Dante had been happy to help the Colleners resist this fate. But there were limits to his commitment. Limits which ran deeper than the desire to protect his own life, or the fact that the Colleners, while sympathetic, weren't his people. Centuries of fighting had warped them. Turned them into people who would slaughter disarmed Mallish soldiers as readily as the Mallish would slaughter them.
Dante couldn't blame them. Yet he couldn't die for them, either. All that remained was to walk away.
"We'll head for the well," Dante said. "Try to find Cord. And get out as many people as we can before the Mallish catch on or the Andrac comes for us."
He struck northeast toward the well. Blays roved beside him, eyes darting to the movement of every pigeon and mouse. Thoughts of Naran and the Keeper hovered above Dante like a cloud of mosquitos, but the reality of their loss couldn't sink into his mind any more than oil could sink beneath water. Twice, they heard the furor of fighting on nearby streets, but they did nothing to get involved.
As they neared the well, a handful of bedraggled people appeared on the road before them. The citizens turned fearfully, shrinking into the cover of buildings as Dante and Blays jogged past. The well's carved arches and pillars stood in the mid-morning sunshine like rugged bones exposed from a dune of sand. Frightened voices carried from the depths, echoing in the shimmery way of words in the presence of standing water.
Dante moved down the steps. Scores of people were packed into the chamber with the pool, faces lit by the flutter of torches. The air smelled of stagnant water and stale sweat. Some of those in the chamber were soldiers, but many were young children or white-haired elders with crooked backs. Dante passed among them, asking after Cord.
"She's gone to Trapp Square," said a man with a gold elbow-ribbon. "Many people hid there when the Mallish raised the alarm of war."
"You need to start getting people through to the other side," Dante said. "There's no stopping the demon. It could arrive at any moment."
The soldier nodded uncertainly. Dante secured directions to Trapp Square, which was located a half mile to the east. He jogged into the daylight, orienting himself to the dome of the Reborn Shrine, and headed for the square.
"How many people do you suppose were down there?" Blays' voice was as colorless as an old rag. "Three hundred?"
"Thereabouts."
"Out of a city of thirty thousand. We barely made the swim to the other side. All those kids, old people—how many of them do you think will make it?"
"More than none."
Blays laughed strangely. "For all our efforts, we'll save a few dozen lives. I can't wait to have children so I can tell them the story of how I heroically let tens of thousands of Colleners die."
Dante's boots slapped the street as he ran. He was used to being the one who questioned the point. The one who wondered whether it would have been better not to have tried at all. Seeing Blays this way, he was taken by the gut-deep fear of a responsibility he wasn't sure he could discharge.
"We came to the basin with three people," Dante said. "They had an army. Fronted by monsters no one's ever defeated before. This might not feel like victory, but we're lucky to be leaving with our own lives, let alone some of the citizens."
Blays ran beside him in silence.
"What more could we have done?" The words spilled from Dante. "We've saved these people from starvation. Spent weeks learning to fight the demons. Rallied the towns to come here and seize the opportunity to throw the Mallish off their backs. I hate this just as much as you do. But when I look back on this day, once the regret and anger have faded, I know what I'll feel: pride. The kind that only comes from knowing you did everything you could. From having fought so hard that even when your enemies tell the story, all those who listen will bow their heads and wish they'd known you."
Blays remained silent. The flatness of his expression shifted, growing thoughtful. His eyes lit up. "Look."
Dante followed his gaze. Hundreds of yards to the south, the black head of the Andrac bobbed on a path nearly parallel to theirs. The creature moved with deceptive speed, striding between the buildings like a grown man walked among children. Watching it—its bulk, its power, the empty blackness of its form and the painful whiteness of its eyes—Dante grew dizzy. Within moments, its long strides carried it past them.
Blays grunted. "It's heading for the shrine."
Dante kept one eye out for Cord and another on the progress of the Andrac. As Blays predicted, it neared the shrine, one of the few buildings in the city taller than it was. The demon stopped. A voice carried from the east. Furious. Defiant. Dante couldn't make out the words, but there was no mistaking the deep bleat of the voice.
