The Light of Life

by Edward W. Robertson

  "Right." Dante turned to the others. "Well, I've told you what I did to see the stream. So just do that."

  Blays scrunched up his eyes. "Get good ideas, then look out for flashy little gold bits?"

  "That's what worked for me."

  "That's what you say worked for you," Ara said.

  "Careful there. You wouldn't want to infect us with the actual facts." Dante found a more comfortable position on his mat. "This time, when you imagine the forest, get lost in it. Let your ideas flow as they will and carry you along with them."

  "Question," Blays said. "Do we have to think about a bunch of trees? Or can we think about whatever we please?"

  Ara shrugged one shoulder. "Do you think you need my permission?"

  "Even if I did, I suppose that's never stopped me before."

  They bent to their tasks. Dante built his inner world of the lost forest layer by layer: trees, grass, birds, and so forth. With each piece he added, he spied subtle sparkles of gold. If he hadn't known what they were, he likely would have mistaken them for tricks of his mind. He couldn't be sure, but he didn't think he'd ever seen them at other points in his life when he'd been daydreaming or brainstorming.

  Not five minutes into it, Volo jumped to her feet. "I see them! They were glimmering in the raindrops!"

  Dante laughed. "You were imagining weather?"

  "We've got weather in the present, don't we? Why wouldn't they have it in the past?"

  The idea was so obvious it hadn't even occurred to him—or, alternately, he still hadn't been thinking flexibly enough, defaulting to visions of pleasant sunshine. When he closed his eyes again, he imagined himself struggling through a snowstorm, fighting for every mile he could get before sundown. Within the barrage of snowflakes, one in a thousand glittered gold.

  The day's end was nearly at hand when Gladdic inhaled a loud breath through his nostrils and opened his eyes. "I have seen the stream."

  Dante clenched his fist in triumph. "How? What technique did you use?"

  "I wasn't imagining the forest of days gone past. Rather, I envisioned Tanar Atain as it stands now. Its boisterous cities and its hard-working villages. Then I envisioned the White Lich falling upon them and ravaging them. The way the Blighted would fall upon the citizens like a pack of rabid wolves; how they would bite for the vulnerable softness of a woman's throat, and peel away the still-throbbing muscle from a man's calf.

  "The villages were small enough to be slaughtered wholesale. After, the blood hung in the still waters like the stink of death. In the cities, some were able to flee into the wild swamp, to fall victim to the ziki oko or venomous snakes. Others wasted from disease or starved down to their bones.

  "I watched as one man paddled his family away from the Blighted as they gave chase. Hour after hour, he paddled with all his strength. Yet the Blighted were tireless. As their boats closed on the man's canoe, he pushed himself to his absolute limit. His arms spasmed; he lost hold of his paddle, dropping it into the water. His canoe drifted to a stop. The Blighted flung themselves inside. And the man, who was too weak to even lift his own arms, barely had the strength to close his eyes as they ripped apart his wife and children.

  "At last, I saw a mother attempting to flee the Blighted, tugging her three young children along behind her. As the savagery unfolded on all sides, and the monsters closed in with their mad eyes blazing, she lost all reason to her terror. She raced away from her children, leaving them behind to be devoured. When they screamed in pain and terror, she hoped their cries would drive her mad—yet she was still sane when the Blighted leaped from the water and began to eat her alive. And in her clarity of mind, she spent her last moments understanding that when her children had died, the last thing they saw was their mother's back as she ran away from them."

  "I'm sorry," Blays said. "Does anyone have a spare noose? I seem to have displaced mine."

  "Mock me as you wish." Gladdic stared out into the jagged landscape of punished stone. "When I saw the horror contort the mother's face, as potent as burning acid, that's when I saw the gold shining from the depths of her eyes."

  Dante was too excited to have another of them able to see the stream to care about the gruesome process Gladdic had taken to get there. He felt as though it was only a matter of time until Blays would call out that he too had witnessed the new power, but when the sun sank into the dust-filled sky, reddening it like spilled blood, Blays still hadn't found his way to the stream.

