The Light of Life

by Edward W. Robertson

  The man smiled as thinly as it was possible to smile. "I am nothing. A regretful leftover that must yet be preserved. And so I am a prisoner."

  "Is there anyone else here?"

  "This place is not a house for the living."

  "You have no caretakers? No protectors?"

  "This temple was built to be all the protection that I would require. As for needs, I have none—none, at least, that will be tended to."

  Dante kept both eyes on the man in the throne. Though he was a long way from healthy, he already looked less frail. "Didn't you just tell me that he couldn't be trusted?"

  "And he cannot," Gladdic said. "Yet it may be possible to judge the quality of his lies."

  The prime body gazed at them flatly. "Why have you come here?"

  "You will answer my questions first. What continues to keep you alive?"

  "The will of my master."

  "Can this will—this power—be generated by those who are not under his sway?"

  "If a thing can be done once, it can be done again."

  Gladdic chewed on this a moment. "How did the Eiden Rane become the Eiden Rane?"

  The man laughed, a disturbing rustle. "How is all power gathered? By taking it from others, and placing it within yourself."

  "And how is this done?"

  He closed his eyes. "I no longer remember."

  Gladdic strode forward, light and darkness glaring from his hand. "You lie. Refuse me the truth and I will torture you to madness."

  "I will answer no more questions, for I no longer have one of you. You have come here to destroy me."

  "That's right," Dante said. "But we will make it fast."

  "Would it surprise you to learn that I welcome an end?"

  Blays cocked his head. "You want to die? Haven't you had an awful long time to take care of that for yourself?"

  "Do you think my master would go to the trouble of locking me away from all harm without also ensuring that I be made impotent to harm myself? When I am trapped in this tomb, century on century without sunlight, without the songs of the birds and the girls, without the taste of meat or even the sweet taste of clean water? Who, in such situation, would not go insane, driven to claim their own life and at last bring about an end? When I have not felt a real life for so long, what would it lose me to end it?"

  "Surely there are ways to pass the time down here. You could have started up a mold collection."

  The prime body swung his head from side to side, an act that seemed likely to snap his fragile neck. "I have been for long enough. For nothing has meaning that has no end: and that which goes on forever can never be loved, for it becomes too familiar, as common as the earth or the air, and just as unremarkable. While all around it fresh seeds sprout and grow tall, bloom in all their color, and then die—only to be replaced by the flowers of their own seeds. Tell me this: would you trade my life for your own?"

  The question was fully rhetorical, the prime body plowing on with more in the same vein, waxing on about how he no longer had true memories of life outside the tomb, but rather memories of memories, which he was no longer certain were accurate. He seemed capable of talking for eternity. Almost as if he wasn't quite ready to die after all. Had he gone senile? Or was his chatter a form of self-defense: a ruse to prattle on at them until they died of old age and left him alone?

  Dante's eyes widened. Sick with the certainty of their mistake, he lifted the tamp he'd placed on the blood bond connected him to the prime body. It exploded forward, dazzling him. He waited for his senses to return.

  And found that, while the sense of pressure remained overwhelming, it had diminished, and was getting further away with each moment.

  He swept the nether into both hands. "This is not the prime body."

  Gladdic gave him a scornful eye. "But your signal brought us to it."

  "And while that thing sits in its throne yapping at us, the signal's running away."

  Gladdic's face stiffened. He drew his power to his hand. "King of deceit! I will put your lies to their death at last!"

  With startling agility, the man in the throne popped to his feet. He clasped each hand to the opposite forearm, nails near his elbows, and tore downward toward his wrists, opening shallow channels in his skin. He was so withered and pale that he looked as though his veins couldn't be running with more than an ink bottle's worth of fluid, but blood dripped readily down his arms.

  The man smiled, eyes narrowing to malevolent slits. "I am much older than you know: and I have waited a long time to kill again."

