The Light of Life

by Edward W. Robertson

  "That's one way to do it, yes." Dante let his hands hang below his hips, nether swirling around them like a typhoon-stirred sea. "Anyway, your knight's dead. You can't stop me from wielding the shadows, and if you're honest with yourselves, you'll admit that I can murder you both. When the opposite was true, you told me I had no choice, and had to submit to you. So don't be a couple of hypocrites. Bow down to me."

  "You have traveled far with me, Galand. You know that I would rather die than serve the Eiden Rane."

  "Then it's a good thing he's more open-minded than you are. He's agreed to add you to the ranks of his lieutenants. He told me to kill Blays, but I think if I deliver the both of you to him, he'll change his mind on that."

  "I tell you for the last time that I will never serve!"

  "Quit your bullshit grandstanding! We're offering you power like no one's ever had. The power to reshape everything. To rebuild our world according to a grand plan rather than to watch vain idiots brutalize each other over petty resentments. And if that isn't enough for you, how about this? We'll give you immortality. An eternity to learn and study and develop your skills. You know you've always wanted that. I did, and you're ten times as much of an asshole as I ever was."

  "I have indeed wanted that. Always." Gladdic's voice came out in a croak. "But I have fought hard these last months to regain the pieces of my being that I paid in pursuit of such powers. I would rather die than walk any further down the path you offer."

  "Oh, come on. A hundred years from now, you'll look back at this moment and laugh at yourself." Dante swiveled his icy eyes to Blays. "I know you hate the idea. I'm sure you think it's 'immoral.' And that no outcome can justify what we have to do to achieve it."

  Blays rested his hand on one of his swords, which he'd sheathed to prevent it from draining his trace. "Revoking the freedom or the lives of everyone currently alive? Yeah, it's a little extreme."

  "I'll tell you this: when he converts you, all of those feelings will go away. All of your guilt. Your doubt. Your fears. And you will be grateful to him for his gift."

  "Are you saying this because you believe it yourself? Or because he's making you believe it?"

  "What difference does it make?"

  Blays met Dante's stare. "I want to know who's telling me this. The friend I've had since before we could grow beards? Or the man whose mind has been stolen by a maniac who means to kill everyone you've ever known?"

  "It's me. I'm still here."

  "Are you? Then do you remember the time Cally sent us to investigate the thefts at Lannovar?"

  "The border town. Human merchants were reporting their wares going missing. People were blaming it on the norren. Cally was afraid the whole town was going to erupt into violence."

  "Not just violence. Cally suspected King Moddegan was wary that the humans were getting too close to seeing the norren as their equals, which would be trouble for the whole 'hunting norren down and enslaving them' thing. If Moddegan could provoke Lannovar into tossing out its norren—or better yet, massacring them—it'd secure Gaskan policy in the area for another generation."

  "We traveled to Lannovar. Interviewed the human merchants, along with the norren trappers and artists who traded with them. Eventually, the trail took us to a fellow named Fanden." Dante chuckled tinnily. "He played dumb, but there was something off about him. So we started keeping tabs on him. A few nights later, he took his dogs out for a walk—he had this entire pack of them, little yappers that couldn't have weighed more than ten pounds apiece, the most useless things you've ever seen—and brought them into the city. While he waited in the old churchyard, his dogs snuck into the merchants' shops and stole everything they could carry in their mouths."

  "I still don't believe it. If that fool had put as much effort into honest work as he did into training his dogs, he could've bought half the town." Blays grinned, almost lost in the memory. But the face in front of him wouldn't let him forget. "There's something I've always wondered. After Lira died. We went our separate ways. Lived our own lives. Five years later, I hadn't so much as sent you a letter. But you were still trying to find me. Why? Why keep searching, when at that point we'd spent more time as enemies than we had as friends?"

  Dante tipped back his head, gazing into the punishing sun. His face, hardened by the process that had turned him into something less and more than a man, softened with nostalgia. And regret. And pride.

