I didn’t flinch. He wasn’t trying to strike me.
I still owed him a murder.
“I need another drink to do this,” I said, holding out my trembling hands. “All the excitement has left me shaky.”
He nodded as he gave me a look of sympathy, an expression out of place on the features of a sadistic god of self-destruction. One of his free hands produced a second jar. “Regal lager,” he said, offering it to me.
“Regal lager,” I agreed, taking the crimson brew from him. I lifted it to my lips, inhaling one long, intoxicating sniff of the heady aroma. Never had I wanted a drink so badly.
But instead of drinking, I spun around, covered a dozen feet in three long strides, and dumped the ice-cold liquor on Father Ver’s face.
The priest’s eyes snapped open, his bloodied brow furrowed in confusion as he focused on me. “You’re the boy who ran away after stealing the poor box,” he said.
Considering that had been damn near forty years ago, I was more impressed than offended by the greeting. The bastard really was good at seeing truth.
“False god!” I said, pointing in Nowowon’s direction. “Get him!”
“Was it a rat I saw?” asked Nowowon. He snapped his fingers and, instantly, my heart stopped. I moaned as my body faded back to its spectral form.
If Father Ver was bothered by my vanishing act, he showed no sign of it. Instead he rose, wiped the blood from his eyes, then straightened his shoulders to look at the old god.
“No! It is opposition!” cried Nowowon, as he shrank back down to the height of an ordinary man. He brandished the Gloryhammer in both hands and growled, “Raw war!”
“War is not necessary,” said Father Ver. “You’ll drop the hammer. It isn’t yours.”
The Gloryhammer slipped from the old god’s shaking fingers.
Father Ver walked toward Nowowon, stepping over the gibbering form of the Deceiver. He looked down on the man with contempt, but took pity as he said, “Your vision isn’t real. You’ve been caught in a mental trap. Arise.”
Zetetic’s eyes opened. He pulled his drool-covered fist from his mouth and gave it a puzzled look.
Father Ver thrust an accusing finger at Nowowon.
“You do not belong here! You are a false being, and have no place in this world!”
Nowowon walked backward toward the vortex of stone, looking at it nervously, as if he was considering making a break for it. But he sounded defiant as he looked back at the Truthspeaker and shouted, “Evil dogma! I am God, live!”
“We both know that isn’t true,” said Father Ver, as Tower crawled to retrieve the Gloryhammer. “I sense a summoning spell at work. Someone has trapped you here against your will. You faded from the memory of men long ago. There are no believers to sustain you.”
“O no! O no! O no!” the old god screamed as he shrank before the force of the Truthspeaker’s words.
“You are a fraud,” said Father Ver, as the old god shrank to waist height.
“You are a perversion,” he said, reducing Nowowon to the size of a house cat.
Father Ver looked down on the diminutive old god and crossed his arms. “You aren’t even worth crushing beneath my sandal. You’re a lie, and no one believes you any more.”
Nowowon squealed as he shrank to the size of a mouse, then a cockroach, then a fly. Lord Tower’s spiked metal boot suddenly slammed down, driving into the solid stone.
“I’m not wearing sandals,” he said, casting the Truthspeaker a sideways glance.
Zetetic ran up, snatching the Jagged Heart from the ground. “Why is there a crippled baby dragon over there? Why is the spirit gate closed? What the hell happened? I thought the world had come to an end!”
“Why would you think that?” asked Tower.
“I threw you both through your gates. Greatshadow was ready for us. He killed you both and came into the chamber and killed the rest of us. I survived because I had told No-Face that fire couldn’t burn me. But when I left this place, I found nothing but ash as far as the eye could see. I traveled the world, entirely alone, for decades without finding another survivor. Even the mermen and ice-ogres were gone. The primal dragons had joined together to strip the earth of all sentient life.”
