The Light of Life Read online

  Dante kept one eye on the sorcerous battle and the other on the way ahead, searching for some way out. Volo had angled to port to avoid a string of islands ahead. As they got closer, the many islands turned out to be a single long mass. Outside of the Wound, it was one of the largest pieces of land Dante had seen in the swamp.

  "I grow weak." Gladdic sounded more disappointed in himself than angry or afraid. "Another minute, and he will have sapped me dry."

  The oversized island grew closer, forcing Volo to veer further to port, and closer to the left flank of the enemy formation. The Blighted bared their teeth hungrily.

  Dante grinned back at them. "Turn back to starboard. Take us to the island."

  Volo shot him a glance. "To make a stand? That's the best we can do?"

  "Sometimes," Naran said, "that's all you can do."

  She and Blays corrected course toward the island. Gladdic beat down another multi-pronged thrust of lightning. Dante reached for the nether, gathering it from all the death the swamps had hosted throughout the ages.

  "The walls are sheer," Volo said, squinting at the sides of the island, which were at least eight feet high and completely vertical. "I'm not seeing anywhere to make landfall."

  Dante reached forward. "Aim for the middle."

  She redirected course again, steering them closer toward the center of the island. A hatchet splashed into the water behind them, followed by a second. The next one struck the side of the hull with a dull clonk. As the Blighted drew within range, some dropped their paddles and took up weapons. Saliva spilled from their mouths.

  Lightning flashed behind them. Gladdic grunted, fighting it off with a shuddering hammer of nether. The island loomed ahead. Volo dragged her paddle in the water, back-beating to stop them from crashing into the rock.

  "Don't slow down!" Dante yelled. "Straight ahead!"

  Volo darted him a scared glance, then paddled on, shoulders straining. Dante reached into the stone, liquefying it and pulling it away to open a passage straight through the low cliff. Water spilled inside and they followed it. The air smelled cool and like freshly-broken rock.

  The light dimmed around them as Dante bored onward. Behind them, an enemy canoe raced toward the opening. Dante yanked the entrance shut, locking them in utter darkness. The other boat crunched against the stone seal.

  The splash of their paddles echoed through the narrow space. Gladdic sent a ball of light to hover beyond the prow, illuminating the tunnel as it cleaved open just feet in front of them. At the same time, Dante closed the way behind them, pushing the water forward along with their canoe.

  "How far is it to the other side?" Blays said.

  Dante felt ahead. "Don't know."

  "Is there a chance you could run out of juice before we get to it?"

  "Anything's possible."

  "Unfortunate," Blays said. "Don't worry, though. If we get trapped in here, I'll bash you against the front wall until either it cracks open, or you do."

  The canoe sped on through a space that, while it advanced steadily, never grew any larger. Instead, as they continued, Dante shrank the gap to more tightly fit them and conserve his own energy. Everyone fell silent, as if speaking up would somehow acknowledge the impossibility of what they were doing and cause the universe to immediately correct itself.

  After a few hundred feet of travel, Dante felt his strength fading. Should he conserve energy and stop sealing the way behind them? But that would thin out the water until the canoe ground to a halt. It was light enough that they could carry it forward, but that would slow them down drastically. Maybe enough to allow the lich's soldiers to circle around the island and ambush them as they—

  Light exploded in front of them. Dante threw his hands over his face. Someone cried out—possibly Volo, but it was hard to be sure—and they shot into a dreary, rainy day. After the blackness of the tunnel beneath the island, it seemed as bright as a coastal morning.

  They took two seconds to ensure they were alone, then struck out with all speed, vanishing into the depths of the swamp.

  ~

  Trees and miniature islands unrolled around them. Water, too. Lots of water. Volo insisted she knew where they were, but under questioning, she revealed that meant "a part of the swamp that didn't really have anything in it and hence wasn't worth knowing much about." In other words, she might know where they were in relation to the other bits of Tanar Atain, but she didn't actually know her way around that particular slice of it.

