The Light of Life

by Edward W. Robertson

  Volo thrust out her jaw. "I carry dead people around every corner of the swamp. I'm alone the whole time. I don't need you to protect me from the truth."

  "He's sucking the soul from them," Dante said. "Or a vital essence of some kind. It's about as pleasant-looking as it sounds."

  Blays nodded. "Well can we make him not do that?"

  Dante watched as the people thrashed so hard they split the skin on their knees and elbows. They bucked a final time, then stilled. Their skin paled from the marbled gray to a sickly white. So far, the Eiden Rane had only targeted a quarter of the prisoners, and the others stared at the bodies with bulging eyes.

  A dead man's eyes fluttered open. He tipped back his head and gasped, his face twisting with rage. Around him, the others shuddered and awakened.

  Becoming the Blighted.

  "I'm not kidding," Blays said. "If he's massacring them, can we stop him?"

  Gladdic shifted, adjusting his unfamiliar jabat. "We would only add our corpses to theirs. This village must be sacrificed in order for the others like it to be saved."

  "'It must be sacrificed.' Neat way to wash your hands of it."

  "You speak wisely. To reject the responsibility of what we do is to deceive ourselves into thinking we bear no guilt for it. So I will rephrase: we must sacrifice this village, and be stained for our decision."

  On the dock, the lich swayed, lowering himself to one knee. The last of the tendrils of light curled around him like tame snakes, settling into his body with a final white pulse. Head bowed, he took a deep breath through his nostrils. The newly-formed Blighted turned as one to stare at him. He gestured vaguely, motioning them to join the others.

  "How close is the demon?" Dante said.

  "It is within the clearing. Your orders?" Gladdic raised a white eyebrow. Dante couldn't tell if there was anything ironic in it.

  "Send it in."

  Dante guided the watching dragonfly higher, giving him a better vantage of the field. The Eiden Rane remained kneeling. Blue veins twinkled under the surface of his skin. The Blighted old and new watched him with curiosity. Still locked in place, some of the survivors moaned or cried, but most were silent, making no attempt to move. Dante had seen people's passive reaction to coming death a hundred times before, but he still didn't understand why they didn't struggle against their fate. Was it the instinct of a lizard batted about by a cat, hoping that by playing dead, its tormenter would lose interest?

  Or was the surrender of hopelessness even more powerful than the will to live?

  A black figure surged from the edge of the dock, barely disturbing the water as it vaulted onto the boards. The Andrac flexed its claws and leaped at the White Lich, grinning with a wickedness Dante had once thought was born from an evil love of the slaughter, but now understood was the thrill of combat and the testing of mettle.

  The Eiden Rane's ever-changing eyes seemed foggy, as if he was watching a scene within another realm. He had set down his halberd while Blighting the captives. He cast forth an arm in warding. The Star-Eater raked its claws across the lich's forearm. Nearly silver in color, glowing liquid stuck to its claws and oozed from the three gashes.

  "It has the blood!" Dante tried to jump to his feet in celebration; the canoe rocked violently beneath him and he promptly reseated himself. "Tell it to get out!"

  Gladdic closed his eyes, brow crinkling. On the dock, the Andrac struck again, pushing the lich back a step. "It ignores me. It believes it can win."

  The Star-Eater brought its bloody claws to its mouth, licking them clean with a pointed black tongue. Dante's heart beat hard, sweat squeezing from his skin. The White Lich drove a fist at the demon, which took the blow square in the chest but barely rocked back. Wisps of nether peeled away from the Andrac's body, but it was already reaching forward, inserting its claws through the lich's guard and jabbing them into his stomach.

  The strike would have gutted a mortal man. Possibly cut him right in half. The demon's claws sank no more than half an inch into the White Lich's belly before coming to a sudden stop.

  The Blighted widened their eyes in hate and swarmed forward, grabbing up the weapons they'd dropped so they could murder their share of the villagers with their bare hands. As the lich and the demon traded blows, spilling a bit of nether and a few small spatters of iridescent white blood, the lich began to react faster, blinking repeatedly as clarity returned to his eyes. A point of ether glared from his finger.

