The Light of Life

by Edward W. Robertson

  Dante gave the priest a look. "You catch more flies with honey than vinegar."

  "Yes," Blays said, "but you catch the most flies with shit."

  Gladdic didn't respond. A minute passed, then another. Volo wandered to the edge of the stoop to gaze down on the quiet city. Naran had a distant look on his face, as if remembering old times. A lantern lit up one of the third-floor windows, then receded from the room.

  At last, the door swung open again, the servant stepping adroitly to the side. "Enter, guests."

  Dante moved in behind Gladdic, bringing a trickle of nether to his hand. The servant spun on his heel and led them through a brick corridor and into a sitting room, or more aptly a kneeling room, considering that its furniture consisted of a few knee-high tables and vast numbers of rugs and cushions.

  A man rose from the main table. He was about sixty and his slicked-back hair had gone almost entirely silver, with a few streaks of deep black hanging around what remained of his temples.

  He took in Volo and the foreigners before settling his pale eyes on Gladdic. "Gladdic. You're aware our new rulers have outlawed dana kide?"

  Gladdic inclined his head. "I have just learned as much."

  "Then you'll understand that I'm being purely rhetorical when I greet you by asking whether it's in the best interests of a people to strangle their ability to speak themselves toward truth."

  "I could not say."

  "Good, because I didn't ask. Just as I didn't ask whether the best way to win the hearts of a conquered people is to stamp out their holiest traditions."

  "If such a question were to be asked, I would tell its asker that the best way to ensure that a conquered people will never rebel against you is to reshape them to be the exact same as your people."

  "As a former taxman, you'd think I'd have more appetite for grinding people under my heel. But I don't even have the stomach to think such things." Fade smiled with half his mouth. "It's good to see you. I'd have guessed you'd be dead or long gone."

  The priest moved a half step in front of the others. "An unexpected calling has kept me here. I do not expect to see my homeland again."

  Fade made a subtle gesture to the others. "And because you can't go back to Mallon, you've brought friends from Mallon to visit you instead?"

  "We would not call each other friends. But we have all found ourselves being swept along by the same strange tide."

  "Let me guess. The one flowing from the north?"

  "Indeed. First, though, what of matters here? Have you and your family been safe since the revolution?"

  "Got them all packed up and shipped off to Bressel. House has felt damn near empty."

  "Then why do you remain?"

  Fade pulled his lopsided grin again. "You're not the only one with a calling. I aim to wrap things up and skip town soon as I can. The way things are going with the Monsoon, I'd leave even if there were no northern threat."

  Gladdic nodded thoughtfully. "Yet there is. You are wise to go."

  The other man lowered his eyes to the stump of Gladdic's right arm. "Looks like you got firsthand experience there." He winced. "Pardon the pun."

  "It's no matter. As I said, I have already accepted I will not survive the coming storm. Losing an arm better prepares me to face death, when it comes, without flinching."

  "You're even more fatalistic than the last time I saw you."

  "Gazing into hell will do that to a man." Gladdic tilted his head to the side. "Do you know why I am here?"

  "To make sure I don't get any sleep?"

  "The Eiden Rane has returned. I have seen him. We have fought him. And we think we know a way to destroy him."

  "Oh, batshit. The Drakebane did everything he could about that. If there'd been another option, he'd be out there on the front lines right now, not digging himself a new nest in Bressel."

  "You don't have to believe. But the Drakebane has abandoned you, and I am still here."

  Fade scowled and motioned to his servant, making a drinking motion. The servant vanished from the room.

  "Can we get to the thrice-cursed point already?" Fade said. "Why are you here?"

  "To save Tanar Atain. Our plan requires the Odo Sein. Do you know where they used to be trained?"

  "Why in the nine waters would I know that?"

  "There were rumors that you worked for them."

  "You can tell a lot about a man by which rumors he's eager to swallow." The servant swept into the room, presenting Fade with a green glass. Fade tipped it back, emptying it, and set it back on the tray. "The location of the training grounds was one of the biggest secrets in the Empire. If I had so much as stumbled on it, my bones would be hanging in a cage in the deepest swamp."

