There didn't seem to be a staircase, but there was a door in the far wall. Like the entry to the temple, it was engraved with runes. Gladdic read them out loud, but they were just another weird-sounding riddle, so Dante shook his head and swept the wall open. Revealing nothing but more stone. He felt around with his mind, discovering that there was a staircase behind the door. He opened a passage to it and descended the aggravatingly narrow steps.

  He didn't know what to make of the next room. As expansive as it was, there was little to it aside from a score of low platforms or altars, each of which bore a single object, almost all of which appeared completely mundane: a blanket, a cooking pot, a bracelet made up of little swamp-snail shells. There was even a pair of shoes, nothing more than a couple pieces of leather-cushioned wood with some straps attached, whose grungy condition looked to be as much from having been used as from the ravages of time.

  Only one object looked to have any real value to it, a metal gauntlet with shimmery mottled patterns all over it that suggested it was made of star iron. Just looking at it made Dante suspicious that it was capable of some kind of sorcery. He was extremely tempted to take it with him for study, but he was genuinely convinced this was the kind of place that could lay a curse on you for doing things like that, and the last thing he needed at that moment was to be cursed.

  Blays gazed down at the pair of dirty shoes. "What the heck do you make of this?"

  "Not sure," Dante said. "Could be the possessions of people sacrificed to this place."

  "That's where your mind goes?"

  "You asked."

  "I should really know better by now."

  "This is a temple. Kind of a grim one. Meanwhile these things are up on altars. It's not much of a stretch."

  "In that case, why don't we keep moving?"

  There was little else in the room besides the altars and they had no trouble finding another rune-encrusted doorway. Dante bypassed it as he had the others and headed down the stairs. The walls of the stairwell were packed from top to bottom with runes. He hoped they wouldn't need to read them to figure out how to attain the source, the light of life, because it would take all day.

  At the bottom, he walked out of the staircase and into a forest.

  "What?" Blays said. "Are we back outside?"

  "An outside with no sun?" Dante said. "And black trees?"

  "Oh, so you're saying we're back in Olastar."

  Part of Dante's reply had been mere bravado, because the scene in front of them was plenty disorienting. Spindly black trees were scattered around the chamber while not one but two black streams flowed from one side of it to the other. Grass grew from the ground, which wasn't stone, as it yielded underfoot. It was by all accounts a placid meadow, except for the two small problems Dante had referred to: one, it was indoors, and until a few minutes ago had been underground. And two, it was all in shades of shimmering blacks and grays.

  "Hello?" Dante took a few steps forward. "Is anyone here?"

  "Who are you expecting to be here?" Blays said. "The guardian spirit of the forest?"

  "If there is anyone here, it's got to be something like that."

  "Good point. I'll keep an eye out for him."

  Dante stopped a few feet from one of the trees. It didn't have too many branches, nor too many leaves, almost like it was more of a suggestion of a tree than the real thing. He reached out to it with his mind. He'd already guessed what he would find, but it still came as a surprise.

  "It's nether," he said. "All of it. Kind of like how everything in the Mists is ether."

  "How is that possible?"

  Dante shook his head. "After all we've seen, I'm about ready to just give up on trying to understand what's possible anymore."

  He kept the nether close at hand as he moved forward, trying not to touch anything other than the ground underfoot. The air smelled like the shadow of dew on grass. There didn't appear to be any insects or wildlife and there was no wind to stir the leaves, and so the only sound was the pair of gently rustling streams. He came to the first of them and crouched on the bank.

  "I feel like we really shouldn't wade into this," he decided.

  "Can you part it?" Gladdic said.

  "Probably. The real question is if I can part it without it trying to bite me."

  Dante stepped back from the bank and cautiously extended his focus into the stream. It felt like regular nether, though there was something about it that he couldn't quite place. Bracing himself, he drew a mental line from one shore to the other, then pulled it apart like a seam. The ground he revealed lay one to two feet lower than the nethereal waters, and was dry.

