Greatshadow (45 page)

I chuckled. “Innocent didn’t think so.”

“Innocent didn’t know what was good for her. You, Stagger, are good for me. I was so lucky to know you.”

“Why are you speaking in the past tense?” I asked.

“You’re still dead, right? That wasn’t just some bad dream?”

My mouth went dry. “It wasn’t a dream,” I whispered. “I am dead. But I never left you; I’ve been with you every moment, haunting the bone-handled knife. And now we can be together forever.”

“Can we?” she asked, sounding skeptical.

“Can’t we?” I asked. “I guess, honestly, I don’t know. I don’t understand how things work here in the spirit world. Maybe there will never be any ending here.”

“But I don’t belong here,” she said. “I’m still alive. At least, I think I am. There’s this... tug... inside me. I feel like my time here is limited. Eventually, I’ll be drawn back to the real world.”

“I understand,” I said. “I wish I could come with you.”

“I don’t see why you can’t, if I can take the knife back. Haunting the blade that killed you. That’s kind of weird.”

“This coming from a woman with a belly full of dragon’s blood.”

Infidel sat up, frowning as she noticed the tangled green ribbons in her long hair. As she worked to unknot them, she said, “The first time I swallowed Verdant’s blood, it was dried up and concentrated. I could feel the power surging through my body. This time, it turned me back to my correct age, but I don’t feel super-strong.” She ran her fingers along a line of hickeys on her neck. “And I’m definitely not invulnerable.”

“Maybe things work differently here. Hopefully you’ll be back to your arm-ripping self when you get home.”

She looked up the slope toward the caldera. “I wish I knew how to get home. The only path I can think of leads straight through Greatshadow. The dragon must know how to travel between the spirit world and the material world, or Zetetic wouldn’t be worried.”

“We still have the Jagged Heart,” I said. “Even with just normal strength, we can take him.”

She sighed as she pulled the last ribbon free from her hair and tossed it away. “That’s so sad about Aurora,” she said, referring to a conversation we’d had during an earlier pause.

I sat up and rubbed her back. “She was a good friend.”

“She was my only friend,” said Infidel. “Except you.”

“I’ll always be with you,” I said.

She nodded gazing off into the distance. “Especially if the Black Swan is right.”

“About what? The dragon apocalypse?”

Infidel rolled her eyes. “About us having a daughter.”

Somehow, despite everything that we’d done together since our reunion, that possibility hadn’t crossed my mind. Could I really impregnate Infidel? Did this half-alive, materialized phantom body of mine have that power?

“You’re quiet,” she said, as I grew lost in thought. “Don’t you want her to be yours?”

I smiled as I lay back, pulling her down with me. “I want it so much, I think we should take at least one more run at increasing the odds.”

And then there was another hour that I can’t talk about.

“S
TAGGER MUST HAVE
gotten the job done by now,” said Zetetic. By now it had gotten really dark in the caldera. Outside the small circle of light cast by the Gloryhammer, ghostly flames flickered and danced above cracks in the ground, as gases beneath the earth seeped free and ignited.

“I’m not so certain,” said Relic. “I don’t feel... a release.”

“A release?”

“Like all dragons, I’m attuned to elemental forces. Greatshadow is still present in the flames surrounding us. He simply hasn’t gathered the strength yet to control them.”

“If he died, you could take over the element of flame? Just like that?”

Relic shrugged. “It would require time. How much is difficult to say.”

“How long did it take Greatshadow to master the element?”

“Though I have many of his memories, I can’t judge the time, since time as we know it wasn’t invented when my father was young.”

Zetetic looked perplexed.

“Before Glorious merged his spirit with the sun, the sun’s path was more chaotic. Years and days had no fixed length. Glorious inadvertently gave birth to human civilization when he guided the sun into a fixed path, making seasons predictable, and agriculture possible.”

“Amazing,” said Zetetic.

“Still, to answer your question as best I can, I expect it will take a decade or more to merge my soul with fire.”

“A decade doesn’t seem very long to achieve such power.”

“To you, perhaps. I’ve only been alive a few months. A decade seems unbearably long.”

Zetetic stroked his chin as he contemplated the small dragon. “You’re an interesting infant, Relic.”

“I don’t want to be called Relic any more.”

“Why not?”

“I used that name because I never was given another. But my father finally fulfilled this simple obligation, at least. He called me Brokenwing.”

“So he did. Little Brokenwing.”

“I won’t be using the ‘little,’” said the dragon, somewhat indignant.

“So, if Stagger fails, what are we going to do?” asked Zetetic.

Relic shook his head. “There’s no point in asking. Stagger is our only hope.”

