The Light of Life Read online

  "But my lady, we have already found it."

  Her jaw dropped open. "That's not possible. We've been searching—"

  "For centuries. I heard you. But as you know, we are sorcerers. Warlocks, if you like. And though the group of us are not friends, there is one value we hold in common: we do not like to fail."

  "If you've found it, then you don't need to battle the lich himself. You only need to suppress his sorcery long enough to strike at the prime body. For that, you don't need to travel all the way to the Spires. You could just use the Drakebane's personal guards." She tapped her front teeth. "Except you came here. Which isn't at all easy to do. The Drakebane's Odo Sein are all dead."

  "Many, yes. The others fled with him to take Bressel."

  "That actually worked?"

  "Better than even he dreamed. And so we are left to come to you for aid."

  "My name is Ara," the woman said sadly. "And there are no more knights left to help you."

  Dante crossed his arms. "The next time you want someone to believe the Odo Sein are gone, you might want to warn your Odo Sein not to use the powers of the Odo Sein."

  "I said there are no more knights here. Did I say that there was no one left with our talent?"

  "Then give us a squire. Or a Pageboy of Odo Sein. I don't care what you call them, all I need is for you to send some of them with us."

  "There are many reasons for a person to reason poorly." She began to pace across the paving stones, the white fabric of her dress flowing about her strong legs. "We know most of them as the Hana Ro. In your language—although these days it's as much our language as well—this translates to something like 'the Branch of Lacks.'"

  Ara's gaze grew distant, as if she were searching for signs of infiltrators in the fire-colored hills. "Yes. Something like that, although not precisely that." Her eyes snapped to Dante. "Do you speak more than one language?"

  "Two well," he said. "A lot of others not so well."

  "Then you know that exchanging words between them isn't like exchanging coins between different countries, where you can weigh the metal in them against each other, and know that you're getting a fair deal so that nobody needs to be stabbed. With language, there are a lot of words that don't translate at all. You might dismiss this as the barbarism of a foreign culture that doesn't even have the concept of such-and-such, but that is arrogant thinking, which is lazy thinking, which is the slow death.

  "I think that if you can't translate one of your terms directly to another language, such that it means exactly the same thing in theirs that it does in yours, that doesn't mean there's a flaw solely in the other language. For if your language lacks the specificity to be translated, then it is inaccurate as well, and strays from the truth in ways you can't even see."

  "That…makes sense." Dante looked up at the balconies of the tower across from him. The archers were still crouched there, watching them with nocked arrows. "You were talking about the Hana Ro?"

  "I was and am, so be quiet and let me. When you're reasoning, the Branch of Lacks is like a tree that bears the fruit of all the things that you don't have at your disposal. We in the Spires could spend all night arguing which fruits are borne most heavily, but I don't care about that right now, and will list them in no particular order. One common lack is the lack of information to reach a sound conclusion. If you think fire is cold, then you'll never understand why it keeps burning you.

  "Another lack—and some of my peers will argue that every other lack is merely a sub-form of this one—is the lack of brains to guide yourself down the correct path. Just as a sick man is too weak to paddle across a body of water, your mind is too weak to paddle you toward the truth.

  "A third lack, which might be a refined version of the second, is the lack of training to be able to reason well in the first place. Say you come to a fight with a spear of burnished steel. Your foe's only got a sharpened pole. But if he's spent years in training while you just picked yours up for the first time, you're dead on your feet.

  "And lastly, at least for our purposes, there is the fourth lack: the lack of good intent, where you willfully deceive yourself with false logic in order to reach conclusions that reinforce your old beliefs, or that justify your poor actions.

  "Now then. In not understanding why I can't send Odo Sein away with you, which fruit from the Branch of Lacks are you full of?"

  "I'll save you some time," Blays said. "It's absolutely the brains one."

