“At once, sir,” the friar said, before spinning around and scuttling back down the gangplank. I followed, frustrated by how slowly he walked, though in truth I suspect his pace would have winded me if I’d still been alive. After following him for five minutes, I was grateful to have a guide; the underground passageways were a labyrinth. They were also curiously empty. I had yet to spot an ogress. Instead, I spied a dozen human men in a long hall, who sat eating from bowls filled with gelatinous lumps of whitefish cooked in a thin gray broth. They were a rough-looking bunch, no doubt the sailors from the
Relentless
. They looked well fed. I thought about the ogres in the village, so hungry they’d fought over whale vomit.
At length, we reached a cavern carved from solid ice. The place was large enough you could have fit the Grand Cathedral of the Silver City inside it. Starlight filtered down from the translucent ice roof, casting ghostly shadows all about. The front and side of the room was ringed with large ice stalagmites, matched below by stalactites; the way they jagged together almost reminded me of teeth.
The undulating floor could have passed for a giant tongue. The spiritual hairs on the back of my phantom neck began to tingle.
Brother Will hurried across the cavern, toward a gap in the ice teeth that led once more into a corridor of stone. To reach this, he passed three large boats covered in hide, similar to the ones that had turned up in Commonground, albeit lacking dragon heads.
I remembered something Aurora had said in passing, back during the hunt for Greatshadow, something I’d paid little attention to at the time: “We’d sail from the dragon’s jaws into the Great Sea Above.”
Despite Brother Will’s brisk pace, I felt I had time to check out my hunch without losing him. I tilted my head skyward and bid my spectral body to rise. I shot into the ice, then through it, rising into the starry sky above. I flashed a mile into the air at the speed of thought before looking down.
The landscape beneath me was all white on white; the starlight provided little in the way of contrasting shadows. Off to the west about a mile away, I could make out the edge of the cliff and, beyond it, the frozen bay studded with ice-houses.
Directly beneath me was nothing but snow-covered hills leading off to the west in a succession of serpentine ridges. As my eyes adjusted, the truth slowly emerged: The ridges of the hills were formed from the spine of a dragon.
I was flying directly above the motionless form of Hush. Brother Will had just walked through the cavern of her open jaws.
Perhaps I was growing jaded. Since my death, I’d witnessed four primal dragons – Abyss, Greatshadow, Rott, and now Hush. I was no longer astonished by their sheer size. It was difficult to judge Hush’s true length given that she lay with her body curled, but I would roughly calculate that from snout to tail tip she was a good five miles long. But despite her glacial size, one couldn’t help but notice that she was frozen stiff and had apparently not moved in a very long time. She was more landscape than lizard.
I’d been gone long enough. I dove back down, passing straight through her snout into her cavernous mouth, quickly spotting the passage Brother Will had been shuffling toward. I flew in that direction, catching up to the friar a few seconds later.
He was descending a winding stone stairwell. Frost sparkled on the walls, lit by his glorystone ring. To my surprise, the passageway came to an abrupt dead end at a wall formed of ice. He rapped the ice with his ring. The space beyond was obviously hollow.
An ogress stepped through the ice-wall, passing through its solid surface as if had been merely a sheet of flowing water. She could have been Aurora’s sister for all I knew; her walrus coat, hair, and skin tone were identical, though she may have stood a few inches taller.
“What do you want?” the ogress asked gruffly.
“Judge Stern wants to interview our prisoner. Is she awake?”
“She is,” said the ogress. “But she’s
our
prisoner, not yours. She attacked our villagers. She was bested by our champion. Your judge has no authority over her.”
“She was carrying holy relics of our church,” said Brother Will.
“We’ve already given you the armor. If your judge wants the hammer, I suggest he argue his case with Tarpok. In any event, you have no need to speak to the prisoner.”
“I beg to differ,” said Brother Will. “We’ve every reason to think that this woman is a great enemy of our church.”
