The Light of Life

by Edward W. Robertson

  "We will wait here for you," Gladdic said. "Good luck, sir Blays."

  "Thanks, sir Gladdic."

  Blays shrugged at the Andrac. It stared up at him, saying nothing. Interpreting this as demonic for "Why yes I am ready," Blays walked up to the stone wall and plunged into the shadows.

  The night's gloom lit up with the moon-like eeriness of the netherworld. He crossed through the wall and into a sitting room. In the hallway beyond, the Andrac took the lead, dashing silently over the reed mat lining the center of the passage.

  They'd hardly gotten anywhere before the glowing outline of a person appeared at the far end of the corridor. The Andrac stopped and sank into the wall. Ensconced in the shadows, Blays wouldn't have been noticed by the intruder even if he'd done a handstand with his jabat flipped over his head while blowing a trumpet. But he needed the Andrac, and it wouldn't do to have a servant run off shrieking about bumping into a child-sized demon. He didn't particularly want to kill an innocent resident, either. As he waited, he gritted his teeth, feeling each second trickle away from him.

  The woman walked past. The Andrac detached from the wall, skimming down the hallway. Blays ran a step behind it. After another turn, the demon ran toward a closed door, vanishing through the stone wall beside it. Blays followed it into a stairwell. This was completely dark and at the speed they were going Blays would likely have found himself the proud owner of a broken leg if not for the dark shine of the nether to light the way.

  The air took on the quality of dankness universal to all underground spaces with poor circulation of air. The Andrac exited into another dark hallway, doors flicking past on both sides. They were fed into a sprawling room. The skeletons of small animals lay arranged on tables. Other surfaces hosted candles burned to various lengths, along with glass flasks and small metal pots. Blays recognized it at once: sorcerer's den.

  The demon ran to the far end of the room. There, a great iron doorway blocked the way forward, sealed with chains big enough to beat a bull to death with and padlocks that looked capable of choking a swamp dragon. Patterns and sigils of warding were etched across the entire surface of the door. The Andrac stepped to the side and walked through the wall. So did Blays.

  The chamber beyond was a step lower and he fell six inches, uttering a small yelp of alarm. The room was narrower than the one before it, the walls to right and left standing twenty feet apart. The lower four feet of the walls were blank, with everything above that sporting cabinets and shelves loaded down with glassware, idols, and pieces of metal whose purpose was no doubt inscrutable to anyone but obsessive and crank-minded nethermancers.

  The Andrac trotted past all of this, arriving at a group of display cases set on sturdy stands that, like the cabinets, were four feet high. The little demon stopped in front of one, nodding to it.

  Even without the ivory gecko wrapped around them, Blays had spent more than enough time around Dante to recognize the bones inside the case: those of a human forearm.

  He grinned at the demon. "For a being of pure evil, you do good work."

  The case had a broad step in front of it to allow better access. Blays climbed it, then exited the shadows. The room was so dark he could barely see his own hand. The only light came from the Andrac's dim and slitted eyes.

  "Point your face this way, will you? I can't see a damn thing."

  The Star-Eater obliged, opening its eyes wider. Blays undid the latch on the hinge panel on the front of the case and swung the panel open. He reached for the Aba Quen.

  As soon as his fingers touched the smooth, cool ivory, he stopped. The room prior to this had absolutely, definitely been a laboratory for sorcerers. He knew what sorcerers were like. Suspicious creatures who imagined everyone else was as conniving and covetous as they were. He took hold of the carving, then moved into the shadows. Only then did he lift it.

  With a metal clang, something shot up beneath him. Spears. Emerging from the step he was standing on. If he'd been wearing his normal meat-based body, he'd have been impaled from, and one of the spears would currently be waving his dangly bits as a flag. He chuckled softly.

  Heavy clunks sounded from all sides. He craned his neck in mild confusion—what next, machines that shot arrows at him?—then rocked back on his feet.

  The entire room was flooding with water.

