What Lies Beyond, page 58
part #6 of The Cycle of Galand Series
In desperation, he softened the ground in front of the lich, meaning to pull off the same trick that had nearly killed him before. Feeling his efforts, the lich snorted and stepped over the hidden mud. The next thrust of his glaive cut through Blays' cloak and gouged his side. Blays' eyes widened, but he fought on, blood pattering the snow as he fell back.
Over at the wall, the cavalry charge had penetrated halfway to the lich, but was already stalling. As Dante watched, Olivander was dragged down by the Blighted. He disappeared from sight. Merria roared, slaying one after the other with her nether, but they were surrounding her too, her horse rearing back.
Gladdic gasped. Blighted threw themselves on him with wild abandon. Dante smashed them off; as the old man pushed himself to his feet, something slammed into Dante from behind and tackled him to the ground. Fingers scrabbled at him. He blew the brains out of the Blighted and those sprinting in behind it. A blue-white barrier thrust into the air not two feet in front of him—Gladdic was doing something with the snow, compacting it into an icy wall to block out the undead. For all the good it would do. Dante could already hear them thumping about on the other side, piling themselves into an inhuman ramp for the others to climb.
Blays retreated so fast he nearly tripped over Dante. The White Lich strode after him, eyes as shiny as blue mirrors, and jabbed forward. Before their weapons made contact, the lich rolled his right wrist, swinging his glaive upward—and then straight down at Blays' head.
Blays blocked the blow, his arms bouncing downward from the strength of the lich. Dante tossed a few shadows at the enemy, hoping to at least distract him, but the lich absorbed them with no more than a few scrapes, jerking the glaive upward and hammering it at Blays a second time. Blays dodged out of the way, but was off-balance in the snow as the lich made a third downward stroke, and had no choice but to block it straight on again.
The force ripped the spear from his left hand; if not for the cord looped around his right wrist, he would have dropped it altogether. The lich snapped the glaive's blade down at Blays' head. Blays jumped forward and was struck by the shaft instead.
He sprawled to the ground and didn't move. Blood leaked from his skull. The spear fell from his grasp, still looped to his wrist, but dimming the moment it left contact with his hands. With the weapon disarmed, the lich gazed down on Dante with the coldest eyes he'd ever seen.
He had just enough time to raise a shield of nether before the White Lich struck him with a massive beam of light.
He found himself lying on the ground with his back pressed against Gladdic's wall of ice. The keep hung above him, as if judging his failure. A second beam of ether pounded Gladdic to the ground. The lich made a quick assessment of the ruin before him, then bent down and pulled the spear away from Blays.
Dante supposed he could have attacked the lich. But what was the point? Instead he sent the nether into Blays' head. Blays was alive but bleeding badly. Dante's own head was ringing, but he mended Blays' with all the skill he'd accumulated since first learning the nether more than half his life ago. He wasn't sure why he was bothering with this, either. But better to spend his last act healing his friend than to make a fruitless attack against the lich.
Snow fell on his face. He hardly felt it. Hands as white as the snow groped for the top of the ice walls and slid back down. Blays groaned, his right hand twitching, swatting violently at nothing. Dante hoped the spasm was the result of the healing and not the damage. There wasn't much noise coming from the Citadel wall any longer. He couldn't see it due to the ice, but he presumed the people there had been killed or driven back outside.
The lich stood. He gripped the Spear of Stars in one hand and raised it high in the air to better inspect it. "I should thank you for putting in so much effort to deliver the gods' weapon to my hand. My vision is now inevitable." In his hands, the spear's purestone glimmered a frosty blue. He stood over Dante but didn't yet lift the weapon. "It is over. Would you like to beg to join me after all?"
"I'll only beg you for one thing." Dante sat slumped against the ice wall. Melted snow seeped through the seat of his pants. "Write down what we did. Keep the record safe and put it somewhere it can last for an age. So that when your sick order crumbles—even if it takes ten thousand years—the people who reclaim this world will know that we fought you to the very end."
