by James Maxey
“Very well, sir. We have a deal.”
The albino and the pseudo-centaur sealed their verbal contract with a handshake.
Blade said, “I was certain you were still a reasonable man, despite the haircut.”
“Aye,” said Stallion. “It’s been many years since I’ve been able to dock in a port with a barber I’d trust with a razor.”
“A shave and a haircut will make you feel like a new man,” said Blade. He glanced back over his shoulder and shouted, “Numinous.”
Numinous was already standing behind him.
“I’ve heard every word of this transaction,” he said. “I approve. The thought of waiting endless weeks in this cave in solitude held little appeal to me.”
“He’s got a busted arm,” said Stallion, studying Numinous. “Is there a bonus for being a floating hospital?”
“The bonus is that if you stop trying to haggle on an already closed deal, I won’t sever your testicles and hang them from your earrings.”
“That is an excellent bonus,” said Stallion, nodding.
Later, after the letter of safe passage had been written, Blade left the pirate cave, following the same path that Aurora and Infidel had taken. Tower met him at the first ledge.
“I was waiting in the shaft the whole time, listening,” said the knight, carrying them skyward. “It seemed as if you had the situation in hand. But, are you certain you can trust him with Numinous?”
“Stallion wants that pardon. He wanted it five years ago. Other pirates can slip into towns in disguise from time to time to spend their ill-gotten gains. Stallion doesn’t have that option. He’s got to be the most recognizable pirate in the world. Just as I’m probably the most recognizable secret agent in the world. We understand each other.”
The reached the top of the cliff. Blade sat down on a rock and the Whisper slipped behind him and wrapped her arms around his neck. Tower hadn’t carried her up. Could she fly? Or was she just as fast at climbing as she was at cutting throats?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EVERYTHING THAT CAN BE IMAGINED IS TRUE
TOWER HADN’T BEEN joking about using the War Doll as a mule. After the gear was all brought up from the camp, they began to test how much weight she could carry, piling more and more tents, rations, and tools upon her shoulders until the mound was almost comical. Infidel bore it all with mechanical stoicism. After a certain point, the roped-together pile on her shoulders was so large it risked getting tangled by branches as they walked, so they gave the rest of the gear to Aurora before reaching the limits of the War Doll’s strength. I wasn’t surprised. Infidel was probably strong enough to carry all the gear and the rest of the party as well, along with an actual mule if we’d had one.
Of course, pack animals were out of the question. The part of Greatshadow that was still a big hungry lizard had a taste for livestock. Paintings and sculpture from the Vanished Kingdom showed that cows, horses, and oxen had once had a home here. After Greatshadow rose to power, he stripped the land of any mammals larger than pygmies. It’s rumored that the pygmies’ bitter dyes protect them; more likely, Greatshadow doesn’t hunt pygmies for the same reason that men don’t hunt mice. The meat you get isn’t worth the effort.
I floated next to Relic as we set off into the jungle. I said, “The Black Swan was a bit off. She said a dozen adventurers would join the hunt for Greatshadow. With Numinous down, there’s only eleven.”
Perhaps she’s counting you, said Relic.
“Was she? She can see me?”
Relic shrugged. I could read her thoughts before she became undead. Now, her thoughts are lost to me.
“Eleven against Greatshadow doesn’t seem like good odds,” I said.
The king has chosen quality over quantity. As to whether the king has chosen well, we shall see.
Progress up the slopes was frustratingly slow. The terrain was steep and rugged, dotted with boulders as big as houses all tangled with tenacious vines. No-Face was armed with a machete and turned loose on the foliage, but we still barely covered a mile by mid-day. Despite the thick canopy above us, the sun directly overhead soon raised the temperature from sweltering to unbearable. As we paused for No-Face to chop away a particularly nasty tangle, Father Ver leaned wearily against a tree, looking pale. His heavy clerical robes were better suited to a chilly mountain monastery than the tropics. Aurora, taking pity, approached him. She cupped her oversize hands and, within seconds, crafted a bowl of ice, filled to the rim with cool water drawn from the soggy air.