Dante's jaw dropped. "That's the Keeper."
"She survived!" The excitement in Blays' eyes cooled like a just-forged sword quenched in water. "She can't stand against that thing by herself."
"But we may be able to get her away from it."
Still running eastward, they exchanged a long look. As it had been when they'd decided to abandon the fight and go to the well, their conversation was wordless. Minutes ago, Dante had been ready to leave. Perhaps it was the speech he'd just given. Or perhaps it was the roar of hope he heard in the Keeper's booming voice.
"One last stand," he said. "Just long enough to grab the Keeper. Then our job is done."
They broke into an all-out sprint. The shrine was only a quarter of a mile away, but every second dragged like a sledge through dry sand. The Andrac stooped from sight. When it reappeared, three bodies soared into the air, limbs twirling. The Keeper's shouts held strong. The demon lifted a young woman to its eight-inch teeth and chewed. Even as the warrior died, she jabbed her shining wheel at the Andrac's eye.
Light flashed brighter than the sun. The Andrac swayed back, crunching into the side of one of the shrine's lesser towers. Impossible hope flared in Dante's chest. Then the beast righted itself, screamed its crackling scream, and swept its claws toward the ground.
Dante burst into the grounds around the shrine. There, bluecoats skirmished with wheel-wielding Colleners. Whenever the Andrac stomped their way, soldiers on both sides scattered like baitfish. The shrine's roof was pocked with holes. The carefully tended shrubs and flowers were trampled flat, littered with bodies and dismembered limbs.
"There she is." Blays pointed his sword, but Dante's eyes had already been drawn to the white sparks forming in the Keeper's hands. She stood outside the doors of the shrine, yelling to her dwindling soldiers. Her tan cloak was torn, bright with blood.
Dante wasn't the only one drawn by the light. The Andrac launched across the plaza toward the Keeper. Light sizzled from her hands, striking it in the face. It didn't so much as slow down.
Nether coiled in Dante's hand. He hurled it at the demon, wrapping its head in a ball of darkness. The Andrac staggered and stopped.
"Keeper!" Dante yelled. "Get out while—!"
The demon spun and charged him, its course unerring despite the shadows locked around its head—it had learned to let go of its sight and follow the nethereal connection instead. Dante dashed to the side. A silver spear pierced the Star-Eater's back, but it didn't seem to notice. It was already upon him, swinging its claws down toward his head. He flung himself to his right, rolling as he struck the setts. He popped to his feet, but the Andrac was already slashing toward him again, its claws scraping over the pavement.
Dante reached into the earth and commanded the stone to rise. It shot eight feet upward, walling him off from the incoming blow. The beast's claws slammed into the rock. Chunks of basalt pounded into Dante's turned back, knocking him from his feet.
With a groan, the rest of the wall gave way, pinning him to the ground.
30
It was a perfect afternoon. The sun glowed overhead with the soft warmth of fall, welcome after the morning's cold dew. That same dew hinted at the hardness of the winter on its way, but that only made the warmth all the sweeter.
A shadow fell ove
r Dante's face. To all sides, men shrieked in fear and pain. His back and ribs hurt, but he knew that, like that touch of dew, the ache was the smallest taste of the cold to come.
He twisted his neck. Above him, two-foot claws jutted from stubby fingers and a palm big enough to lift a rain barrel like a cup. Andrac. Star-Eater. Dante tried to push himself to his feet, but something was holding him down. A rock. The one he'd summoned. It had stopped the demon's strike, saving his life.
And then it had fallen on him. Breaking his bones. Leaving him helpless to the Andrac's next blow.
The demon towered above him. The monsters were almost expressionless, but it appeared to be confused—likely because Dante's injuries had caused him to drop the shadowsphere from its eyes. This bought him a few seconds as the Andrac shook its head, reorienting itself. Small consolation. Or maybe one last piece of misfortune: it gave him that many more seconds of pain to live out.