“You were trapped in a deception by the old god,” said the small dragon, rising up on his misshapen legs with the help of his gnarled cane. This was definitely Relic’s voice, and now there was no mistaking this dragon’s eyes were the same eyes I’d spied through the burlap hood. “Nowowon knew that you were vulnerable to assault with a highly detailed hallucination. You were trapped by what was essentially a lie.”
“It lasted forty years!” said Zetetic, waving the Jagged Heart in Relic’s face for emphasis. “And who the hell are you? Why is no-one telling me why there’s a dragon here?”
He was answered with a deep voice that made the ground tremble.
“There’s a dragon here because you woke me from my slumber.”
Everyone turned to the vortex of stone.
A scaly head the size of a ship had squeezed through the hole. It was a deep, glowing red, the color of embers shimmering beneath a blanket of dark ash. Sulfurous smoke rose from the creature’s nostrils. The dragon glared at us with eyes that burned like foundry furnaces, with a heat that caused Father Ver’s robes to send up tendrils of white smoke from fifty feet away.
All we could do was stare back, the moment frozen, as Greatshadow opened his enormous maw, revealing teeth like ivory stalactites and a tongue like a carpet of lava. Wind howled through me as Greatshadow sucked in air like a bellows.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
OILY BLACK SMOKE
A
ND THEN THERE
was fire, a great red wave of flickering tendrils engulfing us in a flood of heat and light. Imagine a coal-fired oven, stoked to a cherry red, with a pot of oil boiling furiously upon it. Imagine plunging your head into this pot, the burning oil working its way into your nostrils and ear canals, into your tear ducts, searing every pore. My spectral teeth burned, my tongue scalded, and there was nothing to do but keep screaming, though I couldn’t even hear my own voice. Once, I’d ridden out a hurricane in my small boat and the roar of the wind had been so loud it loosened my bowels. This devouring flame howled far louder, a crescendo appropriate for announcing the end of the world.
And the smell. As a veteran explorer of volcanoes, I knew all too well the brimstone stench and the peculiar acid tang of molten rock. Add to this the stink of vaporized hair and flesh crackling on the bone and you still cannot imagine the foulness of the atmosphere.
As suddenly as it had begun, the flame passed. The pain jangling my phantom nerves collapsed from incapacitating to merely agonizing. Blinking away the ghost tears in my scalded eyes, it appeared that little had changed. The four figures who’d been present before were still there: Relic, revealed as a dragon, was unharmed, save that his staff was but a heap of white ashes at his feet. He was standing where Infidel’s clothes had been; they were completely gone. There was no sign of the bone-handled knife, though I still felt its tug... from Relic’s mouth?
The Deceiver had survived as well, crouched down, hugging the Jagged Heart to his chest, its aura of supernatural cold sparing him from the flame. Tower, too, was untouched; his Armor of Faith gleamed even brighter, as if the flames had cleansed it of the dust and grime it had gathered on our journey. Somehow, Father Ver, standing just behind the knight, wasn’t even singed even though his robes had burned away.
In fact, the only party member missing was No-Face’s corpse. There wasn’t even a pile of ash, just a small rivulet of serpentine liquid metal flowing where his ball and chain had once been.
Father Ver turned toward me. As I studied his face, I realized I could see Tower through him. I wasn’t looking at a man. I was looking at a ghost.
The phantom glared at me, and said, “You cannot be my guide.”
“Nice to see you too,” I said. “Look, you might be here for only a few seconds, so let’s get to the point: it looks like you’re still heading for the spirit world. When you get there, I need you to rescue Infidel. I mean, the War Doll.”
“You mean Princess Innocent.”
“You knew?”
He frowned deeply. “This was just one of many obvious truths I turned a blind eye toward with the goal of ridding the world of Greatshadow.”
“But how could you know? Relic was reading your mind and said you were fooled.”
“I sensed his mental probes instantly,” Father Ver said. “It was a simple matter to command him to see in my mind whatever he wished to see.”
I crossed my arms and shook my head, imitating the same pose of disapproval I had encountered so frequently in my youth. “So you not only kept quiet about things you knew weren’t true, you actively took part in a deception. For shame.”
