The Light of Life

by Edward W. Robertson

As the last of the towers was set to be taken, creatures flowed from its base. Humanoid, but their arms ended in long claws, their hairless bodies hard and lean. They crossed the rubble in great bounds, the fangs of their long jaws stained with blood. In the sped-up vision, they tore through the remains of the city in a blink, then spread outward, multiplying as they went, devouring whole towns, cities, everything.

  Until there was no more smoke. No more farmers driving their flocks, or children playing in the fields. No more anything but the wind in the grass.

  The lich lowered his hands. The vision faded, leaving them in the dimness of the chamber. "This is what once was."

  "How do you know it looked like that? You weren't there, were you?"

  The giant laughed, a surprising sound like the ring of steel bowls clapped together. "No. But I have seen it."

  "You aren't Shan, are you?"

  "Shan is long dead, and I am not. What I've shown you is what was. What must be prevented from ever happening again."

  Dante sputtered. "Your plan is to save the world from being destroyed by destroying the world?"

  "It will not be destroyed."

  "But it won't be anything. It'll just be you sitting on a mountain of bones getting worshipped by a pack of murderous half-zombies."

  "You deride the Blighted as mindless slaves to their hungers and hate. How is that so different from when they lived as humans?"

  "The Blighted can't even put their pants on the right way. Which won't be much of a problem, as the Blighted are too stupid to make new pants, and will soon all be naked. Enjoy looking at that for the rest of eternity."

  "The Blighted are one tool. A craftsman needs many. Some, like you, will retain your intelligence."

  "So you're going to make me one of your under-liches. I'll wait to thank you until I have no free will. Then you can make me thank you as much as you want. Incidentally, I'm sure your generosity toward elites like me will be of great comfort to the Blighted."

  "Don't speak like you have any care for them," the lich said. "You kill them like roaches. And that is appropriate. Once the plan is complete, there will be no more need for them."

  "What will you do with them then?"

  "I have chosen not to decide yet. Perhaps I will destroy them. Perhaps I will remove them to their own land until their bodies wear out. It does not matter. They will be happy with whatever I decide."

  "Then what? You, me, and the handful of other slave-sorcerers who survived the global extermination spend the next eternity getting drunk and remembering the good old days when the concept of 'days' mattered?"

  "Then," the lich said, cupping his hands and gazing into them, "a new people will replace them."

  "To worship you, I suppose?"

  "In part. And why not? I will have the power of a god. In some ways more, for I will have done more for them than any of the gods ever has."

  "But that isn't the main reason?"

  "Vanity drives men to make accomplishments because they know they will die and be forgotten. I face neither fate, and have thus set vanity aside. Do you know what the centuries have shown me? That all people of all times yearn to kill one another. To destroy everyone that is not of their kind. That they have not done so is not out of their goodness, but only because they have lacked the means. So I will stop them before they achieve that end. By binding them to me. And by making them all as one people, united, with no urge to fall upon one another even if the day comes that I pass from this world."

  Dante took a moment to attempt to conceive this. "Just everyone the same, from one shore to the other? In the mountains and the deserts and the coasts? On every continent of the world?"

  "Is it not worth it for peace? For harmony? A single religion, a single mode of thought, all of the world united at last. The gods have cursed us with differences. With so many ideas that a mind can never hold them all, and shatters beneath their contradictions, trying in vain to make sense of what is around them. I will liberate them from the burden of thought. For all will be answered, and people may at last move forward in serenity."

  "But you can't just demand they all think the same thing. The struggle toward truth is the core of what makes us human."

  "What happens when all questions have been answered and all truths delivered? The righteousness lies not in the struggle, little sorcerer. Why do you resent the thought of others living in enlightened unity? Is it because you hold yourself superior to them? Do you believe that only you have the clarity of mind to seek and discover that which is right? What flaw in you makes you yearn for others to suffer?"