  Dante and Gladdic lashed out with a pulse of shadows. The ancient sorcerer flicked his left hand, whip-like, spraying drops of blood toward his foes. Nether streaked toward them from all sides of the chamber, multiplying beyond the force exerted by the sorcerer. The summoned shadows swarmed against Dante's attack, dispersing it like sand in turbid water. Gladdic's was dashed apart an instant later.

  One of Volo's knives flicked through the air, catching the light of a torchstone. The blade disappeared into the folds of the sorcerer's cloak, seemingly without effect. Blays dropped into the nether and sprinted through the shadows. Without so much as glancing his way, the ancient one twirled his left index finger. He ejected Blays from the netherworld with such force that he hit the ground and skidded backwards.

  The sorcerer—who was, it was now clear, a sort of under-lich left behind as the final defense of the prime body—snapped his left hand forward, flipping more blood toward Blays. Nether gushed to the droplets, as hungry as ziki oko, forming a barrage of darts.

  Blays kicked hard, scooting away along the floor. Dante tossed a chaotic handful of shadows toward the darts, but he could already see that he was too far away to intercept the strike. His heart clenched tight. As the barrage swept closer, an eyeblink away, Blays vanished into the shadows.

  The attacking nether buzzed in confusion, spinning randomly through the space Blays had exited. As the sorcerer cocked his hand, ready to force Blays back into the physical world once again, Dante's strike rammed into the circling swarm, erasing it.

  Blays reappeared to Dante's left. "Have I ever told you I hate wizards?"

  "Technically, you are one."

  "If sneaking about counts as sorcery, then why do cats still need you to open the door for them?"

  Before the throne, the under-lich flicked his arm, robes flapping, turning aside Gladdic's rain of ether with another shower of blood-augmented shadows. Both sides paused, assessing.

  "This fighting is foolish," the ancient one said. "You show strength. My master would welcome you to his service. Just as he did me."

  Blays wheeled his sword through the air. "Yeah, that deal seems to have worked out so well for you, Mr. Hasn't Seen Sunshine in Five Hundred Years."

  The man fixed Blays with an interrogating eye. "Your talent isn't known to us. It would make a welcome addition to our ranks. Regarding myself, it's true that I have spent ages in what some would call imprisonment. But my lord returns, and my wait is at its end: he will claim the world, and I will be granted my share."

  Gladdic drew the nether to his remaining hand, beginning to shape it, but Dante held up a hand. He knew that they couldn't afford to delay—that every second they spent dealing with this under-lich was another second for the prime body to make its escape—but he knew also that a great mystery stood before him. And that the owner of that mystery liked to talk.

  "Did you join him willingly?" Dante said. "Or did he enslave you?"

  The ancient one smiled in crusty amusement. "What does it matter? I serve happily. And so will you."

  "If he's so powerful, why does he need people like us to help him?"

  "Can one man be in two places at once? To complete many tasks, one needs many hands. The lord understands that it takes more than one candle to light the darkness."

  "Has this deal made you immortal?"

  "Not even the master knows for certain, for there have been none like him before." His eyes twinkled. "But I loo
k forward to finding out."

  Before Dante could say more, Gladdic curled his lip and lashed at the servant with a patchwork blend of ether and nether. Posing with the arrogance of a fencer, the under-lich spun from his right foot to his left, pelting the assault with his own blood and the nether that it drew.

  As the two energies pounded each other into sparks, some of Gladdic's nether appeared to defect, or perhaps simply to turn neutral, too engaged by the presence of fresh blood to continue its original task. Though the struggle played out too quickly to be sure of its exact nature, one thing was clear: the under-lich was using less power to defend himself than it seemed like he ought to need. Even if Dante and Gladdic were able to wear the enemy down, his ability to defend himself would buy the prime body precious minutes to make his escape.

  Gladdic seemed to draw the same conclusion, stomping forward and hammering at the under-lich with a storm of prismatic light that overwhelmed the torchstones like the sun blotting out the stars. Dante flanked Gladdic's assault, smashing at the undead with a mallet of nether.

