The Wound of the World

by Edward W. Robertson

  A barrage of arrows forced everyone back into cover. When Dante looked out again, the archers were slowly fanning to left and right, searching for an angle of attack through the field of thin white pillars. Volo hit another knight in the breastplate, but the arrow broke with a metal clink.

  Dante gritted his teeth. "Hold, and the archers get behind us. Retreat?"

  Blays shook his head. "Charge."

  "Ha! You first."

  Blays rolled from behind cover, crouched too low to see or be seen. Dante ran at his heels. Ahead, he caught a glimpse of black scaled armor. Boots clapped against the smooth ground. A knight spotted them, calling to the others in unworried words. Dante's heart sank. He'd been hoping to take at least one of them out before the enemy knew they were coming. He trusted himself to be able to hold off a single knight while Blays dispatched the two others. But if he had to go two on one…then he'd hope Arawn was watching. Or not, considering how embarrassingly he was likely to lose.

  The knights jogged toward them, blades in hand, purple sparks popping from the edges like damp sticks of wood thrown in a fire. They were now too close to the Odo Sein for the enemy archers to fire on them. Dante stood and lifted his sword high, then brought it down to a guard. Blays put his nethereal blade forward, his plain steel weapon held back in reserve.

  A pair of knights converged on Blays. The other two circled toward Dante. Dante stopped in place, ready to dance back behind a trunk to try to keep himself from being engaged by both at once.

  An arrow zipped past his shoulder. The Odo Sein it was racing toward lifted his shield, ready to knock it aside. The bag-headed arrow thumped into the shield. Dante closed his eyes and dropped his legs out from beneath himself.

  The explosion ripped the knight's body into quadrants. Flame spurted between the white trunks. They cracked and toppled, landing with a sound that was heavier than wood but more hollow than stone. Heat breathed over Dante's right arm. He yanked it into the cover of the trunk in front of him.

  Blays jumped to his feet and sprinted toward the blast. The dismembered knight's partner was down on one knee, sword on the ground. Blays took off his head with a looping swipe.

  The two surviving knights exchanged a wordless look, then turned and retreated through the white pillars.

  An enemy arrow whipped over Dante's head. He got down. The air smelled like acrid smoke and an inside-out stomach. The archers covered the Odo Sein's withdrawal, then fell back with them, continuing to pepper Dante and Blays' position with shots.

  Crouching low, Blays unbuckled the dead knights' belts. He crossed one belt over his hip, grabbed up a fallen sword, and sheathed it. Naran and Volo joined them.

  Blays handed the other belt to Naran. "Leave the sword put away until it's time to use it. That is, unless you enjoy feeling like this guy over here." He pointed to a gobbet of former knight, then to another. "And over here. And here. And—"

  "I believe I get the picture." Naran sheathed his sword with a click.

  Volo looked up at Dante. "Is your face always that red? You look like a walking tomato."

  He scowled at her. "Was that you who shot them? Next time you're going to explode something, try not to do it directly in my face."

  "Then keep your face out of my explosions."

  Dante put away his sword. "That tingling. It started when the enemy got near us. I think it might have been a warning."

  Blays glanced down at his blades in disdain. "And they couldn't be bothered to warn us about the half-zombies in the pool?"

  "Then maybe it alerts you when you're in the presence of another sword-bearer."

  "Or maybe you don't know what you're talking about."

  "In these circumstances, that remains a strong possibility. Everyone fit to go on?"

  It turned out he was the only one who'd taken so much as a scratch. The retreating soldiers had gone in the same direction as the spike in Dante's head was pointing. As they moved through the trunks, the ground sloping gently uphill beneath them, he reached again and again for the nether. For years, he'd drawn on it reflexively, often for no purpose but to work his skills near the end of the day. Its lack made him more anxious by the second. A physical repulsion was growing in his gut, telling him to get out.

  But there was a second option to get back to the shadows: to destroy everyone who was keeping them away from him.

