The Light of Life

by Edward W. Robertson

  He'd been too far away to mark the exact spot where Gladdic had landed, but all he had to do was run to the cluster of servants and onlookers circled around the body.

  Dante slid through the grass to kneel next to Gladdic. "Get back!"

  The crowd retracted two steps, leaving him alone with the broken figure. It was both better than Dante had expected yet entirely gruesome: bones poking from the right shin, hip turned strangely, blood staining Gladdic's jabat and leaking from his lolling mouth.

  Dante had already cut himself as he'd run across the island. The nether was everywhere, falling on him before he called to it. He sent it into Gladdic's form. The old man wasn't breathing. His heart was still. Yet the nether still circulated within him. Pulsing in confusion. Dante had seen this before: it was the state in which the body wasn't dead in the full sense, the shadows within it not yet certain that they were supposed to flow from the corpse to rejoin the world as a whole.

  He drove the nether into Gladdic's heart like a black dagger. Blocking out all other thoughts, he churned the nether in a circle to mix with the unsteady shadows that were already there. Once they were thoroughly emulsified, he expanded the nether, contracted it, and expanded it again, slowly at first, then quicker and quicker with each cycle. Until the frantic pace matched the thrum of his own heart.

  He held the pace for twelve seconds. Feeling woozy, he removed himself from Gladdic's heart. Yet it continued to beat on its own. Gladdic coughed bright red blood, groaned, and lapsed back into unconsciousness.

  The crowd erupted into gasps and chatter; someone gave a short scream. A young man with ragged hair fell to his knees and lowered his face in supplication. "You brought him back from the dead!"

  Dante shook his head, too focused on his task to try to explain that Gladdic hadn't really been dead—and aware that, even if he tried, it would do nothing to quench the ridiculous stories the locals would be telling about it later that same night. He cleared his mind of thoughts, waiting with forced patience while the ether filled him. He sent the light to Gladdic's shattered shin, making it whole, while at the same time applying the nether to the priest's numerous and catastrophic internal injuries.

  Bad though these were, Gladdic had fallen more than two hundred feet. The impact should have burst him apart. The flash of light Dante had seen at the end must have been some trick of ether Gladdic had used to save his life.

  Dante hadn't had the time and rest to recuperate all of the nether he'd spent during the battle and he ran out before he'd finished undoing the damage to Gladdic's body. It would have to be enough for the time being. A team of soldiers arrived with a stretcher. They gathered Gladdic up and transported him to the tower where Volo and Bek were currently recovering.

  Dante tilted back his head at the spire. Some loose masonry was scattered across the island.

  He turned to the crowd. "Was anyone with him when he fell? Did you see what happened?"

  A servant took a step forward, bowing his head. "I was on the roof. He was near the edge, muttering to himself and casting his weird spells. Then he cried out and slipped over the edge."

  A woman dressed in the green and white of the Drakebane's soldiers nodded. "Saw the same. Ledge crumbled under his foot. Had warned him it'd been damaged in the fighting, but he didn't listen."

  No one had anything more than that. Dante got the name of the soldier and the servant who'd witnessed it, then paddled back to the island where they'd set up their private hospital, which was getting disturbingly full. A pair of soldiers had been posted outside the hospital quarters. Inside, Gladdic was unattended. Dante wasn't certain if that was because local physicians had decided they couldn't do anything for him, or if they refused to touch dirty foreigners.

  Gladdic was breathing deeply and evenly. It didn't seem like the kind of sleep he would soon wake from. Volo had curled up to face the wall. Dante called to her softly, but she gave no sign she'd heard. Bek, at least, seemed reasonably healthy, given what he'd been through, although obviously weak.

  The door banged open, vomiting Blays into the room. His eyes were bleary and he was missing one of his sandals. Naran entered after him, looking annoyed yet grave.

  Blays staggered over to Gladdic, taking a route that was wriggly enough to seduce a snake. "What happened to him?"

  "He fell from a tower," Dante said.