The lich smiled and raised the spear. The stone glowed like the light of the north star. Gazing up at it, Dante felt something moving in the nether high above. Ka? Sent to gloat over their defeat? Carvahal, turning away in disappointment?
Or an agent of Arawn, watching impassively as his other agent died?
The spear swung downward. Dante had thought there would be some glory in his final moment of defiance, but the last thing he knew was the stabbing awareness that he had not been good enough.
39
It had been, to put it frankly, a hellish journey.
Had started easily enough. Lots of riding. Through places that only the most country of bumpkins could ever care about. Upside to that was there was almost no one around to bother them. And once they got to the mountains, there'd been no one at all. The mountains had been pretty, but they were a little too empty, and she'd been glad to be done with them.
Next came all the hills and plains. And all the giants wandering around them. Avoiding them had taken work. She could have kept clear of them better if she'd been on her own—would have been faster, too—but she'd made her decision on the road outside Bressel. She'd stick to it.
Coming north, the energy in the hamlets had been strange. Everyone was begging them for news. Third time it happened, she pretended she didn't know anything, and made him pretend he didn't, either.
At last the city congealed between the forest and the sea. She felt something relax in her, as if she'd been gripping something tight in her own gut for all that time. Bressel had been bigger and grander, but as soon as they stepped into it, it felt right. It smelled right. They'd arrived at dusk, which was a bad idea: the touch of the night made her want to run off and find her crew and forget everything else she had to do. After all, they'd created this mess. Let them deal with it.
That had always been her way. Only she didn't think she could do that this time. She had the feeling that if she tried, there was nowhere to run to that would be safe when it all came crashing down.
That's when they ran into a problem. The worst problem they could be hit by.
The piece wasn't where she'd left it.
Staring into the broken-open wall, she'd felt the big chill. The one that only pierced you when it dawned on you that something you'd thought had been good had been screwed all along. For all her precautions, someone had been watching her. Following her. Might have meant to kill her. Probably would have, if she'd stayed.
She went out and had a drink. Then a few more. The kid had the sense not to say much. Once she'd calmed down, she started making the rounds. Asking questions. Not always about the piece itself—the last thing she wanted to do was alert the thief that she was back, and she was looking for it—but about the kinds of things that could only be done by the person who was carrying it.
Days later, all she had was dead ends.
That's when the kid suggested they try his way. So they'd geared up and traveled north. Nothing but mountains to the east, a cold sea to the west, and wastelands in front. Just days of that. More than enough time to make her question their decision to leave the city. And then at the end, a vision out of a nightmare: a bone tree, hundreds of feet high, Barden itself.
The kid needed a piece of it. She thought it was a very bad idea to try, but as he poked and scraped at the fused bones of the trunk, no god opened a hatch in the sky to strike them down. Still, the damned tree seemed impervious. Took him three days just to pry off a little chip of it. When he tried it out, he got this heartbreaking look on his face and said he couldn't feel anything.
Come on, she'd said. Maybe it will work once we're closer.
She'd doubted. Hard. Was secretly angry at him for wasting so much of their time while the trail was growing even colder. But two days out from the city, when he tried again, he laughed and slapped his forehead. He had it. It was dead ahead.
Coming back to the city, she hadn't felt the same feeling she'd had the first time. Something felt off. Dark. Should have listened. Her instincts were never wrong. It had gotten colder while they'd been away, almost wintry, but there were a lot of people on the streets carrying heavy bags or pushing wheelbarrows of goods. There was talk of invasion. They were getting out before talk became reality.
The kid brought them through the streets, closing on the target until he was squinting from the pain in his forehead. She wasn't at all surprised when they wound up outside a tenement on the border of the Sharps.
It was afternoon and she hated operating in daylight so they posted up in an abandoned room on the third floor across the street. Fifteen minutes after sunset, a robed figure approached the tenement. Gaunt like a skeleton. The figure went inside.