  "Then you don't know where it is."

  "Hell no. I wouldn't want to know."

  Gladdic turned his profile to Fade, taking two steps toward the wall. "Do any Odo Sein remain in the capital?"

  "You know they'd never leave the Drakebane behind. Any that survived the fighting sailed away with him to Bressel."

  "That was the conclusion I reached as well. In that case, I need you to stop lying to me."

  "Excuse me?"

  "You know precisely what I am saying."

  Fade motioned to his servant again. "Trying to keep track of all your Mallish gods must have driven you crazy. I don't know anything about the Odo Sein."

  "Do you understand that this is the last hope for your country?"

  "There is no hope, you loony bastard. I can't help you. I suggest you find someone who can."

  Gladdic turned to face him. The priest's eyes were as sunken as wells. "We didn't get a chance to engage in dana kide. I will rectify that. Are we agreed that liars are bad people?"

  "What kind of a question is that?"

  "Do not attempt to dodge me. Dana kide is the search for truth, which is holy. If truth is holy, then lies are unholy. And liars are their vessel."

  The servant came back with a refilled glass. Fade didn't reach for it. "If a man lies to save his life, does that brand him a liar?"

  "It does when a man's lies will cost the lives of everyone in his country. Now stop dodging and answer my question. Are lies unholy?"

  "Depends entirely on the why, doesn't it?"

  "If a man lies to save himself from death, that is merely the act of using one unholy act to protect oneself from another. The lie, itself, remains unholy. How, then, might we rid ourselves of lying? If we killed every liar, do you think the next generation would be raised without knowledge of falsehoods?"

  "I think if we killed everyone who ever told a lie, we'd have done the Eiden Rane's job for him."

  "Indeed. For lies are a disease that seems to run as deep as our own blood. Do you know the only way to be cured of them? To lose everything. Every single part of you and what you love. When everything is taken from you, and you have nothing left to lose nor to fear, at last, you can see the truth."

  Gladdic swept his left hand through the air. Ether glittered across the room. Scores of footsteps lit up across the floor, a shimmering pattern of chaos. Most of them were adult-sized, but two pairs were much smaller. They led out the rear of the sitting room, accompanied by a set of larger prints. Gladdic followed the trail out the door and into a hallway.

  Fade made a choking noise and lurched after him. "The hell you think you're doing?"

  Blays trotted after them both. "Does anyone know what's going on?"

  A thought stirred in Dante's mind, but he left it unspoken. Gladdic tracked the footsteps past the kitchen and down another corridor, with Fade hectoring him in increasingly strident tones. The small footsteps led to a dingy door that might have been a pantry. They stopped there. The larger set that had traveled with them reversed and headed back down the corridor toward the sitting room.

  Gladdic set an ear to the door, then pulled back his head and lifted a quizzical eyebrow. "What do you keep in here, Fade?"

  "Food! Roots and such!" Spittle flew from Fade's mouth. "G
et out of my house!"

  Gladdic reached for the door handle. Fade stormed forward. He was a heavyset man with some muscle to him and if he struck Gladdic it was likely the old man would fall. Gladdic glanced at Fade's feet. A white glow outlined the man's sandals. His lower body locked up, his upper body swaying forward; he windmilled his arms for balance, but his feet and legs were so firmly rooted in place he couldn't have fallen over if he'd been struck in the back with a mallet.

  Gladdic smiled at him so briefly Dante wasn't sure that it had been there at all. The priest swung open the door. The room beyond exhaled the smell of dirt and tubers and spiced sausages. Windowless, it was as dark as a cavern. Gladdic lifted a finger and flooded the room with gentle light.

  Two young children huddled on the floor, arms wrapped around their knees. Between their identical haircuts—long on top, short on the sides—and the softened features of childhood, Dante couldn't tell whether they were boys or girls. In tandem, they stared at Gladdic, then at Fade, who remained half-frozen behind the priest.

  "Grandchildren?" Gladdic said. "Stand, please."