“Your judgment matters to me not in the slightest,” said Father Ver. “Tower was my friend. I would not deny him his chance to find his lost love. In the end, the Divine Author will deliver the final verdict on my choices. Let us hope... let us hope it was His intention to write a romance.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but he looked heavenward, not caring whether I spoke to him or not. He spread his arms wide as his face was bathed in light from above. I looked to see its source, but there was nothing there.
“Ah,” he said, in a tone half joy, half sorrow. “So that’s the truth of it.”
He pressed his lips together in a wistful smile as the outline of his face wavered. Then he was gone, and all that was left were a few blackened teeth where he had stood.
My attention returned to the danger at hand. I didn’t want to be around if Greatshadow unleashed another inferno. Fortunately, while I had been chatting, Tower had sprung into action, leaping into the air and flying straight toward the dragon. In scale, it was like a bee diving toward a bear’s nose. With both hands, he slammed the Gloryhammer into the center of Greatshadow’s snout. Like a bear stung on the nose, Greatshadow winced and drew his head back. The false-matter tunnel warped and wobbled, allowing the impossibly large beast free movement as he retreated. Tower grabbed the rim of a scaly nostril with his razor-tipped left gauntlet, refusing to give the dragon a second of relief as he rained blow after blow on the creature’s nose.
As Greatshadow departed, Relic spat the bone-handled knife from his mouth into his hand. It had been completely untouched by the flames. The misshaped little dragon shouted to the Deceiver, “We must give chase! Tower needs the Jagged Heart!”
“You’re out of your mind!” shouted Zetetic. “I’d be dead if I wasn’t carrying this. And why should I listen to you? You’re a dragon!”
“A dragon maimed by Greatshadow,” snarled Relic as he wiggled his stunted wings and limped toward the Deceiver. “A dragon whose sole purpose is to see his father suffer and die for the cruelties he’s inflicted.”
“Father? You’re Greatshadow’s son?”
“Possibly.”
“How can you not be sure?”
“I’m definitely his offspring. But I’m uncertain if I’m his son or daughter. Since my genitals are internal and I’ve not yet matured, this remains—”
“Stop.” Zetetic scrunched up his face and rubbed his closed eyes. “Just stop.”
“You’re uncomfortable discussing sexual biology?” asked Relic.
Zetetic sighed. “It’s one of my favorite topics. But, maybe, right now isn’t the best time to get into this?”
“Agreed. We must help Tower.”
Tower was a fair distance away at this point, still maintaining his assault. There was little Greatshadow could do to remove his annoying assailant while he was in the tunnel, but the second he pulled his head free into the larger chamber beyond, a talon with claws longer than the Jagged Heart swatted Tower away.
The far end of the tunnel became a solid sheet of flame as Greatshadow tried a second time to melt the knight.
“Make yourself immune to flame,” said Relic, grabbing Zetetic by the arm and tugging him.
“I can’t!” cried the Deceiver, planting his feet wide to resist. “There’s no one left to believe my lies! Your reptilian mind is useless to me!”
“Lie to Menagerie. He’s still alive,” said Relic.
“What?” I said.
“What?” said Zetetic.
“No shape-shifting blood magician would neglect to include a tick among his forms,” said Relic. “I sense him now, dug in behind your knee. Nowowon’s magic has robbed him of his humanity, but the Goon is an accomplished survivor.”
Zetetic lifted the hem of his robe and bent over, using the Jagged Heart to balance himself as he twisted to see the back of his leg. Sure enough, there was a little black speck there. “Do ticks have ears? Can he hear me?”
Relic was silent as he stared at the bug.
He shook his head. “Unfortunately, his mental state has been greatly damaged. Perhaps he may recover once he has consumed sufficient blood, but, for now, your skepticism is justified. He’ll be of no use to you.”
“Do you have a second plan?” asked Zetetic.
“As a matter of fact,” said Relic, running the sharp edge of the bone-handled knife along his palm. He sucked in air as a line of bright blood bubbled up.