costs a man his humanity, dream magic withers men’s souls, the Deceivers pay for their powers with their sanity.” Zetetic opened his mouth to dispute this, but Menagerie finished by saying, “Elemental magic can’t be an exception. The dragon must have some weakness.”
“True,” said Grandfather. “For the primal dragons, the price they pay for their elemental magic seems to be their sense of identity. A dragon’s mind is no more infinite than a man’s mind. Rott, the primal dragon of decay, spread his essence so thinly that he hasn’t been seen to manifest himself in a body for centuries. No one knows if he even remembers that he was once a dragon. However, Greatshadow has avoided this fate. He maintains his original body, feasting, sleeping, and fornicating; his sense of identity is in no real danger.”
“Fornicating?” Zetetic asked, with a raised eyebrow. “Wouldn’t this require another dragon?”
“You’ve already witnessed his ability to create avatars.”
“But they’re part of him. Wouldn’t they…?”
Grandfather shrugged. “According to pygmy lore, he can create avatars with female aspects. I assume he enjoys the act of mating from both his original body and his second form.”
Zetetic’s face brightened. “That seems to be a fantastically practical-”
“Perversion!” snapped Father Ver. “All the more reason to kill the depraved beast.”
“Just because you don’t let yourself have any fun is no reason to be angry with the dragon,” said Zetetic.
“Let him be angry if he wishes,” said Grandfather. “It won’t matter to Greatshadow. You’ve witnessed his power. I’m sure you wouldn’t have come to this island if you didn’t have some tricks up your sleeve. A flying knight, a shapeshifter, an ice-ogress; I admire Brightmoon’s imagination in assembling this team. But, in the end, if you continue toward the dragon’s lair, you will die. Even if ice-magic and enchanted armor can protect you from the heat of Greatshadow’s breath, he still is in possession of teeth harder than diamond and claws that can rip through steel like tissue paper.”
“My armor is made of something more enduring than steel,” said Lord Tower.
“So what if it is?” said Grandfather. “Odds are, you won’t even face the dragon. Greatshadow has had centuries to perfect his magic. It’s said he’s populated his lair with guardians summoned from ethereal realms. The most powerful magical artifacts that survive from the Vanished Kingdom are his to command; you cannot even imagine the forces he may throw against you. And while you may enter his lair in possession of some secret plan to beat the beast, it will all be for naught. The pygmies say that Greatshadow’s mind spreads so completely through his lair that a visitor’s thoughts will become the dragon’s thoughts. First, he will strip your mind of all its secrets. Then, he will pour his mind into your bodies, and you will dance for him like puppets on strings.”
The Goons and Aurora looked sobered by this recitation of the challenges before them. Relic, of course, remained an enigma beneath his rags. Zetetic’s mouth was puckered with pain, but that was probably from the hot peppers. Lord Tower’s eyes looked unconcerned; perhaps he already knew all the dangers they faced.
Father Ver’s lips were turned up into something almost resembling a smile.
Zetetic took note. “Perhaps I’m not the only one here who enjoys pain.”
Father Ver shook his head. “I’m merely thinking that the beast has had centuries to become overconfident. Think of Numinous, brought low by a mere decade in which to grow arrogant. No doubt, the beast’s soul is rotten to the core from believing his own lies. Perhaps we have reached the page in the One True Book where he falls before the greater truth.”
“Amen,” said Tower, slapping the Gloryhammer against his gauntleted palm with a true-believer’s fervor.
No one else echoed his sentiment. Instead, everyone sat quietly, staring down at their food as they contemplated their fates. The only sound was the slup, slup, slup of No-Face eating.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
That night, as everyone else slept spread out on woven platforms across the tree village, Infidel stepped down onto a thick branch. Relic stirred from his sleep and held out a leather sack the size of a saddlebag. She took the bag and climbed down the vine-draped trunk in silence. When she reached the ground, she followed a trail to the nearby stream, then followed this to a large pool. Looking around to make certain no one was watching, she shed her clothes and plunged in. Her body gleamed beneath the water’s surface like a silver-skinned fish darting about. She surfaced with a gasp, rubbing her face, ridding herself of the sweat of the day. Whatever dye Menagerie had used wasn’t smeared by her fingers. Now that she was wet, the illusion that her skin was metal was especially strong.
After only a moment in the pool, she rose from the water and opened the sack, producing a rolled up towel. Wrapped within it were fresh jawa fruits and several of the snails. She gobbled them down as she dried her hair. Mosquitoes crawled over her arms and legs, denting their noses on her impenetrable skin. She paid no attention to them as she finished off the snails in record time. She wiped her mouth then leaned over the pool, looking at her faint reflection in the still water. Her face went slack as she studied herself. Her eyes had a distant focus, as if she wasn’t watching her reflection but was, instead, lost in memory.
She looked, if you will forgive the expression, haunted.
Was I causing psychic harm by sticking around? Did she sense me watching her and feel guilt? Should I leave and spare her any further pain? Could I leave if I tried?
My musings were cut short by Relic’s voice in my head.
Return to me.
“I’m busy,” I said.
Return to me!
The command felt like a thousand fishhooks tearing into my brain. He reeled me in as I flopped about. Fortunately, my agony was short lived, halting the second I stood before him. He was curled up on the netting, completely still; to anyone else he would have looked asleep. I saw the bone-handled knife clutched securely in his gnarled claw.
“I don’t like being pushed around,” I said.
We have our bargain.
“Do we? I agreed to watch Tower and the others. I don’t remember signing on to be your slave.”
And yet, you aren’t watching Tower.
“He’s probably asleep,” I said.
I am certain he is not. He and Father Ver are outside the range of my mental powers, but I can still hear the murmurs of their voices on the night breeze. Go and listen to their conversation.
He shoved me with his mind out into the open air beside the central tree house. Tower and Father Ver slept separated from the rest of the rabble on a platform a good fifty yards distant. Apparently, Relic’s telepathy didn’t extend terribly far. The knight and the cleric had hung sheets of canvas for privacy. A glorystone cast their shadows on the cloth walls. I misted straight through the canvas into their room. To my surprise, Tower had shed his armor. For some reason, I’d expected him to sleep in it. If the monks could pray that the armor be invulnerable in battle, couldn’t they also make it pillow soft come bedtime?
Out of his armor, Tower looked… ordinary. Not average, by any means, but nothing like the iron-clad warrior feared by evil-doers everywhere. Rumors of terrible scars proved unfounded. The few nicks and divots around his eyes and lips testified he’d taken a few hits over the years, but the scars were hardly disfiguring. If anything, they gave character to a face so symmetrical it was boring. He had a square jaw and a nose that jutted from his face at a perfect thirty degree angle. His black hair was cut in a bowl style that would have been unflattering on almost any other head. Here, it served to draw attention to the sharp lines of his cheek bones and his pale gray eyes. The only person I’d ever met who shared this eye color was Infidel.
Save for stray silver hairs, he had the appearance of a man in his early thirties, though, if I understood the chronology of Infidel’s life, he must be closer to my age.
He was dressed in a simple linen shirt and tight-fitting cotton pants that showed off his muscular legs. He
