The Light of Life

by Edward W. Robertson

  When he dreamed, he dreamed of the sister sailing away from the feast in her canoe. When he woke, he still didn't know where she'd gone.

  ~

  The day began the same as the others, but they hadn't been on their way for two hours when Gladdic pulled them off course and onto an island. He canvassed the ground with his back hunched, murmuring to himself under his breath.

  Failing to find enough traces there, he moved onto the next island. After a minute of hunting around, he took a knee, gesturing in the air. A miniature Andrac unfurled, as small as the one they'd worked with before.

  They returned to the canoe, taking the demon with them. Gladdic examined each island they passed. Spotting one that sported crumbling stone foundations, he directed them to it. There, he pieced together a second knee-high Andrac, returning with it to the boat.

  "It isn't far now." Gladdic held his fingers to his left temple. "Be on the lookout for Blighted. The last thing we need is for him to know that we are coming."

  Blays kept both eyes on the water ahead of them. He was so intent on this task that he was taken by complete surprise when the forest fell away and the Hell-Painted Hills burned before them.

  The fiery patterns in the black stone were as subtle as a half-naked woman cartwheeling down the market street, but that day, Blays' eyes were pulled two hundred yards north. There, a straight light brown line extended from the swamps and into the heights, heading directly into the interior.

  Blays' mouth fell open. "Lyle's balls, it would have been nice of Ara to tell us they had a road! Or were we supposed to figure that out for ourselves, too?"

  They'd stopped moving, but Gladdic reached for the gunwale for support. "You have been to the Silent Spires, you buffoon. There is no road to it—at least not yet."

  Blays glanced between Gladdic and the strip of clear earth. "That's why he's here, isn't he? To use his earth-moving talents to create an untainted path through the Hills. So the lich and his army can march on the Spires without dying before they get there. Would that even work?"

  "The Eiden Rane must believe so. He can easily test his theory by sending a few Blighted along the road. Should they survive, his invasion will follow."

  Bek's hand moved to the hilt of his sword. "We have to stop Dante from reaching the Spires. If we can't un-Blight him, then we must destroy him."

  "We'll bring him back." Blays could hear the tightness in his own voice. "And then we'll kill the fucking lich."

  They retreated a short way into the swamp, bringing the canoe into some shrubs at the edge of an island. Gladdic gestured toward the distant road, nodding to his Andrac. The pair of demons slipped into the water, swimming across it and emerging on the grassy strip bordering the wasteland. As soon as the Star-Eaters set foot on the bare rock, they seemed to blink from sight, the black of their bodies nearly matching the color of the ground beneath them. A slight ripple across the shinier parts of the rock was the only sign they were moving.

  The three humans sat in the canoe in silence. Every time a dragonfly buzzed past, Blays' eyes locked to it, watching it for any indication it was under Dante's control.

  An hour later, Gladdic lifted his head, gazing into the hills. The two little demons returned to the swamp, surfacing next to the boat.

  Gladdic furrowed his brow, silently conversing with them. "Dante is working on the end of the road some two miles from here. He appears to be alone."

  Blays took up his paddle. "Shall we?"

  "Not yet, I think. Better to wait until later today, when he has exhausted his power extending the road. If he attempts to go elsewhere, I will know of it."

  Much as he wanted to rush in then and there, Blays had to agree to the tactical sensibility of the plan. Which did little to make the ensuing wait any less excruciating. Gladdic sent one Andrac back into the wasteland to observe Dante from a distance, assigning the other to patrol the swamps around the canoe to make sure nothing was creeping up on them.

  Mid-afternoon, the first Andrac dashed out of the hills and crossed to the canoe. Gladdic nodded as it passed its thoughts or memories to him, or however it was that the priest communicated with his bloodthirsty demons.

  "Dante seems to have finished for the day," Gladdic said. "The time is now."

  Blays' pulse doubled. "Bek, can I make a request?"

  "You may," Bek said.

  "While you're connected to him, can you also make him shit himself?"

  The knight frowned. "I don't understand. Do you think his condition has filled his bowels with poisons?"

