The Light of Life

by Edward W. Robertson

  He called them to a stop and motioned to a wide island just visible through the spiderwebbed trees. "We're right on top of it. Has to be over there somewhere. Ready to go put an end to an abomination?"

  Blays loosened his Odo Sein swords. "Are you ever afraid our enemies are saying the same thing to themselves when they're creeping up on us?"

  Dante sent two dragonflies winging ahead into the ruins scattered across the island. After a minute of searching, he frowned. "I don't see anything. He'll have it hidden. Possibly disguised. Be ready to kill anyone we meet."

  He brought the nether to him. Behind him, he felt Gladdic call to the ether. Volo paddled forward toward the island. The pressure behind Dante's brow grew by the second until it hurt with each heartbeat. With the island still a hundred yards away, the pain peaked, knife-like, and then began to abate.

  But the relief was far from welcome.

  "Stop." He grabbed the gunwale. "Back up. Slowly."

  Volo gave him a confused look, then backbeat her paddle. The pain of the pressure ramped up again.

  Dante held up his hand for her to stop. He leaned over the side of the canoe, but the water was far too murky to see more than a few feet down. "The prime body isn't on the island. It's beneath us."

  Blays stared at him, then gave the water a deeply skeptical look. "I find that hard to believe. Unless the Eiden Rane started life as a very gifted trout."

  "Why not? Where better to hide something you don't want people to know exists than in a place where it can't be seen?"

  He closed his eyes and sent his mind down through the water, descending twenty feet before he reached the thick silt of the swamp bed. He regained his bearings and probed further. After a few more feet, he bonked into something solid. Something that didn't want to let his focus inside it. Scowling vaguely, he moved along the dirt piled on top of it instead.

  "There's a structure buried under the mud," he said. "But it's made of something weird. I can't manipulate it."

  "Then how do we get down to it?"

  "I don't know yet. I can't even find an entrance."

  "No worries, we'll just learn to breathe water. And grow hammer-hands to bash our way in with."

  Naran cleared his throat. "This so-called prime body is alive, yes? And hence in need of the necessities of life?"

  "I will confess my experience with two-bodied people is pretty limited," Dante said. "But I'd assume you're correct."

  "Then there must be some entrance to convey these necessities to the body. It may even have caretakers of some kind. They would require an access point."

  "This is not necessarily true," Gladdic said. "In my younger days in the priesthood, we were faced with a challenge. We needed to conduct certain scholarship on the matter of Taim potentially having bequeathed to us an incomplete calendar. And yet if it were to be made public knowledge that we were questioning the god's measures, the peasants would have called for our heads. Requiring vows of secrecy from the participating monks did not seem sufficient for such a grave matter, yet the king himself insisted the research must be done.

  "I was the one who came up with the solution. We sank a deep pit in the king's woods, lowered the monks into it, and sealed them inside. A small hatch allowed the provision of food and water, but it was not large enough for a person to pass through. Once the monks' work was complete, resulting in a small amendment to the calendar, we sent down their final supply: a bottle of poisoned wine."

  Blays gawked. "What an inspiring story of problem-solving!"

  "The monks knew their sacrifice was for the well-being of the kingdom and the virtue of Taim himself. Without it, the church might have fissured, resulting in the loss of countless lives. They volunteered gladly." Gladdic swatted at a mosquito. "While there was no way inside their lodgings, we would have been able to sustain their lives indefinitely. The Eiden Rane may employ a similar system to protect his prime body."

  "What does any of this matter? We're here to kill the prime body, right? So rather than wasting time looking for a way inside the lich's secret lair, why don't we smash the roof in and let the gigantic pool of water do the work for us?"

  "Tempting," Dante said. "But he's got to have a way out in case there's a flood. We could lose the target."

  "And then you use your magical powers to find him again."

  "Assuming we can get to him before the lich rushes in to stop whoever's messing with his one vulnerability. We'll find a way inside—and we'll end this here and now."