Her instincts told her something was wrong. This time, she listened.
They hustled into the street, into the tenement, up its stairs. Found the room. And the piece. The thief was dead. The skeletal man in the robe had killed him—and the killer was still there in the room. The kid tried to talk to him. She went for her knife. The man turned on them, face drawn, eyes sunken. She knew at once what it was. It was smart enough to go for her first. Blade of shadows. Her counter was too slow.
The kid wasn't. He threw himself in the way. She went for the thing's throat. When it was over, the thing was dead. And so was her partner.
The stupid kid had been right. And it had cost them everything.
She took up the piece. But she no longer believed in the mission. The enemy's agents were already inside the city. Rest of the army on its way. The entire trip had been a waste and now he was dead. She checked herself for any cuts—couldn't afford to leave any blood on the scene, they'd use it to track her down—and walked out.
Should have left right then. She chose payback against the High Priest instead. Headed for the Citadel. The place was empty. Evacuated. She ran up the stairs of the keep, meaning to loot everything she could. Take it, sell it, get as far east as she could manage, maybe an island somewhere, see if it could be waited out, and if not, enjoy herself and her wealth until the day it came for her, too.
That's when she ran into her next problem. The lesser lich in the tenement hadn't been the only one of them to infiltrate the city. She was up on the top floor when they came for the Citadel. She did what she knew: she hid.
She was right about to make a break for it when they put up the wards.
Divine punishment? In response to her greed? Her betrayal? Then to hell with the gods: she'd wait it out and head east as soon as the lich was done with the city.
The walls filled with undead. The White Lich came and went. She stayed put. After a few days, it felt like he might be there for an extended stay. She made one trip downstairs to scrounge food and hunt for a break in the wards. Found the former but not the latter. She returned to her bolthole on the upper floors. The next day, they marched out from the Citadel. The wards stayed up, but if their army stayed gone, she wouldn't have to worry about setting them off. She'd leave that night.
Once again, she'd misjudged. They weren't leaving. They were meeting the enemy. Soon enough, they returned to the Citadel to make their defense. Galand's men followed. They weren't nearly enough. The wave of Blighted hidden beneath the streets beyond the walls nearly overran them. Would have, if not for the disturbance below.
She watched the fight between the White Lich and the three men with dry fatalism. Only when Buckler shoved his spear through the enemy's chest did she begin to hope.
But that hope turned out to be as false as all the rest.
Below, the soldiers and priests began to die. She started thinking about how she was going to get out. The three men had gotten in, right? From the keep. Meaning somewhere below the keep. Hidden passage? Gap in the wards? Either way, even if the lich stayed here after he won, she had her way out.
She would have taken it. Was all ready. Except she looked back down and there was Galand knocked in the snow saying something to the lich. They were too far away for her to make out any of the words, but she could see his face, and maybe it was just the distance between them, or the distortion caused by the falling snow, but she would have sworn it wasn't Galand, but the kid.
Something stuck in her throat. She grabbed the window sill and whispered, I promised you.
She'd meant to break that promise. Would have done it days ago if she'd had the chance. But no one had to know that now, did they? No one but herself.
She picked up the piece. She grinned. And she jumped.
~
If there was a servant of the gods watching him from above in the nether, it certainly wasn't hovering there. If anything, it was…plummeting.
The White Lich stabbed the spear at Dante's chest. He rolled to the side. The blade pierced his cloak and the cobbles beneath it, pinning him to the ground. Dante shaped the nether into a spike and drove it at the lich's face, but it swerved toward the spear, absorbing into the weapon.
With a scrape of glass on stone, the lich pulled the spear's blade free from the ground and lifted it up for another jab. Something appeared in the air above him, resolving from the snowstorm like a ship from the mist.
A woman.