  16

  The water swirled across the floor in a foaming torrent. If he'd been your average non-shadowalking type, and had somehow avoided the spears, and had jumped off the step, he would currently be getting swept to the back of the room, either to be smashed into the back wall and drowned, or to be carried into some insidious nethermancer's trap to be held until authorities arrived—or possibly just to be held down for more effective drowning.

  Either way, he very much doubted that his current situation had gone without notice.

  He motioned to the little Andrac. "I take it from the attempt to flush us that it's time to leave. Might I suggest running?"

  He tucked the Aba Quen into his jabat, ensuring it was secure, and leaped off the step. He landed on the eddying surface of the water with a small splash. Rather than yanking him from his feet and carrying him away, the torrent merely felt slippery, like wet clay, obliging him to proceed in careful, loping hop-steps.

  The water appeared to be gushing from the lower front of the room, where it took a step down from the laboratory on the other side. Which explained why it was a step lower in the first place. And why all the cabinets and cases housing the nethermancers' valuables were elevated four feet off the ground. With an appreciative nod at their engineering, Blays galloped right through the wall.

  The laboratory on the other side was bone dry; the roar of the water in the other room was now a muffled hiss. From the tables, the skeletons of the birds and rodents seemed to be watching him. The feeling was so strong that he stopped and peered at them, searching them for signs of nethereal animation, but a closer inspection revealed they were just your standard piles of dead stuff.

  The little Star-Eater slitted its eyes at him. In the real world, the demons looked flat and unreal, but in the shadows, they were as vivid as a tree or a wolf. On a full-sized Andrac, the expression of impatience it was currently wielding on Blays would have been menacing. As this demon only stood to his mid-thigh, the look was comical instead.

  Its impatience wasn't unfounded, however. Blays resumed running, heading across the long room toward the stairwell. As he entered the hallway, an awareness entered the shadows like a shark coming to a reef, questing about with predatory malice. Blays froze in place and tried to make himself very small. Three seconds crept by, then five, then ten. He still had more than half his shadows left in him, but if he had to wait much longer—

  A presence hammered into his side, knocking him from the nether like a loose tooth. Swearing extensively, he drew a knife, nicked the back of his arm, and sprinted toward the stairs, drawing a sword in his right hand and a small hunk of shadows in his left. He pulled the stairwell door open and listened a moment for the smack of feet, then took the steps three at a time.

  He came to the ground floor landing and reached for the door. It flew open before he could touch it. A soldier shouted out in surprise, jabbing instinctually with his short spear. Blays caught the haft with the edge of his blade, sliding it past him, and stabbed the man in the chest, the churning nether of the Odo Sein weapon parting the soldier's breastbone like boiled chicken.

  The Andrac ran past the body and out the door. An instant later, a bolt of nether flicked into its side. This appeared to do nothing, but the spear of ether that followed it punched a hole through the demon's neck, spraying shadows across the hall.

  Thirty feet down the way, a sorcerer in light blue robes stood with her feet apart and her hand outstretched. Tendrils of shadows extended from the Andrac as she drew the nether from its body. Blays spun about and ran deeper into the Bastion, the demon flying along behind him. He could feel the nether zipping down the hallway toward them. H
e flung himself down a side passage. The shadows pounded into the corner with a hail of stone.

  "I don't suppose you know a way out of here?"

  Blays looked to the demon as if he actually expected an answer and came to the realization that the chaos of the moment had driven him temporarily insane. With footsteps pounding after them, and another lance of nether bending around the corner, Blays blipped into the shadows and jumped to his left, taking a shortcut through the wall.

  As soon as he was clear, he dropped back into the physical world, praying the action had been too fast for the enemy nethermancer to track. He found himself in a yawning and empty room. Windows shed light from above, but the openings were nearly twenty feet up and there was no way to climb to them.

  The presence quested forth again. Blays wished it had a face so that he could punch it.

  He glanced at the Andrac. "Well, little fellow. How would you like to collect your share of glory?"