  That evening's dinner tasted especially good: cauliflower in nut oil, along with black bean mash and slices of tart green apples which the servant said were from the year's first crop.

  "This is about as good as you can make a plate of stuff that's too dumb to run away from you." Blays spoke through a mouthful of food, jabbing a fork at the air for emphasis. "But don't you guys ever eat meat?"

  The servant smiled wryly. "Something in the Hills makes the animals' flesh taste unwholesome. It's not such a bad thing, though. We don't have space for livestock. We must use all the plants that we grow to feed ourselves."

  He retreated to the kitchens.

  Dante nodded to Blays. "Be sure to eat your fill. You've got a long day of holding us back tomorrow."

  Blays laughed and lifted a heaping spoonful of herbed beans. "Really, only one of us needs to learn the Odo Sein, right? If the three of you have that covered, it's probably best for me to get out of your way. Preferably in a hammock somewhere."

  "What have you tried imagining?"

  "Right now, I'm imagining that you're not being a condescending jackoff. But it's not a very realistic vision."

  "Well, keep trying. Ara seems intent on making us muddle through this on our own. The more of us we have working on it, the faster we'll go."

  The next morning was a warm one, with unusually low winds. Ara met them at the boundary and sent them straight into the Forest exercise. It took him several minutes of focused effort, but Dante could now see the stream almost every time he tried. Forty minutes in, he stood from his mat and motioned Ara a short ways into the trees.

  She looked inclined to ignore him, then sighed and joined him. "Did I say you could take a break?"

  "It's all right, I imagined asking you. You said yes."

  "What do you want? To remind me that you haven't bathed in days?"

  Dante fought down the flush in his cheeks; they were standing close together, and she smelled like honey. "While everyone has the nether within them, very few of them will ever be able to do anything with it, no matter how long they spend in training. Is the same true of the stream?"

  "You're worried that your friend might be an idiot."

  "I reached my conclusions on that front almost fifteen years ago. I'm just worried he might also be an idiot with the Odo Sein."

  "All of you have the potential to reach the stream."

  "The potential to do so within a month? Or only after a lifetime of study?"

  Ara shrugged. She'd worn a lighter robe to deal with the day's heat and her shoulders were bare. "I can't know the answer to that. Like so much else, you'll have to figure it out for yourselves."

  "That's not good enough this time. The White Lich doesn't give a big white shit about our inner quest for personal understanding of the Golden Stream. We spooked him enough to make him conservative in his advances, but sooner or later, he's going to realize we're not running around the swamps anymore. He'll start claiming people again. Bigger and bigger settlements. Within a matter of weeks, he'll become too powerful for us to resist."

  "You want to learn our secrets in weeks? If you're crossing a desert many days from water, and your friend breaks his leg, what do you do to make it onward?"

  "Carry him."

  Ara raised an eyebrow. "Or?"

  Dante thought for a moment. "You leave him behind."

  Dante returned to his mat. This time, rather than envisioning the woods, he thought. Blays had as much theory about the stream as the rest of them, but he still wasn't breaking through
to where he could see it. Tapping himself into Ara had let Dante see through her sight and witness the stream. What if he could tap himself into Blays and figure out why Blays wasn't seeing it?

  He waited for Ara to call out for them to take a break, then stood next to Blays. "Still being terrible?"

  Blays lobbed a pebble across the border into the naked Hills. "If I'd seen the stream, do you think I'd not have demanded Ara bring me nine bottles of celebratory wine?"

  "Let me try something."

  Dante moved his mind into the shadows within Blays' blood, withdrawing some and binding them to those within himself. On a lark, he tried to access Blays' sight and hearing the same way he might in an undead rat, but it was like bouncing against a blank wall. This made a certain amount of sense: when he reanimated a rat, a dragonfly, or even a person, he had total command over it. By contrast, his connection to Blays was extremely tenuous. It was the difference between clasping hands with Blays and actually being Blays. In fact—

  "Er." Blays pointed into the air around Dante. There, two small bits of gold spun about each other in expanding orbits. "You're talking about those little guys? The ones that look like extremely expensive gnats?"