  "We'd done great things together. The end of the war destroyed that. Tore us apart. But I wanted to believe that wasn't the end. That any tragedy can be undone, if you can set aside your anger and pain, and reach out in hope."

  "We can do that now. Come with us to the Silent Spires. Ara can help you. We will remove this thing from you. It didn't have to end before—and it doesn't have to end now."

  "You don't understand," Dante said. He almost sounded sad. "It ended the instant you refused to kneel to the Eiden Rane."

  Shadows erupted from his hands, raging toward them in black malevolence. Gladdic cursed, battering at them with the ether he'd kept close all the while. No one's mouth was open, yet Blays heard screaming in his ears. He reached for his swords. He couldn't seem to draw them. It was like they'd been welded into their sheaths. His vision blurred.

  He turned and ran back down the road toward the swamp.

  "Coward!" Gladdic shouted. "Deserter!"

  If the words were meant to shame him, they'd have to wait in line behind the army currently sieging Blays' conscience. He sprinted onward, knees and elbows pumping, losing himself to the unique euphoria of running as fast as you can. A fine layer of sweat developed across his body.

  Footsteps smacked the ground. Gladdic loped down the road after him, his long legs carrying him along the smooth dirt with a speed that seemed impossible for his years. Dante ran in his wake, hunched forward like a wolf before it makes its lunge. Nether shot from his hands. Without looking back, Gladdic countered it with tridents of ether, the glittering dust of their combat falling behind them as they ran on.

  Blays crested the hill. The swamp filled the horizons, a humid haze lingering in the air above the trees. There would be no sanctuary there either, would there?

  But what else was there to do but keep going in the face of hopelessness? To see if some kindly god or turn of blind chance would take pity on your miserable life?

  He thundered down the incline, knees jarring. Two black shapes shot past his shins. The Andrac. They bounded past Gladdic, light shining through their joyous grins, and threw themselves at Dante. Dante stopped and fell back, reaching for his limited supply of ether. Blays thought Gladdic might turn around and join the battle, but the old priest continued toward the swamp.

  Ether and nether twirled between Dante and the two little Star-Eaters. The demons were already looking raggedy, but by the time Dante finally put them down, Blays had opened up a lead of a quarter mile. The air was already growing cooler—or at least less scalding—and damper. Trees crowded the edge of the living land. Blays reached the grass, veering south toward the canoe.

  He beat Gladdic to the boat by two hundred yards. He flipped it over and shoved it into the water. He stepped in with one foot, then turned around, sighed, and waited.

  Gladdic arrived with a face so red it looked like all his skin had left him to seek more pleasant realms. Blays clambered into the canoe and the old man followed. Dante was still a thousand feet away, advancing steadily along his road. The Hell-Painted Hills wavered as the sun baked from their naked slopes.

  Blays took up the paddle, giving himself a good splash to calm down his overheated skin, and pushed off into the swamp.

  "Why did you run?" Gladdic gasped the words out between breaths.

  "To get away from there and over to here."

  "And what has this relocation in geography solved? We could have killed him!"

  "I'm not so sure. But even if that was true, so what? We kill him and then what do we do? Bek's dead. We can't kill the lich. Killing Dante wouldn't even
slow down the advance."

  "In what way is running away a superior solution?"

  "There is no solution, you dogged shithead. We've lost. We might as well get ourselves and our loved ones as far away from here as possible and try to enjoy however long we have left." Blays looked over his shoulder, but the trees and shrubs were already too thick to tell if Dante was still after them. "And if that's inevitable—if it's only a matter of time until the White Lich claims us all—then killing Dante doesn't even make sense. I know I can't let myself be a part of the lich's new world. But if Dante's there, maybe he'll make it slightly less dark."

  Gladdic let out a long, slow breath. "You have fallen to despair. I can see this as clearly as I can see my own hand, for I have worn its burden myself."

  "I just lost my oldest friend. And, coincidentally, condemned everyone in the world to death or hell. Forgive me if I'm not at my bubbliest."

  "Your reaction is natural. But it has blinded you. We have one last chance."

