The Light of Life

by Edward W. Robertson

  "He's just popping up all the time, is he? Then what's the big deal this time?"

  "The Drakebane Dynasty has dedicated itself—and in many ways, all of Tanar Atain—to keeping the White Lich contained. That is why the Emperor maintains the Odo Sein; that is why he places such demands and taxes on his subjects; that is why all of the country is trained to think of itself as a singular body, with each person belonging to a specific part where it is their responsibility to execute specific duties.

  "In normal times," Gladdic continued, "the Drakebane's knights keep close watch on the tomb and the lands that surround it. Whenever the Eiden Rane stirs, he is met with a vast host, and is neutralized before he can muster but a portion of his awful strength. This time, however, the rebels undermined us, assisting him so that he might emerge ahead of schedule. The desperation of our situation can be seen in the fact that rather than gathering his forces to try to reclaim the capital, the Drakebane struck here instead, meaning to spend the last of his strength attempting to return the Eiden Rane to his vault."

  Blays pursed his lips. "I don't know if you've noticed this, but our friend Dante here spends more time reading than he does breathing. If there's been a world-saving battle against the White Lich, and it's been going on for centuries, why hasn't he ever heard of it?"

  "For the same reason that so little else is known of Tanar Atain. Such information is not allowed to pass beyond the borders." Gladdic waited for more questions. When none came, he resumed pacing. "If the first story I have told you is the province of the Drakebanes, you will feel no surprise to learn that those among the Righteous Monsoon tell a different story.

  "Long ago, when time was fluid, and the weights of justice bobbed like seeds on the tide, people lived in splintered tribes. Life was war and war was life. Suffering was one's second skin. Silver—yes, even gold—flowed from the mines like glittering wine, but rather than passing to those who were good, who would use it to feed those who hungered and heal those who fell ill, it was hoarded by kings and tyrants, who spent it on axes and pikes, raising more armies to prosecute more wars. And so Suffering became a god in itself.

  "In their desperation, the people prayed to the gods, sacrificing what little they had in vain hope of relief. The gods made sport of their strife; if ever they intervened, it was only to prevent the mortals from giving up all hope and lying down in despair.

  "Yet Unu, Mother of Islands, grew wrathful at her peers' contempt for their mortal toys. She came before Endek, the swamp wizard, and she breathed the mists of the morning into his lungs, and poured the light of the righteous into his ears. Then Endek doubled in height; then Endek's powers grew sixty-fold; and Unu sent Endek forth into the mortal lands.

  "He slew the kings. Butchered the tyrants. Blasted with fire the mercenaries who robbed and raped the weak. None could so much as scratch his skin. Within a year and a day, the land had been purged, and lay at peace. Those who hungered were given food. Those who wasted of illness were given medicine. All stood equal before the measures. They shed the skin of suffering. In time, their peace was so complete they quit their tasks to lounge in freedom. Time itself mattered not; they quit their hourglasses and calendars. And then, at last, secure in their golden age, they quit their sacrifices. Their offerings. Their prayers.

  "An outcry grew among the gods. Not only had they lost the sport of watching the people suffer, but they had lost all love and duty from their worshippers. Coming together, they assembled a great host and descended on Endek, Champion of Unu. They battled him from the coast to the darkest marsh. From the northern hills to the southern rift. So great was Endek's sorcery that even the combined might of the gods couldn't destroy him—but they could imprison him. Hence they sheathed him in cold iron, inscribing the words of their curses upon the faces of his prison, such that his strength was made nothing.

  "With Endek gone, some who had lived in his peace fell into corruption, pillaging their neighbors. Pillaging became conquering, and then the clash of armies. Within a year minus a day, the land had fallen back into darkness and strife, and people again suffocated within their suffering.

  "For all of the centuries, whenever Endek the Eiden Rane has attempted to escape his bonds, he has been beaten back. Yet among the Righteous Monsoon, it is told that if he can be released for good, he will restore them to their golden age." Gladdic bowed his head to Volo. "Do I represent your faith fairly?"