  Dante shook his head, but all he found inside himself were simple denials, devoid of any conviction. "I just don't like the idea of making people think a certain way. Let them follow their own paths. In some ways, the journey's more important than the conclusion."

  "It is for their own good, and they will be happier for it." The lich tilted his massive head. "Do you not understand? You find this idea so dangerous because it is so beguiling. You claim to seek truth, yet when it stands before you at last, you reject it."

  "Why are you even trying to convince me of this? You don't have any doubts about it, do you? Once I'm under your power, neither will I. So why not just be-lich me already so that I'll agree with your every word?"

  The White Lich laughed again, the icy planes of his face looking like they might crack away. "Because there is so much more pleasure in bringing you to understand that you have been fighting for the cause of suffering and extinction. Abandon it now. Pledge yourself to the glory of peace. Let your last act as a mortal man be the first moral choice of your existence. That is my gift to you."

  For just a moment, Dante didn't know what he would say. Then it burst forth in a torrent. "You claim you'll bring them peace by making them all one people. But even that isn't good enough, is it? Because within that people, they'll still be individuals, pursuing their own goals and dreams. Which means there will be struggles. Conflicts. Maybe even wars. So the only way to solve that is to take away their ability to be individuals, with their own minds and mouths, their own thoughts and speech.

  "But it goes deeper than that, doesn't it? You don't only want to silence them to stop them from hurting each other. You want to shut them up because you're afraid that if they get the chance to speak, they'll prove you wrong. And then your whole great quest collapses into ashes." Dante smiled bitterly. "You say you'll bring them peace. Harmony. Unity. And in exchange, all they have to give up is everything."

  The giant didn't look the slightest bit upset by Dante's rebuke. "We have spent enough time on words. It is time to put you to use. I have thought about sending you to kill your friends. That would be amusing. But I want them gone, and your victory over them would not be assured. Instead, I will send you away and see if they follow you. They might not care to, and that would be amusing in its own way, but I think that they will. In doing so, they will abandon the city of Aris Osis to me. And once I have absorbed its people to myself, it will no longer matter what your friends do—although I expect that they will have already died fighting you."

  "You can't do this." Dante activated his loon.

  "Yes?" Naran answered at once, sounded urgent. "Dante, where are you?"

  "You may have captured me," Dante said to the lich. "You might turn me into one of your pet nethermancers. But my friends will find you. They'll kill you. And whatever you try to do to me, I'll fight back. I'll break free. I'll—"

  The lich lifted his left hand, curling his fingers. Light seeped through Dante's skin in little droplets, pooling there and then streaming toward the lich in white threads. Dante's body went ice-cold. He was still breathing, but he didn't seem to be getting any air. Sound roared in his eyes, drowning out the beating of his heart. He grasped at the nether, but he might as well have been trying to grab a cloud.

  For as much as he was afraid, he was just as surprised. Somehow, until that very moment, he had assumed that he'd find a way to escape, or resist, or even
talk the White Lich out of it. In the bedrock of his soul, he had always told himself that he would never let himself be made a slave.

  He had been wrong.

  13

  Blays awoke to two sensations, neither of them pleasant. The first was a most violent hangover, which he recalled being extremely well-earned. And the second was that of being shaken about by some utter prick who was about to learn that he who wakes a hungover man is he whose balls are about to be booted up into his body cavity.

  He slapped away Naran's hand. "Naran, you monster. Unless the White Lich himself is here to defile my soul, you can stuff it up your ass and keep it there until noon. On second thought, make that four o'clock."

  "Get up," Naran said. "I don't care how much pain you've put yourself in. Get up, Mr. Buckler."

  There was a shakiness to the captain's voice that made sweat pop out across Blays' body. Something had gone wrong. That in itself was no cause for alarm, to say nothing of rousting a man from bed like a brute. Over the last fifteen-odd years, Blays had experienced enough things going wrong that he now considered it unusual when things weren't falling to shit.

  But he knew at once that this was very, very different.

  He sat up, wincing at the brightness of the sunlight through the windows. "What is it?"