  Still, their goal at the moment wasn't to reach a specific location so much as to get to anywhere that they might finally not be in danger of being slaughtered. In good news, there hadn't been any sign of Blighted or the lich since they'd carved their way through the island. Dante had sent a dragonfly to keep watch on the lich, but he hadn't even spotted their foe yet when he'd felt a presence grasping through the shadows. It had taken hold of the insect and darted back along the line of nether connecting it to Dante. He'd cut the nethereal cord as fast as he could. He hoped it had been fast enough.

  He and Naran spelled the others at the paddles. Dante started counting inside his head. Blays fell asleep forty-two seconds later. After another hour of travel in a random direction, they put in at a crescent-shaped island that smelled faintly of sulfur. As the others dragged the canoe ashore to hide it in the weeds, Dante slew a handful of flying bugs to form a perimeter around the island.

  At the camp, the Andrac kneeled a few feet from Gladdic, hanging its head. Dante didn't know if they could feel pain, but it seemed exhausted at the least, listless and half-broken.

  Dante moved to stand across from it. "I need to see its claws."

  Gladdic gestured to the demon. It lifted its head, staring at Dante as if it somehow knew about the others of its kind that he'd destroyed, and held out its long talons. Dante moved his mind along their curves. The nether that formed the demon was dense and unmistakable as anything but itself. It took him virtually no time at all to conclude his search for the lich's blood.

  "It's gone." His voice was flat. "The blood must have washed off when the Andrac was swimming away from the lich."

  "Every drop?" Gladdic bent forward, lips moving soundlessly as he examined the claws for himself. His face soured. "You are right. I see nothing."

  "Uh uh," Blays said. "That can't be possible."

  "There is nothing to be found. Look for yourself if you fail to believe me."

  "Oh, I believe you. But I won't let it be true. Because it means we're completely screwed."

  Dante dropped to sit on a fallen log. "We could try again. Send dragonflies in with the Andrac. When the Andrac wounds the lich, the dragonflies can dip themselves in his blood and bring it back to me."

  Gladdic pinched his mouth together in a frown. "While the Andrac is left behind? That is a callous use of one's people."

  "Yes, it would be. Except that we'll cunningly replace 'people' with 'soulless demons that no one would ever miss.'"

  "Are you so certain of that? The Andrac are made from traces of humans. The traces come from very deep within us. Perhaps they are made from a dark part of our own souls. A part we deny possessing."

  Dante blinked. The demon drew back its jaws in a smile. Gladdic cocked his head at it, then snorted and smacked his leg.

  He turned to Dante. "Hold out your hand."

  "My hand?"

  "The appendage you relieved me of. Hold it out to the demon."

  Making sure the nether was close, Dante started to extend his right hand, then thought better and put out his left instead. The Star-Eater stared into it like he was searching for fish within a shaded pool, then lowered its head and opened its fanged mouth. Its throat convulsed. It deposited a silvery puddle into Dante's palm—the blood Dante had seen it lick from its claws early in the fight.

  The blood lay in his hand with the weight of quicksilver. "The demon did this on purpose?"

  "If they bear a portion of our soul, is it surprising to think they might also bear a portio
n of our intelligence?"

  Perturbed, Dante moved into the blood. It was so shot through with ether that for a moment he could see no hint of nether at all. Yet there it was, threaded through the light like the tiny veins within an eyeball. He reached for it.

  The pressure in his head boomed like thunder. He swooned and blacked out. He found himself lying halfway on his side. The others had just started to move toward him; he'd only been out for an instant.

  "Well." He wiped a sudden sheen of sweat from his forehead. "If we want to go say hello to the Eiden Rane, that won't be a problem."

  Gladdic drew back his shoulders. "Do you have a link to the prime body?"

  "Right now, what I have is a headache. And an old man nagging me to be perfect at something I've never even tried before." Dante returned to the log he'd been sitting on before. "The lich's signal is overwhelming. This could take a while to sort through."