  "I'm guessing it's lack of information," Dante said. In any other circumstance, he would have been highly annoyed that they were drifting so far off track, but listening to Ara philosophize was like watching a trained athlete run through an unfamiliar course without missing a step. "Given that I didn't even know this place existed until a few days ago. And that you deliberately hide yourselves out in a wasteland that sucks the soul out of anyone who walks into it."

  Ara smiled, flashing her teeth. "You're already making your way toward the answer. Yes: we founded the Odo Sein in the Hell-Painted Hills because their poison protects us from the Eiden Rane, to say nothing of pests like you. Are you aware that a knight, on finishing their training with us, never returns to the Silent Spires? Why?"

  "Because the Drakebane needs them to fight off the endless monsters and rebels your land's always spawning?"

  "If a fruit is grown from toxic soil, would you eat the fruit?"

  "Of course not. It will be full of the same poisons it grew from."

  "Even if the tree was grown in a clean land and then transplanted to the foul one?"

  "It would still start absorbing the poisons as soon as it was taken here."

  "Yes, it would. And so do we. This land was made to be so corrupt that nothing can grow here. We've carved out a small piece of it that we can survive in, but we can't keep all of the poisons out of it. Over time, they build up in you. We have ways to protect ourselves from them. But that changes our bodies forever. In ways that make the normal land toxic to us."

  "The knights don't return because they can't," Dante said. "They'd get stuck here. Just like you are."

  "It was lack of information after all." Ara smiled, the beauty of her face shot through with sadness. "Sure, there are some people here who possess the powers you need. But none of them can leave the Spires. They'd drop dead long before they met the Eiden Rane."

  "I see." Dante nodded twice, finding that he'd been unceremoniously dumped into that numb and quiet space where all hope has been kicked from beneath you, and your mind decides that the only thing left is to lie down and wait for it to end. "Well."

  "How about apprentices?" Blays motioned vaguely to the towers. "In a place like this, you've always got loads of young kids to sweep the halls and muck the stables in exchange for the privilege of being taught to serve their lords for the rest of their lives."

  "Oh, they're long gone," Ara said. "The Drakebane recalled everyone we had to try to put down the Monsoon. Right down to the children. They weren't close to being ready to fight, but when a man feels his future slipping away from him, he'll mortgage it for pennies on the round. I expect the last of our apprentices were fed to the ziki oko weeks ago."

  "But if any survived—"

  "Then they'd be with the Drakebane, hustled away to Bressel. They're trained to obey him like your arm is trained to obey your mind. They can't leave his side any more than your hand can pop itself from your wrist and crawl away on its fingers."

  Blays opened his mouth to reply, then closed it, giving a quick shake of his head. He seemed to lapse into the same hopeless acquiescence Dante found himself mired in.

  "You say that you would die if you left the Spires," Gladdic said. "How long would this take?"

  Ara rolled her eyes up and to the right. "For those of us that were born here, a matter of hours. For those who were brought here later in life, they might last a day or two."

  "Which implies that those with the stoutest constitutions might endure longer than that. Long enough to depart the H
ills. You must commit your people to us."

  "I must order my people to commit suicide? You northerners worship so many gods that your brains don't know which direction they're pulling in, priest."

  Gladdic leaned closer. Dante could feel him fumbling around in both the shadows and the light, but the soldiers of the Spires continued to keep both forces frozen in place as tightly as the glaciers of the Woduns.

  "Do you suppose that you will survive here, the last island of free humanity, after the Eiden Rane has swallowed the rest of the world?" Fine bits of spittle flew from Gladdic's lips. "Once he controls the continents and the seas, he will rip these hills out by the roots. The only sanctuary for you will be that of death."

  Ara held her ground. "Desperation is driving you to hysterics, you wrinkled sack. Don't feel bad. It's a common failing when you lack a real argument."

  Gladdic's face flushed red. He made a great yank at the ether, grabbing at enough to level the plaza, only for the unseen negators to clamp down on it with everything they had.

  "I make no hysterics." Gladdic closed his eyes, breathing through his nose until his hands stopped shaking. "Better than anyone, the Odo Sein must understand that if we fail, everything is gone, replaced by two ends: death, or the slavery of the Blighted."

