The White Tree

by Edward W. Robertson

  "Do something," Dante said. "I want to see how someone else does it."

  "Could be useful," Cally said. His face kept its vaguely bored expression. Dante was about to ask when he was going to start when he felt Cally's summons looming in front of him like the empty space beyond a cliff. Dante laughed and punched the old man in the stomach.

  He woke up some time later. The world was fuzzy and gray. A toe nudged his side and he realized it had been doing so for some seconds.

  "What happened."

  "You expressed a sudden urge to cease existing," said a blurry, Cally-shaped object. The object helped Dante to his feet and the boy faltered and leaned against the old man. "See what you wanted to see?"

  "I'd had enough talk," he said when he trusted himself to speak. His nose tickled. He wiped it, saw blood.

  "We'll start there," Cally said. "The nether will come once the mind is ready to receive it, but it's the nether's nature to thirst for the water of life. And I'm not talking about whiskey."

  "Blood?" Dante said, wiping his fingers in his palm. Except for that last part, Cally had sounded like something from the Cycle.

  "Blood."

  "I'd wondered about all those scars on your arms."

  "Most of them are actually the product of an oversized mouth." Cally smirked, then pressed a knuckle between his eyes and peered at Dante. "Call to it. It's going to look like it's eating you. It's not, so don't be afraid."

  "It can sense fear?"

  "What? It's not a bear. Being scared just makes you do stupid things."

  Dante counted his exhalations for most of a minute, then unlimbered his mind. They came at once, swirling in his outstretched palm, minnow-like wraiths that seemed to flash black.

  "So far you've worked the nether in its most basic state," Cally said. "Blood amplifies its strength, allows it to truly alter what it touches."

  Dante waited, watching them circle one another. Others came without being called. The ball expanded from a large marble to the size of his closed fist, but mostly it grew denser until he thought he could feel an icy weight denting his skin.

  "It's a fragile thing in this state. It burns as violently as Souman's oil."

  Little pricks and tingles rippled across the flesh of his palm, as if the leechish things were nibbling with razor teeth. He no longer felt the dull throb from when Cally knocked him out. His vision flickered, then returned brighter than before. The scent of grass stuffed his nostrils. It would snow that night, he knew, he could feel it in the breeze. The muscles of his arm began to twitch.

  "This is when it wants to create or destroy. This is the nether in its most potent state. Release it now."

  The thing was so dark he could barely bring himself to look at it. The individual motes had stopped following each other's tails and the ball pulsed slowly, almost as if it were breathing. A note as high as the clouds sounded between his ears. His hand had gone numb. He thought he could crack the tomb with a punch. Raze it with a look. Nothing seemed beyond him.

  "Release it! For the sake of the gods, let it go!"

  Dante turned his hand palm down and jabbed it at the trunk of an acorn tree thirty feet away. Its bole was a foot and a half across. It crumpled like paper. Splinters of bark shot into the air. A great crack thundered past him; he staggered, stripped of all strength and senses with the departure of the nether. He wanted it back. He wanted the shadowy outlines he'd seen around all things to retake their shape, for his eyes and ears and hands to once more feel like the world's own will. He mewled, and as the tree's wide head boomed into the grass he fell to his knees, paused there, then slumped in a heap.

  "We should probably hide somewhere for a while," some part of him heard Cally muse. "Oh. Right." He grabbed Dante's wrists and dragged the half-conscious boy into the sanctuary of the vault.

  * * *

  Dante squinted against the candlelight. He tried to sit up and the blood rushed from his head.

  "They're all going to die," he said, and his laugh twisted into a cough. He slapped the stony floor, fighting for air.

  "Always good for a boy to have ambitions," Cally said. "For your next trick try something a trifle less flashy. Think of yourself as a channel through which the nether may flow. Like the narrow banks of a creek. If a meandering little stream suddenly finds itself engorged by a few hundred thousand cubic tons of water, it tends to no longer resemble itself once the flood has gone away." He got to his feet, eyes glinting down at Dante. "A stream doesn't really capture my meaning, however. Swollen streams aren't all bloody and shrieking and flopping around until they die."

  "I'll be careful."

