Hush (Dragon Apocalypse)

by James Maxey

  “Sorry to bother you,” he said, his dog-breath washing over me. “Sorrow says she’s ready.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  STRAIGHT AND NARROW

  WE FOLLOWED MENAGERIE back to Aurora and Sorrow. The air had gone eerily silent. The waves caused by the bobbing sun had died off, and the ice floes had come to rest, no longer cracking and grinding against one another. The two women’s voices carried over the ice. Aurora was explaining that, from the abstract realms, the Jagged Heart could return a living being to anywhere in the material world. Stern was going to be sent back to the Silver City. Sorrow said she wanted to return to the Freewind.

  “I’m surprised you want to go back to the boat,” I said. “It wasn’t in the best condition when you left it.”

  Sorrow shrugged. “I can’t simply abandon Gale.”

  Judge Stern was awake now, his face turned away from us, but from the tilt of his head he seemed to be listening. I decided it was best not to ask questions that would lead to further discussion of the Freewind, given that Stern was part of the navy hunting the ship.

  “Ready?” Sorrow asked, holding up the hammer and the knife.

  “Let’s do it,” I said.

  Infidel gave me one last kiss and placed my legless torso on the ice before Sorrow. She loomed over me as she began her improvised ritual. The binding was surprisingly simple. The dragon bone of the knife’s blade served a function similar to the silver mosquito, as its porous surface formed natural cages to trap the essence of my blood required to bond my soul to matter. As for the Gloryhammer, solar matter, like all matter, proved vulnerable to decay. Sorrow weakened the head of the hammer with her new command over entropy, then plunged the knife into the softened crystal. I watched with fascination as she kneaded the head of the hammer around the knife. The knife itself became malleable as clay, mixing with the crystalline matter.

  I didn’t feel anything happening.

  I looked toward Infidel. She looked stoic, but her eyes glistened.

  Tears filled my own eyes. The outlines of her body blurred.

  I blinked and she was gone. Everything was gone.

  I was in a world of pure white.

  Only, it wasn’t a world, and there wasn’t an I. I tried to look down to see what form my spirit had taken now, but there was no down. I had no eyes, no neck, no physical sensation at all.

  Was I now in the sun?

  How was I supposed to move it if I couldn’t even move myself?

  Despair seized me. I felt even more trapped than I had in the golden cage inside the golem. In that cage, I’d at least had the hope that, if I understood myself, I might gain some magical gift. I now understood the fundamental flaw of Staggermancy. Because, stripped down to my barest essence, I had no magic. I had nothing at all.

  I’d been rejected by my mother and father. The adults who raised me had not loved me. I’d become a thief and a drunkard before I even had pubic hair. I’d spent my adult life a coward, hiding my feelings from the woman I lusted after, and made my living chiefly by robbing the dead. I’d made fortunes, then squandered them on booze, in constant pursuit of oblivion. Now I’d finally caught it. Oblivion was my ultimate fate.

  I’d failed the world.

  I’d failed...

  Infidel.

  Despite my failings, Infidel had cared for me. A princess with the blood of dragons in her veins, and she’d loved me, and now carried my daughter. I never understood how a woman like her could love a loser like me.

  But what if she didn’t love a loser? What if she’d seen the true me, when even I couldn’t?

  She loved a poet, a scholar, a joker and, yes, a thief. She loved a man who’d lived his life leaping from tall cliffs and crawling headlong into dark tunnels in search of wonder. I like to say I’ve done it all for her.

  It’s a lie.

  I’d lived on the edge before I ever met her, not because I pursued self-destruction, but because I loved discovering something new each day. I was besotted by the world, in all it’s gritty, stinky, sweaty glory. I’d bitten into the apple of life and drunk the tart nectar. I’d loved every moment I spent on our crazy whirling planet.

  Love may lead you down strange and twisting paths, but it can never lead you astray. You may follow blindly, across dangerous ground, and never quite reach your destination. But the destination never mattered anyway. Love was always the journey.