  He leaned his elbows on his knees and closed his eyes. If the nether's connection to the lich was like the crash of a waterfall, he had the impression the link to the original body would be the patter of a single raindrop. He cast about for a second thread. A minute later, having found nothing—why couldn't it ever be easy?—he shifted his attention to the main signal of the lich, hoping that in understanding it, he might better search for its counterpart.

  "What if this 'prime body' is nothing more than a myth?" Naran kept his voice low, but not so low that it didn't penetrate the back of Dante's mind. "What if there's nothing else to be found?"

  "You worry worse than Dante." Blays threw something small into a puddle of rain water. "Wail and gnash once we know it's time to wail and gnash. Until then, let's find a better use for our time. Like staring silently into the distance."

  "When you travel from port to port, there are countless rumors of treasure and wealth to be found if you're bold enough to chase them. Poor captains leap at them, assuming they're all real. Good captains ignore them, assuming they're all false. Great captains venture after them knowing they're probably chasing a phantom—but make plans to feed and pay their crew even if they fail."

  "Our current situation is so desperate that our big plan is to run off and stab somebody in their second body, which is something that I've never heard of anyone ever having. If you have a backup plan for that, I'm dying to hear it."

  Naran muttered something Dante couldn't pick up. Dante continued to examine the contours of the main link. In form, it looked roughly the same as they always did, except massive and on the brink of painful to interact with. But that could only go so far to explain why the second link didn't seem to be there. Was that because it wasn't?

  Or was it hidden?

  Keeping his eyes closed, he stood and turned in a slow circle. The pressure rotated around the inside of his head. He held his breath, attempting to shut out all outside stimulation, but still felt nothing but the main pulse.

  He opened his eyes and said several rude words. "I can't feel it."

  Naran folded his arms, glaring at Gladdic from the corners of his eyes. "Then this was all a waste of time?"

  "It was a great use of our time," Blays said. "Now that we tried our best to kill the lich, we're off the hook, aren't we? So it's everyone else's fault if he goes on and destroys the world."

  Gladdic considered the ground, drops of rain rolling from his close-cropped hair. "How does this skill typically function?"

  "Like I told you," Dante said. "The nether in a drop of blood is connected to the nether in the rest of the body. Get the blood, delve into the nether, and the link opens to you."

  "Yet the second link isn't there? Or is it that the connection to the Eiden Rane is too powerful to see it?"

  Dante shook his head. "Could be either one. Trying to feel if there's another link is like trying to feel a feather's touch while you're being punched."

  "Should I start punching you?" Blays said. "To help you practice, of course."

  Dante tilted back his head. The sky was overcast, just as it had been for days. It was starting to feel like the sun would never return to the land again. He turned once more to the pressure in his mind, seeking its edges. How did you pick out a single raindrop from the middle of a raging storm? Or pluck a leaf from within an all-consuming flood?

  He lowered his chin with a snap. In both cases, you couldn't find what you were looking for from outside the storm. He gazed into the maelstrom of the link to the lich, then dived into the nether. It closed over his mind with cruel weight. Shadows howled about him, buffeting his ears; though the sensations were entirely in his mind, tears sprung from his eyes. He struggled to stay afloat, fighting to kick his way toward some sort of surface—then relented, letting his mind's body be carried along by the stream until the shadows and his consciousness were traveling at the same pace.

  Though the current raged, he floated within it. Peering ahead, the channel of shadows led to a great hazy mass. He turned back to the stream itself. Every tendril of nether seemed to be flowing toward the well of the lich. On a hunch, Dante swam toward the center of the current. Amid a swirling mix of shadows, he came to a stop, once more matching the flow around him.

  There, a single strand of darkness flowed away from him—or rather, he was flowing away from it. He reached for it, closing on it with a final lunge. The stream was so thin and weak that his touch threatened to tear it apart. He held tight, binding it together, feeding it with nether. It blackened to opacity. Watching it for any sign of cracks, he drew it away from the river until he and the strand floated alone amid nothing.

