“Yeah, but he’s, you know, a Deceiver. He’s got the tattoo on his forehead and everything. What if he’s tricking us into doing something awful?”
“I don’t have an answer for that. But what’s our alternative?”
She shrugged, but still didn’t look eager to tramp up the slope.
“We have the best reason of all for doing this,” I said. “Assuming you’re pregnant, I don’t want my daughter being born in the land of the dead. For her sake, we have to get you home safely, and we have to make sure that there’s still a world left for us to raise her in.”
Infidel nodded as she pressed her lips together in a look of grim determination.
“Let’s go find this oversized iguana and get out of here,” she said, marching up the slope, the harpoon resting on her shoulder like a soldier’s pike.
The peculiar geography of this corner of the afterlife meant we didn’t have far to go. Barely a hundred yards passed before we pushed through a wall of thorny brush onto a steep rocky ridge that led to the caldera. We advanced arm in arm, in part because it’s the way lovers like to walk, and in part because we were each having trouble walking individually. My ankle still hurt like hell and Infidel was leaving bloody footprints from where thorns had punched through her satin shoes. Not to mention, we were both tender and chaffed and raw. In places.
As we limped our way past the lip of the caldera, we looked down over a field of black rock, dotted with vents of steam. In the center of this barren landscape there was what looked to be the remains of the world’s largest bonfire, a half-mile-long hill of soot-covered coals and glowing embers wreathed in a skin of pale blue flames.
The bonfire crackled with sparks as we approached. There was a peculiar rumble, low and rhythmic, that I had difficulty identifying. Then, Infidel grabbed my shoulder and pulled my ear down to lip level. She whispered, softly, “Is that fire snoring?”
I nodded. Of course it was snoring. This was Greatshadow’s spirit and it was asleep. Infidel always crashed into a corpse-like slumber after a tough battle. Greatshadow probably did the same.
Our eyes locked. Would it really be this easy? Did we just have to sneak up on an exhausted dragon and punch the Jagged Heart between his eyes?
Infidel placed her hand on the back of my neck. She tilted her face to meet mine and gave me a long, lingering kiss. In the aftermath I stared at her, moon-eyed. There was frost in her long platinum locks. Her breath came out as mist. And her eyes, her eyes glistened like deep and mysterious pools in a cavern as she said, softly, “Trust me.”
I nodded. There was never any doubt. My fate, her fate, the fate of our daughter, the fate of all mankind: I surrendered them willingly into her hands.
She motioned for me to wait where we stood, a good fifty yards from the smoldering flames, as she lowered the harpoon to attack position and crept forward. I held my breath as she inched closer, my eyes flickering from her to the slumbering dragon. Now that I understood the true nature of the flaming hill before us, it was easy to make out the dragon’s long neck and ship-sized head. Infidel was marching straight toward his mouth.
Thirty feet away, she knelt, placing the harpoon on the ground before her.
“Greatshadow,” she said, in a very loud voice. “Wake up.”
She didn’t reach for the Jagged Heart as enormous eyes flickered open, great orbs glowing like furnaces, to focus on her with a hate-filled stare.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“You’ve been sent to kill me,” said Greatshadow, smoke rising from his jaws. His teeth looked like ash- covered logs glowing with internal fires.
“Yes,” said Infidel, still kneeling, her head bowed low. “But I’m not going to. I don’t wish to hurt you.”
“Yet you’ve brought the accursed Heart to my elemental realm. Merely looking upon it causes my soul to weaken. You must know the agony it brings me.”
Infidel shook her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t personally bring the harpoon here, though I was told it could hurt you. I confess, however, I don’t really understand why.”
The ashen heap that was once the most feared dragon in the world turned his enormous head away, so that the Jagged Heart was no longer within his line of sight.
“It’s a part of her,” he sighed, his voice crackling like a campfire stirred by a breeze. “Long ago, before we dragons entangled our souls with the elements, we were mortal creatures. Like all beasts, the most important goal of our lives was to mate. Unlike other beasts, we dragons prided ourselves on the spiritual nature of our relationships. We weren’t mere animals, puppets of our instincts and lusts. We based our coupling on refined courtships that ensured that we were perfectly paired: mentally, spiritually, magically, and physically.”
“I was told that you and Hush were lovers?”
Greatshadow shook his ragged head as cinders fell from his eyes like dark tears. “More than lovers. Alone, we were incomplete beings; together, we were one perfect soul. Her cold balanced my heat. My wrathful nature was calmed by her grace, while my brash and sudden passions could stir her cool and logical heart. When we lay entangled together in our coupling, staring into one another’s eyes, there was no loneliness. We were a universe in total, beyond all cares. Or so I thought.” Greatshadow swallowed hard as the ground trembled beneath my feet.
Infidel cast a glance back at me. I studied her face for some clue as to why she hadn’t attacked. I longed for Relic’s telepathy. I didn’t know why she was taking this risk. And yet… and yet she gave me a slight nod, with her eyes locked on mine, and the message was plain. Trust me.
I nodded back, and waited.
Greatshadow’s voice was almost a whisper as he said. “Our universe was not so complete as I thought. There was… another. As I stared into the eyes of Hush, she dreamed she was looking into the eyes of Glorious, the dragon who was to become the elemental partner of the sun. My flames, it seems, were not enough for Hush. Her cold, logical heart judged that Glorious would be her perfect mate. So, she abandoned me, and flew to him, to profess her love.”
“I’m sorry,” said Infidel.
“What is there to be sorry for?” Greatshadow growled. “It proved a great stroke of good fortune, at least for those of us who were to become the primal dragons. Glorious rejected Hush; he was on the verge of merging his spirit with the sun, and had no time for such trivia as love.
“In her anger, Hush struck Glorious, killing his body, which freed his soul to fully merge with the sun. Such was the violence of Hush’s blow that fragments of solar material fell to earth.”
“The glorystones,” said Infidel.
Greatshadow nodded. “While I was not yet the dragon of fire, I studied all flame, and saw the blaze of the glorystones as they fell. I flew to investigate and found Hush standing over the mortal shell of Glorious. Hush tried to convince me that Glorious had attacked her, but my telepathy was superior, and I saw the truth. My rage was so great that I felt my soul burst into flame; I became the elemental embodiment of wrath. My first act upon wielding this power was to lash out at Hush for her betrayal. Even then, her mastery of cold helped protect her from my physical assault, but the emotional pain of that moment forever altered her. Understanding the source of my primal rage, her heart literally froze when she realized she had driven away the one dragon who had truly loved her. As her ice-bound heart shattered into a thousand sharp shards, the unfathomable chill that filled the vacant spot within her soul triggered Hush’s transformation into the primal dragon of cold.”
“I’m sorry you’ve felt such pain,” said Infidel.
Greatshadow let loose a low rumble that might have been a rueful chuckle. “We’ve become much greater beings as a result of her betrayal. Though I wonder, at times, if we aren’t also something less.”
He cast a baleful glare at the harpoon. “Just as everything I cherish eventually turns to ash, everything