  "Get it out of there!" Dante grabbed Gladdic's shoulder. "The lich is about to tear it apart!"

  Gladdic grimaced and nodded shortly. Sweat stood up across his brow. On the dock, the first of the Blighted reached the Andrac, hacking at it with hatchets and spears that didn't so much as scratch its shadowy body. It ignored them, launching a second flurry of attacks at the lich, who blocked whatever he couldn't dodge, leaving a few shallow scratches across his arms.

  The Eiden Rane narrowed his eyes, battering down another attack, then pushed his right palm forward. A beam of eye-watering ether lashed between him and the Andrac's chest. Nether boiled away in dark clouds. A fist-sized hole opened through the demon's body.

  The Andrac's mouth widened, showing the star burning within its throat. It toppled backward from the edge of the dock and sliced into the murky waters.

  Dante punched the side of the canoe, skinning his knuckles. "He's killed it!"

  "No." Gladdic's voice was calm. "My link to it remains alive. But the Andrac is wounded. It may need our help escaping."

  Blays squinted. "The thing we sent in to prevent us from getting our asses kicked by the big evil bastard now needs us to go fight the big bastard ourselves?"

  "We will not engage the lich unless we are very desperate or very stupid."

  "We have to go in," Dante said. "This could be our only chance to get what we need."

  Blays swore and picked up a paddle. The canoe sped through the trees, already within a half mile of the settlement. Dante pulled two dragonflies toward them to make sure the way ahead was clear of Blighted or Monsoon pickets.

  The third dragonfly kept watch over the dock. A transparent cube of light appeared around the White Lich, condensing into his hands. He blasted at the water with lances of ether, following the Andrac's path away from him. Steam spread over the water with the suddenness of a marine fog rolling in from the sea. A beam of ether ripped into the side of a raft-house, planks and splinters cartwheeling through the air.

  The lich clenched his fist and ceased his assault; the demon had put too much space and cover between them. The blue-white figure conjured a ball of ether, sending it winging over the low rooftops. It steadied six feet above the water, streaming toward the trees. Tracking the Andrac's position.

  The Blighted threw themselves into their canoes and paddled crazily after the ball of light. Monsoon soldiers joined the chase, keeping a bubble of space between themselves and the Blighted. Rowers brought the lich's personal vessel before him. He stepped into it with no obvious haste. His soldiers pushed off, paddling hard to catch up with the others.

  "The bad news," Dante said, "is that their whole damn army's after the Andrac. Including the Eiden Rane."

  Naran ducked his head, angling for a better view through the trees. "What is the good news?"

  "Who said there's any good news?"

  He directed Volo to the right, veering them away from a Monsoon canoe keeping watch on the woods. The trees thinned before them. Rain began to pelt the foliage as they reached the open water of the settlement. The ball of light—and, presumably, the Andrac—had already cleared the fish nets, and was streaking toward them. The enemy canoes were strung out behind the light, the closest lagging it by a hundred yards. The White Lich hadn't yet reached the fish nets, but he'd caught up to the back ranks of the Blighted.

  Volo and Blays swung the canoe about, keeping them just inside the treeline. The ball of ether lined toward them. Suddenly concerned the lich might notice them, and convert the harmless light into somethi
ng most harmful, Dante called to the nether, feeding it the blood from his skinned knuckles. He sent a bolt of it hurtling toward the glowing ball. The two forces impacted with a burst of black and white motes. When these cleared, the ball was still trailing forward. Frowning, Dante hit it harder, knocking it apart.

  The Andrac emerged from the water an arm's reach from the boat, making everyone but Gladdic and Blays jump. Its claws shook as it reached for the boat. Its body, normally pitch black, appeared hazy in spots, especially around the wound in its chest, which hadn't seemed to have healed at all.

  "It needs inside," Gladdic said. "It is too weakened to travel on its own."

  Before Dante could object, the demon was hauling itself up the side of the boat. Though it was massive enough to capsize the canoe, they barely swayed. It crouched in the stern, folding its limbs to take up far less space than seemed possible.