  "How's that? Slip a new remnant into Dante's porridge, then all have a big laugh after he eats it?"

  "Bek is dead. But you remain alive. Last night, I saw you lost in the Golden Stream. Bek told you exactly what must be done. Let us return, and you will free Dante from his chains."

  Blays stopped paddling, twisting around. "We can't. We left the Aba Quen behind."

  "You left the Aba Quen behind. Others among us have more foresight." Gladdic reached into his jabat and withdrew the ivory carving. The gecko was smudged with blood. "Happy birthday."

  Blays took up the idol, certain he was about to fumble it into the water and never see it again. "Even if this damn thing works, I don't know how to lock him out of the nether. He'll rip me to shreds, and then tear the shreds into bits."

  "You cannot blame despair for this level of stupidity. For surely I had intended to do nothing to help you, observing from afar. However, your petulant whining has convinced me to assist you. I will counter his sorcery while you restore his remnant."

  "That could work, but aren't we overlooking something? Like the minor fact I don't know how to use the Odo Sein?"

  "You know enough to make the connection Bek described. Do so now, and be quick about it."

  "But I still can't reach the stream!"

  "I have seen your efforts. You are far closer than you believe. How can it be that I have more faith in you than you have in yourself?"

  Blays closed his eyes tight. An ocean of doubts spread before him. He breathed in, relaxing every muscle, then breathed out, tensing them all. Gladdic was scowling like he was working his way through a theological manuscript dense enough to brain a bull with. Blays started the practice of Forest, then broke off, heart rattling, and envisioned the cabin in the Woduns. The snows. The ice on the lake. His boys and girls pelting each other with snowballs—

  Golden chips spun about him. The air shimmered, as if he could part it like a pair of curtains and open a view to elsewhere in the world. He swooped toward the fragments of stream, but there was no need: they were already coming to his hand. And they would have the night before, wouldn't they? He'd been too shaken up—first by his reverie, then by the Glimpse of the two sisters—to grab at the stream until it was already fading away.

  Before the flecks in front of him could do the same, he sent them toward Gladdic. His motion was clumsy, like trying to throw a plank by the middle instead of the end, but a few of them stuck. Strands and planes of black and white energy extended from all sides of Gladdic's body.

  Blays maneuvered between them, fluttering as awkwardly as a fat-bodied moth as he hunted for the connection that would lead him to the remnant. He slipped around a wide plane of nether, then a tangle of white cords. Behind these, a thin pillar of glowing pearl light connected the earth to the heavens. There was no mistaking the remnant. Blays guided the stream to the pearly strand. The golden matter caught fast, binding Blays to the light.

  He clapped his hands so hard they stung. "I can do it. I don't know how, or how much, but I can do it!"

  "Then we will return now."

  "Right now? How about I take a few days to practice first?"

  "Dante and the Eiden Rane have already learned how to break the Odo Sein's control over the nether. You just told Dante exactly how the Blight is removed. He and the lich will work ceaselessly to learn how to stop this rite as well. We cannot afford to give them a single day, or it might never work again."

  "So we have to go now, huh?" This thought should have been terrifying. Instead, Blays was compelled to laugh out loud. "I suppose it's like they always say: when everyone who actually knows what they're doing has been murdered, why not send in the idiots?"

  He flipped the canoe nose-for-tail and paddled back toward the Hell-Painted Hills, eyes darting to every movement, which in the lively swamp was nonstop. Gladdic reopened a cut near the end of the stump of his right arm. They broke from the trees, entering a clear patch of water that lapped directly against the Hills.

  Dante stood two hundred yards up the shore. He was staring off into the swamp, turned away from them at a quarter profile. It didn't seem as though he should be able to see them, but he swiveled to face them the second their canoe poked from the trees. Despite the distance, Blays caught the blue flash of his eyes.

  Blays brought the boat up to land and vaulted into the grass. Gladdic exited in pained stages, as if his legs had already stiffened up following their dash from the wasteland.

