Gladdic clicked his mouth shut, gazing into the distance. "All my life, I thought myself a beacon of moral clarity in an ocean of diseased minds. Visions of power turn us away from the gods. We are all worms in the same rotting log."
"Even if your hypothesis is true, some of us worms are less gross than others."
Dante quickened his pace, intending to avoid a philosophical debate when he had boats to grow. Blays hollered out from his right. Dante jogged over and found him standing in front of a ten-foot tree with leaves shaped like the feet of fat-toed geckos.
"I'm no expert," Blays said. "But judging from the leaves, trunk, branches, and fruit, I'd say this is a tree."
It looked more than suitable: large enough to be established, but small enough to have a lot of growth ahead of it. Dante jabbed his arm with his knife, closed his eyes, and moved into the nether inside the tree, examining its structures. He was, at that point, a fairly decent Harvester. He'd practiced the art on and off for over a year. He'd practically restocked the Collen Basin's granaries single-handedly.
That, however, was relatively simple. It was one thing to make a plant grow as it wanted to. It was another thing altogether to make it grow as you wanted it to.
After half a minute of poking around in the nether without finding anything obvious to help him, he concluded that sometimes, the best way to learn was by diving in without caring if you failed. He focused on a low branch, gathering the nether near its base. A twig sprouted. Dante drew it downward until he had a vine-like extension long enough that its tip was resting on the ground.
He stopped for a moment to walk around his creation. "Someone get Volo over here, will you? As long as I'm doing this, I might as well do it right."
Blays waved his hands over his head and yelled for Volo, which was not what Dante meant for him to do at all. She trotted over dutifully. She was no longer carrying the bit of her ruined boat, presumably having buried it, pushed it off into the swamp, lit it on fire and rubbed the ashes into her hair, or whatever it was that Tanarians did to properly dispose of the remains of their cherished boats.
"I'm about to grow us a new canoe," Dante said. "You're the first person I've ever seen cry about losing one, so I'm guessing you have strong opinions about what makes a good one."
Some of the sorrow left her young face. "Canoes are what lets us trade. And visit each other. And get away from each other. They're what lets us explore new places and what lets us escape when trouble comes to our village. When something is so important to everything we do, isn't the fool the person who doesn't care if he has a good boat or a bad one?"
"Yes. Agreed. Debate over. Just tell me how to make the damn thing. We'll start with the bow and work our way to the stern."
"That's your first mistake, dirt-walker. In a good canoe, there is no bow or stern. They should be identical. That way, when you're in tight quarters, you don't have to flip the boat around—just turn yourself around, and start paddling the other way."
After some questioning about angles, width, and depth, Dante kneeled next to the tip of the vine and reached into the nether. Green matter flowed from the end of the vine, expanding rapidly into the nose—or, he supposed, the stern—of the canoe. As Volo watched, her eyes were as intensely focused as a surgeon operating on the king, but the gleeful smile on her face was that of a madwoman.
She offered a few pieces of criticism about the sharpness of the prow. As Dante fixed this and moved on to expanding the body of the boat, the finished end hardened from a green, leafy texture into hardwood that was as dark as unadulterated coffee.
The wood seemed to want to grow, and by leading the way with the nether, the tree extended itself happily, as if he were painting a boat in the middle of the air. When it was a third of the way finished, its growing weight caused it to tilt to the side. Volo dived forward and caught it before it could snap free of its fragile vine.
With disaster averted, Dante finished the middle of the boat and moved on to sculpting the other end. The wood creaked pleasantly as it came together in a sharp point. With the hull finished, he extended seats across its interior.
Volo's grin was wide enough to sail the canoe through. "It's gorgeous!"
"Not quite done."
Dante branched a smaller vine from the one that he'd used to grow the boat. Once the new vine was long enough, he sprouted a bud from it, extending this into a short crossbar handle, then a long smooth pole. At the far end, he flared the greenery into a shape resembling a flattened bottle of wine. After ensuring it met Volo's approval, he hardened it into wood, then duplicated it twice more.