  "I doubt that. And for gods' sakes, eat something. Stop making me sound like your father. These things will burn you up before you know it."

  Dante managed to sit up. Nausea and hunger battled for his stomach. He had a headache. He touched his face. It was still there. That was good.

  "If you were my father I'd make patricide popular again."

  "Oh, shut up," Cally said with no real annoyance. He furrowed his brow. "What were you thinking? Were you trying to destroy the city with your first attempt?"

  "I just wanted to see what would happen."

  Cally rubbed his chin, whiskers rustling. "Frankly, you shouldn't have been able to do that first try. Be more cautious next time."

  "I am learning fast, aren't I?" Dante said. He squared his shoulders, daring himself to press for praise. "I mean, have you seen other people learn as fast?"

  "Probably," Cally said through a yawn. "Some take faster to it than others. Like a duck to water, you might say."

  "Ha ha. Why do they pick it up so fast?"

  "Why do some students learn to read quicker than others?"

  "What? No lecture on the nature of the talent?"

  "A physician named Kamrates once theorized a correlation between the width of one's veins and one's ability to channel the nether," Cally began, considering the ceiling. "Obviously bunk. The notion of channeling is only a metaphor. That didn't stop him, however, from dicing up a dozen corpses in his search for proof, including a couple that may not have been corpses for another few years if he wasn't so dead-set on proving an anatomical connection. No pun." Dante opened his mouth and Cally immediately cut him off. "What's your birthday?"

  "February 12. Why?"

  "Duset. The two rivers. Ruled by Arawn in the old design, you know. The Belt's first link."

  "You think your birthsign influences it?"

  "No," Cally said, sighing heavily. "That's what some people think."

  Dante bit his teeth tight. "You don't have any idea, do you."

  "I think the answer is a boring variation of 'all things in moderation': it's likely there's some inherent quality that gives one man more facility with the nether or the ether than his fellow, but the strength of one's will probably has a great deal to do with it as well."

  "That is boring."

  "Would it be more interesting if I told you there was a gland in your skull that's probably twice the size of a normal man's?"

  "Did Kamrates discover that?" Dante's face went guarded. "No, wait."

  Cally chuffed with laughter. "Listen, there's a lot of theories, but none of them are very good. Would you believe you're chosen by Arawn? Or maybe you're the offspring of an imp and a woman? Be practical."

  "One could well argue it's nothing but practical to try to find out why you're good at the things you do well."

  "Well, then one would probably be slaughtered by the town watch in a few days when he should have been learning to kill them instead." He clapped his hands on his thighs. "You've got work to do. Book to read. Do it."

  "You're leaving?"

  Cally turned and went for the door. "Good night. You've got a lot to do. I'll be back in a couple days."

  "You're always running off just when I'm beginning to learn."

  "Shut up and accept your progress for once."

  "I could hurt myself," Dante mocked, but Cally was already on h
is way. Beyond the doorway the land was dark. Flakes of snow drifted into the grass. Cally had stayed for hours while he slept. He fished out the rest of his bread and chewed it in the dark. He wanted meat. A beef stew of a haunch of lamb. Something so big he'd feel silly taking bites out of it. He clinked the coins in his purse. What use was money if you didn't spend it? Who wanted to save when you could be dead the next Saturday?

  The following days were quiet. He ventured out for food and lingered around the market, eyes sharp for members of the watch. No one mentioned the executions. They talked about whether the snow would stick next time and the work they still needed to do on their homes, about the new viceroy appointed for Whetton and its farmland, the recent turmoil so intense in the streets of Bressel a member of the council had been killed and another had stepped down. The retiring man said he meant to focus on his work at the guild of arms, but the talk was he'd been exiled for a secret incompetence even rumor couldn't unravel. Dante edged closer to the four men who spoke of this, daring himself to ask questions about violence he'd seen no hint of when he'd lived there, whether it had anything to do with the city's temples. Strangely, he was concerned for the city. He'd only lived there a few months, but he'd heard so many stories about it as a boy it had felt like a home from the start. He still considered himself a Bresselman, could speak with more authority than these bumpkins on its onion-domed Library, Tenterman Palace, the fiery eyes of the statue of Phannon planted centuries ago where the sandbar had once regularly grounded the dumber, drunker, or unluckier captains of the merchant fleets. He'd live there again, he resolved.