  The demon flexed its claws in anticipation, although Blays suspected it was less enthusiastic about potential valor than it was about the chance to rip a fleshy human into messy pieces. He moved back to the wall. The presence circled closer, homing in on the Andrac.

  And Blays homed in on it.

  He pointed to a section of wall with his sword. The Star-Eater lowered its head and ran full-tilt through the wall. Blays bounced on his heel and followed after it, rolling into the shadows just before he was about to bash his brains out on the stone. In the hallway on the other side, the Andrac threw itself at the sorcerer, who jerked up her hands in surprise. Ether sprayed from her fingers in straight lines, raking tatters from the Andrac. It slashed at her leg, grinning at the sight of the blood flowing from her thigh.

  Yet she was already sucking the nether from the Andrac's wounds and applying it to her own, the gashes fading as the demon became semi-transparent. Blays drew his second sword and charged. She backpedaled, the faltering Andrac giving chase and ripping at her shin.

  The woman drew back her arm, yanking a fat gob of nether from the demon. They both stumbled. She fired a blast of nether at Blays. He held up the meager bit of it that he could command, waiting until her attack was almost on him before deflecting it.

  He leaped through the shower of black sparks. She was already drawing more power from the small Andrac, which fell on its face, now-ghostly claws outstretched before it. Blays made an overhand slash toward the sorcerer's head. She threw up her right hand, which succeeded in saving her skull at the cost of sending her hand and half her forearm smacking against the wall.

  She wailed in the particular kind of panic that overtook people when they watched themselves lose a limb. Shadows whipped around her head. Before she could think about doing anything with them, Blays stuck his other blade into her gut. She gasped, face going gray. He flexed his elbow and backhanded his first sword through her neck.

  Her head landed a foot from her hand. Her mouth hung open, the eyes blinking at him dully. That reaction was one reason he wasn't particularly fond of beheading people, but when you were dealing with nethermancers, it was always best to chop too much rather than too little.

  He turned to the Andrac. "Still with me?"

  It didn't move. Except for the integrity of its body, which was collapsing on itself. Blays kneeled halfway down, intending to touch the demon on the back, then grunted at himself.

  "I'll remember you, little one." He straightened. Wisps of nether curled away. The Andrac was gone.

  Blays glanced up and down the hallway, trying to get his bearings after the chase. Even by the standards of stately castles, the Bastion was big. The wrong turn could find him utterly lost in hostile territory.

  Then again, he had no need to follow the rigid confines of "hallways" and "rooms." He shifted back into the shadows. Felt a bit wobbly. Less than two minutes before he ran short, he thought. He aligned himself in what he thought was a southerly direction that would take him back to the others and ran as fast as he could, blowing through a wall. Heading in a straight line, he knifed through a second wall, only to blunder into something yielding yet smothering. It felt clothy. He ripped the tapestry from himself, cast it aside, and sprinted on.

  Without warning, the bright darkness of the netherworld fell away, replaced by the dull darkness of an average room. Back in the real world, Blays immediately tripped over a kneeling mat, sprawling forward. He managed to tuck and roll as if that had been his plan all along, but with no one there to witness it, the victory felt hollow.

  He pressed his palms against his eyes, wanting to groan. He hadn't run out of shadows. He hadn't been forced out by a nethermancer, either. Instead, it had been the locking-out of the Odo Sein. How had the Monsoon gotten their hands on someone with the power? Had they turned a knight traitor? Or, much like their current rash of sorcerers, did they have a secret training ground of their own?

  As he took a well-deserved moment to mull all the ways that life was unfair, he spotted a silver lining to his predicament. The room he was in also had windows high up on its walls. Like before, they were too high to get to, but the moon was angling through them from slightly to his right. Given the time of night, that meant the windows were facing south.

  Keeping one hand on the hilt of his sword, which he'd put away after dealing with the nethermancer, he jogged toward the southern wall. He cracked open the door and peeked into the hallway. Light glowed to his left, strengthening in intensity. A pair of soldiers ran down the corridor bearing a lantern. Blays let them pass.