  "A tower? Are you sure it wasn't his high horse?"

  Dante explained what little he knew. "He'll live. I think."

  "Hardly a surprise, is it? Devils never die easy. If he was going to fall on something, why couldn't it have been a field of whirling blades?"

  "Are you that drunk? Or just that stupid? He could be out for days. If the White Lich shows up and Gladdic's still unconscious, that means no Andrac. We'll be down to a single sorcerer."

  Blays crossed his arms and made an attempt to nod, though his head was swaying side to side as much as up and down. "Yeah, well, he's still a bastard. And I'm tired. Wake me up if he dies, will you? Just make sure to bring beer."

  Blays shuffled toward the other room, ramming into the doorway and half-collapsing inside. Even with the door closed behind him, the racket he made unfolding his bed from the wall was enough to wake Bek.

  Naran shook his head in disgust and indicated the balcony. It was hours past sundown and the offshore breeze had died away to nothing, leaving the night humid and warm. Most of the revelers had gone off to bed, but isolated shouts and cackles rang through the darkness.

  "We're dead," Dante said. "With Gladdic in this state, a lesser lich could sneak up on us at any moment."

  Naran pinched his chin. "In that case, I would recommend the use of a little-known asset known as 'guards.' It is admittedly primitive when compared to sorcery, but some have found it effective."

  "Yes, all right, maybe it's not the end of the world in and of itself. But this isn't our only problem, is it? Volo's catatonic. I don't even know if she can hear me. Gladdic might be in a coma. Even if he snaps out of it in time, Blays can barely stand to stay in the same room with him. Everything's falling apart, and it's at the worst possible time."

  "Given the frequency that you find yourself in such conditions, I had come to think that you enjoyed them."

  "I don't know if we can rely on our original plan to take out the lich. I need to think of something else. Some way to hit the lich before he comes close to the city and puts his guard up."

  Naran nodded, gazing across the dark towers. "As before, I don't know what help I can be to you. But I'll offer whatever I can."

  "I suppose you can help me keep an eye on the city. We should set up patrols to look out for more Blighted. The attempt they made today was too good not to try again."

  They went to the ground floor to speak to a woman named Sal Dan, who had been acting as Naran's liaison since the first threats had arisen against the city. She sent runners out to bring more soldiers to the island for instruction.

  While they waited, Dante asked Naran to step outside. He moved a short ways from the tower, checking to ensure they were alone. "The loon I gave Jona broke when we were on our way here. I'm going to replace it."

  "Do you anticipate that we'll be working separately again?"

  "It's possible I'll need to venture outside the city for recon. Besides, if you're out on patrol and you bump into a lesser lich, I doubt you'll want to wait for a runner to inform me that you're currently shitting your pants."

  Dante waited until a pair of the city's innumerable rats wandered by, then slew them with one of his few remaining dabs of nether. He picked up the bodies and brought them upstairs, where he severed their heads and rapidly cleaned them of flesh and brains, a process that had become second nature to him.

  Naran clamped his hands in his armpits. "Is it required that everything involving your art must be disgusting?"

  "You sound like Blays. As the saying goes, if you want to make a loon, you have to break a few rats' skulls."

  Dante cracked the skulls int
o the component pieces that would form the loon and bound them together with some Tanarian thread that was strong enough to use as fishing line. He cut his finger and Naran's and they each added a dab of blood to the two parts, forging the connection between them. They tested them to confirm they worked, then returned downstairs, where Sal had assembled thirty soldiers. After Dante briefed them on the previous Blighted attack, they took to canoes and dispersed through the city canals.

  Feeling moderately better about the state of things, Dante returned to his balcony, shifting his attention between the White Lich, the retreating Monsoon (who'd made camp in the swamps miles north of Aris Osis), and the city's innumerable canals and waterways. The revelry had finally ended, citizens exhausted by the battle trundling off to their beds, aware they might have another fight on their hands all too soon. Having had an awfully long day himself, Dante propped his back against the wall.