“
We
are great enemies of your church,” said the ogress, in an impatient tone one might use speaking to a particularly dull-witted child. “Purity is an even greater threat to all you hold dear. Your argument isn’t terribly convincing.”
“Listen to me!” Brother Will said, waving his finger in her face. “Your prisoner has devoured the enchanted blood of the primal dragon Verdant! It gives her strength beyond imagining. She can bend steel with her bare hands. The sharpest blades are blunted when they strike her invulnerable skin! You don’t know the danger she poses!”
“You’re obviously mistaken about the identity of our captive,” said the ogress. “We were able to stitch her wounds with a bone needle; her skin is no tougher than any other of your race. And if she can bend steel with her bare hands, why does she struggle so helplessly when we’ve bound her limbs with mere leather?”
Brother Will furrowed his brow, obviously stumped by this revelation.
I saw no reason to stand in the hall and listen to these two argue. I ghosted through the ice and found myself in circular stone cell about seven feet across. Infidel was alone, leaning against the wall, her body covered by a sealskin pelt. Her bare arms lay before her, bound at the wrists by tight loops of leather. To my astonishment, she held my bone-handled hunting knife in her left hand.
The room was stuffy, even warm, despite the wall of ice that sealed the door. Only a few gaps in the stone allowed air to flow; Infidel looked dazed and drowsy, and I wondered if she was suffocating in this nearly air-tight space. On the other hand, despite the glazed look in her eyes, the color had returned to her cheeks. Save for the numerous bruises around her shoulders, and a stitched gash on her chin, she looked not too shabby for someone who’d been crushed by a whale.
She looked up as I drifted near her.
“Stagger?” she whispered.
“You can see me?” I asked, my ghost heart freezing. Was she so close to death’s door?
“And hear you,” she said, keeping her voice low as she glanced at the ice wall. The light from Brother Will’s glorystone cast the ogress’s shadow on the ice in stark outlines. Infidel winced as she rose to meet me. Beneath her seal skin, she was wrapped from armpits to upper thigh with tight white bandages. Her feet were bound together by leather loops that let her move her feet only a few inches apart. She leaned back against the wall to steady herself. Her breathing sounded shallow.
“You’re not dead?” I asked.
“I’m too sore to be dead.”
“Why did they let you keep my knife?” I asked. It seemed very odd to leave a prisoner with a weapon, and for the life of me I couldn’t imagine how she could have hidden it.
“The ogres don’t see the knife,” she said. “Only I can see it and feel it; it was stuck to my hand by dried blood. But even when they stitched up my palm, it never fell from my grasp. They ran needles through it as if it wasn’t even there.”
“It must still be halfway between the spirit realm and the real world,” I said. “Maybe it’s letting you see me.”
“I wish it was letting me cut these cords,” she said, placing the knife in her teeth and trying to stab the leather at her wrist. The blade slid right through, like vapor.
“You’re in the middle of the ice-ogress temple,” I said. “You’d have a hard time getting out of here even if you weren’t tied up. To make matters worse, one of the Judgment Fleet is here, the
Relentless
. Judge Stern is on his way to interrogate you to find out of you’re
the
Infidel.”
“Stern?” Infidel said, spitting the knife back into her palm. “Sorrow’s father?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“That’s a pretty big coincidence, isn’t it?” she asked.
“The monks used to say that what we think of as coincidences are all part of the Divine Author’s master plot.”
“And that plot would be?”
I shrugged. “From what I can gather, just as King Brightmoon allied himself with the Black Swan to slay Greatshadow, he must have struck a deal with either Tarpok or Purity to help kill Glorious. Judge Stern is here representing the king’s interests. Maybe. There are lots of gaping holes in my information. But, we don’t have time to figure things out, because Stern’s coming here to see you. You need to figure out a cover story, quick, so he won’t learn who you really are.”
“Or I tell him who I really am,” said Infidel. “Maybe I can convince him that my father will reward him handsomely for my safe return.”
“Or he puts you on trial immediately for high crimes against the church and you’re dead before the day’s out.”