  "If I must understand it, why are you talking to me like I don't?"

  "Because you, and everyone else I speak to, are incapable of understanding that your life was rendered worthless the instant the Eiden Rane crawled back out from the earth. Send your people and at least know that you tried!"

  "It would only be a waste."

  "Then send your lessers! What does it matter, you arrogant bitch? They are meant to fall in service of the Spires!"

  Ara's right hand twitched. Her guards tensed. The cords stood out from her neck, but her voice was calm. "It's not logical to waste resources on a strategy we know will fail. Better to wait and see if the lich makes a mistake. Like trying to enter the Hills before he's strong enough."

  "You know that he won't," Gladdic said. "He has fought your people before. He's had a millennium to plan his ascension. He will never strike before he is ready. The only choice is to take the fight to him before he's prepared."

  "There's wisdom in that. But we can't help you do it. So if you're serious about stopping him—about taking the fight to him—I suggest you stop wasting everyone's time and be on your way."

  Gladdic curled his hand as if to make another grab at the ether, then slouched his spine, dropping his gaze to the plaza tiles. "It is no wonder the world lies ever in darkness. Bring the answers before your leaders and wisemen, and they will prove themselves as cowardly as everyone else."

  Dante turned to take in the slope they'd come in on. "Crossing the Hills almost killed us. If we leave now, will we be okay?"

  "Once you enter our land, it'll cleanse the Hills' corruption from you within a few hours," Ara said. "But once you start off again, don't stop until you hit the swamp." She glanced up at the balconies; some of the archers had returned. "You should go. You can wait in the outer trees until you feel well enough."

  Dante racked his mind for answers, but they'd exhausted every argument they'd come to make. Under the watchful eye of the archers, he walked away from the plaza and into the gardens that ringed the towers. He felt much better than when they'd arrived at the Silent Spires, but he could feel the exhaustion lurking in his legs. Even after some rest, it was going to be a long walk back to the swamps.

  Blays kicked a rock, sending it skittering over the dirt. "Well, that was a lot of a bust. What are we going to do now?"

  "I think," Dante said, "that we are going to do an unpleasant amount of walking."

  "Why don't we ever travel to anywhere that you can reach by sitting?"

  "Maybe Naran had the right idea. We should buy the fastest ship we can find and spend the rest of our existence sailing around somewhere warm."

  "If we stick to the seas, the lich might not even be able to get at us. The Blighted would make awful sailors. They already act like they're drunk, just wait until they get put on a ship and get some rum in them."

  Dante brushed past a shrub of blue flowers. "Taking to sea isn't a completely insane idea. Once we're out of the Hills, I'll loon Nak and tell him to start arranging for an escape fleet."

  "You mean like what the Drakebane did, except with no destination at the end of the journey? If that's what we're down to, I'll start preparing a eulogy for the state of our ideas."

  "We should go to Bressel," Volo said. "If we can find the Odo Sein and talk to them, maybe one of them would come back with us."

  Dante grunted. "Everyone we've talked to seems to think that's about as likely as talking the White Lich into sitting on his own glaive."

  "Then we'll kidnap one of the knights and make him fight the lich."

  "Kidnapping someone who can strip our powers from us like dirty sheets might be our worst idea yet. Even so, just to cover our asses, I'll ask my agent in Bressel to see if she can run down an Odo Sein. Right now, though, everything we've seen indicates that traveling to Bressel would be a waste of weeks we can't afford to lose."

  "That's pessimistic," Blays said. "I'm sure the White Lich will put his plans on hold if we write him nicely enough."

  Volo wiped a bead of sweat from her temple. "What if we searched for one of the apprentice knights who fled with the Drakebane? Maybe they weren't able to train long enough to be totally loyal to him."

  "If they were trained for—" Blays got a startled look on his face. He spun on his heel and dashed back toward the plaza. There, Ara had been speaking with her bodyguards and was just now mounting the steps of the tower.