  He knew better than to ask about the riots, though. They'd want to know his name, whether he was from the great city and if he had news of his own, might even want to know his position on the struggle. He was an adept liar, as all boys learned to do to avoid chores and beatings and, once they were old enough, public whippings, but he had no room to chance it. His tongue didn't always listen to his brain. He wouldn't have the freedom to join such talk until Blays was out from under the law.

  Instead he went back to the mausoleum, intending to ask Cally next time he saw him. Of the Cycle's 800-odd pages, he'd consumed no more than a quarter, and he set on the remainder with the same futureless abandon he spent his money. When he stopped to rest his eyes or stretch his legs he messed around with the nether, forming a shadowsphere inside the tomb, or sweeping it along the ground to stir the leaves or send a small rock rolling. He fed it no blood. No matter how badly he wanted himself at the center of all things once more, he was dogged by the memory of how crushingly small he'd felt after he released it and destroyed the tree.

  "So, how's it been? Transcended this mortal existence yet?" the old man said when he appeared some time later, tugging his cloak tight around his shoulders.

  Dante closed the book and looked up. "Who wrote the Cycle?"

  "Many people," Cally said, fixing him with a look. "The first part was assembled, according to the few scholars who've done credible research on the time, in something like a half dozen sources over a span of sixty-odd years. The second part is actually much older. Some of them go back as far as we have records. A Gaskan scholar named Nettigen once claimed to have found a tablet in the ice north of Narashtovik with an Arawn story dated at 9,000 years ago by its description of the locations of the stars."

  "No one was alive back then!"

  "How do you know that? Were you there?"

  "No doubt you were." Dante cocked his head. "If it's got so many authors, how do we know we can trust it?"

  "It's not like it's the word of the gods themselves," Cally scoffed. He tugged his fingers through his beard. "I think the many authors are a stroke of its genius. They're all collected under the umbrella of authority that is the Cycle, yet it's possible, if you read closely, to read the writings of men with distinctly opposed states of mind. Who's right, then? Neither? Both? Maybe the answer lies not in the words of the men but in what emerges from their implied dialogue." He stuck out his lower lip, conceding. "Or maybe one of them is just wrong. This is dangerous, in a sense, since his inclusion in the Cycle would seem to make his words infallible, yet a learned man will know they're clearly false. Is this intentional on the part of whoever finalized its structure? Is it a deliberate maze meant to guide us not so much to a certain set of facts as to an enlightened flexibility of mind? Well? Is it?"

  Dante started. "I didn't realize those questions were anything but rhetorical."

  "They weren't, but let's pretend."

  "We can't know the answers to any of your questions without digging up the authors and shouting interrogatives at their bones," Dante said, not entirely meaning to make fun with his aping of Cally's mode of speech.

  "But—"

  "Yeah, yeah, that doesn't mean they're not worth asking. But it does mean there's no way to know for sure. Besides, wouldn't a much simpler explanation be there was no plan, they just scooped up all the legends and poured them between two covers?"

  "I suppose," Cally said. He huffed. "It's possible they didn't write the Cycle with the express purpose of refining our mode of thought. But I don't see how else we're supposed to reconcile all the disconnects."

  "I don't know about that. When I read the stories of Jack Hand, I see justice in his vengeance. I admire his courage, that he can just seize things and reorder them how he sees right. Isn't that a truth that's always true? It's the story of every age, isn't it?"

  "Ah. The time-honored absolutism of youth."

  "I'm young, so that means I'm wrong?"

  "No," Cally said. He sighed. "Age muddles things, that's all. You'll see what I mean if you thwart all decency and live another couple decades."

  "Ah," Dante said. "The time-honored condescension of age."

  "Mind yourself," the old man warned, but his voice was warm. "I suppose you'd even try to make sense of all those numbers the Cycle is so fond of repeating. Anyway. I didn't come here for sophistry. Frankly, it bores me." He scratched his ear, face clouded with thought. "What's the name of your reprobate friend?"

  Dante looked up. "Blays."