  Once the lantern faded around a corner, he headed the opposite way, turning right at the intersection to resume heading south. Footsteps scraped ahead. Two dim figures spotted him, jogging forward. Blays drew both swords. Their purple light illuminated the gaunt face of Gladdic and the warrior's frame of Bek.

  Blays ran to meet them. "What are you doing in here?"

  "Mitigating your incompetence," Gladdic said. "Did you find the Aba Quen?"

  Blays sheathed his swords and removed the statue from his jabat. "Would you like to sing my praises now? Or wait until things calm down?"

  Bek moved to touch the Aba Quen, then stopped himself, as if it was too holy. "That is it. The remnant that lifts the Blight."

  "Then our work here is done. Let's get out of here like it's filled with people trying to kill us."

  Gladdic turned about and jogged down the passage. Nether wreathed his hand.

  Blays cocked his head at Bek. "Hang on, he can use the shadows, but I can't? Are you locking me out of them?"

  The power slid from Blays' shoulders like a water-bearer's pole. Bek gestured behind them. "I didn't know it was you. All I knew was that a warlock was at play. I put a stop to everything I could feel."

  "And nearly put a stop to my heart, too. You—"

  Three soldiers spilled from a side room. Gladdic blasted them into giblets before Blays could draw his sword. He stepped over the bodies, blood sliding beneath his sandals. The next turn of the corridor took them to the expansive foyer containing the Bastion's front doors.

  Though the room was the size of a small chapel, it was completely aglow with lanterns, which were borne in turn by a squadron of Monsoon soldiers. They raised their spears and small round shields.

  Blays drew his swords and charged. Looking puzzled and contemptuous, the dozen-odd soldiers formed an inverted chevron, ready to tear him to pieces. Arrowheads of nether whipped past Blays' shoulders and thumped into the bodies of the soldiers. Every one of them fell to the ground at once.

  "That looked like they'd practiced it!" Blays vaulted over a still-twitching corpse and threw open one of the oversized doors. There was shouting going on from within the Bastion, but the night was peaceful with the song of crickets.

  They ran along the thin strip of land fringing the fortress. The icy canoe rested in the shallows, fog swirling about its edges. It looked a little melty, but Gladdic solved that with a wave of his hand, the ether solidifying the boat's underside. They climbed aboard and launc
hed off, Blays paddling while Bek and Gladdic watched for threats.

  "I was led to believe you were so good at stealing that you could filch a man's own shadow," Gladdic said. "Then why is it that we currently have an entire palace attempting to hunt us down?"

  "Because those cheating bastards tried to stop me from taking their stuff," Blays said. "They used traps and things. Completely unsporting."

  "One wonders whether—"

  Gladdic was interrupted by a streak of nether hurtling toward them from the Bastion walls. Gladdic lifted his hand, meeting it with a wedge of ether. Blays had his back turned to the conflagration, but the light of the impact sparkled over the water. Gold specks lit up around Bek as he clamped down on the enemy nethermancer.

  An arrow plunked into the water to starboard, followed by one to port. Blays risked a quick look at Gladdic. "Mind putting a stop to that?"

  Gladdic forked his fingers, loosing nethereal missiles toward the battlements. Someone screamed. Gladdic cried out in surprise. Impossibly, a flock of shadows was flying toward them from the walls, in direct defiance of the Odo Sein. Bek's mouth fell open in shock as Gladdic released a barrage of ether toward the incoming attack. Bek gathered up motes of the stream, shaping them for use, but he was already too late. Shadow and light met in the air like a thunderstorm on a summer night.

  Yet just as it looked like every piece had been countered, a followup strike of nether speared into the water, vanishing from sight. It punched through the bottom of the boat in a spume of water. With a series of cracks like a toppling tree, the ice canoe splintered to pieces.

  Blays plunged into the lukewarm moat. He kicked hard for the surface, knowing it wouldn't help, that the ziki oko would begin eating him within seconds. His head broke free. Bek rose beside him, clutching uselessly at the remaining chunks of ice, which were far too small to try to ride.