  "I think we'll never have a chance like this again."

  Gladdic clenched his hand in front of his chest. "Before we go forth, remember what will happen if we let ourselves get killed. We will lose Bek, who may be the only Knight of Odo Sein in the country who is able to venture outside of the Spires. We will lose the Aba Quen, delivering it to the hands of the enemy. We will lose our own lives, and with them Tanar Atain will lose one of its few remaining hopes. And when Dante completes his path to the Silent Spires, and the Eiden Rane tears down the towers, the land's last hope will fall with them."

  Blays smiled hard. "Do you think I don't understand the cost of failure? I've fought more wars than you've started. And I'm ready for this one."

  Gladdic nodded once. Blays brought the canoe in to the boundary of the swamp. Once the others were out, he dragged it into the grass and flipped it upside down. He got a glass jar from his pack. The bearded crab sat in the bottom, resigned to its new lot in life.

  Perhaps he should have kept it, just in case. But Blays wasn't sure that he'd be back. And if he did return, one way or another, he wouldn't need it anymore.

  Besides, if he was about to die, it would be nice to have done one more act of kindness before the end, however small. He removed the perforated lid, set the jar on its side, and waited for the crab to scuttle out onto the bank. It vanished into the grass.

  Blays stepped into the Hell-Painted Hills.

  Heat baked from the black rock like a brick oven. A hot breeze blew down to the swamps. Blays had already been sweating, but he was now dripping with it, blasted from below by the stone and above by the sun. Gladdic waved his hand, shading them with a flattened circle of nether. This helped just enough.

  Blays made for the road. After the toe-grabbing crags of the warped landscape, walking on the hard-packed earth felt like the difference between swimming in stormy seas and canoeing over placid waters. In the steady wind, some of his sweat began to cool.

  As they neared the crown of the first hill, Blays motioned the others down, then crawled forward until he was just past the top. The road continued through the valley and the next hill, so smooth and straight it looked like it'd been painted there by a norren god. He watched the landscape for a full minute, then backed up to the other side of the hill.

  "No sign of him yet," he told Gladdic and Bek. "Or of anything else."

  Gladdic pushed up his lower lip. "You know him better than anyone. Does this feel correct to you?"

  "We've fought before. I'd advise you to assume that we're not going to take him by surprise. But as long as Bek strips the nether from him, all we've got to deal with is a half-decent swordsman."

  He crossed the ridgeline again, heading down the slope, one hand resting on the hilt of a sword. Bek whispered to himself steadily, generating a trickle of the stream, which floated along beside him. The road leveled out momentarily, leading them past a snarled twist of rocks that grasped from the ground like broken fingers.

  Shadows flashed from the rocks. If the nether had been headed straight for the three of them, Gladdic might have been able to deflect it in time. Instead, the darkness plunged into the soil. The dirt fell away beneath Blays' feet, sinking downward as if it were draining into the center of the world.

  They fell.

  17

  The ground dropped away faster than they fell. Another few seconds, and Dante would stop what he was doing, allowing them to complete the process of w
hat they were doing, and splat all over the solid rock at the bottom of the hole.

  "Warlock!" Bek reached out his arm. Splinters of gold streaked upward.

  The ground stopped vanishing beneath them. Blays had expected something like that—had been hoping for it, anyway—and landed on his feet, tucking into a roll. The strap snapped on one of his sandals, which flew away to another side of the dark, circular pit.

  They were a good twenty feet down. Gladdic was breathing in quick gasps. Ether flared, wrapping around his bloody shin and ankle. Catching a glimpse of bone, Blays was extremely glad to be momentarily blinded as the light did its work.

  Gladdic let out a shuddering sigh of relief. The ground beneath them glowed white. He swept his hand to the left as if he were knocking a pile of dishes from a table. Slowly, the earth retook its original shape below them, elevating them back toward the surface.