  Fade wheeled his arms, but Gladdic was out of reach. "Don't you dare. You foreign shit, I'll bait my hooks with your balls. I'll—"

  The priest jerked a thumb at Fade. The man's jaw clamped shut. He stood as static as a statue.

  "Come out, children," Gladdic said. "Into the light."

  The one on the left stood, motioning for the other one to do the same. Hesitantly, they walked out from the pantry, stopping outside the door.

  Gladdic didn't move. "Are you afraid?"

  The one who'd stood first, the shorter of the two, nodded. "Yes, sir."

  "You should be. For your grandfather would rather sacrifice you, and everyone else in this land, than to break his word to the coward who's abandoned him."

  "Grandpa? Did we do something bad?"

  "No, child," Gladdic said. "You are innocent. But innocence is the weakest shield of them all. It splinters the first time it meets a blade."

  Gladdic made a chopping gesture. Fade's head jerked forward as it was released from its bonds. "Stop, you son of a bitch! Stop!"

  Ether sparked on Gladdic's fingertips. "I haven't yet begun."

  "Right." Blays moved forward, reaching for the hilt of his sword. "If this is going where I think—"

  Gladdic gestured again. Whiteness traced Blays' figure. He stopped in his tracks, immobilized except for the raging of his eyes. Gladdic ignored him, staring right back at Fade, whose neck worked and strained.

  A halo of ether formed around Gladdic's index finger. He hovered it over the top of the braver child's head.

  "Get away from her!" Fade shook his head side to side like a dog that's taken a snoutful of pepper. "You're a monster!"

  Gladdic snorted in contempt. "Your words have no power, fool. If the Eiden Rane is not stopped, these children are already dead."

  He shaped the halo into a long needle, lowering it to the girl's face. She backed away, her back thumping into the wall. "Grandpa!"

  Dante's heart beat like the wings of a manic bird. Gladdic moved across from the girl, trapping her against the wall, and maneuvered the glowing needle to her ear. Dante called forth to the nether.

  The girl screamed.

  So did Fade. "The Hell-Painted Hills!"

  Gladdic halted the needle. "What of them?"

  "The training grounds are tucked away in the Hell-Painted Hills. You want to find whatever's left of the Odo Sein, that's where you need to go."

  6

  Gladdic touched his chin. "The Hell-Painted Hills."

  Fade nodded, sweat dribbling down his brow, chest heaving. "That's why no one's ever found the place. Only the Odo Sein's power is enough to keep a body from getting poisoned by the old magics."

  "The Hills run for hundreds of miles between the coast and the mountains. Where within them is the academy?"

  Fade rattled off a slew of precise directions to the Hills. "That will take you to a spot known as Frog's Reach. It's right there on the fringe. The Silent Spires—that's the academy—is miles past the border. There's no road, no proper path neither, but the way is marked in gold. Follow the gold, you'll get you to the Spires." He curled his lip. "Except you'll drop dead before you get a mile in. And in the Hills, there isn't even any dirt to bury your foreign corpse."

  Gladdic turned his head to Volo. "Are his directions plausible?"

  She swallowed. "I know where Frog's Reach is, yeah. But nobody travels through the Hills. It's death."

  "Thank you, Fade. At last, you have found a way to speak the truth."

  Gladdic closed his eyes. The needle blinked away. Fade and Blays stumbled forward, released from their invisible bonds. The girl ran past Gladdic and into her grandfather's arms.

  Fade gazed over her shoulder with sheer loathing. "Now get your half-rotted carcass off my land. I don't care what kind of sorcerous devilry you got in your veins—I ever see you again, I will plant my knife in your heart."

  "I would not blame you." Gladdic bowed. "Thank you for your cooperation, Fade Alu."

  They made way for the front door, the sobs fading behind them. Outside, the night air was sluggish and humid. Dante had been getting used to it, but at that moment, it felt suffocating.

  "What," Blays said, batting aside a low-hanging bit of shrub, "in the orgy of the gods was that?"

  Gladdic looked as untroubled as a man waiting on a shaded bench on a spring day. "The guiding of a man toward the light."