  The rain had stopped while they were inside the cavern, but as they hurried onward, it broke open again, drumming against the stony landscape. At the ridge, they got down on their bellies and crawled over the rim, continuing forward for fifteen feet before Dante was confident their silhouettes wouldn't show against the line of the hill.

  Ahead, more white trunks poked from the ground, but there were fewer of them, offering little cover. The land below them was a bowl-shaped valley hundreds of yards across. The white surface was spattered with deposits of iron gray rock which, judging from the shine and the smell, probably were in fact iron ore. Where their edges touched the white matter, the ore had turned not the rusty orange of iron-bearing rock exposed to the weather, but bright crimson. Shallow pools of blood-red water collected in the depressions in the terrain.

  A hillock rose in the center of the valley. At the center of the hillock stood a dark cylinder. The two knights and their complement of archers were running toward the cylinder, where a group of thirty people stood in the rain. Multiple Odo Sein held watch on the perimeter of the hillock, obvious in their heavy armor.

  Most of the others held position between the knight sentries and the center. But next to the cylinder itself, a figure in gray robes gestured his hands to the sky.

  "That's Gladdic," Dante said.

  "And there's a small legion with him," Blays said. "Under normal circumstances, I'd tell them to go get some more friends to make it a fair fight, and then kill Gladdic when they fell for my ruse and left. But I'm guessing by the constipated look on your face that you still can't use the nether."

  "But again, if we kill all the Odo Sein there—"

  "Then we still won't know if there are others lurking around until it's too late."

  "Then what do you want to do? Sneak across this almost completely open field and try to surprise the people who are about to be warned by the other people whose asses we just kicked that we're about to sneak up on them?"

  "I don't know if you're aware of this, but there's typically a reason that people don't launch attacks on people who outnumber them ten times over."

  "Because it's stupid?" Volo said.

  "We could return to the Monsoon," Naran said. "Beseech them for assistance."

  Dante pinched his temples. "We don't even know if they've won their battle with the Drakebane. Or if they'd help us. Besides, whatever Gladdic's working on, he's doing it right now. If we run off to find Riza, by the time we get back, Gladdic could have one of his new demons ready."

  The group they'd skirmished with reached the hillock and ran up it. Blays swept his rain-dampened blond hair back from his brow. "Whatever we're going to do, we better do it before they come hunting for us."

  The knights ascended the mound and kneeled before a man in a green and white tunic that hung to his knees. They spoke, the knights gesturing in the general direction where Dante and the others lay in hiding.

  "Huh," Blays said. "Suppose that's the ol' Drakebane?"

  "Or one of his relatives." Dante wished he'd had a rat on hand to send to listen to the conversation. Then again, in this lifeless land, the appearance of a rat wouldn't draw any less attention than if he were to walk up to the hillock himself.

  The two knights stood, backing off. The man in the long green jabat called out an order; Dante couldn't hear a word of it, but there was no missing the way the exercise of command straightened the man's body. Eight Odo Sein and another eight people in less distinguishable dress gathered around the man giving the orders.

  The group moved out from the mound. Dante had assumed they were mustering to deal with the threat rep
orted by the two knights, but rather than striking west toward Dante and the others, the royal contingent headed northeast.

  Gladdic turned away from his work, watching the contingent depart. They were much too far away for Dante to read his face.

  "Well that makes things a little easier," Blays said. "Now we're only outnumbered six times over."

  "Still too many knights."

  "We don't have to fight all of them. We could walk up to arrow range, lob some insults at Gladdic to distract him, then have Naran hit him with the last flaming star."

  "And then run like hell?"

  "Unless you've decided to start a vendetta against all of his friends, too."

  Dante turned to Naran. "How close will we have to be? How's your bow string feeling in this rain?"

  "It's well-waxed," Naran said. "I don't think this is the first time Tanarian archers have had to deal with a little moisture."

  They spent the next few minutes sketching out their approach, including ways to try to force Gladdic from cover. As they finalized their plans, Dante glanced over at the cylinder, where Gladdic had been motionless for some time. Two Odo Sein ordered six people in plain white jabats to stand shoulder to shoulder. The knights moved down the line and the people dropped, bleeding. Gladdic kneeled over the bodies, arms extended to his sides.