“Have a drink,” she said.
Father Ver wrinkled his nose at the offering. “I must decline,” he said. “I’m certain you mean well, but it would be a sin to drink water created by your pagan magic.”
“I didn’t create the water. I just gathered it. But, suit yourself.” She turned around, only to find Reeker standing just behind her. He took the cup from her hands without asking and gulped it, rivulets running down his chest.
I didn’t notice if Aurora took offense at this because from the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of the Whisper giving a canteen to Ivory Blade. As Blade drank the water, the Whisper unbuttoned the top few clasps of his armor and folded back a flap of white leather to expose the skin around his collarbones. Then, in a move that probably warmed him rather than cooled him, she leaned her invisible face to his chest and began to lick at his sweat. I looked around, feeling squeamish about witnessing such an intimate act.
After a few more hours of hacking, we eventually made it through the worst of the vines into the denser jungle beyond. It’s counterintuitive, but the deeper you go into a jungle, the easier the going becomes. The canopy above is so thick with plants growing on other plants that most of the available sunlight gets captured long before it reaches the ground, creating a semi-permanent twilight in which only a few hardy, broad-leafed plants grow. You might expect the ground to be covered by fallen leaves and branches, but the soil is constantly scoured by ants and beetles that make short work of anything that hits the jungle floor.
With most of the machete work behind us, Menagerie took the lead, scouting ahead of the party as a panther. Ivory Blade and the Whisper followed, then Lord Tower, Father Ver, and No-Face. No-Face, when not on machete duty, was assigned as Father Ver’s bodyguard. Despite his deformity, No-Face wasn’t a half-seed, nor did he openly dabble in blood magic. Apparently, this made him acceptable to walk within an arm’s length of the holy man.
Reeker and Zetetic were next. Reeker was the Deceiver’s bodyguard, or perhaps just his guard, period, since he had orders from Lord Tower to give the Deceiver a snoot full of skunk juice at the first sign of anything suspicious. I had to wonder why the Deceiver was part of this team, if he couldn’t be trusted.
Relic took my private musings and turned them into a prompt for a telepathic exposition.
The Deceiver is immensely powerful. He is the master of falsehoods, and the things that are false in this world far outnumber the things that are true. Zetetic may be the greatest threat Greatshadow faces, assuming he can find the courage to stand up to the dragon. He’s definitely not undertaking this quest out of choice.
“How can you know that?” I asked. “I thought you couldn’t read his mind.”
His mind is labyrinth of hallucination that protects his innermost thoughts, but I am slowly navigating that labyrinth. I’ve learned that he blames his presence here on the Black Swan. She paid a substantial fee to persuade King Brightmoon of the importance of including him.
I scratched my ghostly scalp as I contemplated this. It was difficult to wrap my head around the idea that the Black Swan had already witnessed the next twenty years. I wondered what else she’d changed on this mission, beside including Zetetic and Aurora? I glanced back at the ogress, who was bringing up the rear along with Infidel. One thing conspicuously absent from the mountains of gear upon their backs was a harpoon. From the way Aurora had described it, the shaft of the harpoon was over fifteen feet long. It plainly wasn’t with the gear, an
d Tower wasn’t carrying it either. Could it have been broken down into something smaller?
I spent most of my time drifting near the two women, mostly because of my craving for Infidel’s company, but also because of the circle of chilled air that surrounded Aurora. Even as a ghost, the jungle heat was unpleasant. Still, being a traveling ghost wasn’t all bad. On my trips through the jungle while I was alive, I was normally too exhausted by hiking to enjoy the scenery. In my weightless, ogre-cooled comfort zone, I had time to appreciate the rich tapestry we walked through. If everything around us was the work of the Divine Author, he had a sense of playfulness when it came to the colors surrounding us. Translucent pink salamanders the size of bananas crawled over dark jade leaves big enough to use as a tent. Parrots and parakeets the color of lemons and oranges flitted between chocolate-brown tree trunks, devouring iridescent copper beetles and finger-length ants red as chili peppers. Orchids blossomed in every nook and cranny, flowers I’d only seen in botany books — yellow and black tipsy tigers, snow-white wedding gloves, pale purple danglers. The breeze was a heady mix of their perfumes; though, little by little, the floral aroma was getting drowned out by the low-tide stench of Reeker as he and the Deceiver slowed their pace to skirt the bubble of cool air surrounding Aurora.
