs got, the harder it got for such men to admit they'd been traveling in the wrong direction. Until the day came when Gladdic would rather burn you alive than risk discovering he'd spent his life believing in a falsehood.

  Surely that wasn't what the gods wanted from their creations. They'd made the world so big because they wanted it to be explored. If so, to search and to learn was to worship.

  Dante nudged the fringe of the star-shaped patch of nether. It didn't budge. He summoned it to him. Again, it stayed still. Keeping one eye on the shadows, he drew his knife, rolled up his left sleeve, and scratched his biceps.

  The trace sprung from the ground like a spooked pheasant. As it swerved toward him, Dante scrambled back, tripping on a rock and landing hard. Beside him, ether sparked in the Keeper's hands.