  And now it was time for me to undertake a new journey, a trip that no man had ever dared before. Glorious had moved the sun with his mind, but I would move it with my heart. Understanding this, a calmness washed through me, and I fell into restful sleep.

  I woke on a white sand beach, to the sound of gulls and the soft sigh of sea-foam fizzing near my feet. I raised my left hand to shield my eyes from the intense brightness that surrounded me. I sat up, squinting, unable to remember how I had arrived here.

  As the warm sand shifted beneath me, I realized I was naked. I looked down at my toes and gave them a wiggle. For reasons I couldn’t quite put my fingers on, I felt happy to see them. They seemed like old friends who’d been absent for some time.

  How much had I drank last night? Where was I? What had happened to my pants?

  I grinned. It’s both a drunkard’s gift and curse that his best memories are the ones he can’t remember.

  Looking around, I was on a long ribbon of white sand. The ocean before me was black as night, with waves topped by milky foam that reminded me of scattered stars. Behind me, the jungle was dark green, bordered with an impenetrable wall of spiky vines. Try as I might, I had no memory of how I’d come to be here.

  The sky overhead was pure white; I couldn’t spot the sun amid the burning haze. The light came from all directions at once, reflecting off the white sand with a ferocity that left me squinting.

  Assuming I was on the Isle of Fire, most beaches with white sand lay to the west of Commonground. I rose on unsteady legs and spun to my right. I had no idea how far I needed to go to reach the Black Swan, but knew that the sooner I started walking, the sooner I would get there. I began to walk, stumbling and staggering in the soft sand.

  Despite the intense brightness that surrounded me, I was grateful for the haze that rendered the sky a uniform white. If the sun had been fully exposed, my bare skin would have burnt to a crisp. The sand, while warm, wasn’t burning my feet. But all it would take would be a shift in the clouds, and both of these convenient truths would vanish. Feeling renewed urgency, I stumbled on.

  And kept walking.

  And kept walking.

  My eyes adjusted to the luminance. I had no way of measuring time, but I began to have the curious feeling that I had been meandering along this same stretch of white beach for hours. Or had it been even longer? For a brief moment, I felt I should stop and think about my situation, but when I slowed my pace a sense of dread gnawed at the back of my skull and kept me moving forward. I began to count my steps, and grew lost in the unfolding ribbon of numbers, counting, ever counting, until I’d forgotten why I was keeping track. Only as I was reaching one hundred thousand did the size of the number strike me as peculiar. Assuming I was averaging a step a second, I’d been walking for twenty seven hours. How could that be possible? I hadn’t paused to eat or drink; understandable, considering I had neither food nor beverage, but where was my hunger? Where was my thirst? Assuming I had drank gallons the night before, why had I not felt the urge to piss? If I’d been walking so long, why did the sky never darken? Where was the night? Would this day never end?

  Eventually, I found footprints in the sand. My heart surged with relief at the thought that I would soon find someone who could help guide me home. Onward I staggered, picking up my pace, my feet meandering as I crossed the path of the footsteps I followed again and again. Yet despite the freshness of the trail, I never caught sight of the stranger I was pursuing. The hours wore on. At length, I came to a second set of prints. Many hours later, a third set was added. I paused to study them. My feet
fit nicely within the outlines. Whoever I was following, they must have been similar to me in height; the length of my stride fairly mirrored theirs.

  Much later, a fourth pair added to the growing crowd I chased. Then a fifth, and a sixth.

  At about the time my internal clock advised that I should start looking for a seventh set of prints, I finally spotted a man, far in the distance. He was dressed in red robes, with black hair in a long ponytail. I began to run toward him. As I drew closer, I saw that he had a large red “D” tattooed in the center of his forehead.

  Zetetic?

  “Zetetic!” I cried out.

  The Deceiver’s eyes went wide. He stretched his hands toward me and shouted, “Stop!” Then, without pausing to breathe he cried, “Wait, don’t stop, just walk!”

  Confused, I halted.

  Zetetic bounded across the sand and grabbed my hand, jerking me forward.

