"Close enough," she said. "Close enough to be given the truth. In practice, the Golden Stream fades away much too fast for us to get any use out of what the people spark up while they're arguing away with each other. But what this custom does accomplish is to train every single citizen to be a potential Knight of Odo Sein. As with your warlock degeneracy, most of them show little talent for it. Through dana kide, those who are good at it become very easy to spot."
Blays scratched the back of his head. "That's a bit manipulative, tricking your whole society into arguing all day long just to make your job a little easier."
"The concept of dana kide is wrong, then? When they reason their way to a better premise, and share that new idea with those around them, they aren't making themselves and their people wiser and stronger?"
"That part sounds noble enough. It's the part where you're totally deceiving them that feels deceptive."
Ara laughed in derision. "So what if we lie to them? We improve their lives with dana kide, while also using it to prevent them from being turned into the Blighted—or from being eaten alive by them. How horrible! How shameful! Your brilliant foreign logic has lifted the blinders from my eyes. We'll go serve our citizens up to the Eiden Rane at once."
Blays held up his hands. "All right! Goodness, for someone who thinks arguing is so great, you sure hate to be disagreed with."
"Your arguments stink like fish carcasses. You're not angry at me when you make a bad one, you're embarrassed at yourself for having made them." She swept a strand of hair from her brow. "If you're done condemning the Odo Sein for preserving our people against a threat that would have destroyed any of your worthless countries centuries ago, I'd like to congratulate you. It only took you a week to discover what it took us fifty years to work out."
"That's how long it took to found the Odo Sein?" Dante said. "Does that mean we're ready to learn your story?"
"Just how much do you think you've actually accomplished here? So you've worked out a few facts we've known about for hundreds of years? Get back to work."
The flickers of stream they'd generated earlier were nearly all gone. Blays started in on his flexing and relaxation routine—Dante refused to even think of it by name—but before he could finish, and "swoop in on" the golden dots, the last of them vanished.
"Unless we get extremely lucky, we're going to need a steady source of the stream," Dante said. "Volo, you're the best at generating it consistently. Mind dreaming up a few forests for us?"
"Yeah," she said. "But I'll do it anyway."
She smoothed out her mat, took a seat, and closed her eyes. Blays resumed his routine. Ara watched him for a moment, but grew bored of the sight almost immediately, which Dante found gratifying.
"It will be some minutes before the girl has assembled her inner world in enough detail to begin generating sparks," Gladdic said. "In the meantime, shall we take up the Garnassus of Ohelion?"
Dante looked at him as if Gladdic had suggested they disrobe for a wrestling match. The Garnassus was a historic debate between two Mallish scholars named Halwick the Stout and Bordrang the Black. Dating back four hundred years, and concerning the trials of a man named Tarlan who is repeatedly wronged and seeks a variety of revenges on his foes, it was primarily used to provide a framework within which neophyte scholars could debate the nature of moral action, particularly whether it was absolute, or influenced by the context around it.
"Ohh," Dante said. "You want to see if we can create some stream of our own? Do you want the position of Halwick? Or Bordrang?"
"Bordrang." Gladdic sounded like he was tasting the word and finding it to his liking. "I have always chosen Halwick. It is time to try a different course."
They set to arguing, with Dante going first. He'd usually found Halwick the Stout to be safe and predictable, but Gladdic made his counterpoints so fiendishly that Dante fought to keep himself on tenable ground. As Gladdic argued that Tarlan's vigilante killing of the man who'd stolen his flock was a fully appropriate response to an attack on Tarlan's ability to clothe and feed himself, a glimmer of gold appeared between them.
Blays' eyes darted to it. He exhaled in a rush. Scrunching up his brow, Blays inhaled and exhaled again. Dante and Gladdic resumed the debate.
A minute later, the glimmer dwindled away. Blays shook his head. "Nothing."
Dante broke off mid-argument with Gladdic. "You swooped?"
"I swooped. Then I swerved. And for good measure, I tried a flying backwards triple somersault. Still couldn't touch it."
