by James Maxey
“You’re not the first to come this way, you know,” said Grandfather. “Every generation sends a team of men against the beast. Every generation fails.”
“You’ve met previous parties?” Zetetic asked. “Do you know the fate of the Castlebridge expedition?”
Grandfather nodded. “I believe you are referring to the two hundred soldiers who hacked their way up the mountain almost twenty years ago.”
Zetetic nodded. “My father was with the expedition. We know the Wanderers delivered them safely to landfall. After this, they simply vanished from the face of the earth.”
“Into the face of the earth is more accurate,” said Grandfather. “Their ashes are no doubt well-mingled with the soil by now. Lava-pygmies witnessed it all. Greatshadow sent out his avatars as they were halfway up the slope. All flesh was burned away. The armor they wore turned to slag amid a field of blackened glass. It was a horrible scar upon the earth for all of a month; the jungle has long since swallowed all evidence of their passing.”
“He attacked Commonground with two of these avatars,” said Menagerie. “They were enough to get the job done, but I still wonder, does he have limits? Could he have created a dozen if he wished? If he animates these forms with his spirit, does his spirit weaken as he divides himself? No magic comes without a price. Blood magic costs a man his humanity, dream magic withers men’s souls, the Deceivers pay for their powers with their sanity.” Zetetic opened his mouth to dispute this, but Menagerie finished by saying, “Elemental magic can’t be an exception. The dragon must have some weakness.”
“True,” said Grandfather. “For the primal dragons, the price they pay for their elemental magic seems to be their sense of identity. A dragon’s mind is no more infinite than a man’s mind. Rott, the primal dragon of decay, spread his essence so thinly that he hasn’t been seen to manifest himself in a body for centuries. No one knows if he even remembers that he was once a dragon. However, Greatshadow has avoided this fate. He maintains his original body, feasting, sleeping, and fornicating; his sense of identity is in no real danger.”
“Fornicating?” Zetetic asked, with a raised eyebrow. “Wouldn’t this require another dragon?”
“You’ve already witnessed his ability to create avatars.”
“But they’re part of him. Wouldn’t they…?”
Grandfather shrugged. “According to pygmy lore, he can create avatars with female aspects. I assume he enjoys the act of mating from both his original body and his second form.”
Zetetic’s face brightened. “That seems to be a fantastically practical-”
“Perversion!” snapped Father Ver. “All the more reason to kill the depraved beast.”
“Just because you don’t let yourself have any fun is no reason to be angry with the dragon,” said Zetetic.
“Let him be angry if he wishes,” said Grandfather. “It won’t matter to Greatshadow. You’ve witnessed his power. I’m sure you wouldn’t have come to this island if you didn’t have some tricks up your sleeve. A flying knight, a shapeshifter, an ice-ogress; I admire Brightmoon’s imagination in assembling this team. But, in the end, if you continue toward the dragon’s lair, you will die. Even if ice-magic and enchanted armor can protect you from the heat of Greatshadow’s breath, he still is in possession of teeth harder than diamond and claws that can rip through steel like tissue paper.”
“My armor is made of something more enduring than steel,” said Lord Tower.
“So what if it is?” said Grandfather. “Odds are, you won’t even face the dragon. Greatshadow has had centuries to perfect his magic. It’s said he’s populated his lair with guardians summoned from ethereal realms. The most powerful magical artifacts that survive from the Vanished Kingdom are his to command; you cannot even imagine the forces he may throw against you. And while you may enter his lair in possession of some secret plan to beat the beast, it will all be for naught. The pygmies say that Greatshadow’s mind spreads so completely through his lair that a visitor’s thoughts will become the dragon’s thoughts. First, he will strip your mind of all its secrets. Then, he will pour his mind into your bodies, and you will dance for him like puppets on strings.”