  Reasoning that the entrance would have to be above water, he ordered Volo to take them to the ruin-choked island. As the others wandered about looking for hidden doors, Dante sank his consciousness into the soil, searching for tunnels or stairs. The ruins were lodged in the dirt like raisins in a lump of uncooked dough. Any one of them could have a secret staircase into the space beneath the water, which seemed to be hundreds of feet wide and descended to unknowable depths. With an inner grumble, he poked his mind down into the quiet stone of the first ruined building.

  He'd only been at his task for five minutes when Volo's voice rang out from the neighboring island. "Hey guys! Over here!"

  Dante ran around the corner of a tumbled-down building, drawing the nether to him, but although Volo was jumping up and down and waving her arms above her head, she didn't appear to be in the process of being menaced or mangled by anything.

  Dante cupped his hands to his mouth. "Yeah, we'll be right over. As soon as you bring us the canoe."

  Volo straightened in embarrassment, then laughed and ran to the bank of the island where she'd left the boat. The others gathered next to Dante as she pulled up to shore. For some reason, she was dripping wet.

  They piled inside the vessel and crossed to the smaller island. This had zero structures on it whatsoever, meaning they'd ignored it. Volo tramped a third of the way up the shallow slope and stopped in front of a tall and unpleasant-looking tree with a snake-like mess of roots and spiny branches that looked like they were reaching forth to strangle you.

  "Aha," Blays said. "You've found us a tree!"

  Volo wagged her head. "Isn't just a tree. It's a jana kang. Stores water in that pot belly-looking part of itself. Well, I swam inside it—and on the other side, there's a tube down into the darkness."

  Dante took a step closer to it, reaching into the nether in its trunk like he'd do if he were about to harvest it larger. Just as Volo had claimed, past the vast barrel where it kept its water, a woody tunnel ran deep into the earth. Much deeper than any root had any business going. The interior seemed to be dry and was wide enough for a grown man to crawl through on his hands and knees.

  He rubbed the back of his neck. "How in the world did you find this?"

  Volo shrugged. "I looked around until I saw something that shouldn't be here."

  "You find it unusual to find trees in a forest?"

  "You can't see it because you don't even know what you're looking at. And you won't know there is something to look at unless I tell you." Concern bent her face. "What if owning knowledge is the most responsibility a person can have? Does having it oblige you to figure out where you need to share it?"

  "Ease your burden by sharing it with me now. How did you know?"

  "Jana kangs suck up brackish water with those roots there. By the time they store it in their belly, it's been made fresh. You travel around the swamps as much as I do, you have to know where to get good water. But this is the thing about the jana kang: they only grow where it's brackish."

  "And we're two hundred miles from the nearest ocean."

  She made a little "there you go" gesture. "Even if you knew it was strange for one to be here, the belly's filled with water. You'd never see the entrance unless you were already looking for it."

  Dante motioned to Blays. "Well?"

  "If you're suggesting I go first," Blays said, "then I suggest that you go defile yourself."

  "But you're great at climbing inside trees."

  "And I'm even better at
telling you to do it."

  Volo rolled her eyes. "What's the matter with you? I've already been inside it. It's dark, that's all."

  She threw herself at the tree and scampered up its trunk toward the woody shelf overhanging its so-called belly. Dante watched her youthful lack of care with an annoyance largely aimed at himself. In prior times, he'd done any number of things far more foolish and dangerous than climbing inside a strange tree, yet rather than emboldening him, the experience of age had made him hesitant.

  Volo slipped beneath the shelf and into the belly of the tree. Dante set his jaw and started up after her. The gnarled bark made for easy climbing. He reached the wide hole at the top of the belly and swung a leg inside, ducking his head. The interior held a pool of dark water six feet wide, four across, and unknowably deep. It was sloshing about slightly, but there was no sign of Volo.

  He lowered himself into it. The water was warmer than he'd expected and smelled clean in a way the swamp absolutely didn't. He groped about with his toes but couldn't feel the bottom. He conjured up a dot of ether. The white light stretched across the belly. Six feet underwater, a large hole stood open in the back of the chamber. Dante took three deep breaths and dropped below the surface, kicking toward the hole. He fit through without issue. After a few feet, the passage bent upward.