  A face stuck out over the edge of the hole. The long black hair looked the same as ever, but the rest of what Blays saw made his guts clench tight. Dante's face was gaunter than Gladdic's and as eggshell white as the Blighted. The eyes were sunken, switched from a grayish hue to a light and vivid blue. His body somehow looked more brittle yet much tougher, like the trunk of a stunted mountainside tree that would still be clinging to its crag long after everyone alive today was long buried.

  "You shouldn't have come here." Even his voice was different: there was a brassy ring to it that made Blays feel like he'd been whacked in the head. "You should have run away."

  Blays stepped into his lost sandal, giving the broken straps a hasty knot around his calf. "And you should have known I'm much too dumb to act with anything approaching reason."

  "You saw that I was watching you," Gladdic said. "You conserved your strength while pretending to spend it. And when the demon withdrew, you moved to ambush us."

  "You talk like I've committed treason," Dante said. "But I've acted exactly in line with my orders."

  "This brings you joy? Serving the Eiden Rane like a trained dog?"

  "Why wouldn't I be happy to perfect the world?"

  "I do not see perfect. I see enslavement."

  "That's because your eyes are as cloudy as your urine, you gnarled old goat. History is the soil that all fights and wars grow from. That's why we're going to erase it."

  "What? History?"

  Dante snorted. "Are your ears as weak as your eyes? Yes, we're going to erase history. Along with everything else that divides people from each other. After a while of that, we might even be able to give them their free will back. With everyone united in worship of the Eiden Rane, who will be happy to execute you from a thousand miles away if you ever undermine his law, what's there going to be to fight about?"

  "But you would bring the world to the apocalypse for this! You would destroy everything!"

  "No, we'll leave plenty of trees and animals around. Those are more or less fine. It's the people who need a reset. Arawn cursed us when his mill broke and everything's been awful ever since. As for the apocalypse, we only need one of those, after which we get eternal harmony—which doesn't sound as profound as it is, so I want you to take a second to contemplate the meaning of 'eternal.'" Dante paused like the master at a university. "Got it? Now compare that to the current system of nonstop bloodshed and misery that's presently scheduled to go on until the end of time. If you support that, then I'll happily suggest that you are the real monster."

  Something small and frightened reached for Blays' heart. He booted it aside. "Sounds great, except for the part where you murder or Blight every living soul. And the part where you can't guarantee that this glorious eternal paradise will ever come about in the first place. How do you know the White Lich is telling you the truth? Do you really suppose you can trust a fellow who intends to kill literally everyone?"

  "I've heard him speak. He believes. He's had hundreds of years to plan this. And in a few more weeks, he'll have the power to achieve it." Dante's eerily blue eyes moved to Bek's sword. It was sheathed, but the swamp dragon horn hilt identified it at once as Odo Sein. "Why exactly did you come out here? To kill me? No, probably not. If you'd worked out a sound method of attacking those like us, you would have used it against the Eiden Rane, both to break the main threat and in the hope that killing him would release me and the others from what he's made of us. It wouldn't, by the way. What's done is done. So if you aren't here to kill me, you're here to rescue me, aren't you? How? Did you think you could simply talk me out of serving the man who'll save the world?"

  "We have no such illusions," Gladdic said. "I know that when he takes you, he takes your will as well, much in the way a father would take a knife from a toddler much too young to use it."

  "Then you'd have to undo the taking, wouldn't you?" Dante laughed ringingly. "You think you can reverse the will of the Eiden Rane!"

  "We can." Blays took half a step forward. Over the course of their talk, Gladdic had used the ether to return the earth to its original state, and they were now at ground level, standing twenty feet away from Dante. "There's a way to un-Blight people. We can do the same for you."

  "That's not possible."

  "Why don't we try it and find out?"

  "Stay where you are." Dante lifted one hand, then slowly lowered it. "How would you do this?"

  "Simple. Sort of. The lich has taken something vital from you. All we have to do—"

  "Silence!" Gladdic barred his arm across Blays' chest. "You must not tell him the process. He will relay it to his master, who will work to negate it from ever working again."

  "What's it matter? We're about to turn him. After that, he won't want to tell the lich."