He cast the vines away from the completed pieces and stepped back from his work. "What do you think?"
Volo dropped beside the boat, giving one end an exploratory lift. "It's so light. And as smooth as glass. Completely seamless. Bet it cuts through the water like an Odo Sein sword. I'd kill for one of these!"
"Unless it's the White Lich, no murder necessary. The boat's all yours."
She swung up her head, searching his face for signs he was tricking her. "I can't take this. It's a masterpiece."
"Well, I can't carry it home with me. So you might as well take it."
Volo popped to her feet and hugged him tight. "Thank you. When I pass this down to my children, I'll make them thank you too."
He reached for the gunwale. "Don't start thanking me yet. An hour from now, and the prime body's guards could be bashing it into toothpicks."
They picked it up and portaged it to the shore. It slid into the water like a knife being sheathed. The pressure of the link to the prime body had lessened significantly, but it remained steady enough to follow without difficulty. Dante oriented them southward and they struck out with all speed.
Blays drove his paddle into the water. "Any idea who the prime body's got traveling with him?"
"Well," Dante said. "As far as I know, today was Bob's shift. But he might have had to take time off to tend to his mother. She's got that swelling in her feet, you know. In that case—"
"Forgive me for wanting to know who or what we're about to do battle with."
Volo twisted around, not missing a single stroke of her paddle. "When it could be anything, isn't it better to prepare for nothing? What if you prepare to fight a fish, only to be rendered helpless against a bird?"
"Then I'll aim higher."
"She's right," Dante said. "If it's Blighted, they won't be any trouble. If it's another sorcerer, then I expect it'll be weaker than the one they left behind to try to destroy us. Then again, I'm starting to think we've only seen a fraction of what the White Lich can muster."
"At least tell me we're gaining on them?"
Dante delved into the bond of blood. "They've got several miles on us. We're not obviously gaining, but I don't think we're falling any further behind. It'll be a while before I can tell if the gap is growing or shrinking."
The canoe whisked along so swiftly the water hissed against its hull, a steady accompaniment to the rhythmic churn of the paddles. Dante closed his eyes and immersed himself in the link to the prime body. Were they gaining? Or was that just a trick of—?
Something tickled the far end of the link. If Dante hadn't been concentrating on the connection, he might not have felt it at all. The presence took up the end of the thread and began to advance along it with almost perfect stealth, its movement as subtle as the strokes of a norren line painting.
Dante popped open his eyes. He knocked down an iridescent blue wasp that had been droning along beside the boat, reanimated it, and sent it buzzing south above the canopy with all the speed its wings could provide. Stone ruins peeped from the tree-coated islands. As the wasp flew closer to the prime body, the presence crept onward along Dante's bond to it.
It was halfway to him when the wasp spotted the boats rushing on through the forest.
"The White Lich." Dante's throat was so tight he could barely speak. "He's less than ten miles ahead. And he'll reach the prime body long before we do."
&nb
sp; Gladdic startled as if he'd been stung, making the canoe roll back and forth. "How can this be so? It's been a mere three hours since the Blighted in the tomb first saw us."
"He must have already been on his way there. To cover his only weakness."
"Which will pass into his hands in a matter of minutes. We have failed. He will never let the prime body from his sight again."
Dante expected someone to pipe up with an argument—perhaps even for one to stir in himself—but everyone was quiet. Naran lifted his paddle from the water and laid it across his lap. Blays followed suit. After a few more strokes, Volo did the same. The canoe drifted forward on its own momentum before coming to a stop in the middle of the sun-dappled water.
"So that's it?" Volo said. "We're just giving up?"
Dante ran his hand down his face. "We can't go after the prime body. The lich will smash us like we're a spider crawling toward the crib."
"Then what do we do?"