  Blays felt the nether flow to Gladdic's call. They exchanged a nod. Blays strolled along the bank, keeping one hand near his sword, for what little good it could do against Dante.

  Dante watched them come, but didn't budge from his spot. Nether spiraled around his arms. Blays stopped twenty feet away from him.

  Dante was smiling. On his new face, it didn't look right. "I never thought I'd see you run away."

  Blays tossed his head. "What are you talking about? We've run away from tight spots a thousand different times. I've gone through more shoes than most armies."

  "But you've never run away when running meant losing, and the only way to win was to stand and fight."

  "I'm here now." He glanced at the swamp, looking thoughtful as he sent a part of his mind to the cabin in the Woduns. "You said you and Daddy Lich figured out how to break the Odo Sein together. But he's been elsewhere all this while, hasn't he? Do you two have a loon-like link between you or something?"

  "What does that matter?"

  "I want to send him a message."

  "Which is?"

  "That he should run," Blays said. "Run far away, and never show himself again. Or else the last thing he'll see is my sword—and the last thought he'll have is to wonder what his head is doing so far from his body."

  He picked up the stream he'd been generating as they spoke and snapped it at Dante. Dante tried to blast at the golden sparks with nether, but the shadows passed over them without leaving a mark. Showing his teeth, Dante redirected the nether at Blays.

  The shadows stormed toward him in sheer fury, ready to rip his body into pieces and chum him across the waters. Heart tumbling like a boulder down a hill, Blays held his position, concentrating on the Golden Stream as it made its ponderous way toward Dante.

  The nether closed on Blays. He could duck into the shadows and let it pass by, but he thought if he did that, he'd lose control of the stream. He could probably generate more—assuming he could buy a few seconds to conjure it up without Dante converting him into skewered meat minus the skewers—but he wasn't sure how many more times he could wield it. He was already feeling shakier than when he'd practiced it on Gladdic, and that shakiness wasn't all due to nerves. The only way to come out of it alive was to trust in Gladdic.

  The shadows screamed onward, blotting out the sun—and were met with the starry whiteness of ether. The flash dazzled Blays, yet somehow he could still see the pieces of stream as they landed on Dante's transformed skin.

  And sank inside him.

  A galaxy o
f nether shot from Dante's body. Blays threw his hands in front of his face, expecting to be annihilated, but the shadows weren't moving. Rather, they were the connections between Dante and the nether exposed by the stream. A few lines of ether extended from him as well, sickly-small in comparison.

  None of the ethereal strings looked anything like the column of pearl Blays had seen within Gladdic. He maneuvered around the outermost layers of shadow, groping inward. The darkness surrounded him completely, interrupted here and there by a spindly thread of light. He reached what he knew was the center. And ground to a halt, cold sweat popping across his skin.

  "His remnant," Blays choked. "It isn't there!"

  Lost in his search, he hadn't noticed that Dante and Gladdic were busy whaling away at each other with everything they had. Nether and ether exploded in constellations of destruction, twinkling away into nothing, only to be replaced by another clash of magic a moment later. Such fights tended to sound like sizzling beef, but this one boomed like winter waves.

  "Of course the remnant isn't there, you dung-brained ape," Gladdic sneered. "That is precisely what we are here to fix!"

  "Just testing you," Blays said. "Good news. You passed."

  He swung back into the surreal vision of the Odo Sein. Black spokes and angled walls jutted from Dante. Blays threaded his way back to the center.

  Where a vertical emptiness occupied Dante's core. It was like the shadow of a shadow. Or perhaps more like the gap of a board missing from a fence; even if you'd never seen the fence before, or for that matter knew what a fence was, you could still look at it and see at once that something was gone. Blays gathered his remaining stream, which had dwindled as he'd been searching, and sent it to the place where the remnant should be.

  Gold shimmered up and down, as though coating a tube of glass so perfectly wrought that it couldn't be seen. A charge ran back to Blays' body with a jolt. He pulled back from the sight of the Odo Sein. Gladdic stood two steps ahead of him, gesturing madly with his one arm as he held off Dante's ceaseless assaults.