  He surfaced in a hollow space the size of a small wagon. Volo treaded water across from him, her black hair slanted over her stark white face like a wind-ripped veil. His breath and the splash of water echoed tightly, but the close space was interrupted by another tunnel into the trunk. This one was above the waterline. Dry.

  Before he could think to turn around and go back for the others, Blays surfaced beside him, blowing water from his nose. He was followed by Naran, and then a couple seconds later by Gladdic, who extended his wrinkled neck to keep his mouth above water.

  Blays eyed the old man. "You look like a drowned terrier."

  "Some day, so will you," Gladdic said.

  Dante grabbed the lip of the tunnel and pulled himself up. "No more insulting each other until we're sure we're not about to be crushed to death by a sentient tree."

  The tunnel was only four feet high, obliging him to crouch his way forward. Within a few feet, it descended in a spiral staircase. The steps' edges were smooth, as if they'd been grown rather than carved. The floor and walls sweated condensation. Between the slipperiness of the steps and the lowness of the ceiling, he was so concerned with not bashing his head or tumbling downward that he had no mental space left to be worried about whatever they were walking into.

  The air cooled. A whiff of decay joined the smell of must. The tunnel leveled out, expanding to six feet high, then eight. They were no longer walking on wood: rather, it was the bone-like grimstone.

  Dante tried and failed to reach inside it. "I can't manipulate this stone."

  Blays glanced at the floor. "Have you tried telling it that it's ugly first?"

  "Is that a coincidence? Or did the lich build this place to protect it from people like me?"

  The floating blot of ether Dante was using to light the way spilled over a tall stone door. Blays started to draw one of his swords, but as the blade lit up with purple sparks, drawing on the nether of his trace, he thought better and resheathed it.

  Dante made eye contact with the others, then pulled the nether about him like a cloak and reached for the door's ring-shaped handle. He expected it to be locked, or even rusted shut, but it swung open handily, an unseen counterweight pulling it along its hinges.

  The room beyond was too vast for the light of the ether to fill. The floor was patterned grimstone. The air smelled distantly of death. As Dante stepped forward, white lights glowed from the high walls.

  He froze. "Gladdic, did you do that?"

  "I was about to inquire the same of you."

  After several seconds of silent waiting, Dante muttered to himself and moved to his right, following the sweep of the wall. Round white pillars connected the floor to the ceiling. These were inscribed with foreign writing in a language Dante had never seen before. He passed by three of them before it occurred to him to stop.

  "These columns," he said. "There's writing on them."

  "All columns have junk carved on them," Blays said. "You think a king's going to pay for some big fancy temple and just leave all his columns blank?"

  "I thought Tanarians didn't use writing."

  Volo reached for the symbols, which looked grimy but not particularly weathered. "We don't. The Drakebane's priests used to tell us that anything worth carrying forward should be made simple enough to remember."

  Gladdic bent forward like a blade of grass grown too long to support its own weight. "It isn't Tanarian. It's Yosein."

  "Yosein?" Dante wrinkled his brow. "The people who used to live in the Hell-Painted Hills before the lich drove them out?"

  "Indeed. I would suggest they were the original architects of this place."

  "What does the writing say?"

  "I do not know. Regrettably, I lacked the foresight to see that I would someday find myself in an underwater palace covered in Yosein script."

  "I might be able to read it." Blays leaned close, running his fingers over the letters. "I think it says, 'This has nothing to do with why we're here.'"

  "I'm not so sure about that," Dante said. "We keep seeing connections between the Eiden Rane and the Yosein. If anyone would know about him, it's them."

  "Yes, and if we kill him according to plan, none of it will matter."

  Dante was half tempted to make a rubbing of the inscriptions with the bit of charcoal he kept for such purposes, but even if they weren't in the middle of something extremely dangerous, there were dozens of pillars in the room. He'd only be able to record a tiny fraction of the text from a single pillar. Even if he found a way to translate it, the information would be so incomplete it would almost certainly be useless.