  Blays drove his paddle into the water, pulling them away from the oncoming horde. "For all the amazing junk you people can do, has it never occurred to a single sorcerer that it might be useful to be able to grow wings?"

  "I've done some work on it," Dante said. "But the ducks keep dying before I can get them all the way sewed on."

  Blays and Volo paddled with everything they had, drawing them into the darkness of the forest. Much of the forest enclosing the settlement was too dense to pass through, but the citizens had carved pathways through it, including the one the five of them were now using to escape. Dante extended his mind into the trees and the nether within them, harvesting great tangles of branches to close off the passage. The lead canoes crashed into the unexpected growth, the Blighted hissing in fury and whacking at the branches with ineffectual paddles.

  Blays glanced over his shoulder. "Can't be that easy, can—?"

  Light seared through the fresh growth, incinerating it along with at least one unlucky Blighted who had flung herself into the branches to rip at them with her hands. As she burned, she tipped back her head and smiled at the sky. Her smoking husk plopped into the water with a sizzle.

  "Stop your craft and bend your knee." The White Lich's voice rang through the woods. "Mercy can be yours. But it requires the humility to accept it."

  The Blighteds' canoes shot through the opening in the foliage, cinders clinging to their clothes and hair. Volo and Blays were paddling with everything they were worth, but the furious strength of the undead would slowly overtake them.

  Gladdic twisted in his seat, ether circling his fingers and wrists in shining bands. "What you call mercy is the abnegation of the self. You would snuff out every sense of choice, and once our thoughts can be of nothing but you, you would tell us that is freedom at last."

  "I know you." An edge of amusement entered the lich's voice. "You are the one who hastened my liberation. Ah, the anguish on your face when your ambush failed. I have seen such looks many times before. Did you think that destroying me would make them forget the evils of your soul?"

  Gladdic made a choking sound. Rod-straight bands of ether rushed to his hands. He sent the light blazing behind them, shredding into the closest three canoes. The Blighted shuddered with the impact. Severed limbs spun into the water. As soon as they splashed down, the surface roiled with ziki oko feasting on the gifts of flesh.

  The second line of enemy canoes swept past the de-crewed vessels. Gladdic drew another stream of glittering lines and slung them at the Blighted. As the light closed on its targets, a tide of shadows poured from behind the undead, enfolding the ether and smothering it into nothing.

  "You consider what you have to be great power, don't you?" The lich's words sheared through the patter of the rain. "You have worked a lifetime for it. Now, for your stubbornness—your refusal to accept the truth before you—you have tossed it aside like a pot of waste."

  The canoes pursuing them broke to either side, leaving a clear avenue through the water. The air there darkened to twilight.

  Gladdic thrust out his hand, his forearm as sinewy as if it had been skinned. "Galand!"

  Stiff cataracts of light poured from Gladdic's hands. And then Dante felt it: the monstrous wave of nether thundering toward them. He called a great flock if it to himself, sending the energy careening in the wake of Gladdic's ether. The light hit the torrent of enemy shadows first, the two forces exploding into a mass of madly-spinning sparks. The lich's nether carried onward, forcing past Gladdic's efforts like a man wading through deep snow.

  Dante hit it with everything he could. Limbs of nether tussled against each other like battling dogs. The air blackened until the trees within it were bare silhouettes. Still the lich's attack ground forward, pushing Dante's defenses back foot by foot. It was the strongest attack he'd ever encountered. Trying to hold it back felt like trying to pull up a mountain by its roots. Sweat popped out from his brow. He wanted to yell out, but he was bearing down too hard to speak; the slightest slip of concentration, and the nether would rush forward, annihilating them.

  His hands shook. The lich's shadows pushed a foot closer, then lurched forward by ten. Dante felt himself about to give way.

  Gladdic extended his fingers, spraying beams of light into the pressing wall of darkness. These carved away at the shadows, biting deep, whole portions falling away and dissipating. The nether slowed. Dante pushed back with some final reserve, causing the shadows to buckle along the seams Gladdic had sliced into them.

  Everything came to a halt. Both sides strained against each other, neither advancing nor retreating. Gladdic adjusted a single beam by a matter of inches. It cut into the underside of the shadows. Without warning, the lich's entire attack collapsed, fluttering away like black ash.