  With a disorienting lurch, he returned to the physical world, holding one arm out for balance. He felt for the strand. As soon as he touched it, the faintest pressure toyed within his head. He turned in a circle until the sensation centered in his forehead. He was facing due north. Almost directly away from the lich.

  "I found the second signal," he said. "The prime body is real."

  4

  Gladdic's mouth fell open. "His original body exists? And you can find it?"

  "This was your idea," Blays said. "Are you that shocked to finally be right about something?"

  "Don't you understand? If it is real, then it can also be destroyed."

  Naran followed Dante's gaze into the trees. "How far away is it?"

  Dante tilted his head, trying to gauge the pressure's properties. "Hard to say. It's extremely subtle. I don't think I'll be able to judge until we're underway and I can feel how much closer we're getting."

  Blays swore. "Why do all of your solutions involve work?"

  Dante got up to help relaunch the canoe. Gladdic moved to the Andrac, which had crouched among the shrubs at the perimeter of their camp. Its shoulders were hunched high and it was still leaking shreds of shadow from the wound the lich had opened in its chest, which remained unhealed.

  Gladdic communed with it. It unfolded stiffly to its feet and followed him into the trees. When Gladdic returned, he was alone.

  They got into the canoe and shoved off, paddling along at a sustainable pace. For the first few miles, Dante didn't say a word, keeping all of his attention on making sure his link to their target didn't slip away. Once he was beyond certain the connection wasn't going to vanish, he sat back in the stern, blinking at the occluded afternoon sunlight.

  "We're not getting much closer," he said. "It's got to be at least forty miles away. Maybe twice that. And almost straight north. Volo, do you know what's up there?"

  "Swamp," she said.

  "Interesting. Any particular kind of swamp? Or just the kind with a lot of water in it?"

  "It's hara dim. Abandoned land."

  "What happened to the people who abandoned it?"

  "They got smart." She jabbed absentmindedly at a large purple fish that had taken a close interest in their boat and was following alongside them. "I've never been there. I guess we get to learn about it together."

  "Whatever is to be found there, it will be employed in service of protecting the prime body," Gladdic sa
id. "Our task will not be easy."

  Blays paused mid-paddle. "Are you suggesting the invulnerable centuries-old wizard might try to protect his only weakness? Truly, your insight is too valuable to go without."

  Naran uttered a murmur of dissent. "Even if we have located the prime body, we can't be certain that killing it will also kill the lich. If it were so vulnerable, why would he leave his weakness where he can't protect it?"

  Gladdic raised a white eyebrow. "The fact we are the first to ever find it should more than answer the question. He fought to keep its very existence a secret. You cannot kill what you do not know."

  Dante was tempted to push them to complete the journey in one long go, cycling between paddlers and salving their muscles with nether, then decided it probably wasn't the most brilliant idea to arrive at the White Lich's secret lair completely exhausted and low on nether. They continued for a few hours after dark, Gladdic lighting the way with a ball of ether, then made camp on an island. There had been no sign of Blighted along the way, nor of pursuit, but Dante kept his dragonflies on patrol throughout the night.

  They started out again at first light. The swamp had a heavy, unhurried air to it, and now that they were miles away from any settlement, animals glided in and above the water with little concern for the humans. Once, hearing the chattering of a pack of branch-swinging, flesh-eating boko mai, they diverted for half a mile before correcting course to the north.

  The trees grew denser and taller, thick scarves of cobwebs hanging between them. As the delicate pressure mounted in his head, ruins sprouted from the larger islands. Others lurked below the surface, suggestions of a lost past. Rather than heaped rubble, some looked largely intact, as if they'd been built beneath the water—or like they'd been built at a time the water had been lower.

  By the next morning, the pressure in Dante's head was strong enough to be irritating. Three miles later, it was pulsing steadily in his brain, peaking to the point of pain. His heart thrummed even harder.