  “One, two, three, four,” he said, pulling me into a steady pace. He was carrying a small triangular box with slits in the side. In form, it resembled a clock, but it didn’t have any numbers or hands. All it seemed to do was produce a steady, rhythmic click. Zetetic’s feet fell in rhythm with each beat, and soon mine did as well as I kept pace beside him.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, confused. “What’s that in your hand? What are you doing here? For that matter, where the hell are we?”

  “I’ll answer all your questions, I promise,” said Zetetic, who now reached into his robes to produce a long walking stick. He began to drag the stick behind him, leaving a straight line as we journeyed. “Promise me that you’ll keep walking forward, and match the pace of your stride to those of this metronome.”

  “Metronome?” I asked.

  He handed me the box. “It’s spring-operated. Slide the panel along the back to find the winding mechanism.”

  “Aren’t these something musicians use?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Feel free to break into song if you wish. Anything you need to keep your pace steady. You’ve been staggering rather badly.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Look at how your footprints keep crisscrossing,” he said, nodding toward the sand before me.

  “These are all my footprints? How? How did I make it around the island without finding Commonground?”

  “You aren’t on the Isle of Fire,” Zetetic said. “I take it you don’t remember what happened to you?”

  I shook my head. “My best guess is I drank myself under a table and some punks robbed me of everything including my socks, then dumped my body on the beach. I’ve just been pushing myself forward until I reach home. I can’t wait to tell this story to... to... oh.”

  Suddenly I remembered Infidel.

  Suddenly I remembered everything.

  “This is not a beach,” I said.

  “No,” said Zetetic. “This is not, technically, anywhere at all. You’re dealing with concepts too large for human senses to fully process, so your mind has constructed this symbolic tableau. The infinite ocean represents the void filled with stars. The green forest is the material world. The beach represents the path of the sun. As long as you travel this path, keeping the forest to your right, the sun still rises in the east and sets in the west.”

  “You mean... you mean I’m doing it right?” I scratched my head. Or the symbolic equivalent of my head.

  “Ha!” said Zetetic. “Not even close! You’re appropriately nicknamed, Stagger. The sun has been meandering in an eccentric orbit for the last week. The length of a day hasn’t been the same twice since you started. This seems to have thrown the weather off, as I’ve heard reports of blizzards as far south as the Isle of Apes. As you can imagine, this has led to quite a bit of consternation below. Which is why I’m here.”

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “Thanks to the information they got from Judge Stern, the king’s astronomers have done a wonderful job of analyzing the problem with the sun. But they didn’t possess the power to do anything to put the sun back into its correct path. For that, someone with a more specialized skill set was required. I presented myself to King Brightmoon yesterday. His kingdom is in turmoil; farmers from across the Silver Isles are at his gates, brandishing pitchforks and demanding he take action.”

  “You are that action,” I said.

  “Indeed. Through my contacts, I’d heard that Glorious had been slain and a new ghost now drove the sun. I assured the king that I possessed the ability to speak to this ghost and put him on a straight and constant path. In exchange, I’ve been granted a pardon and one of the king’s remote island fortresses, plus all the gold, soldiers, and servants necessary to outfit it. I’ve always wanted a modest place of my own.”

  I looked at the box in my hand. “So, this is all I need to keep me on pace?”

  “Almost,” he said. “Once we complete an orbit, we’ll find the line I’m now tracing. If you follow this line faithfully, the sun will be back on the correct path.”

  “And you’ll stay with me as I walk?”

  “This first time through. After this, I’ve prepped a glorystone in the Royal Observatory to serve as a channel through which you may speak and be spoken to. The chief of the Observatory, Father Luciferous, is quite eager to talk to you and learn your story.”

  I smiled. “I like telling stories.” I looked at the stretch of sand before me. “And I like walking on the beach. But I feel like there’s a lot I left unfinished in the material world.”

  “Every dead man I’ve ever spoken with felt the same way,” said Zetetic.