“Allow me to apologize for Father Ver,” said the Deceiver, looking back at Aurora with a friendly smile. “His church teaches that ogres and mermen and the like are false beings, existing as sort of a shared dream that will all be wiped away when the world finally awakes to the truth. I pity him for the limits of his worldview. I personally am happy to be in the company of someone who knows ice magic.”
Aurora gave him a suspicious look. Even a compliment felt dangerous coming from the man. Still, I wondered if I was giving him a fair shake. I distrusted Deceivers mainly because the church had drilled into my brain from an early age that heretics like Zetetic were the incarnation of evil. That same church harbored a supply of knife-wielding maniacs dedicated to stabbing the woman I loved. Perhaps I needed to keep an open mind.
“I’ve always been fascinated by the magic of your people,” Zetetic continued. “It’s based on completely different theories of reality than those that are taught by the Church of the Book. Since Father Ver believes he is in possession of the sole path to truth, your mere presence is a threat to him. The undeniable evidence that your magic works undermines everything he believes. No wonder he hates you.”
Aurora shrugged. “I don’t care what he thinks.”
“A healthy attitude,” said Zetetic. Then he turned toward Relic, who was hobbling along near Infidel. “The ruins of the Vanished Kingdom are filled with idols of gods long since forgotten. I’d love to learn more about who these gods were, and what the men of your time believed.”
Relic shrugged. “The men of my time were no different than the men of today. There was no one great, universal truth accepted by all. In the end, it mattered little who or what was worshipped. Time wiped away both the just and unjust. The followers of the dog-god vanished from the world just as completely as the followers of the snake-god. The temples where a thousand men gathered to sing the praises of their makers are now hidden beneath roots and rocks. I cannot help but think that, no matter what men believe to be true, over a long enough time scale, it will be proven false.”
Zetetic smiled. “Just because an idea is eventually false doesn’t mean it wasn’t true once. We Deceivers are smeared as believing that the world is created from shared lies. It’s more accurate, however, to say that the world is composed of contradictory truths.”
“How can truths be contradictory?” asked Aurora. “Things either are, or they aren’t. It can’t be both night and day at the same time.”
“It can if the world is a sphere,” said Zetetic. “In your homeland it is always winter; here it is always summer. If I could travel instantly between the two physical spaces and ask the season, I would receive two contrary yet true answers. People are limited to thinking that their immediate experiences represent all that is real. The Church of the Book believes one model of reality, while Weavers, blood magicians, and somnomancers all are certain that they are in sole possession of the actual truth of the world. You can’t blame people for thinking that these competing ideas can’t all be correct. But, what if reality is large enough to accommodate everything? What if we live in a world where all truth is local? What if, on the grand scale, everything that can be imagined is true?”
“Remind me not to ask you any more questions,” grumbled Aurora.
“I’m merely trying to pass the time with some intellectually stimulating conversation.”
“The only thing I need stimulated is my spine,” said Aurora, with a hint of strain in her voice. She shifted the oversize pack she hauled to redistribute the weight to her left shoulder. “What the hell does Tower have in the packs? Anvils?”
“If your load is heavy, perhaps I could be of assistance.”
Aurora gave the Deceiver’s slender form a quizzical look. “What? You’ll tell me some lie about the gear? Convince me that it’s lighter?”
Reeker suddenly became much more alert.
“Uh-uh,” he said, grabbing Zetetic by the arm and pulling him a yard further up the trail from the ogress. “If you try to use your powers, I’m supposed to give you a full blast of juice.”
Zetetic frowned. “You wound me, sir. I was merely offering aid to a member of the fairer sex. Have you no sense of chivalry?”
Aurora snorted. “He’s the wrong guy to ask that question.”
The faintest trace of a snicker flickered over Infidel’s face.