  "Wait until I'm to the other side." He bounced on the balls of his feet, then jogged lightly into the stream bed. Nothing reached out to strike him, and he ran up the opposite bank and backed away from it.

  The others followed. The black water on the upstream side was starting to back up, and so Dante withdrew from it, letting it resume course. It was flowing as normal just a few seconds later.

  He strode toward the second stream. It flowed in the opposite direction of the first, but otherwise looked and felt the same, and he parted and crossed it just as easily. He could just make out the far wall ahead of them, and made his way to it without encountering anything more threatening than a couple of trees.

  It was nothing but blank, unadorned stone. No doorways to be seen. Not even any runes.

  Dante felt down through the rock. "This is the bottom of the structure. The source has to be here somewhere."

  "Unless it is not," Gladdic said.

  "It better be. Or have you forgotten that this was your idea?"

  "That does not mean I thought it was certain to work."

  They made their way around the perimeter of the chamber, parting the streams again when they came to them. There was nothing on any of the walls. No entrancing lights, either, nor the cavern that such a light was said to have led the White Lich to. With nothing else in the room standing out as worthy of further investigation, Dante headed to the mouth of one of the streams. Its nether seemed to be appearing from nowhere. And where it flowed into the wall, it appeared to be disappearing to nowhere.

  Dante rubbed the inner corners of his eyes. "Gladdic, I don't suppose you've heard any stories about a place like this, have you?"

  "As you know, one version of the lich's story speaks of a cavern," Gladdic said. "I would assume that before it sank into the swamp, the only part of this temple that was above ground was its entrance, meaning it is the cavern."

  "But it didn't say anything about what the lich did in the cavern?"

  "Only that the light appeared to him, seemingly on its own. Though in another version—one that makes no mention of a cavern, only a sojourn into the deep swamp—the sorcerer sells his soul to obtain the light." Gladdic raised his voice and called across the chamber. "If that is the price, then let it be known that I will pay it!"

  This earned no response except from Blays, who exhaled and sat down on a rock.

  Dante reached into his cloak and retrieved the lichstone. "Do we need to activate this in some way?"

  "Maybe so," Gladdic said. "But anything we do with it in this place runs some risk of pulling forth the mantle of the lich without meaning to. It is time that I take custody of it."

  Dante felt the weight of the stone in his hand another moment, then passed it over to Gladdic. "I'll break my connection to it, then. I wouldn't want it to get…confused."

  He severed the link as neatly as he could.

  Gladdic drew some nether to him. Despite everything they'd gone through together, including witnessing him summoning dozens of actual demons, it still felt blasphemous to watch a priest of Taim wield the shadows. Gladdic drew them out into dozens of thin strands, then wove them into a lattice full of swoops and curves.

  "I used a grid-shaped pattern to access it," Dante said.

  "I know what you used," Gladdic said. "I do not believe the specific form of the pattern matters. Only that there is one."

  Dante watched skeptically as Gladdic finished his work and guided the delicate sphere (he hadn't even bothered to make it a cylinder) up to the lichstone. While he kept the black threads of the pattern still, he made them glimmer like ether. It made contact with the stone and came to a stop. Dante crossed his arms. Gladdic furrowed his brows at the sphere. With a soft flash, its leading edge began to sink into the lichstone. They both watched intently as the rest of the sphere dissolved beneath the pearly surface of the ether.

  "The new layer you're looking at looks chaotic, but it moves in patterns, if you can train yourself to see them," Dante said. "Every now and then, a hole will open in the pattern. When it does, slip the nether in to open the connection."

  "Indeed," Gladdic said. "But I am not trying to make a connection to it."

  Without having any nether of his own under the surface of the lichstone, Dante couldn't see what Gladdic was doing. "What's happening?"

  "Nothing is happening. I am simply observing it."

