“Give me my damn ale!” it screamed as the two tumbled and fell down a ravine between me and the kitchen.
I got unsteadily to my feet and someone grabbed for me. I stepped aside and a man tumbled to the ground in front of me. At least I think it was a man. When I looked closer at him his face got all amphibian on me.
The giant toad he had become started croaking, “The rats. You see the rats? Do you see the rats?”
I stepped away from the toad and stumbled into a forest that had grown up between a pair of mountains ahead of me. As I did, a raven flew right at my face, pecking at my eyes and cawing, “Don’t eat the verbs! Don’t eat the verbs!”
I managed to bat it away from my face and ran into the relative calm of the woods, jumping over a python that redundantly hissed “Sssssnake . . .” at me.
It felt like I ran for hours, the forest creatures shouting nonsense at me when they weren’t trying to kill each other. I finally broke through to a sunlit clearing, all meadow grass and flowers whose colors burned.
“Wait,” I said. “It’s winter . . . isn’t it?”
“Of course it is. You’re hallucinating.”
I spun around to find the speaker and saw nothing. “What?”
“This way,” the voice came from above me.
I looked up, and a woman stepped out of the sun to stand before me. She was shorter than before, and wore a white dress that was so sheer that she might as well have still been nude.
“Hello again, Frank.”
“Lysea?”
“Who did you expect? How many gods do you serve?”
“Serve . . . What?”
She reached out and touched my cheek. “You weren’t looking for that bad boy who wrecked my temple, were you?”
“I wasn’t looking . . .”
“Of course you were. That’s why you’re here, and not down there.”
I looked down and saw we floated far above the forest floor of The Headless Earl. The woods themselves seemed engulfed in a war between nonsense-babbling forest creatures. I swallowed, remembering my dislike of heights, and tried to will my stomach to stop rolling.
“This is an accident,” I said. “I wasn’t supposed to inhale.”
“My dear,” Lysea said, lifting my chin. “No one goes on a vision quest by accident.”
“But—” She placed a finger on my lips, silencing me.
“Unexpected does not mean accidental.” She gazed into my eyes, smiling as if enjoying some private joke at my expense. “Also, fate is the sum total of the paths we choose to take.”
“What?”
“I am the goddess of love and storytelling,” she said. She bent over to kiss me lightly on the lips, sending a shudder through my body that felt as if it broke apart the world around me. “That makes you particularly fascinating to me.”
I blinked and looked down again, and we were floating above Lendowyn Castle. More immediately, I was back in Lucille’s body, wearing the dress that I’d worn when I had married her. “What?” I said, realizing that being intoxicated by Brock’s herbs allowed the return of my singular drunken eloquence.
She traced her fingers down the side of my face and my throat. “There’s something of greatness in you.”
“I don’t think so.”
“No, you don’t.” Her fingers lightly touched my breast and I shuddered. “But when it is offered, you choose the higher fate.”
I shook my head.
“Look down there,” she said.
I did. Swarming the castle were the forest animals, still fighting, wrecking the castle below while still spouting their nonsense.
“Those men below, given the choice, embraced the animal.” She turned my face back toward her. “You chose to embrace the divine.”
She kissed me again, and this time it was no light peck on the lips. The world melted around me again. When she let me go I stumbled back against the door to her temple, back in the midst of the abandoned memorials. Lysea stood before me as the gigantic nude she had been when we had summoned her. For a moment I thought I had never left her temple, and that everything since had been an extended dream. But I saw myself and realized I was still hallucinating. I was no longer Lucille, I was back in my original body, just as I had been when I saw the Dark Lord Nâtlac.
“What is—”
She rested her fingers on my lips again. “Quiet, my love.”
Around us the war of the animals still raged through the city, even though we were in Grünwald now, not Lendowyn. And above the babbling of ravens and foxes and wolves and mice and badgers I heard something roar. A shadow crossed the sun. A familiar fifty-foot lizard descended from the skies, screeching. I tried to back away, but Lysea held me in place.
Fortunately, the dragon was not dropping to attack me.
Not exactly.
It didn’t drop toward the temple where I stood, but as I watched, I saw another version of myself, just as I had emerged from the catacombs, covered in sewage, stumbling between the abandoned tombs of Lysea’s garden. The dragon fell down on that version of me, and I shut my eyes to avoid watching the carnage.
I had seen my body die once before. This was too much.
“Seen enough?” Lysea whispered in my ear. “Time to go home.”
CHAPTER 23
“What? Wait!” I opened my eyes and I was lying on the forest floor. I stared up into the eyes of a huge dragon. It spoke to me in Lucille’s voice. “Frank? Are you awake? Frank?”
I blinked and the colors of my vision drained away into a pool of rainbow shimmers as the leathery skin melted off the dragon’s face to reveal a human Princess Lucille looking down at me.
I blinked a couple more times before my brain rejoined the waking world. “The girls!” I sat bolt upright, sending my consciousness sloshing around my skull in a very vertigo-inducing manner. “Ulp,” I said as I covered my mouth.