  Volo tossed another throwing knife. It took the enemy in the shoulder, but he paid it no mind, as if he felt no pain at all. As the under-lich spun and whipped his limbs, beating back each attack with a sprinkle of blood, Blays slipped into the nether, attempting to circle around to the sorcerer's back. From the corner of Dante's eye, he caught Naran trying to edge forward, only to be driven back by a stray loop of nether; those shadows were under Dante's control, but in the chaos of the fight, Naran would have no way to tell.

  The under-lich thumped Blays from out of the netherworld. Blays rolled backwards and blinked back from sight before the enemy's followup lance of nether could strike him.

  The scratch Dante had opened on his arm at the start of the fighting had started to coagulate, leaving the nether sluggish. Almost grumpy. He used a razor of nether to lengthen the wound. A warm bead of blood slid down his arm. The shadows spun with enthusiasm. And Dante smiled.

  As Gladdic tried and failed to brute-force his way through the ancient one's guard, Dante peppered the robed man with tight shots of nether. The sorcerer spun like a dust devil, his spilled blood driving the nether before him like a herd of black beasts, smiling his arrogant smile, as if mocking Dante's own.

  Dante felt the ether about him: crackling between Gladdic and the lich; glowing softly from the torchstones; present in the design of all things. In perfect stillness, he emptied his mind, like two cupped hands holding nothing. And asked the ether in the lich's arms to heal the wounds there.

  The sorcerer continued to whip his arms about like a practitioner of a strange martial art, but the nether that had orbited him drifted away from his now-bloodless limbs.

  Dante summoned as much nether as he could hold together. "Now!"

  He unleashed the shadows in a single long flood. Gladdic jabbed forth his palm, matching the nether with a column of light. The under-lich scrambled backward, his once-smug eyes going wide with alarm. He raked fresh cuts across his arm. He'd only started to bring up the nether when the wave of energies broke over his body.

  He disappeared in a haze. Nether teemed around him like dark wasps. Ether streaked forward like lost bits of shooting stars. When the air cleared enough to see again, the under-lich had fallen to his knees. One of his arms had been ripped free and was lying against the throne behind him. Half his face had been shredded to the bone; something that might have been the remnants of an eye lay upon his exposed cheek.

  The other eye swiveled toward Dante, brimming with hatred. "You will mourn what you have just done when you sit at his feet. When—"

  His half-flensed jaw swung free from its hinge, hanging from the side of his mouth. A look of dismay entered his eye, and then it rolled upward, seeing nothing. The under-lich lost what little color he had left, whitening like snow. He lifted his hand to the ceiling. His fingers curled to his palm, snapping off one by one and falling to the ground with the sound of crumpled parchment chucked aside.

  With a burst of blue light, he collapsed into dust. The grimstone beneath him was stained with pure ether.

  Dante edged closer to the stain. "Is he dead?"

  "He better be." Blays nudged the pile of dust with his sandal. "Otherwise, the only one who can slay him now is a charwoman. Don't we have a prime body to hunt down?"

  Dante made a once-over of the others, but no one had taken more than a few scratches during the fight. Not surprising. The under-lich had been too caught up in fending off Dante and Gladdic to launch many counterattacks of his own.

  This done, Dante reopened the link to the prime body in his mind. The pressure pointed directly to the wall behind the throne. After brief inspection, they found another door concealed by the illusion cast by the torchstone above it. Dante grabbed the ring handle and pulled the door open.

  A wall of lukewarm water poured over him, sweeping him from his feet and slamming him against the back of the throne. Volo sailed past him, scratching about for a handhold. Gladdic scrambled to the side, avoiding the flood's full strength.

  He approached the doorway from the side, water pouring over his bare shins as he craned for a look inside. "Half the wall is open. The only way out is back the way we came!"

  Dante wanted to argue, but the roar of the water coursing through the wall was convincing evidence for Gladdic's point. He turned and ran toward the staircase, snagging Volo by the arm and helping her to her feet.