  Dante fell back, chest heaving. His jabat was drenched with sweat.

  Blays glanced back, still paddling for all he was worth. "Was that as close as it felt?"

  "Not sure," Dante said. "Did it feel like we were about to get ripped into a pile of bloody guts?"

  "That wouldn't be entirely bad. At least I'd finally get to shake hands with my liver for all its fine service."

  Dante groped clumsily at the nether, gathering more to defend against the next assault. Behind them, the Blighted paddled harder yet through the last specks of decaying shadows.

  Gladdic gripped the gunwale, sweat tracking through the wrinkles of his forehead. "He fears overextending himself while he remains weak. Either the Blighted will overwhelm us, or we will deplete ourselves slaughtering them."

  "Nice plan," Dante said. "Would be a shame if someone decided to thwart it."

  He felt down for the soil beneath them. For the most part, the swamp's waters varied between ten and twenty feet in depth, but some portions of the bed were no more than two or three feet beneath the surface. He located one such spot just ahead of them. As they passed over it, he pulled the dirt upward, mounding it until it was inches from breaking into the open. The Blighted plowed onward, gaining steadily. When the enemy canoes were ten feet from the shallows, Dante yanked the ground upward into a series of jagged rills and spikes, hardening it into stone.

  The canoes crashed into it with the hollow splinter of broken hulls. Pale bodies flew out with the impact, still gripping their paddles. The second wave of ships crunched into the first, snarling themselves against the barrier of rocks.

  Naran made an obscene gesture at the pileup. Blays and Volo opened up space, heading for a small tunnel through the trees. Behind them, ether glimmered across the raised stones, which sank beneath the water, returning to their original state of silt. A handful of boats stopped to pick up the Blighted from the wrecked canoes. The others didn't break speed.

  But Dante's maneuver had put them several hundred feet ahead of their foes. They sped through the gap in the trees, entering a maze-like profusion of trees and minor islands. As Volo steered them down one of the many pathways, guided by some Tanarian trail marker Dante couldn't make out—or, perhaps, guided only by her completely reasonable terror of all the things chasing them—Dante harvested the trees across the
waterway behind them.

  "You should save your strength," Gladdic said. "A few branches won't so much as slow him down."

  "Unless it makes the Blighted think there's no path there at all."

  He had lost one of his dragonfly spies at some point—most likely, his focus had lapsed while they'd been fending off the White Lich's onslaught—but he sent one of the two survivors to keep watch over the hidden pathway. The Blighted entered the maze-like area and slowed, gnashing their teeth in confusion.

  The lich stopped, surveying the trees dispassionately. He tilted back his head, then waved his hand. Ether danced along the branches. When it reached the section Dante had altered, it lit up like a lantern. The lich's mouth twitched. He flicked his hand, returning the trees to their unaltered state. The Blighted raced into the tunnel.

  "I have successfully bought us several whole seconds," Dante announced. "We might want to consider going faster."

  "Then you might want to consider paddling," Blays said.

  "With what? My hands? And after the ziki oko eat them, should I use my elbows?"

  "Or your face. No one will miss that."

  Dante spared a dollop of nether to soothe their strained muscles. Even so, the Blighted gained ground, with the White Lich right behind them to undo Dante's attempts to block or snarl the trail.

  "We got a plan here?" Volo's voice was as tight as a harp string. "Or are we just hoping the dead people will get tired soon?"

  "I thought we'd discourage them by paddling until we're too lean to have any flavor," Blays said. "Or we could give them Gladdic. He's so sour they'll probably let the rest of us go."

  Dante's mind chased its own tail. They couldn't outrun their foes. Couldn't hide themselves or their trail. So what was left? Face the White Lich and his armies and hope Gladdic had been wrong about everything?

  As the enemy canoes closed distance, divisions spread to the left and right, preparing to hem them in. Standing in his command vessel, the White Lich lifted his hands. A storm of geometric lightning crackled toward their canoe. Gladdic met it with a cloud of nether that boiled away in the face of the driving light.