  "Well, if anything starts to go funny—"

  "Then I may ask for your advice at that time. Until then, be silent, that I might find what I am searching for."

  Blays shook his head at Dante.

  Dante was apparently supposed to feel chagrined, but he only felt more annoyed. He was the only one with any experience with the lichstone, after all. And was more skilled with the nether to boot. In fact, there was a real argument that he should be the one attempting to take on the mantle of the lich, not Gladdic. He'd already been a lesser lich. It was almost a sure thing that that would better equip him to resist being overcome by the forces of the stone than someone with no experience with such matters.

  Gladdic muttered to himself under his breath and sent a second batch of nether in behind the first. He moved his hand about in slow graceful movements punctuated by sudden savage lunges. The lichstone dimmed. But not in a way that suggested it was diminished. More in the way of an eye narrowing in anger.

  Dante glanced to his left. "What was that?"

  "What was what?" Gladdic said.

  "You didn't feel it?"

  "No."

  Gladdic hadn't looked up from the stone during this. He was still moving his hand about in fits and starts, but Dante couldn't feel whatever was going on under the surface of the stone. Something else, though, twitched at the very periphery of Dante's consciousness.

  "Well did you feel that?" he said.

  "I did not, Galand, for I am very intent on not disturbing anything that should not be disturbed. If something is happening beyond the stone, I suggest you investigate it, and ensure that no calamity is about to befall us."

  This was rude but true. Dante withdrew, circling widely around Gladdic and the lichstone rather than walking right past them, then headed in the direction of the twitches he'd felt—or thought he'd felt.

  Something flashed behind him. He whirled around, but Gladdic looked untroubled by whatever the stone had just done. Meanwhile, something was fluttering around in Dante's senses. It was already fading, but he'd finally gotten a decent line on it, enough to redirect him toward the pair of nethereal streams.

  He stopped in front of the nearer of them. The sensation twitched again, hard enough to almost make him twitch, but he could no longer tell which direction it was coming from. Was he standing right on top of it? He felt down into the ground, but felt nothing out of the ordinary (other than the fact the ground was made out of nether, anyway). He looked up. Nothing there either.

  He moved several steps upstream, hoping to get a better angle on wherever the sensation was coming from, but the next twitch of it felt like it could have been coming from ahead of him or behind him. He gritted his teeth, gazing at the dark surface of the stream. A stream, he supposed, that could be obscuring whatever it was that he was feeling. He swept the nether to the side, exposing nothing more exciting than some black dirt.

  He tried upstream and downstream, to similar worthless results. The nether flowed past in a chorus of ripples. He wondered if he should bother to try exposing the bed of the other stream. He supposed he had nothing better to do. It was only thirty feet away, meandering slightly, practically if not entirely identical to the one he was standing in front of.

  Except that it was flowing in the opposite direction.

  The twin rivers of Duset were very common in stories and discussions involving Arawn. They were his symbol of the Celeset, after all. And in every instance Dante could recall, they always flowed in the same direction.

  He glanced back at Gladdic, of a mind to go discuss it with him, but the old man was in a bad mood, and interrupting him would just make him more annoyed. Unfortunate, because what Dante was about to attempt might possibly cause a disaster of some kind. But there was no other way about it, was there? So Dante reached into the nether of the stream in front of him and pulled it in the other direction.

  He was expecting resistance of some kind, perhaps even a violent struggle. But the river of nether happily reversed direction as easily as a snap of the fingers, almost as if it had been waiting for this, and began flowing toward the near wall instead of out of it.

  Dante took a step back. Nothing stirred from either the stream he'd just reversed or the one beyond it, and the chamber was as quiet as ever. Glumly, he glanced behind him. Gladdic was still fussing around with the lichstone, to no better effect than Dante's attempts. What were they missing? It certainly felt like they were in the right place. The connection he'd made with the lichstone had all but guaranteed it.