  "Dante has been taken."

  "What? When?"

  "I believe it happened last night—he went missing then, and I couldn't contact him. But I didn't know what had happened until just a minute ago."

  "Why didn't you tell me about this hours ago?"

  "I made an attempt to wake you. It failed, as someone was too drunk. I don't believe it was me."

  Blays had fallen asleep in his clothes, meaning he only had to find his sandals and swords. The blades were leaned against the head of the bed in easy grabbing range, the same place he always left them—it was good to know that even after a solid gallon of what passed for Tanarian beer, he was still able to remember what was important in life—but one of his sandals was missing. He moved toward the other room, meaning to steal one of Gladdic's.

  "Who thieved him? The Monsoon?"

  Naran trailed after him. "That's possible. But whoever took him, he's now in the hands of the White Lich."

  Blays froze with Gladdic's sandal halfway onto his foot. "Naran. Please tell me you're joking. And that this is a well-deserved punishment for my dereliction of duty."

  "Last night, Dante forged a new loon so he and I could keep up with each other's patrols. Since last night, I've tried to contact him repeatedly, without success. Not five minutes ago, he pulsed me. It was clear that he was talking to someone else, but that he wanted me to hear their conversation." Naran described what he'd heard. It wasn't much. "There can be no doubt that he was speaking to the Eiden Rane—and that the enemy meant to convert Dante into a lesser lich under his command."

  A wave of immense smallness passed over Blays. "Do we know if the lich has succeeded yet?"

  "Based on the last noises I heard before the loon went dead, I would assume he's enacting the process right now."

  "Then we have to go stop him."

  "The lich is likely to be hours away from here. The transformation of the Blighted is nearly instant. I'm afraid there is no way to get there in time."

  "We still have to try!"

  Naran kept his voice low. "We don't know where he is, Blays. Even if we did, we'd have to face off against the White Lich—and this time, we would do so without Dante's help. Or Gladdic's. The two of us wouldn't stand a chance."

  Blays sank to a crouch, hands pressed to the sides of his head. A hundred ideas swirled across his mind, but most of them were stupid, or useless visions of cutting the White Lich's fat stupid head off. Except the lich bled this ghastly white stuff, it wouldn't even spray in a properly satisfying—

  Blays jerked up his head. "Dante made a loon for you?"

  "To replace the one he and Jona had been using, which broke yesterday."

  "Your loon has his blood on it." Blays sprinted into the other room. Gladdic was asleep or unconscious in his bed, his pale shins looking like the trunks of birch saplings. "Gladdic! Wake up, you old son of a bitch!"

  Naran glared at him. "He is recovering from his fall. Show some decency!"

  "If he doesn't get up, the only thing I'll show him is the back of my hand. Gladdic!" He grabbed the old man's jabat, which was perfectly clean, having replaced the blood-stained one he'd been wearing during his topple from the tower, and gave him a good shake. "Open your eyes, you prick! Wake up and do some good for once in your miserable life!"

  Gladdic's head lolled, then snapped forward. He opened his eyes, the whites of which had gone faintly yellow. He made a clicking noise in his throat.

  Blays kept a tight grip on the front of his jabat. "Gladdic? Are you in there?"

  "I…live."

  "Yes, and we're all very upset about that. Do you remember what happened?"

  "The tower. I was on top of it. Watching over all of the world. And then…" He narrowed his eyes to slits, then bared his teeth and shook his head. "I cannot remember. Everything is blank." His mouth fell open. He fixed his eyes on Blays. "Wait. There is more!"

  "Yes?"

  "I was fishing!"

  Blays gave a grunt of laughter. "I think you cracked your skull. You weren't fishing, you were falling. The difference is that fishing involves a line and some fish, whereas falling involves breaking parts of you, and the occasional splattering."