  "That's what they told us," Volo said. "But they never said nothing about the way he looks at you. Like you're just a crop for his harvest."

  "So the Eiden Rane was sent by the only good god to usher in a golden age of perfect peace?" Dante said. "That sounds even more like propaganda than the Drakebane's version."

  Gladdic gave a small shrug. "At one time, I thought the same."

  "But not anymore?"

  "After the treason I have witnessed on this day, I believe all might be lies."

  "There's one place the stories are in accordance," Naran said. "In both cases, the lich's power has come from a source of light."

  "The natural assumption is that this refers to the ether." Gladdic adjusted his gray robes, which had been soiled with blood and dirt during the fighting and escape. "The final story of the Eiden Rane's origin is not told in any courts. In fact, it in itself has many different versions. But each one repeats the same common themes: that long ago, a sorcerer and his wife lived with their children at the edge of the known swamp. One day, the sorcerer's wife fell ill. Over the following days, their children did as well. Though well-versed in the healing arts, the sorcerer could do nothing to reverse their worsening condition.

  "In fear for their lives, he passed into the unknown swamp. There, he sold his soul for the power to save his wife and children. Yet when he returned to his house, all of his family had perished.

  "Their deaths, in conjunction with the deal he struck, drove him mad. Over the next few years, children started to go missing from the villages in the hills. The village elders warned the bereaved parents to leave the matter be. In time, however, their grief proved too much. They assembled a war band and hastened into the swamps, following a trail left by the most recent of the vanished children—a trail that led them directly to the sorcerer's home.

  "There, they found their children had been turned into pale, vicious demons. In their horror, the villagers slew the changed youths, then burned down the sorcerer's abode. This goaded the sorcerer and his demons into laying waste to the hills. The villagers had sorcerers of their own, however, and quickly, a hellacious battle ensued. Yet the hill-people could never destroy the sorcerer—for in the bargain he had struck in the swamp, he had been given a new body, and left his old form with the demon with whom he'd done his deal. Unless the old body was destroyed, the White Lich could never die.

  "Hill by hill, the people were pushed back. At last, with no hope of defeating the White Lich, they enacted the only plan that could stop him from poisoning the whole world: they destroyed their own lands, slagging them into a melted and poisonous miasma through which not even the Eiden Rane could cross. Later, the lich was imprisoned. Yet the hills remained forever tainted."

  Dante scratched the side of his jaw. "You're talking about the Hell-Painted Hills. But that's not the story the Alebolgians tell. They say the hills were invaded by a plague of enormous pale locusts."

  Gladdic favored him with a disdainful look. "Where did you encounter such a version? The high courts of Cavana?"

  "Lady Vita of Osedo. She's educated and well-traveled."

  "That is precisely your problem. On such matters, you cannot trust the tales of the nobility. What do they have to fear of what lurks in the wilds? They will warp the story to whatever suits their fancy. Rather, you must speak to the peasants. It is they who are exposed to the monsters of the outlands. They are the ones who must face the terrors of the wilds. That's why they must remember the truth."

  Blays flicked a pebble into the water. "I'm glad we've had this talk. I feel much safe
r knowing that we're basing our battle plan on state propaganda and peasants' fairy tales."

  "Some day you will learn that scorn is no replacement for wisdom."

  "Before or after the day when you learn that you're going straight to hell?"

  "On that front, you might not have long to wait." The old man's face twisted in something that could have been a grimace or a smile. "I give the third story special credence for reasons we have already discussed: it has never been coopted by would-be despots and warped into a shape that bolsters their cause. I believe it may contain basic truths about the Eiden Rane—including how he might be defeated."

  "You must not think it's all true," Dante said. "It claims the White Lich can't be destroyed. But you and the Drakebane were trying to do just that, weren't you?"