  He woke with a start, heart pounding. It was still dark, but the stars had jumped close to two hours. Two hours that Dante had neglected to keep watch on the vulnerable city.

  He activated his new loon. Naran didn't answer. He was probably asleep, too, leaving the patrols to better-rested Tanarians. Dante sent his nearby bugs on a quick sweep of the skies. The city seemed at peace, but that could be true right up until the moment ten thousand Blighted jumped from hiding in the waterways.

  He jogged up the stairwell to the rooftop, emptying himself of thoughts. In the stillness, the ether arrived, coming freely, most of his ability restored by sleep and the long hours since he'd used it. He pushed open the hatch to the roof. He was two hundred feet high. Enough to see a good portion of the city at once. Gathering up the ether, he sent it down to the canals. Not to the surface, which would likely be painted with the disturbance of any number of vessels even at this late hour, but below it. Faint, small lines appeared, the trails left behind by cruising fish.

  He cast his net further and further, working in an outward spiral. Knowing he had limited light to work with, he gave each segment of canal no more than a dusting, hoping that it would be enough to catch the trail left by anything human-sized.

  As he neared the western wall, the dust lit up like white fire, illuminating dozens of tangled strands. Dante's throat caught. He sent a dragonfly screaming toward the site, but it couldn't see past the murky surface of the canal.

  Dante flung himself down the steps, pausing only to inform the guards stationed outside their quarters that he was going to check on a possible disturbance. As he ran out the doors, he pulsed Naran's loon again, but there was no response.

  He hopped in a canoe, stirring the scent of brackish water as he paddled toward the western wall. There had been something like thirty or forty trails through the water. If they were all Blighted, that wouldn't be a problem; the shadows were starting to come easily again, and would rip apart the undead in seconds. If they were Blighted led by a lesser lich, it might be more of a challenge, yet he fully expected that he'd still be able to destroy them by himself—or at the very least retreat and rally at one of the towers.

  Besides, with most of his team injured, or passed out in bed, what other choice was there?

  He came to the southern tips of the silvery trails, which were already fading away. He tracked them north, the light strengthening as he went. After a few hundred yards, it was blazing under the water, and seemed to be intensifying at a sluggish walking speed. One that would match that of bodies slogging along underwater.

  Dante brought the canoe in to land. Nicking his arm, he summoned the nether to his right hand. He dropped a good chunk of his ether into the water, asking it to glow as pure light.

  Pale rays shot through the water. On the canal bed, illuminated despite the murk, forty Blighted threw their hands over their eyes against the intrusion of the light.

  Dante didn't have much experience with using the nether to blast things underwater, so he sent a single bolt as a test case. It moved more slowly than it would through open air, but struck the target forcefully enough to punch a hole through the man's chest. He staggered, a cloud of blood wafting through the water.

  The Blighted took off to the north at what passed for a run. Dante only had to walk to keep up, striding alongside a retaining wall. He plowed a half dozen shadowy missiles into the water. All struck their targets, but only three did so with enough damage to kill. Could he force or lure them from the water somehow? Or was there a way to work with the water to reduce the energy he was spending? Because while it was likely that it would be at least another day before the White Lich arrived—

  He passed the corner of the retaining wall. A shadow flew toward him, robes flapping behind it. Dante thrust at it with the nether, but the nether was already coming at him, battering past his defenses, enfolding everything in darkness.

  ~

  Cold tingled over him. He smelled ice. It felt like some time had passed. He opened his eyes.

  And stared into those of the White Lich.

  Dante kicked his feet against the stone ground, trying to slide away as he snatched out at the nether. The lich lifted his index finger. Dante's feet and hands seemed to freeze to the floor. A whip of ether dashed the shadows from his command.

  "You will stop that." The lich's metallic voice grated like flint drawn down the side of a copper bowl. "Or I will hurt you until you learn to stop."

  Dante bit his teeth together hard enough to strain his jaw. He made another grab at the nether. The ether whipped out again, dispersing it. A second whip of ether lashed at Dante. Pain launched up his spine. Every muscle in his body went as stiff as a tile. He heard himself scream.