A smear arced from the tower to his left, falling swiftly toward the demon. A trick of his eye as his body gave out? The smear cohered into the outline of a man. One carrying a blazing sword in each hand.
Blays landed on the demon's side with a thump, stabbing his swords into its chest. The Star-Eater squealed, straightening. Blays removed one blade from the Andrac and inserted it an arm's length above the other, hauling himself up the monster's body.
Dante's head buzzed like a ball of bees, but an instinct older and deeper than words told him what to do next. He reached into the rock, melting it into mud. It flowed away from him. He inhaled hard, pain knifing into him as his ribs expanded. Broken. He was bleeding from a dozen blunt gashes, too.
But the presence of his blood meant the nether was already there. Dante reached for it with both hands, sending it flowing into his veins and marrow. The flames within his chest dampened to coals. The Andrac staggered toward him, slapping at Blays, who'd pulled himself between the creature's shoulder blades. Dante got to his knees and faltered. He reached for more nether. Some drew from the ground. Other scraps flitted from the bodies of the dead.
But most gushed from the gashes Blays had carved in the Andrac's side.
Dante's heart thundered. At the time, he'd been too preoccupied to understand, but he'd seen the same thing fighting the human-sized demon on the road down the cliffs. He cleared his mind and spread his arms wide, calling to the nether. It swirled madly from the Andrac's side. Dante poured it into himself, erasing the pain remaining in his chest, then turned it to the sprain in his knee and the fracture in his shin.
"Keep hurting it!" he yelled up to Blays. "Keep stabbing!"
"What do you think I'm trying to do?" Blays heaved himself up the Star-Eater's shoulders, finding purchase on its neck.
Dante sucked more and more shadows from the giant. Usually, the nether was cool enough for him to hold it until he was ready to put it to use, but this kind—perhaps because it was from the traces of the dead—stung him like nettles, insisting he use it at once. Everything he drew, he shaped into lances and slung at the nearby Mallish soldiers, who were on the brink of breaking the threadbare Collenese defenders.
Blays wrapped his arms around the Star-Eater's throat, set his blades against the demon's black skin, and yanked them back. Shadows spewed forth. When Dante lifted his hand, nether flowed from the demon's neck as if Blays had slit its jugular. A gray-robed man ran from one of the shrine's outbuildings, a globe of ether gathering in his hands. Dante fired the stinging nether into the priest's chest, blasting him back through the doorway he'd exited.
The Andrac slapped at the back of its neck. Blays tried to drop down, but the demon's palm crashed into him, knocking him loose. With a cry, he slammed to the earth, skidded toward the shrine, and lay still.
Dante stepped toward the demon. "You may be made of nether. But I'm its master."
A stream of shadows flew from the Andrac's throat. The monster drained as readily as a tapped keg, but Dante could feel resistance within its body. A lesser nethermancer would be able to draw no more than a trickle. For him, it was a raging cataract—yet the demon's body was as deep as an ocean.
The Star-Eater strode toward him. When it planted its foot, its leg gave out beneath it, dropping it to one knee. Its head lolled. Patches of its neck and chest grew translucent. Shuddering, it lifted its head and glared down at him, fangs bared. Then it too reached for the nether, holding tight to its dark fluids.
Tendrils of shadows flowed across the gash in its neck, thickening into ropes. Dante drew harder yet. The Andrac reeled backward toward the shrine. Dante stalked after it, flinging bolts of nether at any bluecoat that caught the corner of his eye.
As slowly as if it bore the world on its shoulders, the demon strained to its feet. Dante siphoned more nether from its neck, but the wound had already knit halfway shut and was shrinking by the second. The Star-Eater flexed its claws and grasped the shadows. For a moment, the two of them neared stasis. The former river of nether flowing from the demon's throat had stanched to a weak stream.
The Andrac's snarl twisted to a grin. Black threads knitted across its wounds, pulling them tighter. The shadows slowed to erratic droplets. Panic rising in his chest, Dante battered the monster with its own nether, but this dissipated into dark motes, useless against the vessel that had contained it. The demon took a lumbering step forward. Dante reached for its nether, but all that came was that which lay in the rock and dirt. The Andrac was closed to him.