  "You see them?"

  "Unless I'm hallucinating after I drank so much of that celebratory wine that I forgot I'd had any. How am I doing this?"

  "I was trying to see through your sight, but I think I made you see through mine."

  "So you did all the tough work, then magically passed your hard-earned knowledge over to me? Can we make this standard practice?"

  Dante met eyes with Ara. "We've figured out that the Golden Stream exists. We've all learned how to see it. Now how do we learn how to wield it?"

  10

  Dante didn't really expect for her to tell them that. This turned out to be a wise mindset, because he turned out to be exactly right.

  "You need me to tell you how to be sorcerers?" Ara said. "Three of you are sorcerers."

  "More like two and a half," Blays said. "Or two and a quarter. Actually, what's the smallest fraction more than two?"

  Dante tapped his chin. "Why don't you ask your penis?"

  Gladdic stuttered with unintended laughter.

  Blays shook his head at them both. "Since our mentor insists on being as helpful as a hemorrhoid, why don't we just try to grab the stream?" He closed his eyes and clenched his face. They were nearing midday and it was hot enough for a bead of sweat to appear on his temple. He opened his eyes, breathing hard. "Nothing. And if I bear down any harder, I'll need to change my jabat."

  Dante examined the two bits of gold that had appeared next to him. They were already shrinking, dimming. He extended his mind toward them. He could see them, but it was as if there was nothing there for his mind to sense. An idea presented itself to him. Before he could think about all the ways it wouldn't work, he summoned the nether and wrapped it around the two dots of stream. The sparks seemed to brighten for a moment, but remained invisible to his inner eye.

  He shook his head. "It's like trying to move a limb I don't have."

  "Now I understand," Blays said. "Not having one would explain why you think they can talk."

  Gladdic seated himself cross-legged and scowled up at the two flecks of gold. Volo walked in a circle around Dante, mouth twisted to the side. A part of him expected her to unlock the secret right away, as she'd done with the Glimpse, yet the sparks didn't show any sign of being affected. The four of them spent the next minute in near silence. Without warning, the two pieces of stream winked away, nowhere to be found.

  "Did someone do that?" Dante said.

  Gladdic lifted an eyebrow. "If we had, would that not be proof of the talent to move them, and hence a favorable outcome?"

  "We can stare at the stream all day without getting anywhere. How do we actually wield it?"

  "What if we're getting ahead of ourselves?" Blays rubbed the back of his arm. "When I was at Pocket Cove, they broke our training with the nether into several sections. First, they taught us to see the nether. Second, to touch it. And lastly, to grasp it. Right now, we're trying to skip straight to the grand finale. But maybe we should try to learn how to touch the stream first."

  "That's inefficient," Dante said. "When I learned the nether, I went straight to using it. I didn't even have to see it first."

  "You seem to be forgetting that you had the original Cycle lending you a hand. And that you turned out to be one of the greatest nethermancers of our generation. These people don't even have a broadsheet calling the emperor a wanker, let alone a holy book that teaches you how to wield the stream's power without you knowing that you're being taught. I'd say that baby steps are all we've got."

  "Agreed," Gladdic said. "Many of the acolytes within the Mallish church show little potential, but even modest talent in the ether is too valuable to be thrown away. Those who are strong may leap to the top of their studies in a handful of bounds. For those who are weaker, more steps are needed to convey them to the heights."

  As they spoke, two dabs of stream returned from nowhere, circulating in the air between them.

  Dante let out a huff of air. "Fine. We'll try to learn to touch it. How'd they teach you to do that at Pocket Cove?"

  "Er." Blays tipped back his head. "I don't wholly remember. I think it involved a lot of naked swimming. And searching for exotic sea snails."

  "We'll just find where the Odo Sein keep their ocean, then. How can you not remember learning to shadowalk?"