  "I've found a way to contact him."

  "When can I see him?"

  "You can't," Cally said, silencing him with a look. "What I can do is pass him a message."

  "Tell him I'm coming," Dante said, pressing his hands together. "Tell him not to worry. I won't let them get away with it."

  Cally smiled beneath the thatch of his beard. "That'll show em."

  "What? Then tell him to start figuring out how he's going to repay me. Is that better?"

  "Much." Cally yawned and went for the door.

  "That's it? Aren't you supposed to be teaching me things?"

  "You've already got too much to digest and not enough time to do it in. Practice. Think on what you've learned. Read the damn book. I've got better things to do than mope around a graveyard like a widow pining for her husband's yard."

  "Fine." Dante turned away. "Go lecture at someone else for a while."

  "Choke on your ingratitude," Cally spat. He flipped his hands. "Bah."

  Wind gusted through the open door. Dante watched him go, then turned his eyes to the walls, to the drawers full of corpses. Like Jack Hand and the bones of the rats in his prison. He'd been one man against a keep full of defenders—and he'd taken it and made it his.

  When Dante'd first settled into the tomb he'd found other things dead than men: the leathery bodies and dry skeletons of rats and rabbits that had found their way in but not out, pigeons and crows that had taken shelter from the weather and battered themselves dead at the cracks of daylight in the walls. Seven or eight tidy piles of bones. Maybe the Cycle was a past meant to be borrowed by the ages to come after. Was that why its authors had written it, however many hundreds of years ago? To let later men stand on their shoulders? To preserve themselves through the actions of people they could never hope to meet?

  Something rustled in the shadows of the vault. He doubted that, whoever'd written the
book, whatever they'd had in mind, they could have seen what he had planned. He hoped it would be enough.

  7

  A holy day, a joyous day, the midpoint between autumnal equinox and winter solstice when Lia left the land and Mennok reluctantly took up its reign. The day, by coincidence, of the execution.

  Dante watched the sun spark up over the roofs of the east. He'd loved this day when he was younger. The night before was Falmac's Eve, the Night of Fire, the night Carvahal flew down from exile to take arms against white-bearded Taim who'd thrown him out for bringing the fire to man; the night when head-high stacks of wood were burnt in the squares and boys wore masks and "robbed" men of apples and tin pennies in the street, "slaying" any man who bore a beard. The theater dressed in yellows and reds and bright-burning gems and played out Carvahal's original betrayal, how he lit a torch from the Millstar of the northern heavens and descended with it from the skies to the earth. Taim saw the blaze of its fall and gathered his children and his children's children to destroy whoever'd defied him, but Carvahal brought the torch to Eric the Draconat, he who ate dragons' hearts, and Eric climbed the ladder of the heavens to duel winged, scale-backed Daris and so win his northern army to face the forces of Taim. They met on the snowfields of the north and the snow churned and boiled under the heat of their blood. There Taim slew Daris, and confusion shouted across the land. Eric's rebellion of men and the half-gods and Daris' drakes were smashed, but in the final moment when Eric struck deep at Taim's heart with Anzode—the sword tempered in the hearts of 108 dragons—he actually spilled the god's blood upon the ground, forcing the father of the skies to retreat to his seat in their heights.

  Carvahal fled then too, bearing Eric's unconscious body to the hole in the north sky where Mallius' bow had punctured it long ago, and every year on Falmac's Eve Carvahal seduced the blackbirds of Mennok to bear him down to earth and drag the punishing fires of Barrod's sun away so he could wreak his rebellion by cover of dark and the earth could rest and heal. The next morning the farmers set down their scythes and plows and flails and drank to the cycle of the gods. They toasted Lia for her faithful bounty, praised Simm for making their wheat and oats and barley grow tall, thanked Barrod for the life of his yellow rays; they gave a cry for Carvahal's daring that would keep them warm through the winter, for the saturnine locking of the time of Mennok that would make the return of the gods of light and life all the sweeter. Many of them ended up passed out before the sun had gone down. Dante thought he could already hear the earliest revelers singing out in the city. The watchmen would partake too, he knew. There would be few better days for the confusion he meant to sow.