  "And if it doesn't work?"

  "Then there's no secret to expose to the White Lich, is there?"

  "You're lying to me," Dante said. He was the only one among them that wasn't sweating. As unhealthy as he looked, he also looked capable of sitting in the Hell-Painted Hills for thirty years without suffering the slightest discomfort. "If you have no way to undo this, then there's nothing left to talk about."

  "He took your remnant from you, didn't he? The bit of ether that's like your trace. That's what turned you into one of his under-liches. By using the Odo Sein, we can transfer a new remnant into you."

  "Not if I resist you. Even he has his limits, but the Eiden Rane is the only one who can take a trace or a remnant from the unwilling."

  "Unless you have the Aba Quen. Don't worry, your lord will know what it is."

  Dante frowned. Gaunt though his face was, it had become ageless, the wrinkles of sun and age wiped smooth. He turned and paced to his right, circling them. "You really can do this, can't you? You found a way. Or at least you think you did."

  "Don't act that surprised. Now let's get this over with. You'll thank us afterwards."

  "I can't believe you actually think you're going to win. If the lich lets you live to serve him, you're going to be so embarrassed about this."

  "Have you always been this arrogant? Or did I not notice because it was usually turned against someone else? We're going to bring you back to who you were. You can't stop us and you don't have a choice. Please, go willingly."

  "I've given it a lot of thought. And I'm going to tell you to go to hell."

  Blays clenched his teeth. "You huge idiot. We can save you!"

  "No," Dante said. "You can't."

  Still pacing, and without turning toward them, Dante flung out his left hand. Golden splinters cracked from his body and fell to the ground. A storm of nether shot from his palm, roiling toward Gladdic. Gladdic shouted in surprise, throwing himself backwards as he met the darkness with a lightning-shaped prong of ether. The two forces boomed against each other, dispersing into ghostly ash.

  Half-hidden behind the cloud, a black blade seared toward Bek. Bek's eyes flew wide. He tried to duck, but the blade swerved to match his motion. It spun through his neck. His head twirled to the dirt road, landing with a puff of dust.

  Choking in shock, Gladd
ic hammered at Dante with paired streams of darkness and light. Dante opened his hand. With a casual gesture, he threw out a barrage of nether, stopping the streams in a sizzling collision.

  Blays found his swords in his hands. He couldn't remember drawing them. Nether snapped up and down the black steel. His heart was so loud he couldn't hear Gladdic, who looked to be shouting something. Blays took a step forward.

  Dante lifted his hands over his head. "Stop this!"

  Gladdic let the nether twist in his hand. Blays halted, swords angled from his waist.

  "You killed him." Gladdic's voice was shaky, suddenly old. "How?"

  Dante laughed. "While you were racing back and forth across the swamps like such brave heroes, I was studying the Odo Sein. And asking the Eiden Rane for everything he knew about it. Though he was close to an answer, he was missing a few key pieces—but thanks to my training at the Spires, I was able to fill in the gaps. It was challenging, practicing against myself. I wasn't sure it was going to work until the moment I freed myself from the knight's binds."

  "That's why Bek couldn't protect us at the Bastion," Blays said. "It wasn't that he screwed up. The lich must have told the sorcerers there how to break through the Odo Sein. But they weren't quite good enough to stop us."

  Gladdic opened and closed his left hand. "The Odo Sein has protected these lands against sorcerers for centuries. If it could be broken, someone would have done so long ago."

  Dante nudged Bek's head with his toe, rolling it so it faced them. One of the knight's eyes was coated with dust. "I think he'd argue otherwise. The Knights of Odo Sein use the stream to block or sever your connection to the nether. But all they're doing is blocking the connection that's obvious to you. Which means they're undone by their own game, aren't they?"

  "I can't even begin to follow that," Blays said.

  "You don't have to. You never have. All you've ever had to do is slap together a few ridiculous ideas and occasionally stick a sword in someone."

  Gladdic crinkled his brow. "Since all nether is connected, as long as you can access your trace, you can use that to reach out to any other shadows as well."