The Goons and Aurora looked sobered by this recitation of the challenges before them. Relic, of course, remained an enigma beneath his rags. Zetetic’s mouth was puckered with pain, but that was probably from the hot peppers. Lord Tower’s eyes looked unconcerned; perhaps he already knew all the dangers they faced.
Father Ver’s lips were turned up into something almost resembling a smile.
Zetetic took note. “Perhaps I’m not the only one here who enjoys pain.”
Father Ver shook his head. “I’m merely thinking that the beast has had centuries to become overconfident. Think of Numinous, brought low by a mere decade in which to grow arrogant. No doubt, the beast’s soul is rotten to the core from believing his own lies. Perhaps we have reached the page in the One True Book where he falls before the greater truth.”
“Amen,” said Tower, slapping the Gloryhammer against his gauntleted palm with a true-believer’s fervor.
No one else echoed his sentiment. Instead, everyone sat quietly, staring down at their food as they contemplated their fates. The only sound was the slup, slup, slup of No-Face eating.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
HEART TO HEART
That night, as everyone else slept spread out on woven platforms across the tree village, Infidel stepped down onto a thick branch. Relic stirred from his sleep and held out a leather sack the size of a saddlebag. She took the bag and climbed down the vine-draped trunk in silence. When she reached the ground, she followed a trail to the nearby stream, then followed this to a large pool. Looking around to make certain no one was watching, she shed her clothes and plunged in. Her body gleamed beneath the water’s surface like a silver-skinned fish darting about. She surfaced with a gasp, rubbing her face, ridding herself of the sweat of the day. Whatever dye Menagerie had used wasn’t smeared by her fingers. Now that she was wet, the illusion that her skin was metal was especially strong.
After only a moment in the pool, she rose from the water and opened the sack, producing a rolled up towel. Wrapped within it were fresh jawa fruits and several of the snails. She gobbled them down as she dried her hair. Mosquitoes crawled over her arms and legs, denting their noses on her impenetrable skin. She paid no attention to them as she finished off the snails in record time. She wiped her mouth then leaned over the pool, looking at her faint reflection in the still water. Her face went slack as she studied herself. Her eyes had a distant focus, as if she wasn’t watching her reflection but was, instead, lost in memory.
She looked, if you will forgive the expression, haunted.
Was I causing psychic harm by sticking around? Did she sense me watching her and feel guilt? Should I leave and spare her any further pain? Could I leave if I tried?
My musings were cut short by Relic’s voice in my head.
Return to me.
“I’m busy,” I said.
Return to me!
The command felt like a thousand fishhooks tearing into my brain. He reeled me in as I flopped about. Fortunately, my agony was short lived, halting the second I stood before him. He was curled up on the netting, completely still; to anyone else he would have looked asleep. I saw the bone-handled knife clutched securely in his gnarled claw.
“I don’t like being pushed around,” I said.
We have our bargain.
“Do we? I agreed to watch Tower and the others. I don’t remember signing on to be your slave.”
And yet, you aren’t watching Tower.
“He’s probably asleep,” I said.
I am certain he is not. He and Father Ver are outside the range of my mental powers, but I can still hear the murmurs of their voices on the night breeze. Go and listen to their conversation.
He shoved me with his mind out into the open air beside the central tree house. Tower and Father Ver slept separated from
the rest of the rabble on a platform a good fifty yards distant. Apparently, Relic’s telepathy didn’t extend terribly far. The knight and the cleric had hung sheets of canvas for privacy. A glorystone cast their shadows on the cloth walls. I misted straight through the canvas into their room. To my surprise, Tower had shed his armor. For some reason, I’d expected him to sleep in it. If the monks could pray that the armor be invulnerable in battle, couldn’t they also make it pillow soft come bedtime?