“Everyone’s fine,” Lucille said.
I shook my head slowly. “How long—”
“How long were you out?”
“Yes,” I said. I resisted the urge to nod because shaking my head had sent the whole world spinning on a second axis, and I didn’t want to add a third.
“About three hours.”
“Three hour . . .” I tried to get up, and the universe tilted on that last axis and I just tumbled sideways in front of Lucille in a rather embarrassing manner. She took my shoulders and rolled me back onto the bedroll I’d been resting on.
“I said it’s all right. Stay put. Brock says that it takes a while for the smoke to wear off.”
“Yeah.” I rubbed my temples and watched as rainbow auras shot across my vision. The one around Lucille was shaped like a dragon. “I think I need to talk to Brock about that.”
“Then talk to Brock.” Brock stepped into view, eclipsing the evening sky and most of the forest. The shimmering rainbows around him outlined a bearish silhouette. He held a battered tin cup that seemed tiny in his hands. He knelt next to Lucille and offered the cup to me. Steam wafted up from the dark liquid in it. “Brock made this for you,” he said.
I took the cup. The contents smelled like boiled moss. “What is it?”
“Boiled moss,” Brock said. “To help the spirit find the rest of the way home.”
“My spirit has been homeless for a long time,” I muttered before I drank.
All I can say is that I’ve tasted worse. After I was done, it felt as if the moss was growing on my tongue, but the world had stopped spinning, and the rainbow auras had faded.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Brock told you to hold your breath,” he said, taking the cup back.
Now that the world had stabilized, I could sit up without vertigo. “I seem to remember you hanging out with the village shaman, right?”
“Brock was shown many visio
ns.”
“Did those visions happen to involve a packed leaf full of herbs tossed into a fire?”
“Yes.”
I sighed. “Did we just give an inn full of thieves prophetic visions?”
“No. Without a shaman to lead Brock, Brock would only see his totem animal.”
“Okay,” I said. “That explains all the woodland creatures spouting gibberish.”
“Brock doesn’t understand.”
“That makes two of us.” I got unsteadily to my feet.
Lucille placed a steadying hand on my arm. “So you saw a totem animal?” She asked.
“Maybe everyone else’s. Mine? No. Not unless the Goddess Lysea counts.”
“Goddess . . .” Brock said.
“Goddess?” Lucille repeated.
“Yeah, Goddess. I sort of inadvertently made an offering to her after we escaped from the dungeons—long story.” I shook my head and laughed, still feeling a bit light-headed. “Long story, that’s a good one. The offering’s a long story.” The chuckling got worse.
“A goddess came to you?” Brock asked.
“It was a pretty elaborate hallucination.”
“What did you see?”
“All sorts of things,” I said. Brock stared at me with an uncomfortable intensity—especially uncomfortable on a man the size of a middling-large bear. “Is there a problem?”
He shook his head. “No. Brock shouldn’t pry. Vision is between you and the Goddess.”
“Wait a minute. Vision? Go ahead, pry.”
Brock shook his head. “Every shaman sees their own world when the spirit walks. Brock could not tell you what it meant.”
“Shaman? What shaman?”
“You, Frank.”
“Me, what? I’m no shaman.”
“Most see their animal when the spirit walks. A shaman sees gods.”
“No, I’m no shaman.” I turned to Lucille for support, and she was grinning as if she was enjoying this. “I’m not?”
“Why?” Lucille asked. “You’re already the Dark Queen, High Priestess of Nâtlac.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“It . . . it just is.”
Brock placed a hand on my shoulder. “The Goddess touched you, spoke to you, and only you can say what she meant.”
“Great,” I whispered. “It was bad enough as a hallucination. As a prophetic vision it’s worse.”
“What did you see, Frank?” Lucille asked.
“I saw Lendowyn Castle fall,” I said, “and I saw a dragon kill me.”
• • •
We left that subject to lie there, but it tracked us like a pack of wolves, just out of sight, waiting for someone to separate from the group.
Sometimes my own metaphors make me uncomfortable.
The good news was that our raid on The Headless Earl was an unqualified success aside from my unscheduled detour into a love goddess’s apocalyptic visions. Brock’s shaman weed packets had completely incapacitated the majority of the inn’s inhabitants. The few who tried to escape from their spirit-walking companions had run into the waiting arms of Brock and Sir Forsythe and were very quickly subdued. Now we had horses, camping gear, weapons, and the girls had fully equipped themselves for the weather. Most important, we had liberated enough gold to pay the toll into Fell Green, pay for lodging there, and have enough left to afford some wizard who knew what they were doing to help straighten out the mess we found ourselves in.
Our group had only stopped briefly, just long enough for Brock to revive me and everyone to sort out the new horses and equipment. Within the hour, we were moving again, toward the Fell River. However well things had gone, we had added a group of twenty-some thieves and highwaymen to the list of people who were probably after us. With any luck they were several hours behind. More if they hadn’t been able to retrieve the horses that we hadn’t taken; Rabbit had stripped all their tack and sent them off into the woods. By the time our new horses needed to rest, twilight had turned full dark and we had reached the point where the Fell River met the Lendowyn border. We found a place to camp in a clearing in sight of the river. It gave us a wide space both for the horses to graze on what spots of grass poked through the snow, and for us to see any unwanted approach.