  But he was afraid they were in the wrong time: and that the light they searched for had been extinguished a long time ago.

  He lowered his gaze to the ground. His shadow stretched out before him. He stared at it, vaguely troubled by it for reasons he couldn't explain. Then he spun around.

  Between the twin streams, a ball of light hung in the air. Dante brought the nether to him with a jerk. The light swelled and sharpened.

  A shimmer ran down its face. "I am…awake."

  21

  The ball of light was a yard across with a halo around it. It was as pure as the ether, but its surface churned and eddied like the nether, and it slowly expanded and contracted, "breathing" in the same way the shadows did. Sometimes Dante thought he could see a flicker of a face within the light, but then it would shift into a patternless swirl.

  "Are you the source?" Dante said. "The light of life?"

  The light ignored him, rotating to its left, then rolling back. "We are no longer buried beneath the swamp? How?"

  "That was my doing. Were you trapped here?"

  Drawn by the glow, Gladdic and Blays had run to join Dante. They drifted to a stop to either side of him.

  "What'd you do?" Blays said.

  "Is that it?" Gladdic said.

  "I don't know yet," Dante said. "But whatever it is, it can talk."

  "Trapped," the light said. There was a strange buzz to its speech, like it had three or four voices instead of one and they were all slightly out of sync. "Yes, I was trapped."

  "Then I'm glad we were able to free you. And I hope you're what—or I should say who—we've been searching for."

  "You lifted all of this free of the mud? How?"

  "I am a sorcerer. I know how to manipulate the earth. That's how I could feel your temple was buried here, and that's how I unburied it."

  "Sorcerer." The light rippled. It turned slowly to its right, then its left. "There is something wrong."

  "We're not here to do you harm. We're here to—"

  The ball jerked around to face him. "No. There is something wrong with the world."

  "You can tell that? From in here?"

  "You can't?"

  "This is the only place we've been to in the last few weeks where it wasn't immediately obvious. Our arrival here is no coincidence. Rale is under siege by the entity known as Nolost. In a matter of days, he will finish tearing the world apart. To prevent this, we need to take on the power of…" He paused: he had no idea what this thing's relationship had been with the lich, if they'd had one at all. "…a being who is no longer with us. We believe we need your help to do that."

  "You believe?"

  "In large part, we're working off very old stories. Ones we're not at all sure are true." Dante motioned to the lichstone in Gladdic's hand. "But that was once a part of the being, and it led us here."

  The ball of light rotated toward Gladdic. It contracted slightly. "Then he is dead."

  "If such a being can ever truly die," Gladdic answered.

  "How is it that you came to possess his drogor?"

  Gladdic didn't hesitate. "We are the ones who killed him."

  The ball contracted further. Dante gripped the nether.

  "I was sure that he would one day enslave all creation," it said.

  "He nearly did," Gladdic said. "Before the arrival of the entity, the Eiden Rane was the deadliest foe any of us had ever faced."

  "How did you kill him?"

  "With this." Blays got the rod from his belt. "The—"

  "Oh. The spear of the gods. I had thought that would do it. But I thought your kind had lost the knowledge to cross over to the godsrealm."

  "Yeah, we had to figure that one out too," Dante said. "Ironically, we might never have done so if the lich hadn't started using portals to try to destroy us. Am I wrong, or are you sounding like you wanted him destroyed?"

  "More than anything. He betrayed me—and he betrayed Arawn."

  Dante choked on his own saliva. While he was recovering, Gladdic said, "The White Lich was created by Arawn?"

  "He wasn't supposed to be. He was supposed to be something much different. That was what made it a betrayal."

  "The Eiden Rane brought about the most important change in my life. One that returned me to the ways of the gods after I had led myself down a false path. Yet for all I have learned of him, I still feel as though I do not know how he came to be in the first place. If you know that tale, I would hear it."

  The ball of light considered this. "I'm not sure that Arawn would want me to tell you that."

 

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