Volo's exercise produced her first blot of stream. In almost no time at all, she was putting out a slow but steady flow of the substance. By contrast, Dante and Gladdic's production was sporadic and spotty.
Twenty minutes in, Blays straightened and stretched back his neck. "I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere. Anyone else want to take a shot?"
Dante took his place while Blays started up a raucous argument with Gladdic. Performing the Wave o' Muscles felt ridiculous, but it was oddly relaxing. Regardless, Dante was soon so wrapped up in trying to reach the Golden Stream that he forgot about how ridiculous he might look.
One attempt after the other came to failure. It wasn't even like he was bouncing off the motes, or sliding across them. It was more like they weren't there at all. He deployed every trick he'd learned in his life-long efforts to not be terrible with the ether, but none bore fruit.
When he grew frustrated, he switched out for Gladdic, who switched out in turn for Volo. They lunched, then spent the remainder of the afternoon beating their heads against the wall of the stream. At last, the setting sun informed them it was time to call it quits.
"It's no wonder the stream has such limited use," Dante said. "You can barely gin up enough of it to see it. And a speck of it barely lasts long enough for you to get mad at it before it fades away."
Blays clapped him on the shoulder. "You make it sound like we spent the day failing so badly our mothers don't know whether to disown us or blow our inheritance on hemlock. I say we made a lot of progress today. A few more steps forward like this and we'll be ready to go bash the lich's big white head in."
Dante wasn't too sure about the last part, but he was heartened by the rest. He'd let himself get dragged down by nothing. Just like always, the elation of success had been as short-lived as a mayfly: for today's success became tomorrow's normal. And when failure rose over your head like cold water, the memory of your last successful gasp of air was no comfort at all.
~
He was asleep, and enjoying it very much, when something twitched in his ear. This startled him so violently that he fell halfway from his wicker bed. The pulse came a second time. A loon.
He touched his ear. "Yes?"
"My lord?"
"Most likely. Who's this?"
"Why, it's Jona, sir."
Still drunk on sleep, it took Dante a moment to place the name: Naran's mate from the Sword of the South. The room in the tower was utterly dark except for a band of moonlight slicing through the gauzy curtains. The others were snoring, but if Dante kept up his conversation, they wouldn't be for long. Dante slipped out the door and into the stairwell that connected the two rooms comprising that floor of the tower.
"Jona," he said. "I understand that the Collen Basin is far away from here, but I'll assure you that it's the middle of the night in Tanar Atain as well."
"Oh, most sincere and severe apologies for waking you. But I bring news from Aris Osis."
"Aris Osis? How?"
"Well, being that that's where I am, sir."
"I thought you were in the Collen Basin, Jona."
"Yes, I was. Right up until I wasn't."
"Your presence there was a way to keep us in contact with the entire region. Who authorized your departure?"
"Why, Captain Naran did. Lord."
"How? He couldn't possibly have made it to Collen already."
"He's authorized me now, you see."
"Now that you're in Aris
Osis? He authorized you retroactively?"
"Indeed. It's a mariner thing, you see. Wouldn't expect a man of your stature to be bothered with our customs, crude as they can be."
"Try me, Jona. Why did you feel you could leave Collen without my authorization?"
"Well, Captain Naran is my captain, my lord. And you're just some lord."
"I suppose there's no arguing with that." Dante frowned down the dim stairwell. "You're right. You're not my subject, Jona, and I'm grateful for your help over these last few months even though you owed me nothing. Naran made it to Aris Osis all right, then? Why are you two still there? Looking for passage out?"
"That would be somewhat redundant, I'd think, since we have the Sword of the South right here. The crew snuck back into port some time ago to search for the captain."
"I was worried Naran might never see his ship again. Thanks for letting me know."
"You're welcome, lord. But I didn't wake you at hell's own hour of the night to let you know that everything is well and good. There's been an attack on Aris Osis."
"By the Monsoon?"