Out of his armor, Tower looked… ordinary. Not average, by any means, but nothing like the iron-clad warrior feared by evil-doers everywhere. Rumors of terrible scars proved unfounded. The few nicks and divots around his eyes and lips testified he’d taken a few hits over the years, but the scars were hardly disfiguring. If anything, they gave character to a face so symmetrical it was boring. He had a square jaw and a nose that jutted from his face at a perfect thirty degree angle. His black hair was cut in a bowl style that would have been unflattering on almost any other head. Here, it served to draw attention to the sharp lines of his cheek bones and his pale gray eyes. The only person I’d ever met who shared this eye color was Infidel.
Save for stray silver hairs, he had the appearance of a man in his early thirties, though, if I understood the chronology of Infidel’s life, he must be closer to my age.
He was dressed in a simple linen shirt and tight-fitting cotton pants that showed off his muscular legs. He was kneeling by the side of the platform, his head bowed to touch the floor. I drew closer just in time to hear his whispered prayers come to an end. He closed his supplication to the Divine Author with, “… and grant me the wisdom to tell lust from love, desire from devotion. Amen.”
It seemed like a prayer most men would find handy, though I was a little surprised lust was high on Lord Tower’s list of concerns. He rose, a little closer to the edge of the sagging platform than most men would find comfortable. Perhaps he spent so much time flying with the Gloryhammer he’d lost all fear of heights. I wondered where the legendary weapon was. Or the armor; it should have made quite a pile once it was off him. Not to mention the Immaculate Attire, which they’d removed before they buried Blade. And, for that matter, where was the Jagged Heart? There still was no evidence that Tower had the harpoon.
Father Ver was sitting nearby, also kneeling, his head beaded with sweat. He was stripped from the waist up, his robes bunched around his hips. Before him lay a two-foot-long braid of leather. I drifted around behind him and saw bright red welts raised among the constellation of scabs along his back.
Tower pulled a small leather notebook from the waistband of his pants. This was the book Zetetic had taken. As he flipped through the pages, he said, softly, “There’s no point in blaming yourself. Blade was the one who chose to dabble in dream magic. You couldn’t have known.”
“We both know that isn’t true,” Father Ver said, closing his eyes. “I could have known.” His voice sounded wet and raspy, as if he’d been crying. “I’ve made too many bad bargains. My pursuit of the greater good has forced me to accept the unacceptable. Ten thousand years of lashings can never erase the harm I’ve done to my soul by agreeing to these compromises.”
“The Divine Author would not have given you these trials if he did not feel you could endure them,” said Tower. “I need you, Ver. You’re the wisest man I’ve ever known. I wouldn’t have accepted this mission without you on the team. But you’ll be of no use to me if you’re too paralyzed by guilt to do the job.”
“I have no guilt,” said Father Ver. “Undeserved guilt is a form of self-deception. Instead I feel shame, regret, and anger.”
“Well, try to work on those,” said Tower dismissively, looking away from the holy man and gazing out of the jungle. “I’m going to go get a little fresh air.”
Without warning he pitched forward and dropped off the edge. We were a hundred feet up. He hadn’t struck me as suicidal. I drifted over the lip of the platform. A light suddenly sparked below, casting shadows upward. I looked down and saw the Gloryhammer in Tower’s right hand; the small notebook was still in his left. His forearm bulged as he gripped the glowing weapon and shot off through the trees, deftly avoiding vines and trunks. I followed, though I didn’t need to follow far. A knot formed in the pit of my stomach as I realized where he was heading. The night went dark again as his feet touched down and the Gloryhammer suddenly disappeared. I blinked as I caught up to him. What had he done with the hammer? Could he simply summon it at will? He stuck the notebook back into the waistband of his britches.
The mystery of the missing hammer was the least of my concerns. Tower had flown directly to the pool, landing barely five yards in front of Infidel, who still perched on the rock, buck naked. Her eyes were wide with shock. She had one arm across her breasts, and the towel draped over her lap. Tower dropped to one knee before her and bowed deeply.
“Princess Innocent,” he said, in a voice just above a whisper. “I offer thanks to the Divine Author that you are still alive.”
“Ummm…” said Infidel. She furrowed her brow. “Hmm.”