“Reeker’s the worst womanizer I’ve ever seen,” said Aurora. “He’s slept with every whore in Commonground without paying a dime. Treats them like something you’d scrape off a boot, and still they line up outside the bar waiting for him.”
Reeker didn’t look offended by this summary of his character. Instead, he slicked back the white streak in his hair and said, “Aurora, honey, I’d be happy to show you what the women are so hungry for.”
Zetetic stroked his chin as he studied the skunk-man. “I suspect his secret is musk.”
Reeker cut him a sideways glance.
Zetetic wasn’t deterred. “Most mammals use scent to convey sexual signals. With his control of aromas, perhaps Reeker is seducing women on a primal level with odors they aren’t consciously aware of.”
Reeker poked the Deceiver in the chest. “You don’t know nothing! Women like me for my good looks and charm.”
Zetetic held up his palms. “I meant no offense. However, since I lack your striking features and erudite manners, I’m left with only simple kindness with which to befriend women. This is why I’d like to help Aurora.”
“No magic!” said Reeker, again with a finger-poke.
“I don’t really do magic,” said Zetetic. “I only tell lies. What have you to fear from a mere liar?”
“I’m not afraid of you,” said Reeker. “But you’re lying in saying you’re a liar. Or not a liar. Or not lying about... I mean, you’re not telling the truth in... what I’m saying is...” He furrowed his brow as he got lost ever deeper in the thicket of the sentence he was attempting to construct.
“You’re trying to say I’m lying about being merely a liar,” said Zetetic. “That’s an astute observation. Any man can tell a lie. I know how to make the universe believe it.”
Suddenly, for no apparent reason, Relic gasped loudly. His staff fell from his gnarled hand as he collapsed to the ground, completely limp.
“My head is not a safe place to eavesdrop,” Zetetic said, sneering down. Then, while Reeker was looking at the fallen hunchback, the Deceiver casually placed a hand on Aurora’s pack. His gaze met the ogress’s eyes as he said, in a matter-of-fact tone, “I’m big enough to lift this pack with one hand.”
Reeker spun around and spat, sending a gob of yellow goo toward Zetetic’s face. Only, by the time the spit had crossed the five-foot gap betwee
n them, Zetetic’s face was replaced by a giant ankle, and Aurora was jerked from her feet.
Everyone looked up through the hole that had suddenly been punched in the canopy. Zetetic was now two hundred feet tall, holding the pack by a single finger looped under a rope. Aurora dangled beneath the pack, looking no bigger than a rat.
“I do believe I’ve remembered another appointment,” Zetetic said, laughing, his voice booming like thunder. He flicked his arm toward the ocean, sending Aurora and her pack flying in a long arc down the slope.
Infidel knelt next to Relic. She whispered, “You alright?”
Relic sucked air through clenched teeth, then said, “His thoughts... like razors... my mind... is bleeding...”
Infidel shrugged off the shoulder straps of her pack, letting it drop to the ground in a clatter. She cracked her knuckles and looked up with the same eager grin she always brought to fights where she could beat up someone bigger. Her face fell into shadow as Zetetic’s sandaled foot flew down toward her and Relic. Infidel whirled around, kicking, catching Relic in the gut and launching him out of the stomp-zone. She crouched to jump away but was too late. The giant foot slammed into her with a shudder that shook the whole mountain.
Zetetic jumped, knocking over trees, flying down the slope a good fifty yards before crashing back to earth, waving his arms to maintain his balance on the uneven terrain. Off in the distance, perhaps a half-mile away, I caught a glimpse of Aurora and her pack tumbling head over heels, on the verge of vanishing once more into the canopy. Then, in a sudden flash of light, her downward arc was intercepted by the shining silver form of Lord Tower, catching the ogress in his outstretched arms. Her pack tore loose at the impact, sending a spray of camping gear out over the treetops.
As difficult as it was to tear my eyes from this spectacle, I turned back to Infidel, who was splayed out in the center of a giant footprint. With a grunt, she popped her face up from the earth. She spat out a mouthful of black jungle dirt as she sat up, rubbing her eyes.