  As Dante watched, a looming black figure unfurled from nowhere to stand beside the priest. It spread its clawed hands wide and tipped back its head, rain falling into its star-bright mouth.

  "Bastard sons of bastard gods," Dante said. "He's got an Andrac."

  The others all looked over. Naran's face hardened in its newly distant way. Volo looked uncertain but defiant, as if her turning back of the Odo Sein had rebuilt the resolve she'd lost after the battle in the pool.

  "Right," Blays said. "Shit."

  Dante smacked his fist against the ground. "We can't go at them now. The ether's locked down, too—there's no way to hurt the demon."

  "That's not the only way to hurt them, is it? I can cut them from within the shadows."

  "Which we can't get to, either. We'll have to wait until they make camp. Or see if we can draw Gladdic away somehow."

  "Why would we do that? He's just made our job easier."

  "Is it our job to die as fast as we can? Because that's the only thing that's going to happen if we go up against the Odo Sein, an Andrac, Gladdic, and whatever else they have over there."

  "Think, no-brains. What are the Andrac made out of?"

  "Nether," Dante said. "Traces."

  "And what are our blades powered by?"

  "Also traces." Dante could feel his mind struggling to raise and hold on to the implications of what Blays was saying. Before the logic could slip away, he retreated to the same quiet, impersonal distance he used when working with the ether. A state where things seemed to unfold on their own. He looked up. "It should work. But we'd be banking our lives on a theory."

  "Yes, but at least if I'm wrong, then you'll get the chance to tell me all about it in the Mists."

  "If we wind up in the Mists' version of Tanar Atain, I think I'll skip straight to the Worldsea."

  "This idea," Naran said. "It necessitates being engaged by the Andrac before any of their other fighters? Is it safe to assume that will happen? If I have learned anything, it is that the captain who thinks he can predict a battle had better tell his first mate where he'd like to be buried."

  "Gladdic will send the Andrac," Dante said. "They're his life's work. An extension of himself. There will be nothing more satisfying to him than to use them to destroy us."

  Blays wiped rain from his eyebrows. "Anyway, this is our backup plan. Our main plan is for you to use the last flaming star to blast Gladdic into pious stew."

  Plan in hand, Dante remained kneeling behind the screen of bone-like limbs, trying to pick out their best approach to the center of the valley. A minute later, after some fussing about by Gladdic, a second Star-Eater unfolded from nowhere, stretching its broad arms like a man readying to split wood.

  Dante swore. Most times, waiting and watching made you better prepared for what was to come. Sometimes, though, it merely allowed you to believe you were preparing when in fact all you were doing was delaying. And a situation that could have been solved slipped beyond your control.

  In a low crouch, Dante moved to the next grove of waist-high growths. The others followed behind him, their sandals barely making a sound on the wet rock. For all their stealth, they weren't a third of the way toward the hillock before one of the Odo Sein pointed at them, his voice booming over the hiss of the rain.

  Most of the remaining knights gathered to watch them, with a few remaining on the periphery to ward against a sneak attack from another direction. Gladdic turned from his work and stared across the bowl. There was no sense trying to hide; it was only slowing them down. Dante stood and walked toward the raised lump of land, keeping his hand close to his sword. Rain pattered on the flat pockets of iron with a metallic beat.

  The walk felt much longer than it was. They started up the hillock. Its sides were half covered in irregular flows of iron, as if the metal had been heated to a liquid and then poured down the slopes to harden.

  Dante came to a stop halfway up the incline. Now that they were closer to the cylinder, he could see that the iron monument at the middle of the land wasn't round, but a hexagon, its sides inscribed with foreign runes. It stood fifteen feet high and twenty across, but its solidity was marred by river-like cracks in its surface, their depths weeping bloody rust.

