Greatshadow?”
“No,” said Infidel, sounding deadly serious. “The plan is to go get myself rich. Not pirate booty rich, not ancient artifact rich, but filthy, filthy, filthy rich. Because if there’s one thing I learned growing up in my father’s court, it’s that if you’re filthy rich everyone will bend over backwards to tell you you’re clean. If I show up in my father’s court with sole possession of Greatshadow’s treasure, I’m confident I’ll have a full pardon in my hands inside of ten minutes. The church might not be happy about this, but I’m betting after I donate funds to build a few new cathedrals, they’ll come around. I’ll be rich with my own money, not my father’s. I’ll be free to live where and how I wish. I’ll have my own palace with silk sheets on a bed so fluffy you’d think it’s stuffed with clouds. Every day I’ll take a hot bath while musicians serenade me and I’ll get out of the water and put on clean freakin’ underwear. And when I walk into my own damn dining room, people are going to run up to me with trays full of goddamn cake!”
Aurora nodded slowly, contemplating the dream. “And this is going to make you happy?”
Infidel shrugged. “I’m not shooting for happy. I’m aiming for comfortable and fat.”
“You’ll achieve more than this,” said a voice from the branches above. Infidel jumped to her feet. Aurora jerked her head up as a sheen of ice grew across her clenched fists. It was Relic. How the hunchback had climbed into the branches without us hearing him I don’t know. It seemed like a bit of a stretch that this could have been where Infidel had thrown him.
Relic peered down at the two women. His eyes glowed faintly golden in the darkness. He said, “You shall be beloved by all mankind, princess. You will be the champion who slew Greatshadow. For centuries men have perished due to the unpredictable malevolence of fire. Castles, hovels, entire towns have been reduced to cinders with no warning, killing young and old alike. Once Greatshadow is dead, fire will be a trusted tool of mankind, fully tamed, a danger no more. Children will sing songs about you a thousand years hence, just as they sing the tale of how the first Brightmoon vanquished the dragon of the forest. As for seeking the forgiveness of the Church of the Book, remember you won’t just return with the dragon’s treasure. You can also return with barrels of fresh blood, replacing the dwindling holy relic you stole. You can claim you were driven by divine visions to renew the blood. One day you’ll be regarded as a saint.”
Infidel looked up the slope of the mountain, toward the glowing caldera. “And maybe one day I’ll sprout wings and fly. Because if there’s a Truthspeaker on this quest, then I’m never going to be part of this dragon hunt.”
“Assuming there’s still a hunt,” Aurora said. “The Truthspeaker’s charred bones are probably at the bottom of the bay with the rest of the king’s fleet.”
“Nah,” said Infidel. “My father’s a jerk, but not an idiot. He sent those ships in to give the dragon a chance to feel like he’d finished off the threat before it even reached shore. It had to be a distraction. Tower and his team are already on the island.”
Relic nodded. “I concur. It’s only a matter of time before they contact the Three Goons. We must prepare for this moment.”
“Prepare how?” asked Infidel.
“You will need a disguise that Lord Tower cannot see through,” said Relic. “I have just the persona in mind.”
“Forget Tower. How am I supposed to fool a Truthspeaker?”
Relic’s glowing eyes twinkled as he chuckled. “That, my dear, will be far easier than you may think. Few are as easy to deceive as those most confident of the truth.” Then he cast his gaze toward Aurora. “The deception will require your cooperation, as well as the silence of the Three Goons.”
Aurora nodded. “If you promise to help me recover the Jagged Heart, I pledge to keep my mouth shut. As for the Goons, they’ve been hired as muscle; there’s no clause requiring them to disclose everything they know. We can buy their silence with a non-competing contract for those sub-rights.”
“I vow that recovering the Heart for you will be my second goal, though ensuring that Greatshadow dies remains my top priority. If you accept this, then we have a deal,” said Relic. He held out his gnarled hand. Aurora placed her giant hand upon it. Infidel laid her smaller hand against the ogress’s knuckles.
Infidel said, “Excellent. It looks like we’ve got it all worked out for me to join a group of men sworn to kill me so we can face off with a dragon that melts stone with his breath.” She grinned. “And Stagger used to complain that I never planned ahead.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
At dawn the harbor rang with a cacophony of sledgehammers and saws as the Wanderers salvaged useful lumber from the shattered remains of Commonground. Along the shores, river-pygmies gathered up scraps of wood too splintered to be of use and heaped them onto bonfires. Nearby, the bodies of dead brethren were stacked into muddy blue piles. I always found it odd that the river-pygmies cremate their dead; a water burial would seem more appropriate. I need only glance up the blackened slope of the mountain to understand the origins of the custom. Greatshadow could wipe out the pygmy tribes at any time for any reason. They pygmies believed that, as long as they let fire consume their bodies when they were done with them, Greatshadow would leave them alone most of the time. Whether Greatshadow was even aware of this bargain I can’t guess.
Once or twice during the night, pygmies had come poking around the trees beneath the boat. I’ve no doubt they would have climbed aboard if Aurora hadn’t stuck her head over to investigate the noise. Her big, tusked face had sent would-be scavengers scurrying back into the darkness.
Relic left at sunrise. I’d watched as he scrambled down through the branches of the trees then dashed off through the debris-threaded thickets, agile as a cat. His crippled routine was obviously just a disguise. I have to say that he’d sounded like he knew a thing or two about disguises when he spent the better part of the night explaining his ideas for how to hide Infidel’s identity. He had wanted her to wear a suit of full plate armor, including a bucket-style helmet that would conceal her features. Infidel had vetoed this; she liked her comfort and full freedom of movement, and helmets got in the way of her peripheral vision. After a few hours of circular discussions, Relic had thrown his hands into the air and announced that he’d thought of the perfect disguise, but couldn’t share it. It would be a surprise, he said, as he scurried out to gather whatever supplies he had in mind.
I still felt like they were wasting their time. With Father Ver among the king’s men, Infidel would be discovered in seconds. My upbringing in the monastery had left me keenly aware of the power of Truthspeakers, and Father Ver was a legend. He was the most powerful Truthspeaker the Church of the Book had ever produced, as I knew all too well.
To appreciate the power of Truthspeakers, you need to know a little bit about the Church of the Book. High in the mountains of Raitingu, what the Wanderers call the Isle of Storm, there’s a temple built into the bedrock of the world’s tallest mountain. Within this temple is a chamber carved from pure white quartz. Here, on a pedestal of gold, sits the One True Book. The book is roughly five feet long, three feet across, and two feet thick. It’s bound in leather black as a moonless night; it’s said that if you stare at the cover, you can see stars twinkling in the void. In contrast, the pages are snowy white, thin as onion skin. The priests calculate that the book contains 7,777 pages.
Within this book, the Divine Author has written the history of the world, from the moment of creation to the final day of judgment. My life, your life, the lives of the dead and yet to be born, are recorded in minute detail on these holy pages. The One True Book is the final authority on all that has been, all that is, and all that will be.
Having access to this document would seem to give the Church of the Book a certain advantage over everyone else, save for one tiny detail: the book is far too sacred to ever be sullied by human hands. All men are too corrupted by lies to risk opening the book and actually reading it. The pure light of sacred truth would melt the flesh from the bones of anyone deluded enough to think himself worthy of sullying the pages with his unworthy gaze.
It’s taught that, one day, a Golden Child will arise, a perfect being uncorrupted by lies, who will open the