He fell back a step. As the demon stood over him, its face grew as sober and focused as a child's. It bent its knees and raised a clawed hand high into the sky. Dante's mind became a blank.
Light flared to his right. The Keeper lumbered forward, limping heavily, a cube of ether clutched in her gnarled hands. "You are made of our people. Our own deaths turned against us. I release them!"
The demon didn't bother to glance her way. But when the spear of light flew from her hands, it flinched, sidestepping toward the western wing of the shrine. The ether ripped into its chest, knocking it back onto the tile roof.
Shadows leaked from the wound, which stretched diagonally from its left hip to its right shoulder. Dante thrust his mind into the cut. Nether geysered like water from a breached dam. The Andrac struggled to slow the tide, but its focus was weakened by its prior injuries. Shadows spun around Dante in a whirlpool, as thick as the clouds on a mountain's head. Each drop stung him. Their weight pressed as greatly as the slab of basalt he'd freed himself from, threatening to rip from his grasp. And tear him apart with them.
The Star-Eater was graying from head to toe. Dante drew out its shadows until he was surrounded by stormheads of nether, reducing the world to shapes and suggestions. Mentally, the demon struggled against him, pushing him to the brink—then fell back, exhausted.
Dante seized on its weakness, ripping into it with everything he had. The swirling nether threatened to black out the world. His entire body felt pricked by needles. The nether surged, pushing everything else from his mind. When at last it ebbed, leaving him able to think again, he knew the next pulse would be bigger than he could contain.
"Run!" he yelled to the Keeper. "As fast as you can!"
She took off in a loping limp. The Andrac leaned heavily against the shrine, clawing like a drunk man trying to keep himself from falling off the world. Patches of its body were as transparent as shadowcut glass. Shadows spilled forth, coating Dante's skin as if they wanted to burrow inside him.
The tide of nether swelled again. In another moment, it would burst from Dante's control. There was nothing he could do to stop the coming devastation. The only thing he could do was try to control its shape.
Blays remained motionless on the ground behind him. Dante tore into the shadows beneath the unconscious man. The ground dropped six feet, taking Blays from sight. Dante yanked a shelf of rock across the hole, sealing him against whatever was to come. If Dante died, Blays could shadowalk out when he woke up.
Assuming he woke before he ran out of air.
The Keeper was now sixty feet away. The dozens of soldiers on each side had cleared out as well, leaving Dante alone with the Star-Eater. Like a tooth ready to pop loose from the socket, the creature was on the brink of giving. Dante drew forth every drop of nether he could touch. As the tide threatened to overwhelm him, he unleashed the nether, centering it on the Andrac's chest—and raising a wall of rock before himself.
A hollow boom thundered through the plaza. The demon vanished in an expanding sphere of black motes. Dante flung himself flat behind the seamless wall of basalt. With a deafening crackle, the nether tore through the Andrac and into the shrine. Stone exploded in all directions, slamming into Dante's wall.
Something cracked into his head. The world flashed white, then went as black as the trace left by death.
* * *
"Awaken." The voice was like that of a stone door. Dante wanted to stay in the darkness—there was no pain there, no strife—but the voice bore an authority he couldn't deny.
His eyes fell open. The gentle warmth of an autumn day touched his face. The air smelled of cracked rock. Blood, too. Given the dampness of his clothes, it was probably his own.
The Keeper kneeled over him, face creased with concern. "You live on."
"So do you," Dante said thickly. "How?"
"When the building fell, I used the ether to keep a piece of it in its original shape. It formed a pocket around us."
"What about Naran?"
"He was hurt. But he lives. My people have taken him to safety."
Dante stretched his limbs and learned they all worked. "The Andrac. Is it banished?"
"More than banished." She grinned, fox-like. "It is eradicated. Nothing remains but its stain."
Dante pushed himself up on his elbows. Flakes of basalt clattered from the folds of his clothes. Around him, the ground was a talus field. The sky felt wider. In part, this was because the gigantic demon was now gone.
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