"There is nothing more to be done." Gladdic's voice was the monotone of the utterly defeated. "This was our one chance to stop the disease before it can become a plague. With every day that passes, the Eiden Rane will convert more and more Tanarians into Blighted. Each one swells not only his army, but also his personal strength. And we are already too weak to defeat the enemy head-on. What shall we do against this? Attempt to rally allies to our cause? Most would scoff at the threat; others might believe, but will be too afraid to fight; those willing to heed our call will discover that, in the time it required for us to go to them for aid and then to return with them here, the enemy has become invincible."
Gladdic tipped back his head to the sky. "The only power that can save us now is the gods. And they will do nothing, for most do not care—and the rest like to see us suffer."
The finality of his words knocked them into a second silence. Bugs hummed along between the plants, a few stray bees visiting the fire-colored flowers that were beginning to bloom from the vines that looped between the trees.
"The lich is tracing the connection between me and the prime body," Dante said. "Once he reaches the end, he'll know exactly where we are."
"He'll come straight for us." Gladdic's voice lacked a single drop of doubt. "The idea that we almost killed him will make him furious. You must sever the link."
"I know. But there's one thing I need to do first."
While they'd been talking, the spying wasp had been following the lich's armada from on high. Now, Dante sent it north, back in the direction of the prime body. Aided in his hunt by the link in his head, he located the lone boat within five minutes.
With the White Lich closing in on his mind—an outcome which, if it came to pass, Dante feared might grant the enemy much more than the ability to feel where he was—Dante ordered the wasp to plunge down through the canopy. The boat was a double-hulled canoe crewed by a team of Blighted boatsmen, overseen by a motionless figure whose face was the same color as his bleached white robes.
A platform stretched between the two hulls, mounted by a small cabin. Dante sent the wasp straight toward it. It had no windows or portholes, but something between a door and a hatch was set into its rear. The frame was warped just enough for the wasp to wriggle through.
The interior was dark, lit only by thin slices of light seeping through the edges of the door. In the center of the cramped space, a skeletally thin man lay curled fetally. He was nude, the prongs of his vertebrae stretching his skin, his knees and elbows as knobby as a malformed branch.
Dante relocated the wasp to the ceiling for a better look. And almost retched. The body's eyes and mouth were sewn into tight black lines. He was hairless and his skin was a patchwork of seams, as if chunks of it had been replaced repeatedly across the centuries. His fingers were as long and thin as twigs and he was missing most of his nails. He was twitching his fingers, drawing them over the cabin floor. He seemed to be tracing letters or symbols of some kind, but if so, it was from a language Dante had never seen.
The tickling in his mind became a trembling, then a violent shaking as the White Lich surged toward him across the blood-bond. Dante cut the bond to the prime body—and their hopes with it.
~
Lacking any real plan, they headed east, veering south once Dante was sure they were well away from the White Lich's forces. Nobody said much except for mundane matters like asking for a water skin or a break from paddling. As dusk neared, Volo put them in on an island half covered in frogs whose skins were cornflower blue.
The swamp typically stayed warm enough at night that there was no call for a fire, which was good, because Dante felt far too demoralized to try to drag together some dry wood. The five of them sat in a loose circle, gazing at the grass.
Blays frowned, leaned close to a green stalk, and held his hand to it. He lifted it, holding an insect that looked exactly like a stick with legs.
"The White Lich only cares about enslaving humans, right?" As the stick-bug reached the end of his hand, Blays flipped his palm over, letting the creature crawl to the other side. "Clearly the solution is to disguise ourselves as humble animals of some kind. Cats ought to work. He doesn't strike me as the sort of fellow to care for cats."
"Sheep are better," Dante said. "They're about the right size, and we could all hang around in the same flock. With plenty of normal sheep, of course. We wouldn't want to look like idiots." He reached for a handful of sour purple berries Volo had found upon their landing. "Gladdic, do you have any other ideas for how to come at him? Any other rumors? Old stories? Things the Drakebane was too scared to try?"