"They were a part of it, to be sure. Along with a horde of ghouls."
Dante had been pacing about the stairwell. Hearing this, he stopped short. "The Blighted? Was the White Lich with them?"
Jona repeated the question, voice faint; in the background, Naran's voice answered, too indistinct for Dante to make out. Jona said, "Captain doesn't think so, but there was certainly a lesser lich at hand. I don't know what such a thing as that might be, but I'm guessing the both of you do. It was an ugly night. Very ugly. Even after we'd turned the tide, and were driving the ghouls from the city, they were carrying captives off with them. Young and old alike. Don't think I'll forget their screams for some time."
"How were the defenders able to drive off the lesser lich? Were there sorcerers present?"
"Oh, it was quite a scene, my lord. The lich and his ghouls seized the outer districts with hardly a loss. The fighting in the city proper was as vicious as you'll ever see, yet one by one, the towers fell. The Tanarians retreated to make their last stand on Turtleback Island. They knocked down the only bridge to it, but the ghouls waded through the water like they had no need for air at all. With the lich at their backs casting his sorcery about, they broke the front ranks of the defenders.
"But just as they were set to break through, and capture the whole port, two knights in scaled armor charged in with blazing purple swords! Gods, it was a sight. The lich's foul magics stopped dead. One of the knights was dragged down by the ghoulish hordes, but the second cut the lich clear in twain. After that, the ghouls fought like the demons they are. Looked ready to die to the last of 'em. But just like that, they turned and retreated from the city in a great mass, snatching up whoever they could grab along the way."
Dante's mouth had gone dry. "You said one of the Odo Sein—the knights—died in battle. What about the other?"
"Why, he's being showered with meat and ale as we speak, lord."
"I need you and Naran to find him. You can't let him leave the city. He may be our only hope of victory."
"The captain had similar thoughts. You see, sir, the Tanarians might have won this battle, but they suffered most horrible losses. And the Drakebane's already drawn off most of the city's best soldiers in his boats. Captain Naran thinks that if the devils muster a second attack, the entire city will fall. The slaughter that would come after would make what happened in the Collen Basin look like a slap-fight. Tens of thousands of people, sir. Captain Naran thinks you're the only one who can stop that from coming to pass."
"If the next attack is led by another lesser lich, he may be right. But if it's headed by the Eiden Rane, we'll all die. But we're in the middle of learning to use the Odo Sein ourselves. We can't afford to abandon our training right now."
"Yes, the captain thought you'd say something like that."
"Then I assume he also knows why we can't go."
Jona chuckled. "As a matter of fact, he's got a theory, the crafty devil. He figured you'd say that even if twenty thousand souls are lost in Aris Osis, breaking away from your training would guarantee the loss of infinitely more."
"That's exactly what we're looking at. No matter how gruesome things become in the short-term, we have to think about what will save us all in the long-term."
"Captain Naran understands that, surely he does. But he also asks if you might not find a way to continue your most important training and stop the city from falling to liches and ghouls."
Dante puffed his cheeks with a sigh. "To have any hope of that, you have to enlist the surviving Knight of Odo Sein to our side. Do you understand me?"
"Quite clearly, my lord."
"Good. Let me know if and when you've got him. I'll see what I can come up with on my end."
He closed the connection to the loon. The stars indicated he had three hours until dawn. Judging that the situation wasn't quite an emergency, Dante went back to bed, but he didn't get much sleep. He finally dropped off only to be shaken awake what felt like minutes later. His eyes were dry and scratchy, but he was lost in a pleasant stupor until he wandered out to the stairwell and remembered that everything had been upended.
The others were already at breakfast. He ran down to join them, casting a glance about for lurking servants before explaining everything that Jona had told him.
"Shit," Blays said after Dante finished. "Rains of it. Hoist the shields high and don't come out until the splatter stops. There's no way we can go to Aris Osis."
Dante gave him a puzzled look. "If we made it through the Hills once, there's nothing to stop us from doing it again. Aris Osis is only a few days from here."