  He was gone for a while. The coldness returned. He opened his eyes. He'd pissed himself.

  He was lying in a stone chamber. The walls were covered in glyphs and the air smelled damp and somehow old. The White Lich stood fifteen feet from him, the light emanating from the sorcerer's skin making his outline indistinct, like a vision from a dream. He barely had room to stand without scraping his head on the ceiling.

  Dante found he was able to tilt his head to meet the lich's gaze, but the rest of his body was bound in place by implacable strands of ether. "Why not kill me?"

  The lich's expression barely changed, yet he was somehow able to exude a sense of pitying contempt. "You are smarter than most, sorcerer. Don't beg me for answers that you can find for yourself."

  "You want me for something. Information. Or to turn me into one of your slaves. Or both."

  "Think more deeply yet."

  "Except for the fact that other nethermancers seem to be of use to you, and that you're completely insane, I know almost nothing about you."

  Only the lich's lips moved. "We are not always rational. Not everything is done in the service of securing resources. Sometimes we act for satisfaction. Maybe I just want to hurt you."

  Dante's scalp tingled. "Do you?"

  "Yes," the lich said. "But I do not think that I will."

  "How did you get to me?"

  "You already possess the answer."

  Despite his half-terror, Dante nearly rolled his eyes. Then he frowned instead. "After you ambushed us with the Blighted, you knew we'd be on the lookout for further incursions. So you gave us one. When I went out to investigate, your lieutenant attacked me from the shadows."

  "Yes."

  "Why not just kill me, though? What if I'd been able to fight off your lieutenant? Or woken up while he was still taking me to you, and destroyed him?"

  "You oppose me. You would give your life to stop me. Do you even know what it is that you fight?"

  "Well, yes. A madman bent on conquering everything."

  "Why do I do what I do?"

  "Power. You want to rule everything. And remove all threats to your life."

  "Those are lesser goals. What is the main one?"

  Dante thought for several seconds, then shook his head. "I don't know. You forgot to send the manifesto around."

  "How long have you humans lived on this lan
d?"

  "It isn't entirely clear. I was taught that the gods gave us life about two thousand years ago."

  The lich's mouth budged into the suggestion of a smile. The light in his eyes danced. "You are taught wrong. Your knowledge is as shallow as this swamp. The truth is as deep as the seas that lie beyond the land."

  "You're talking about the uniquely Tanarian idea that we've been around much longer than that. At least twenty thousand years. Maybe as much as a hundred thousand."

  "This interests you. I see it in your face. Yet you deny it?"

  Dante would have crossed his arms, but as they were currently locked in place beside him, he settled for crinkling his brow. "Can I say that I find it excessively odd that you, the all-feared Eiden Rane, have kidnapped me in order to deliver me a history lesson?"

  "I do not fear when birds caw or frogs croak. Speak as you will. Do you know how the old world was lost?"

  "The sorcerers built a beautiful world, but they did so on the backs of their slaves. Eventually, there was a rebellion. Apparently one so big that the entire world got smashed up, which I find difficult to believe logistically. As the sorcerers were on the brink of defeat, they unleashed a race of demons they'd created. Ones that hunted people. The demons slaughtered almost everyone. Drove the survivors into hiding. After a long while, the demons died out, but it was tens of thousands of years until people began to build cities and nations again." He crooked one eye. "Supposedly."

  Effortlessly, the Eiden Rane drew the ether to him, the light scintillating and jagged. If Dante hadn't already pissed himself, he would have done so then.

  The lich spread his hands wide. In the air between them, a vision formed, as crystal clear as existence itself. A great city. Towers like blades of glass. Gleaming streets. Horses as proud as victorious warriors. Then, in a mad rush that somehow remained comprehensible to Dante's eye, those clean streets filled with rebels. Towers burned and fell. Light and shadow smashed whole neighborhoods into craters.