  "The Drakebane believed that the lich's time in captivity will have significantly weakened him. It was thought that, with the Odo Sein present to dispel the enemy's sorcery, they and the Andrac might be able to cut him down and bring him to his final death. But we underestimated the aid the Monsoon had provided him. You are aware of the Blighted?"

  "If I knew anything about these matters, you'd be too busy tending to the Blays-shaped sword wound in your throat to answer our questions."

  Gladdic stared at him a moment, then puffed his cheeks with wry laughter. "When the Eiden Rane emerges from his prison, he is relatively weak. To restore his power, he draws humans to him and drinks some vital essence within them. This corrupting process also enslaves them to his will. The resulting product is known as the Blighted—the pale people who hide beneath the water. The rebels had already smuggled many souls to him before today, hadn't they, girl?"

  Volo's jaw trembled. "They were captives. Taken from the Drakebane's soldiers. They said they were being taken to a prison in the deep swamps where the Drakebane couldn't turn them free."

  "Some were soldiers, yes. But they needed more bodies than that. Many were innocent villagers whose deaths your leaders then blamed on us. It is amusing the crimes a good man will commit when he is convinced that he is the savior, and that his enemies are devils."

  "I expect you could write several books on that one," Blays said.

  "So the White Lich is more powerful than you anticipated he'd be at this stage," Dante rattled off, doing his best to wrestle the conversation back into a productive arena. "How then do we stand against him?"

  Gladdic gave one of his shrugs. "We do not. To fight him directly would be to shed our blood on his altar."

  "To fight him directly? There's an alternative?"

  "The key lies in the third story of his creation. The villagers of the hills were unable to destroy the Eiden Rane because they were fighting his avatar rather than his true form: the body he abandoned to become the lich. You might dismiss this story as a 'fairy tale,' yet for all the Drakebane Dynasty's strength and preparation, they have never been able to finally destroy the Eiden Rane."

  Blays squinted. "The Drakebane Dynasty does a lot of sister-marrying, do they?"

  Gladdic gave him a disgusted look. "Why would you reach such foul assumptions?"

  "Say you're right, and the only way to kill this fellow is to kill his original body. If the Drakebanes have spent hundreds of years trying to kill his new body, they must be completely gods damned inbred."

  "I am not the first to suggest a search for his original body. Previous attempts have never been able to so much as prove its existence. The Drakebane believed that I was wrong, and that even if I was right, we would not have time to track his first body down."

  Dante stood from the rock he'd been seated on. "That's your proposal? Find and destroy this first body?"

  Gladdic nodded once. "We have no allies to draw on, no armies to summon. We lack the strength to battle the White Lich himself. The same might not be true of his frail mortal heart."

  "What happens if we can't stop him?"

  "Then he will convert more and more Tanarians into the Blighted, expanding both his army and his personal power with each step. Once this nation is fully under his sway, he will take the next, and each after it in turn. That has always been his goal."

  To the west, the sun was nearly extinguished behind the clouds and leafless white trees. The others looked tired. Anxious. Dante had no doubts that he looked as bad. That might have been the only thing they all had in common. He was a former Mallisher, but had spent the last half of his life as a priest in Narashtovik. Blays had also come from Mallon, but had the look of a Collener, and now split his days between Narashtovik and Pocket Cove. Naran was a merchant and sometimes-pirate descended from those in the far south. Volo was a young woman from these forbidden swamps—just yesterday an eager rebel, she seemed to have wholly turned on her former cause.

  And Gladdic, an old man from the highest echelons of the Bresselian priesthood, who Dante would joyfully have murdered just a few hours earlier—and who now claimed to be fighting against an evil far greater than anything Gladdic himself had ever dreamed of.

  It was a very odd group. But it had the potential to be a very effective one.

  "We could walk away, and hope you're wrong about his goals," Dante said. "But you could also be wrong about the extent of the lich's power. Which means we might have the strength to stop him."

  "And if he is right," Naran said bitterly, "then no one else will have a second chance."

  Volo nodded. Blays tilted back his head, then did the same.