“I presume you wear this disguise because you fear retribution from the church,” he said. “You have nothing to fear, my princess. The king has long since used his influence to revoke the sentence of death placed upon you in absentia. Given the unmistakable perfection of your lineage, the Voice of the Book agreed that a proper trial was in order before any punishment is decided.”
Infidel bit her lower lip. She opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it again. I couldn’t tell if she was still maintaining the ruse that she was a machine, or if she just didn’t know what to say.
Tower continued: “When you disappeared on our wedding day, I suspected you were kidnapped by one of my political enemies. My investigation eventually led to Lord Claypot. He possessed some magic that confounded the Truthspeakers, but I had him tortured until he confessed the plot. Alas, he expired before I learned the full details of the events of that fateful day fourteen years, seven months, and nine days ago.”
Infidel continued to silently stare at the knight.
“I did discover that you had escaped, but were in hiding because you feared retribution from the small segment of fanatics within the Church of the Book who blame you for the destruction. I assure you, I will protect you from them with all my powers. You were a pure and chaste young woman untainted by any hint of wickedness. I’m certain of your innocence, and trust you have the best of reasons for not returning home after you escaped from your captors.”
“Well, yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Like, this ‘pure and chaste young woman’ crap. What the hell? If my father’s spies are even halfway competent, you have to know I support myself primarily by killing people for money. Don’t you think, maybe, just maybe, I don’t exactly fit the definition of pure?”
“I, too, have killed men,” said Tower. “Yet, my heart is pure. Motives matter when judging actions. You’ve done what you must to survive.”
“Motives?” Infidel shook her head sadly. “You idiot. My number one motive was to get away from you!”
“Bu… but… but…” Tower’s face fell as her words sank in.
“Turn around,” said Infidel. “Did you have to wait until I was naked to have this little heart to heart?”
Tower turned around. “I didn’t know you’d be naked. Since I knew you were in the area, I had the Gloryhammer guide me to you. It was poor timing that you are unrobed. I promise I haven’t seen anything. I kept my eyes toward the ground.”
“‘I promise I haven’t seen anything,’” Infidel said in a mocking tone. She jumped from the rock and grabbed her pants. “By the sacred quill! You’re still the same simpering bore. I wouldn’t expect you to know this, but some women are actually flattered by the idea that men want to look at them. When we were engaged, I couldn’t even get eye contact. You acted like holding my hand before marriage might get us sent to hell! I used to have nightmares that you’d show up in our wedding bed with
full plate armor, a blindfold, and a pair of tongs.”
She pulled up her pants, buttoning them hastily, getting one of the buttons out of order, so that the leather sat on her hips at an odd angle. She turned around and found the steel bra she’d been wearing, pulling free the cotton slip inside. “If you’ve known since the damned cave who I really was, you should have said something so I could get out of this damned metal bra. My nipples are killing me!”
She spun back to face him, preparing to pull on the slip, and jumped slightly when she found Tower standing only inches from her. He was staring at her with fire in his eyes. “You dreamed…” he said, breathing heavily, “of our wedding night? Don’t you think I had such dreams as well?”
She didn’t get a chance to answer. He suddenly grabbed her by both arms and pressed his mouth to hers. Her eyes bulged as he pulled her to him, pressing her still naked breasts against his chest. He worked his lips against hers for a long moment. I watched in gruesome anticipation, certain that at any moment Infidel would decapitate this lustful fool. But, to my growing horror, she didn’t move a muscle. She let him kiss her for five seconds, ten, a minute, as her eyes stayed wide open. Finally, she pushed him away, with frustrating gentleness.
“Ooookay,” she said, pausing to wipe her lips with the back of her hand. “Let’s stop for a minute. I’ve spent fifteen years avoiding assassins sent after me by the Church of the Book. I’m telling you point blank that I found you boring beyond all imagination when we were engaged. Can you understand I might be a little confused that you show up fifteen years later finally wanting to kiss?”