"Yes, and if we make that journey, we might as well find a planet-sized knife to cut the world's throat with. I thought we were here to learn how to stop the White Lich ourselves."
"We are pathetic acolytes and the gods only know how long it'll take for one of us to gain real skill. Meanwhile, there's a fully-trained Odo Sein who might be willing to help us."
"One person. Who we've never met before. And who might be willing to help. And who might not get targeted by the White Lich's advance agents, or exposed in a gambit by a lesser lich, or any number of other plans the big fellow will devise in response to the Odo Sein thwarting his first attack on the city."
"Aren't you normally the one who wants to try to save every last man, woman, child, dog, rodent, and cockroach that comes into harm's way?"
"Sure," Blays said. "But I've also never run into an enemy who might qualify for godhood. Before, no matter what we were up against, I always thought we stood a chance."
"You don't now?"
"This is the first time I'm not sure that we do."
"I fear that we have no choice." Gladdic dabbed his mouth with a napkin. "By using his pet sorcerers as proxies, the Eiden Rane has found a way to move more aggressively than we anticipated. If he swallows Aris Osis, he'll have an army of no less than twenty thousand Blighted. With a force like that, he will absorb the rest of Tanar Atain as fast as he is able to move his troops."
Blays shrugged. "So we bide our time until we're ready, then ambush him."
"Impossible. He'll keep himself in the middle of an entire horde of Blighted. We will have no way to get close to him."
"Then I'll shadowalk through the horde. Or Dante will tunnel in beneath the lich. Or we'll deploy any of the thousands of other ways we've learned to kill people over the years."
"You forget that as his army grows, his personal strength swells as well. It is likely he will reach a point where he is immune to the effects of Odo Sein—or even to sorcery as a whole."
"It's 'likely,' is it? And what are you basing that on? A long personal friendship with the White Lich? Or was it just the first thing you found when you inserted your head up your ass to search for ideas?"
Gladdic's white eyebrows knitted together. "I am reporting to you the same information that I have heard from the Drakebane,
his mystics, and his historians. I suppose your expertise is superior?"
"What have you actually done for us, though? Told us about the prime body, which plenty of other people seem to have known about?"
"I got you here! The place which you now believe is vital to our enterprise!"
"All you did was threaten an old man and his grandchildren. I'm reasonably sure I could have done that much. Assuming I could stop vomiting at the thought of it."
Dante noted, with mild irony, that their increasingly acrimonious discussion was causing a few stray bits of stream to drift above the low-slung breakfast table.
Gladdic pounded his open palm on the table, drawing a look from a servant mopping the other side of the chamber. "I have proven my loyalty to our cause time and time again. Now is not the time for division!"
"Maybe that's exactly what it's time for," Blays said. "If you think you can go to Aris Osis and put down the lich, nobody's stopping you. I think my efforts are best spent learning to become the only thing that can make him weak enough to stand up to."
Gladdic drew back from the table. "A perfectly reasonable suggestion. Who, then, will go, and who shall stay?"
Dante saw two paths opening before him—and he was afraid which one he would take. He planted his hands on the table. "Think this through, you fools. The choice doesn't have to be one or the other. It doesn't even have to be made right now. First of all, unless Naran can convince the knight to join us, the whole thing is moot, and we'll stay here. Second, the White Lich might not press the attack until he's had time to regroup in the swamps and add to his ranks. There's no need for us to go anywhere until we know there's going to be another assault on Aris Osis. Until both those conditions are met, we'll continue to train at the Spires."
Blays scratched his thumb against his upper lip. "And what do we do if they are met?"
"We get to Aris Osis as fast as possible. We stand against the White Lich or whoever he sends in his stead. If we die, we die. If we kill the Eiden Rane, we throw ourselves a party and we won't stop that party until the Tanarians get sick of us and throw us out. But if we only push him into retreat, then we'll come back to the Silent Spires and continue our work."
The Light of Life Page 27