  "By paralyzing him while you threatened his granddaughter with a knife made of ether? Would you have hurt her?"

  "I don't know."

  Blays skipped ahead and planted himself in the middle of the path, blocking it. "That's not good enough! I didn't spare your life to watch you hurt children!"

  "And I didn't go on living in order to watch you fail because you lack the courage to win."

  "You asshole, do you even—"

  Dante stepped between them, barring his arms to the side. "You idiots! Have you forgotten that we're in the middle of enemy territory? How about we wait to accuse each other of war crimes and cowardice until we're somewhere the authorities won't burn us with glass or feed our lower halves to the fish?"

  Teeth gritted, Blays nodded once. Gladdic made an "as you wish" gesture. Dante wasn't entirely sure they had proper inns in Tanar Atain—conceivably, if you went to visit another city, you could simply pole your raft-house to it and live in that—but upon asking Volo, she confirmed that, though rare, such establishments did exist.

  They got in the canoe and Volo guided them through the endless canals. As soon as they exited the island district, she came to a stop in front of a three-story building skirted by wide porches. Laughter rolled out of the open windows. Rather than being built on land, the structure was held up by thick stilts, as though it had once been a dock until its owners thought of a more profitable use for it.

  Otherwise, it was more or less like any inn you'd see in Narashtovik or Mallon, with the exception of the "stables," which took the form of a miniature marina enclosed with fences above the water and nets below it. It was overseen by a guard whose egg-shaped body was a local rarity, given that most everyone spent a good portion of their day poling or paddling boats around, hacking at plants with machetes, or shaping beams into new rafts and docks. Volo didn't leave her new canoe behind until she had thoroughly impressed into the guard that if her boat got stolen, she would in turn steal no less than one of his testicles.

  They secured a room (third floor, which Volo said would get a better breeze) and headed up to it. Dante bolted the door behind them. Blays and Gladdic separated like combatants in an arena. Volo sat on a mat in a corner, looking downcast. Naran moved to a wall, hands clasped behind his back.

  Blays stood across from Gladdic, held apart by a shin-high table. He hadn't taken off his sword belts yet. "You were going to do it, weren't you? You were going to kill that little girl."

  "Killing her would have b
een inefficient." It had been a long day of travel and most men Gladdic's age would be hunting for a chair, but he stayed on his feet. "Her grandfather broke before she'd felt the slightest sting of pain."

  "But if he hadn't buckled, you would have hurt her until he did."

  "Bask in your self-righteousness. I above anyone know how good it feels. How intoxicating it is to condemn your enemies as evil and yourself as the wielder of virtue's sword!"

  "Quit with the speeches," Dante said. "You sound like a mad priest."

  Gladdic smirked at that, then sobered. "Look to our results. No one was hurt. And we gained the location of the last remaining Odo Sein."

  Blays flung out his hands. "No one was hurt this time! But if we hike out to these Silent Spires, and they tell us to go fuck ourselves running, what's your plan then? Start torturing the youngest person in sight?"

  "If such an act was required to stop the Eiden Rane, you would spare one child and sacrifice the world instead?"

  "Some things aren't worth compromising on, you son of a bitch. Like, I don't know, baby-killing!"

  Gladdic lowered his face and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Conventional morality works against conventional threats. But the threat posed by the lich is beyond all scale. If we don't accept the nature of what we face, and adapt to its horrors, we will lose."

  Blays' face had gone scarlet. "This was a bad idea."

  "I'll fight the lich with everything I have," Dante put in. "But I won't become a monster. We can't give up our souls to this."

  Gladdic rubbed his jaw. "That would make our task much harder."

  "Then we'll work harder."

  "As if we weren't already? Restricting our methods will only increase the risk of our defeat."

  "Then we'll risk it! Gods damn, man, I've done more than my share of killing. And I'd do most of it again. Despite that, I still think I'm a decent person—or that I'm at least capable of being saved. But if I start torturing children, then I don't get to believe that anymore."

  The old man considered him for some time. "So be it. But know that if I must sacrifice my soul to end this, I will do so in a heartbeat."