Zetetic looked up into the darkness. “I wonder what’s taking so long to get the job done?”

If I’d been there to answer, I’d have reminded him that at fifty, my body isn’t quite as robust as it once was. It takes a little longer to get the job done.

A
ND EVEN LONGER
to get the job done a third time. This dayless, nightless land provided few clues as to how much time had passed as we rested, utterly exhausted.

Infidel was using my hairy belly as a pillow, looking up at me with a dreamy gaze. Suddenly, her eyes widened.

“It’s so obvious!” she said, jumping to her feet.

“What’s obvious?”

“Dragon’s blood! You come back to life when the knife touches dragon’s blood. And, you came back to life when Nowowon gave you a drink of blood. So, to come back to life permanently, you need to drink dragon’s blood!”

I sat up, scratching my head. “You think it’s that easy?”

“Who’s the brain in this operation?” she said, placing her hands on her hips.

“Um,” I said, deciding to pretend I didn’t understand the question. Anyway, what could it hurt? She scrambled toward the fallen body of her dragon-self.

“Ow, ow, ow!” she said as she crossed over the ground. “Lots of sharp rocks under these leaves. I’m not used to being tender-footed.”

“You want to wear my boots?” I asked, wrestling to put on what remained of my pants.

“I’d slip right out of those things,” she said, scrambling onto the dragon corpse. “I’ll wrap my feet in some cloth from the cape. Right now, you need to suck some dragon-blood.”

She grabbed the bone-handled knife, struggling to free it. She gouged a new hole on the side of the hip. Gore the consistency and color of pea soup oozed out.

My lips were tender from Infidel’s nibbles, but I heroically pressed them to the scaly hide of the corpse and sucked. The blood was sticky, as difficult to swallow as molasses, and the fruity flavor I had tasted on Infidel’s tongue had a sourness when drank directly that grew more unbearable the longer it sat in my mouth. It took a few moments to force down a cup of the stuff.

“Ugg,” I said, wiping my lips. “I’m used to putting bad things in my mouth, but this is fairly rotten.”

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Fantastic!” I said. “But I’ve felt that way ever since we’ve been back together. Just being able to talk to you again is more magical than dragon’s blood.”

“Maybe you won’t notice any changes to your body until we get back to the real world,” she said, studying my bruised frame with a critical eye.

“That’s probably how it works,” I said, hoping it was true.

She sat down on the she-dragon’s log-like foot and began to cut the lower edges of my cape into strips with the knife. She wrapped her feet in the thick velvet, forming what could have passed as ballerina slippers. They looked surprisingly functional; Infidel had a lot of experience improvising with clothing. She took what remained of my shirt, tore off the shredded sleeves, and wore it like a tunic, cinching it at the waist with a belt made from the braided sleeve rags.

I dressed while she worked, slipping my boots back on. Since I was shirtless, I decided I’d wear what was left of the cape. I brushed off the twigs and leaves, and noticed a snarl of long, tangled hair. I looked at it closer, unable to tell if it had come out of my scalp or hers, and finally decided it was a little of both. Inspired by the intertwined fibers, I began to wrap the long strands around my little finger, tucking and twisting them until I formed a small braided ring. It barely fit on my little finger. I braided another, slightly larger. I finished my efforts just as she jumped down from the log.

I dropped to one knee before her and took her hand.

“I don’t know if this counts, since there’s no church, no priest, and, alas, no wedding cake. But, my parents never got married, and I want our daughter to grow up respectable. So, Infidel, with this ring, I thee wed, if you’ll have me.”

I paused before I slipped the smaller hair ring onto her finger, looking into her face. Her eyes were wet as she nodded and said, “I do.”

The ring fit perfectly; the silver in her hair and the gray in mine even gave it a bit of sparkle. “It’s not exactly gold and glorystone,” I said.

“It’s far more precious,” she whispered, pulling me close. I handed her the larger ring. She slipped it onto my finger.

At this point, I should probably switch to another interlude in the material world, but, alas, there really wasn’t anything interesting going on there. So I’ll just skip ahead to the part where we got dressed again.

She finished binding up her slippers as I finished fixing the clasp on my cape. She tossed me the bone-handled knife, which I stuck in my belt, then went to grab the Jagged Heart.

“Wow,” she said, lifting it, a bit off balance. “It’s kind of heavy.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I should probably carry it. You carry the knife.”

“Nah. Even if I don’t have supernatural strength, I still have more experience jabbing holes in things than you do.”

“Conceded.”

She looked toward the caldera. “You’re certain the world will be destroyed if we don’t do this?”

“I’m not certain of anything. But Zetetic thinks it’s a real possibility.”

“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.

T
HE 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.”