The priest appeared to be trying to stare through the horizon and into the other side of the world. Just as Dante was about to repeat himself, Gladdic said, "It is a miracle that we were even able to locate the prime body. If there were any other effective solutions, someone would have executed them long ago."
"Can we seal him back up? Let him be dealt with by whoever's around the next time he busts out?"
"Even if I knew the process, which I do not, we would have to bring him back to the Wound. He will know better than to fall for any tricks to get him there."
"Then what can we do?"
"Make your peace, if you can," Gladdic said. "And then do what we are all here to do: die."
Blays transferred the stick-bug to his other hand. "We could leave here and never talk about this again. That way no one has to worry about their coming doom until right before they're Blighted."
"A breathtakingly humane proposal," Dante said. "Remind me to nominate you for sainthood the next time we're in Narashtovik."
No one had any other ideas. Dante hadn't really expected any. Walking to the other side of the island, he wondered if they shouldn't all just kill themselves. It would have the added benefit of stopping him from having to loon Nak and explain everything that had happened, which he wanted to do about as much as he wanted to fall asleep with his feet dangling in the water.
However, if there was one thing age and responsibility had taught him, it was that the overall pain of procrastination was higher than that of getting the chore done right away. With the daylight getting short, and fish rippling the water everywhere to bite at low-flying bugs, Dante opened his loon connection to Nak.
"Yes?" Nak's voice was as upbeat as ever. "Lord Dante?"
"Hello, Nak."
"I was beginning to fear something had gone wrong! What happened, then?"
"That depends," Dante said. "Remind me what was I about to do last time we talked?"
"Well, you were about to sail in with that rebel outfit—the Righteous Monsoon, isn't it?—and finally put an end to Gladdic."
"Yes, that's what I was afraid of."
"Something has gone wrong. Don't tell me he escaped yet again!"
"No, he's in our custody. Listen, Nak, do you remember when I asked you for anything in the archives about Tanar Atain, and you told me that fairy story about the vampire of the deep swamps?"
"I won't apologize for that. My intention was t
o provide you with everything I could find and to let you decide what, if anything, was useful."
"It turned out to be wrong. But not in the way we expected. The vampire is real—and he's far, far worse than the stories told."
Dante had a little less than an hour before the loon shut down, and so he explained in only moderate detail about their attack on the Wound of the World: and how they had indeed found Gladdic, but hadn't realized that Gladdic was actually in the process of attempting to destroy a long-buried evil that the Monsoon was attempting to use to destroy the Drakebane Dynasty. And how, after learning what the White Lich was, they'd deemed it necessary to keep Gladdic around, both for his knowledge of the lich and of Tanar Atain. Dante then summarized their recent efforts—and failures—to stop the Eiden Rane.
"No one's ever been able to destroy him," Dante concluded. "But if we don't find a way, I believe it's possible that he's going to conquer everyone."
"By turning everyone into these Blighted?"
"Or things like them."
"But won't he eventually run out of power to raise more? Every nethermancer has limits to how many undead he can command. Even Jack Hand himself had a limit to how many rats he could get to march to his tune."
"This is different. The larger the White Lich builds his force, the stronger he seems to get. That implies there's a point of no return. Once he crosses it, nothing will be able to defeat him."
"Come now, that violates everything we know about sorcery."
"Over the years, it has become readily apparent to me that most of what we know about sorcery is that everything we thought we knew about it was wrong."
Footsteps sounded through the loon; Nak was pacing. "If I was the one telling you this, you'd tell me that I was an ignorant fool. So rather than it being the case that this White Lich is such an exceptional figure that he doesn't have to obey the known rules—and who is, in fact, capable of the exact opposite of what all experience has shown us to be true—isn't it more likely that you're wrong, and that he will shortly reach the end of his ability to command more Blighted?"
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