  Hey!" Blays waved his arms over his head. "Bel Ara, wait!"

  Archers flooded back onto the balconies of the towers, aiming their arrows at Blays. He skidded to a stop, holding his hands high above his head.

  "I admit running straight at your leader while yelling my head off wasn't the most diplomatic approach," he called out. "But can you wait to fill me full of arrows until after I've filled you in on how I'm going to save the world?"

  Dante was already running after him, trying to take a posture that indicated he thought his friend was very stupid and that he was only trying to stop that friend from making things worse.

  As Dante hit the plaza, Ara descended two steps to stand above Blays. "If you've come back to beg me, you'll have more luck begging a tree to grow you a wife."

  "Oh, I already have one of those." He smiled tightly at the archers and slowly lowered his hands. "But if I can talk this tree into growing me a person who'll hear me out, then I'd be interested."

  She squinted at him with one eye. "You're aglow with cleverness. That seems like a stupid reaction, considering I've already told you at length why we can't send anyone to help you. You want to argue more? Waste as much breath as you want. Words can change minds, but they can't change facts."

  "You might say that, good Bel. But my companions and I are cursed with the foolhardiness of not knowing when a thing can't be done. With that in mind, I have a proposal for you."

  "Make it fast or not at all."

  "You can't send knights to help us because you don't have any. And the only other people here who have the power of the Odo Sein can't leave the Hills. Well, that's the end of it, isn't it? But then I got to thinking. You might not be able to leave here, but we can. And we can put a blade through the prime body's heart and bring down the lich—if you teach us to be Odo Sein."

  Ara's black eyebrows twitched upward. A smile spread across her face like dye dropped in water. "I see why they don't give you a title, Mister Buckler. After all, what would they call you? The Minister of Alternative Solutions?"

  "I prefer the Baron of Getting Shit Done." Blays turned to Dante, who had stopped a few feet behind him. "You think we could fit that on a signet ring?"

  "If this works," Dante said, "we'll stitch it in gold thread on a thirty-foot banner. Well, Bel Ara? Can you train
us?"

  She descended another pair of steps. "Sure. In fact, the idea had already occurred to me."

  "You're serious? You can train us to do what you do—the skill we need to counter the White Lich—and you didn't say anything about it? You were going to let us just walk away?"

  "I have to come up with the ideas for you? You don't understand the Odo Sein at all, priest of the eleven-plus-one gods of the north. If you couldn't think this solution out for yourself, then you proved you're not ready to learn what we do."

  "But I did think that thought," Blays said. "So that means you'll teach us?"

  "Nope." Ara dropped down the final steps, putting her on the ground with them. "But I will bring your plea in front of the Argument of Seven Voices."

  "Right. The good old Argument of Seven Voices. Will you think less of me if I ask you what the hell that is?"

  "The rulers of the Silent Spires."

  Dante licked his lips. "I'm sorry, I thought you were the ruler here."

  "Then that was a faulty assumption on your part, wasn't it? Not a good thing, thinking the first person who wanders out of a fortress is in charge of the whole palace. I do have sovereignty over my own tower, and as the newest Voice of the Seven, I'm expected to handle irregularities like this. But in a case like yours, we decide as a group."

  "As in you take a vote? You don't have a king? Or at least a chancellor of some kind?"

  Ara snorted. "Trust a High Priest to argue that every governing institution's got to be ruled by a High Priest. Why would you believe one person can be right about every single thing at every single time? If you want to get to the truth, you don't assign it to a single man who's above us all. You put a bunch of good people in a room and you let them fight their way to the truth."

  Gladdic moved next to Dante, looking more thoughtful than during his angry outburst earlier. "How will this hearing proceed?"

  "I'm thinking we'll argue on three decisions. First of all, whether we're allowed to train those who approach the Odo Sein rather than vice versa. Second, we'll look at whether we're allowed to train hari to be knights. And last, I'm pretty sure the others are going to want to argue that foreigners who trespass in the Silent Spires should be put to death."