  Gladdic stood above them, flanked by his two Andrac, whose wide alien mouths were drawn back in hideous grins. A pair of knights were with him as well, seemingly untroubled by the demons mere feet away. The other knights waited on the flanks, mailed fists resting on the horn-pommeled handles of their swords. A few archers stood twenty feet back from the front line, leaning over their nocked arrows to shield their fletching from the rain.

  "Dante Galand." Gladdic's voice was a melodious mix of amusement and scorn. "Do you find your own land so unbearable that you would rather abandon it to follow me into the depths of this one?"

  "I'd like nothing more to be home," Dante answered. "But you keep trying to destroy the homelands of others—first in the Plagued Islands, then in Collen, now here."

  As he spoke, Naran and Volo spread to either side of him, kneeling down behind small outcroppings of white rock. It wasn't perfect cover, but it was better than nothing. Blays remained two steps behind him and to his right.

  Gladdic sneered down at them, his wet gray hair plastered to his head. "Your righteousness sickens me."

  Dante laughed. "My righteousness? You use the nether—a substance you kill others for touching—to make abominations I would never dream of! And then you claim to be the holiest man in Bressel!"

  "I use tools the gods forbid in order to achieve things men can't dream. When at last all heresy is quenched, I will quench it from myself as well."

  "That's a very convenient excuse. It would justify you to do anything you want."

  "You mean like murder thousands of innocent people?" Blays said.

  "You mean in Collen?" Dante said. "Or Tanar Atain? You'll have to forgive me, he's racked up so many massacres that—"

  Gladdic took two strides forward. "My purpose here is not to destroy. As that is all you do, that is all you can see in others. I am here for salvation."

  Blays motioned to the demons. "And what are they here for? The free lunch?"

  "They are here to undo a threat that could undo us all. So I beg you, slander me with your petty notions of hypocrisy. How much will you care for following your own rules when everything stands at its end?"

  "Has it ever occurred to you that you're a raving lunatic?"

  "Look around you!" Gladdic thrust his arms apart to take in the twisted landscape of red, white, and black. He laughed, a dry and raven-like caw. "Does this look like a land fit for humans? Here, you face total enslavement. One that will
come at the hands of the same darkness you worship."

  Dante had meant to engage Gladdic in order to buy plenty of time for Naran to position and ready himself to take his shot—the only one he'd get—but instead, Dante's anger had sucked him into an argument with a madman.

  "I know who you are," he said. "And you are a liar."

  Gladdic waved a long-fingered hand at the air. "Your words sicken my ears. You must have noticed your nether is powerless here. You will surrender. Or my servants will devour you."

  "You're right," Dante said. "I can't reach the nether. But do you really think I'd be here if I didn't know exactly how to kill you?"

  He lifted his arm and swung it down. To his left, Naran's bow twanged. The arrow sped uphill. Gladdic's eyes widened. Despite his age, he was nimble, his long thin legs coiling to dodge the attack.

  But it would be too late to escape the weapon's blast.

  Beside him, an Odo Sein launched himself forward. The arrow struck him in the chest. For the blink of an eye, nothing happened—had the arrow gotten too sodden to work?—and then came the lightning and the thunder.

  Dante whirled, shielding his face. Heat whooshed past him. The shock of the explosion rattled his guts. He turned, squinting through the smoke. The knight lay in pieces. Gladdic had been knocked backward onto the rocky surface. Steam whorled from his soaked robes, but he was already stirring, swaying to his hands and knees.

  Half his face was pinkened. He twisted his features into a snarl, shouting words Dante didn't recognize, and thrust his finger downhill. The two Andrac spread their jaws wide, throats glowing, and loped toward Dante. The Knights of Odo Sein advanced behind the demons in two loose groups, spreading themselves out to avoid losing more than one at a time to any more flaming stars. One group looked to be headed toward Naran, the other veering toward Volo.

  Blays drew his twin blades, making them dance. The rain seemed to sizzle in the purple-black light. Dante drew his weapon, angling the blade toward the nearer Andrac. The handle tingled in his palm. Uphill, Gladdic faltered a step, a line of confusion crossing his face to see them standing their ground.