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 was kneeling by the side of the platform, his head bowed to touch the floor. I drew closer just in time to hear his whispered prayers come to an end. He closed his supplication to the Divine Author with, “… and grant me the wisdom to tell lust from love, desire from devotion. Amen.”
It seemed like a prayer most men would find handy, though I was a little surprised lust was high on Lord Tower’s list of concerns. He rose, a little closer to the edge of the sagging platform than most men would find comfortable. Perhaps he spent so much time flying with the Gloryhammer he’d lost all fear of heights. I wondered where the legendary weapon was. Or the armor; it should have made quite a pile once it was off him. Not to mention the Immaculate Attire, which they’d removed before they buried Blade. And, for that matter, where was the Jagged Heart? There still was no evidence that Tower had the harpoon.
Father Ver was sitting nearby, also kneeling, his head beaded with sweat. He was stripped from the waist up, his robes bunched around his hips. Before him lay a two-foot-long braid of leather. I drifted around behind him and saw bright red welts raised among the constellation of scabs along his back.
Tower pulled a small leather notebook from the waistband of his pants. This was the book Zetetic had taken. As he flipped through the pages, he said, softly, “There’s no point in blaming yourself. Blade was the one who chose to dabble in dream magic. You couldn’t have known.”
“We both know that isn’t true,” Father Ver said, closing his eyes. “I could have known.” His voice sounded wet and raspy, as if he’d been crying. “I’ve made too many bad bargains. My pursuit of the greater good has forced me to accept the unacceptable. Ten thousand years of lashings can never erase the harm I’ve done to my soul by agreeing to these compromises.”
“The Divine Author would not have given you these trials if he did not feel you could endure them,” said Tower. “I need you, Ver. You’re the wisest man I’ve ever known. I wouldn’t have accepted this mission without you on the team. But you’ll be of no use to me if you’re too paralyzed by guilt to do the job.”
“I have no guilt,” said Father Ver. “Undeserved guilt is a form of self-deception. Instead I feel shame, regret, and anger.”
“Well, try to work on those,” said Tower dismissively, looking away from the holy man and gazing out of the jungle. “I’m going to go get a little fresh air.”
Without warning he pitched forward and dropped off the edge. We were a hundred feet up. He hadn’t struck me as suicidal. I drifted over the lip of the platform. A light suddenly sparked below, casting shadows upward. I looked down and saw the Gloryhammer in Tower’s right hand; the small notebook was still in his left. His forearm bulged as he gripped the glowing weapon and shot off through the trees, deftly avoiding vines and trunks. I followed, though I didn’t need to follow far. A knot formed in the pit of my stomach as I realized where he was heading. The night went dark again as his feet touched down and the Gloryhammer suddenly disappeared. I blinked as I caught up to him. What had he done with the hammer? Could he simply summon it at will? He stuck the notebook back into the waistband of his britches.