Just like Sir Forsythe’s men, right before they were barbecued.
I took the first opportunity to walk off by myself and sit on a rock to watch the river. The cloudy, dark, moonless sky perfectly matched my mood. Below me, the river boiled, too violent to ice over.
Yeah, things went perfectly.
I couldn’t even blame the knots in my stomach on Brock’s moss drink. It had worn off hours ago. It had been bad enough when I was contemplating what my mistakes had already done. Thinking of what they might lead to wasn’t pleasant. Snake had outmaneuvered me even before I’d known who he was. Even the most drastic solution that Sir Forsythe had mentioned, death breaking the enchantment, now seemed out of reach. Death of one body causing a swap back was straightforward enough when it was just us two. But Snake had moved on.
What did that mean? Would it cause a swap with the dragon? A swap with Lucille? Nothing?
This is why we’re going to hire a wizard.
That didn’t make me feel much better. The logic was inescapable—which was why we were headed there—but that didn’t mean I liked it. I’d never been too fond of those in the wizarding profession even before one had banished me from my original body so he could steal it. I also couldn’t say that Fell Green was anywhere near the top of my list of fine tourist destinations.
“Hey, want something to eat?”
I turned at the voice briefly expecting—hoping—for Lucille.
It was Mary. I couldn’t help think about the last time she had tried to bring me dinner . . .
“Sure,” I said. I turned back to the river. She set down a tin plate on the rock next to me. On it steamed a couple of sausages that must have come from the pantry of The Headless Earl. “Thank you,” I said, uncertain about what else to say.
She didn’t go away. I wasn’t surprised. Whatever frustration or anger the girls had with me, half of it seemed focused through her. I could feel the swelling of an epic tirade behind me, and I braced myself for it. But when it finally came, nothing really could have prepared me for the gut-punch.
“Do you love her?” she asked.
I spun around and gaped at her.
She waited a moment, then asked, “Frank?”
“What?”
“Do you love her?”
“Who?”
“Who you think?”
“I know. I’m stalling.”
She walked around and crouched in front of my rock and shook her head. Now that she had donned stolen leather and a furred cloak, she looked more herself. Less lost child, more young warrior goddess. Her face was too shadowed in the nighttime darkness to reveal her expression.
“Why don’t you answer the question?” she asked.
“It’s complicated.”
“Is it?”
“Why are you asking?”
“Why you stalling?”
I sighed. “You heard my story, didn’t you?”
“The true one or the bushel of lies you introduced yourself with?”
“That’s just my point.”
“You have a point?”
“My point is—you had the right idea about me all along. I’m not a hero. I’m not even a particularly good thief. I’m reckless, impulsive, and the people around me get hurt even when I’m not being a self-serving bastard. One of my best skills is lying to people, right after lying to myself. I only even know Lucille because of a series of accidents that were either out of my control, or a result of my own bad decisions. Every woman who’s had the bad sense to get attached to me has had h
er heart broken . . .” I couldn’t help thinking of Evelyn. It may not have been a real romance, but she had come all the way from Grünwald only to be frightened to death by an angry dragon—
An angry dragon.
“Oh crap,” I whispered. I rubbed my forehead as I began realizing the real reason Lucille had been so angry. Of course she was. If she had felt anything remotely like what I . . .
And she found me with someone else . . .
“Frank?”
“Sometimes I don’t realize the full stupidity of my actions until long after the fact. But I’ve already hurt her, a lot—”
“Frank?”
“What?”
“You’re not answering the question.”
“I told you—”
“Everything but whether or not you love her.”
“I—”
“But I think I know.” She stood up and started walking away.
“Wait.”
She stopped.
“Why are you asking?” I asked her.
“Because there’s one thing I never saw those dangerous smooth-talking men ever do,” she said without turning around. She walked away before I could ask her anything more.
CHAPTER 24
It was nearly a full day’s ride before we reached the bridge across the Fell River. Because we followed the river, we rode through a more heavily populated area than the border with Grünwald. It made for a few tense moments, but every group that seemed like it might have made trouble for us had less than half our number, and when you’re facing armed riders in leather armor, it matters more that there are ten of them than the fact that most are teenage girls. Everyone gave us a wide berth.
We reached the bridge around sunset. I dismounted and led my horse to the front of the bridge and waited. Behind me I heard Grace say, “Where is this place? Across the river?”
“Just wait,” I called back.
At the moment, the stone bridge arced over the boiling waters, the setting sun glinting off the icy stones in an unbroken arch from the Lendowyn shore across to Dermonica. Despite being the only crossing for miles in either direction, the immediate surroundings were the emptiest stretch of the river coastline we’d come across. For a few moments the only sound was the rushing of the river and the distant cawing of a raven somewhere.
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