As I said this, the ice door cracked, suddenly collapsing beneath its own weight. Rather than the ogress and the friar, a tall woman with four arms and a pair of wings stood in the doorway. Save for being coated with fine silver fur, her face was a perfect match with Infidel.
“I apologize for eavesdropping,” Purity said, with a slight grin. “It’s the hound in me, I fear; I can hear every word spoken for a hundred yards in any direction.”
“You can hear me?” I asked.
“Menagerie’s animal senses detect you, if faintly,” Purity said. “Have you never felt as if dogs were sometimes staring at ghosts? It seems, indeed, they are.”
“Can they also
feel
ghosts?” I said, leaping forward, making a fist, putting all I had into a swing at her chin. I had one shot at taking her by surprise. That shot failed, my ghostly arm wafting through her.
“It seems not, now that you’re free of your driftwood shell,” she said.
“How about this?” Infidel shouted, hopping forward, raising her bound fists in an uppercut punch.
Alas, Purity caught Infidel’s arms with her hands and pushed her away. Infidel’s back slammed into the wall. Purity was on her a half second later, grabbing her by the neck, lifting her in the air.
“I like your spirit, princess,” Purity said. “I suspect your quickness to violence explains how you’ve managed to retain your virginity to the spinsterly age of thirty. You’re exactly who I need to wake Hush. Sacrificing one of my poor ice-maidens will never do when I can have the blood of a virgin princess!”
Infidel clawed at Purity’s wrist. “Your information is out of date. I’m not a virgin. I’m pregnant!”
“Pregnant by a ghost, via copulation in an abstract realm. In the material world, your physical form has never been defiled by a man!”
“Hey!” I protested. “She wasn’t
defiled
, period. We’re married! And wherever and however it happened, she is indeed pregnant. I saw our baby’s spirit glowing in her womb. Anyway, how can you possibly know what happened with us?”
Purity drew her face close to Infidel and sniffed the perspiration that now beaded on her brow.
“An ebony bird told me,” she said, staring into Infidel’s eyes. “You
are
pregnant. I can smell it in your sweat.”
“So you won’t be sacrificing her,” I said.
“So when I sacrifice her, I’ll be sacrificing two virgins at once,” said Purity.
“Why do you need to sacrifice anyone?” I asked. “What the hell is going on?”
“This world has seen its last sunrise,” said Purity, dismissing me with a wave. “There’s nothing you can do to stop me. The ogresses have gone to prepare the boats. Tarpok stands ready with the sacred harpoon. Stern even now dons his sacred garb and readies his Writ of Judgment. Leave this place, little ghost. I find your faint murmurs annoying.”
“It makes no sense!” I protested. “Killing the sun is insane! What can you possibly hope to gain from such a thing?”
Purity glanced at me. “An end to ceaseless, pointless chatter, to start with. I’ve been to the Promised Land, little ghost. I’ve seen the world in its pristine state, before the sky was tainted by the sun. All the world was once in permanent winter, beneath a silent, smooth blanket of white, slumbering like an innocent child, until it was raped by noise, by heat, by light. It is time to complete the circle, and return the world to purity.”
“You’re out of your frozen mind,” I said.
“And you’re annoying me,” Purity grumbled. “Go away, little ghost.”
When the Black Swan had used similar words, I’d been pushed away against my will. Whatever magic she’d used, Purity hadn’t mastered it. I felt no force compelling me to leave. So I wonder if she was surprised when I disappeared?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THAT INFIDEL
M
Y FINAL TEN
minutes in the material world were somewhat hurried. Of course, I was unaware that my moments left were so few. Perhaps there were things I could have done differently, though it’s too late for second guessing.
With ten minutes left, I willed myself back to the deck of the
Freewind
, arriving at the speed of thought. The ship had been tidied up somewhat, but was still listing. From the bow of the ship, looking toward the stern, I couldn’t help but notice that the mizzenmast and the foremast were tilting in opposite directions.