  “Fair enough. But then, I’m probably the first dead man to actually have some leverage. I’m willing to keep the sun moving through the sky at a constant pace. I’d like you to explain to the king that I feel a little gratitude is in order. I think I can concentrate on my pace a little easier if he’ll do me a couple of favors.”

  “Are you speaking of blackmail?” Zetetic said.

  “I think I might be. The king is going to get a lot of love from his subjects once word gets out that he’s fixed the sun. I hope that he’ll share his good fortune by issuing a few pardons. There’s a family of Wanderers called the Romers. I’d like for him to leave them alone. Even more importantly, I want him to issue a full pardon for Infidel. I don’t want her to have to hide from assassins while she’s raising our daughter.”

  Zetetic’s face went blank.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I was... I think these are reasonable requests. I’m certain the king can accommodate you.”

  “I’ll want proof,” I said. “Glorious said he could see through the glorystones. I obviously haven’t picked up that trick yet. But if there’s a stone where this Luciferous guy can talk to me, I want you to promise me that you’ll bring Infidel to it so I can speak to her.”

  Zetetic nodded. His face was completely calm and expressionless. “I’ll do what I can. Of course, it might take some time to locate her.”

  “For you? Just tell someone you have the power to find missing people by jumping into the air and landing beside them.”

  He furrowed his brow.

  “What’s the problem?”

  He shook his head. “No problem. I’m just worried we might have gotten out of step with the metronome. Let’s walk in silence for a while.”

  “For someone called Deceiver, you’re surprisingly bad at lying,” I said.

  Zetetic shook his head. “I’m simply concerned, is all. You must keep moving forward. You must not change your pace.”

  “You know something, don’t you? About Infidel?”

  Zetetic said, “Of course not.”

  I stopped moving. “I’m not taking another damn step until you tell me what’s going on.”

  Zetetic grabbed my arm and yanked me forward.

  “No!” I shouted, taking a step backward.

  “Keep walking!” he cried. “Think of the chaos you cause on earth when you pause even for a moment,
let alone move backwards!”

  “Tell me what you know!” I shouted.

  “Infidel’s dead!” he screamed at me.

  I fell to my knees.

  Zetetic sighed, and bent down on his knees before me. He said, softly, “I’m sorry. I don’t know the full story, just bits and pieces of court gossip. Judge Stern was briefly captured by Infidel and a witch named Sorrow while they were in the Great Sea Above. Stern heard Sorrow and Infidel request to be sent to the Freewind, which was damaged and adrift in the artic, just north of the Isle of Grass. They wanted to help the Romers get the ship back to port.”

  I clenched my hands in the warm sand beneath me. I’d known Judge Stern was listening. Why hadn’t I said anything?

  “King Brightmoon messaged his flagship, the Raptor, to find the Freewind. The Raptor is capable of flight, and covered the distance to the Freewind’s location in less than a day. One of the old, normal days, not the thirty-hour specials you’ve been serving up. ”

  “What did they find?” I asked.

  Zetetic said, “I really need for you to stand up and start walking again.”

  “What did they find?”

  Zetetic sighed. “The Storm Guard had beaten the Raptor to the punch with one of their hurricanes. When the Raptor arrived, they found timbers from the Freewind scattered across the sea. The Storm Guard had crushed the ship between two icebergs. Ordinarily, the Storm Guard are eager to take prisoners to sell as slaves, but through diplomatic channels we’ve learned that the crew of the Freewind fought to the last man. Their dead and wounded went down with the ship. Presumably, Infidel and Sorrow perished with them.”

  I nodded. “There were no bodies?” I asked.

  “Not that I’m aware of,” said Zetetic. “Please get up.”

  I rose, brushing sand off my legs.

  “Infidel’s the main reason I’m doing this,” I said, stepping forward.

  “I understand,” he said. “But she was just one person. There’s a whole world that depends on you now. It’s not just people at stake. Every last blade of grass on the planet needs you to keep walking. Every tree, every bird flitting between their branches, every last fish in the sea depends on you now for survival. The magnitude of your responsibility is incomprehensible.”