  Dante touched the center of his forehead. "It's getting further away. They must have gotten it into a boat."

  Blays grunted. "Let's hope it wasn't ours."

  Dante took the steps three at a time, reaching the hall where they'd first discovered the illusion-hidden door and sprinting across it, his sandals smacking wetly. The next staircase brought them up the trapdoor and into the corridor where they'd nearly drowned. Water leaked through cracks in Gladdic's ice, threatening to blow the plug loose at any moment. Dante ran to the entrance, ready to shatter the door if he had to, but the door opened without complaint.

  They dashed across the first chamber they'd entered, the ground scattered with the corpses of the Blighted, and made their way to the tunnel up through the tree. Dante took a deep breath, dived into the belly, and swam out through its opening, emerging into a warm afternoon day. All in all, they'd spent a full two hours locating the tomb and making their way to its end, and hardly two minutes getting back out of it.

  Despite Blays' worries, the canoe was still there. Most of it, at least. What was left floated in splinters, bobbing in the swamp's subtle currents, as the link to the prime body grew fainter by the moment.

  5

  Every organ in Dante's torso seemed to sink three inches, as if someone had pulled a plug from within his body and everything inside him was draining away. The chunks of the canoe floated serenely, warmed by the sun, which had finally fought its way past the clouds.

  "No!" Volo charged into the muck at the shore, plucking a broken board from the water and holding it across her palms like a dead infant. "This was my way-boat. I was supposed to die with it!"

  Dante was too brain-numbed to wonder what in the world she was talking about. As he stared stupidly at the wreckage, Gladdic stumbled toward the bank of the island, dripping water after their swim through the pot-bellied jana kang tree. He lifted his intact arm and showered the pieces of wood with ether. They stirred, beginning to drift back together. A ghostly image of the canoe wavered above the water. Splinters of wood quivered.

  A bead of sweat dripped down Gladdic's temple. The image of the canoe thickened until the water beneath it was as dim as a distant hill in a morning haze. Just as it looked ready to knit back together into an unbroken whole, the process stopped. After a final shudder, the pieces of wood fell back, going still. The ideal of the canoe faded away into nothing.

  Gladdic lowered his hand and his face. "I lack the power. What's done can't be undone."

  "Well, it's not like we're totally screwed or anything, is it?
" Dante said. "Which one of you volunteers to be the new boat?"

  "A complaint only reveals that the speaker cannot solve the problem before them."

  "Oh, fuck off!"

  "This land has more vessels than any seven kingdoms put together," Naran said. "Perhaps there is an abandoned boat someone on this island, or one of its neighbors."

  He jogged down the shore, sandals squelching. Volo had crouched down and was still cradling the piece of canoe she'd fished from the swamp.

  "There won't be another boat here," Dante said. "Or else whoever's helping the prime body would have destroyed it, too."

  Blays wandered forward, arms crossed. "Build a raft?"

  "Unless we also build it a set of wings, we'll never catch up to them."

  "We'll just raise a sail and power it with the wind of your bitching."

  Dante snorted. "Right. You start gathering wood for the raft while I grow a field of hemp to beat into the sail."

  Blays tipped back his head. "Or we could skip all that and you could grow us a canoe."

  "From my canoe-seeds! I knew I was forgetting something!"

  "Find yourself a plant and harvest it into a boat, you stupid ass. I know it'll be hard to find a tree in the middle of this gigantic forest, but I have faith in you."

  "That's…a pretty good idea." Dante turned back to the island's interior. "Help me find a tree, then. Something young, but that's already got some growth to it."

  Blays headed into the trees. As Dante went in a different direction, Gladdic moved beside him. "You are able to do that? Grow a boat from a tree?"

  "Theoretically. It's a skill I picked up in the Plagued Islands. It's amazing what people will share with you when you're not busy trying to conquer and enslave them."

  "It was not my intent to enslave the Plagued Islands."

  "Much more noble of you to prop up the bloodthirsty Tauren and have them enslave the place."