  "Because unlike the rest of you who get into these things, I'm not an obsessive mooncalf about it. I'd tell you to loon Nak to ask Minn what she taught me, except she's over in Pocket Cove right now, isn't she? I think the process involved breathing."

  "Breathing? Like with your lungs? That sounds like an arcane process to be sure."

  Blays paced about the grass. "Hang on, part of the reason I'm having a tough time remembering is because I ripped through it like used cheesecloth." He snapped his fingers. "That was it! I employed my Waves o' Muscle technique, and once my head was all calmed down, I swooped in on the nether from the side. Caught it completely off guard."

  "Waves o' Muscle? I veto this discussion."

  "The name more or less describes exactly what it is. The technique's a way to train yourself to be able to murder your foes at maximum efficiency, but it's also a good way to get your brain to shut up and let you think. What you do is isolate a group of muscles—the ones around your ears and eyes, say—then tense them hard when breathing out. Then as you inhale, you relax them. On the next breath, you move down to the next set of muscles, the ones in your jaw and neck, and repeat the process all until you get down to your feet."

  Dante found that he was already flexing the muscles on his face and ears. He made himself stop. "What does any of this have to do with learning sorcery?"

  "Beats the hell out of me. And Minn. All I know is that I did it, then came at the nether like a big sexy hawk, and it worked."

  Dante glanced at Ara, expecting to see her rolling her eyes or drooling with scornful laughter, but she was presently looking uncharacteristically nonjudgmental, which only happened on the rare occasions they weren't saying something she found unbelievably stupid.

  "This seems dumb," Dante said. "But it also seems like it'll only take a few minutes to test out. You might as well go first."

  Blays rolled his shoulders. "The women present might want to avert their eyes to avoid a sudden loss of consciousness."

  Volo giggled. Ara's expression reverted to its natural state of "witnessing unbelievable stupidity."

  Blays inhaled deeply through his nose, then cocked his head. "I've spotted a flaw in this plan. I can't seem to see any of the stream."

  "That's because you're bad at…" Dante trailed off, turning in a confused circle. "Hold on, where did it go?"

  Volo and Gladdic looked about, but they too couldn't see a single golden speck.

  "This makes no sense," Dante said. "We're all able to see it. We've
taught ourselves that much. So why can't we see any of it right now?"

  Volo quirked her mouth. "Maybe it's gone?"

  "Gone where? The nether's all around us. So is the ether. Once you know how to see them, they're always there. So where is the stream?"

  "Perhaps our skills remain weak," Gladdic said. "Hence it is only when we actively focus that we can see it."

  "And all four of us are exactly as bad at seeing it? So it disappears from all four of us at the exact same time?"

  "When phrased as such, it does not seem likely."

  Dante rubbed the corners of his eyes. "Then is it disappearing somewhere? Hiding?"

  Blays stretched his arms over his head. "I know one way to get it to show its face: show it a pretty mind-forest." While he was still mid-sentence, a little golden firefly appeared behind his head, circled to his side, and drifted in irregular loops. "Now that's strange, isn't it? I hadn't even thought of a single tree yet."

  "You didn't need to. Because you were just inspired."

  Gladdic's mouth fell open. He tilted back his head at the blue of the sky like he was being granted a vision from the gods. "You're suggesting that unlike ether and nether, the stream isn't permanent. Rather, it is created."

  "That's not what I'm suggesting at all," Dante said. "That's impossible."

  "Why so? Because the elements that we are familiar with do not act in the same fashion? You yourself stated that the key to seeing the stream was to think deeply and in detail about the forest. What is this but a focused way to find inspiration?"

  "All right, that's plausible. And if the stream is constantly fading away, that's another reason that nobody else even knows it exists. Most of the time, it isn't there."

  "Look!" Volo pointed above their heads. There, a dozen slivers of gold had sprung into existence, tossing gently in slow circles. "You guys just made those. While you were talking."

  "While we were debating." Feeling light-headed, Dante gawked at Ara. "That's why you invented dana kide, isn't it? To turn your entire society into an ongoing source of the stream for you to use!"