  He moved away from the pillar, drawing his knife and poking himself in the arm. Nether lay heavy in the damp air, strangely skittish. Fifty feet from the passage through the tree, they came to a corner of the room. Dante followed the new wall, walking between it and the pillars. Another pair of torchstones glared to life ahead and above them.

  Leaves rasped over the floor, but there was no breeze.

  Dante stopped in his tracks and stared hard into the darkness to their left.

  Naran murmured, "Did you hear—?"

  Pairs of light winked from the gloom, faint as stars. Gladdic lifted his hand. Ether blared across the chamber, lighting up a mob of lean-limbed ghouls. The Blighted bared their yellowed teeth and charged. They made no effort to coordinate, but so equal was their fury that they advanced with the discipline of a king's guard.

  Blays drew his swords, the purple-black charge of nether racing from the hilts to the tips. Dante and Naran did the same. Volo got out her long knife with its heavy guard. Gladdic stood his ground, fist clenching portions of both nether and ether.

  Dante flicked his hand, sending black scythes whirling into every other Blighted on the front line. They fell like fumbled crockery, rage burning with the last light of their eyes. Blays and Naran carved into the thinned ranks. The nether-enhanced swords cut through bone like it was flesh and flesh like it was cheesecloth. Blood sprayed the floor in red curls.

  The Blighted climbed over their own dead, throwing themselves at Naran and Blays. Ether streaked from Gladdic's hand, straighter than any arrow, taking the enemy in their foreheads and chests. They thumped to the ground, their withered hands groping for the swordsmen's ankles even as they died.

  Blays stepped pretty through the corpses, lunging forward whenever a Blighted stumbled or tripped, running them through and then yanking his blade to the side, releasing their blackened guts to thud wetly to the ground. Dante slung a second round of nether, cutting down ten of them in an instant. Ether seared through the gloom. Purple swords swung in arcs, trailing their dark light behind them.

  As always, th
e Blighted fought to the last. At the end, limbs and gore lay tossed across the stone, white islands in a swamp of blood—a grotesque copy of the Wound of the World itself.

  Blays wiped his swords on a dead man's clothing. The fabric was too tattered to tell exactly what it had been. "How long do you suppose these bastards have been down here? Getting chopped to bits was probably the most excitement they've had in a century."

  Volo kicked a pair of legs, then looked disgusted with herself. "If this is the best the lich can do, maybe he isn't so scary after all."

  "Their wrath and speed is more than enough to overwhelm normal men," Gladdic said. "But they are more than soldiers. They are also eyes. The Eiden Rane now knows we're here—and if he knows, it is possible that the prime body knows as well."

  Dante swiveled his head in a slow semicircle. "It isn't going anywhere yet. Maybe it can't even move on its own."

  Blays sheathed his weapons. "We're on a mission to kill a bed-ridden old man? If you see something running away from us at full speed, don't worry. That's just my honor."

  Gladdic stepped over a torso. "Honor is nothing but a way for the powerful to excuse their own power. We will find the prime body, and we will destroy it. Or the White Lich will find us."

  He strode onward, passing over the bodies rather than detouring around them. Dante kept a lump of shadows in his fist. They came to the far wall and turned left. Halfway across the room, they came at last to a door. Blays drew his weapons and nodded to Dante, who pulled on the ring handle. It was heavier than the first door had been, but opened without trouble.

  The room beyond was a downward stairwell. Blays led the way, Dante one step behind him. After a single flight, the stairs ended at another door. This opened to a tight corridor. Two inches of water lay on the floor. The air was now as cool and neutral as a cavern. Blays stirred the water with the toe of his sandal, provoking a stagnant smell, but no movement from anything within it.

  He put away one sword and stepped forward, remaining blade held low before him. Gladdic lit the way with a ball of ether whose light was soft yet penetrating. The corridor was just wide enough for two people to stand shoulder to shoulder, but not wide enough to fight side by side, and they advanced single-file, Blays in front.