  "I was at Ordimer Stream. Outside of Fallhedge. That is the village where I spent my childhood. I was at the stream and it was vital that I catch enough trout, for my father was sick in bed and my mother had died the year before, and my younger sisters would have no dinner except what I brought home. It was close to winter and the leaves were falling in the water, and the sun was about to go down and I was cold, but I stayed until I caught my fourth fish and then I walked home, and although it was dark and I was frightened, I was proud, too. Because that night, my sisters would not go hungry."

  "What's this? A memory of yours?"

  "It was more than a memory. I experienced it in perfect clarity. As though I were living it anew. Do you not see?"

  Blays snapped his fingers. "You died, didn't you? What you saw was the Pastlands."

  "I believe so. Yet if I was dead, how can I be here now? Breathing? Speaking? Questioning?"

  "Because apparently Dante is a miracle-worker. You'll have to thank him for that. Except you can't, because the White Lich took him."

  Gladdic's mouth fell open again, eyes gleaming in horror. It was an expression Blays wouldn't have thought him capable of. "But how?"

  Blays and Naran explained what little they knew. During this, Gladdic closed his eyes. Winky little pieces of light flowed down his body. When he finished and opened his eyes again, his face looked somewhat less haunted, meaning it appeared to only be housing four or five ghosts instead of a full dozen.

  Blays' head hurt, but he hardly felt it as he paced about. "The lich might have stolen Dante. But we can find him. We've got some of his blood. We need you to open a connection between it and the rest of the blood sloshing around in his body and use that to track him down."

  "And then what? If he has been converted into lichdom, he will be utterly loyal to the Eiden Rane. He will attempt to destroy us on sight."

  "When we left, Ara said that there's a way to reverse being Blighted. Maybe there's a way to de-lich somebody, too."

  "You are suggesting we return to the Silent Spires, learn if there is indeed a method to undo what has been done, then chase Dante down and apply this method to him?"

  "Unless you think we can slap it out of him."

  "You are made foolish by your passions. You don't understand what this course of action will lead to."

  "Saving our friend from being used against us, teaming up with him to rip the lich into glowing white confetti, and then being thrown a country-wide party by the grateful locals?"

  "It
is three days from here to the Hell-Painted Hills. Then one to two more days to reach the Silent Spires. Even if the lore you seek is real, and can be conveyed to us instantly, it will be five to seven days before we can even begin the hunt for Dante."

  "I think he'll forgive us for not being able to violate the laws of nature and time to get to him sooner."

  Gladdic had been seated on his bed. He stood, pre-wincing and then looking mildly surprised at the apparent lack of pain. "During that timespan, short as it seems, the Eiden Rane will invade Aris Osis. We will not be here to defend it, and it will fall. In a single stroke, the lich will double both the size of his army and his personal power. After that, there will be no fighting him."

  "I don't care. We're going to find Dante. And we're going to save him."

  "This might well be the Eiden Rane's very plan! Entice us to depart the city, and then claim it once there is nothing left to threaten him. We cannot fall into his trap!"

  "We're not going to fall into any trap. We're going to jump into it."

  Gladdic shuffled to the glass door and flung it open to the balcony. He swept his hand across the towers of the city. "You would sacrifice all of these people for this? Along with our only real chance to kill the Eiden Rane—a chance we have spent everything preparing for? That Dante was fighting for? And you would do all this on the possibility that we might learn a way to undo what has been done?"

  "Yes! Yes, gods damn you, I would!"

  "But what is the point? You would save your friend only to lose the world! How can we kill the lich if we give this up?"

  Blays crossed to him in a blink, jabbing his finger at Gladdic's face. "Do you know how many times he and I have done the impossible? I don't, because I stopped keeping track after it hit triple digits. We'll get him back—and we'll find a way to win. Just like we always do."

  Gladdic looked away with a grimace, exposing his worn teeth. "How can you throw so much away like this?"

  "Because he would do the same for me."

  The look that came to Gladdic's face contained a blend of sadness, envy, and resolution. "Very well. We will abandon the city and travel to the Silent Spires. But I ask one thing of you."