She was falling toward the lich, her ponytail and light cloak flapping behind her. This was quite remarkable, but Dante fought to allow no hint of it to alter his expression. Not even when she cocked her elbows and drew back a curved white sword.
She swung downward. So did the lich. At the last moment, he felt her presence, jerking to his right. Due to his movement, rather than stabbing Dante through the heart, the spear stuck him through his side. And rather than the sword cleaving through the top of the lich's head, it cut him between his neck and shoulder.
It sank deep. As deep as anything besides when Blays had rammed the Spear of Stars through his chest. For the woman was Raxa, and the weapon she bore was the bone sword Dante had once taken from the White Tree.
The lich faltered to the side, luminescent blood shooting from the wound. The spear fell away from him. The sword splintered in Raxa's hand; somehow, she landed on her feet. She dived into the nether, but the lich knocked her free of the shadows with a wave of his hand and hit her as hard as he could with his fist. She flew into the ice wall and struck it with a crunch. She dropped to the ground.
The White Lich swiveled to face Dante. Shards of the bone sword jutted from his upper chest. He put one hand to the wound, flooding it with ether, but the flesh didn't want to mend. Face pulling back into a rictus of rage, he lifted his other hand over Dante.
"You and your vermin have troubled me for much too long," the lich said wetly, a dollop of his strange blood trickling from his mouth. The ether sparked in his hand, ready to be unleashed. "Now you—"
"Die." Blays had picked up the Spear of Stars from where the lich had dropped it. He now rammed it through the lich's heart.
The lich pulled back, taking the spear with him. The ethereal shaft twitched with each beat of his heart. He grabbed the shaft as if to wrench it loose. Arms shaking, he lowered his head.
"I would have brought you peace." The metallic echo of his voice was now just a dull scrape. "Instead you will return to your chaos and wars. Your strife and your misery and your pain without end."
"Sure, none of us really likes that stuff," Blays said. "But at least they're ours."
He bared his teeth, bore down with all his strength, and twisted the spear. The lich raised a quivering hand, then let it fall. His eyes blazed so bright they looked ready to burn forth from his skull.
They faded to dimness instead.
His skin cracked, the light of the ether shining from within. He began to shrink—no, to collapse, his shoulders tumbling down into his chest, his thighs buckling, his neck falling into itself, his head tilting back in response, mouth hanging open in horror, the dull pits of his eyes searching the sky for deliverance.
His skin began to flake away, swirling on the winds, indistinguishable from the snow. So did his cape and his armor and his flesh, exposing bones that looked forged from the same pure ether as the Spear of Stars. What little didn't soar on the winds fell into a pile of white dust.
Dante tried to heal the wound in his side, but he could barely move the nether. "Is it over?"
"Yeah," Blays said. "It's done."
Blays rested the butt of the spear against the ground. Dante closed his eyes. Snow fell upon his face. He felt like he was sinking, down into the ground, and there was nothing he could do to stop it, but it didn't matter.
40
He woke feeling better than he had in a long time. At peace. Soft sunlight seeped through the shutters of his cozy room. The floorboards were cool beneath his feet. He hurried through the main room to the front porch. Outside, a pale full moon hung in the washed-out blue of the morning sky.
"Hello," the monk said from his chair. "You're looking better. Did you finally get some rest?"
"Yes," Dante said. "Has it been that long?"
"Oh yes. You got lost in the forest, don't you remember? You went through nine hells—pardon my language—trying to find your way back here. But you did, and now that's behind you, and you can rest as long as you like." The man smiled. "But don't rest too long. You have your studies to get back to, you know."
Dante took a deep breath. There was a yard past the cabin and a forest beyond that and the air smelled like that time of spring when the trees had grown confident that winter was defeated for another year. It was good to be back. Yes, good to be back, wasn't it? He couldn't quite remember being lost in the forest (he must still be shaking off his long sleep), but he could remember feeling afraid, like it might never end, that he might never find his way back here. Here to the cabin in the woods, where he waited for the day his father would return.