  For a moment, Dante wished they'd insisted on leaving. "Okay then. How do we find the lich's mortal body?"

  Gladdic gave a small, sinewy smile. "It was my hope that you might provide answers to that."

  "Until ten minutes ago, I didn't know he had a mortal body. If you're depending on me for answers, then we could save ourselves a lot of trouble by stabbing ourselves right now and sparing the lich the hassle."

  "Perhaps you already possess knowledge, yet are unaware. Tell me the details of your encounter with the lich."

  Dante launched into as comprehensive an account of their battle as he could provide. The others pitched in with observations of their own. Gladdic showed no emotion until the end, when Dante described how he had yanked up the solid iron ground and trapped the White Lich inside it.

  "Now that was a clever solution." Gladdic frowned at him. "How have you learned to command the earth like that?"

  "Wouldn't you like to know," Dante said. "It didn't imprison him for long, though. He'd gotten free by the time we'd escaped."

  "The walls of the Riya Lase are treated with great magic. Mundane iron would only hold him for a short time."

  "Why iron?"

  "I do not know. But its need here is why none is to be found elsewhere in Tanar Atain." Gladdic swayed, then seemed to swoon, seating himself heavily on the bare ground. Dante took a step toward him, fearing his injury had finally overwhelmed him, but the old man pressed his gnarled hand to his face, shaking his head slowly. "Nothing you have told me is of any use. Even if the first body is real, we will have no more chance of finding it than any of the others who have tried."

  Blays gawked at Dante, then at the old man. "You suggested it! Why couldn't you have given up this fast when you were putting thousands of people to death in the Collen Basin?"

  "You think this is sudden? I have spent months thinking on this matter. I have dissected and discarded every way in which I might find the Eiden Rane's first form. In my delusion, I thought your encounter with him would provide the solution."

  "You son of a bitch. Were all your promises of help just a trick to get us to ferry you away from danger?"

  "Why does the mind betray us so? Why does it ever lift our hopes only to torture us anew?" Gladdic's eyes went wide with shock. "We assume the gods gave us consciousness as a gift. But what if it was punishment?"

  Blays moved his hand to the hilt of his sword. "Then I'll be happy to rescind your sentence."

  "I was wrong to let my delusions infect you as well. Flee from here. Flee, and hide, and li
ve out however few days are left to be lived."

  Dante gritted his teeth. "Will you stop your stupid whining? You might have run out of options, but you're looking at the kings of bad ideas. We haven't even started to get dumb yet."

  "Correct." Blays dropped his hand from his weapon, smiling a little as he walked about the island. "Shall we start being stupid? Do you suppose the White Lich ever goes back to visit his first body?"

  "Why would he do that? To say hello? To gossip about his latest plans to swallow up the world? Returning would only leave him vulnerable to being followed."

  "He's got to keep it locked up somewhere, right? If your heart was a separate entity from your body, you wouldn't let it just wander around unsupervised."

  "But if it's still in some sense mortal, it would need food and water. Someone must be caring for it."

  "Or something." Blays pursed his lips. "If all the body needs is the occasional sip and nibble, it would only require a servant or two. Are the Blighted competent enough to handle something like that?"

  After a moment, Gladdic realized he was being asked a question. "The Blighted retain enough intelligence to perform such a task. And their loyalty to the Eiden Rane is perfect. They would never betray him, nor fail to do their duty."

  "So this whole thing could be operating out of a single shanty in the middle of nowhere."

  "Meaning it could take us years to find," Dante said. "And considering the Drakebane's people have been looking for centuries, I wouldn't count on us finding it through traditional means."

  Blays sniffed, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. He paused then, staring at whatever he'd smeared onto his hand as if it held great secrets. "The lich bleeds."

  "I don't remember that. And I got an awfully close look at him as he was pounding us all into the ground."

  "All right, he doesn't bleed blood, but when you cut him, his wounds exude a substance us non-liches might equate with blood."

  "That white liquid." Dante drew back his head. "You think we can track it."