“Reavers.” Her voice was flat and lifeless, like some Mazigh machine that stamped answers in dead metal. “They came during the summer, sailing through the ice. We fought them, but they were too many, and too strong. The Yslanders take whatever they want, and burn what they don’t need. They always have.”
Omar felt a spike of adrenaline race down his spine.
Yslanders! She’s seen them!
He asked, “Was this last summer? Six months ago?”
“No.” She shook her head slowly. “Four or five generations past, I think. I’m not sure how long I lay in the earth before I heard the call.”
“What call is that?”
“The call of the Fisher King. He lives beyond the ice in a golden hall,” she said. “Because of his wounded leg he cannot travel the world, and so he summons the souls of the faithful to find him in death, where he can bless them and keep them for all time.”
Omar frowned. “I’ve never heard of this king before. But you hear his call now?”
“Yes. But his call is not a sound to be heard. It is a summons that can only be felt in the hearts of the faithful.”
Omar looked around them at the countless multitudes parading south across the glacier. “There are many faithful.”
“Yes. There are.”
“Has anyone ever returned from the south to tell you about the Fisher King? Do you know his name or the name of his country?”
“Once there was a brave soul who found the royal hall and returned to his home in Gaul to tell his village shaman of the Fisher King. He said the great hall was made all of gold and stood alone on an island of barren rock high on a mountain slope. The island is guarded by huge white beasts who serve the Fisher King, and the island itself is so hot that it glows red in the night.” She paused. “The spirit said it nearly broke his heart to leave that place so that he could tell the shaman. And then he hurried back south again to take his place in the court of the Fisher King.”
A hall on an island on a mountain? Huge white beasts?
Omar squinted across the sea of misty faces around them. “Have you seen any Yslander ghosts since you began your journey? Are there any Yslander souls here?”
“No,” she answered quickly without looking about. “The Yslanders always carry their dead back home with them. And they worship crueler and stranger gods than ours.”
“I see. So they aren’t among the faithful, then?”
“No.”
Omar nodded. “Thank you. And good luck. I hope you find your golden hall soon.”
“I will. Farewell.”
Omar came to a halt and watched the dead woman wander away with her fellow ghosts. A moment later he shivered as the spirit of an old man shuffled through his body, and Omar danced away from the aether figure, and then began picking his way carefully through the shuffling crowd of ghosts back toward the Frost Finch.
He stepped inside the gondola and sealed the hatch behind him, and felt his skin flush with the dry heat in the cabin from the ever-warm boiler in the engine compartment. His companions all lay just as he had left them, all reclining on or propped up against their food stores and supplies. Omar spent an unpleasant minute on the toilet, closing his eyes and trying to imagine that he enjoyed a moment of actual privacy, and then he bundled himself up in his seat and closed his eyes for the night.
Omar awoke with a bony hand shaking his arm and he looked up through the morning light shining on the glacier to see the gaunt cartographer staring at him. “What? What is it?” Omar sat up and shook off the man’s hand, which seemed loathe to release him. “What?”
Kosoko nodded across the cabin and Omar looked at Garai. Riuza stood over the little professor, her fingers pressed to the man’s throat. She sighed. “He’s dead all right.”
The lieutenant stood behind her captain, and at the pronouncement she went back up to the cockpit alone.
“Dead?” Omar sat up and looked at the corpse. Garai’s eyes were closed and his head still leaned against the tall pile of fish. But he did look a bit blue and gray around his eyes and lips. “When? How?”
“Last night,” Riuza said slowly. She opened the professor’s shirt and poked around his neck and chest and belly. “I don’t know, I don’t see anything on him. You take a look, you’re the doctor, aren’t you?” She stepped aside.
Omar wiped the dry crud from the corners of his eyes, yawned, and leaned over to look at Garai Dumaka. The man’s skin looked a bit dry and cracked, his lips chapped and split. There were no marks on his neck or face, and no bruises or wounds on his belly. And when he removed Garai’s gloves, Omar found the professor’s hands quite smooth, though dry and bluish around the nails.
He shifted in his seat and casually rested his left hand on the pommel of his seireiken. The sea of dead faces filled the cabin of the Finch and he glanced around quickly to find and nod his head at a very small man leaning on a slender cane. He muttered, “Old man?”
“He can’t hear you, he’s dead,” the captain said, frowning. “And he’s not that old.”
Omar ignored her and focused on the old Hindu physician, a master of the Ayurveda school who had surrendered himself to Omar’s sword willingly on his deathbed. The elderly healer limped forward so that he appeared to stand in the narrow space right in front of Garai and he peered down at the dead man for a moment before saying, It may have been his heart, though he is rather young for that, some families simply have weak hearts. Any number of mushrooms or serpent venoms might produce the same appearance as well, though few kill very quickly or quietly unless given in a massive dose. It was probably just his time, as untimely as it was. A pity.
The ghost receded into the crowd of souls in the seireiken and Omar took his hand off the sword. He leaned back again with a frown. “How old was he?”
“Not very. Late thirties, maybe,” Riuza said.
“Well, since he’s eaten the same food as us, and he isn’t very cold… if I had to guess, I’d say his heart just gave out in his sleep. A pity,” Omar said.
“I suppose.” Riuza nodded. “All right then. Help me with him.” She took hold of Garai’s sleeve and waved Omar to stand up.
Omar stood. “Help you with him?”
“Yes,” the captain said with a touch of exasperation. “Help me. With him. Outside. Now.”
“You don’t mean to dump his body out there, do you?”
Riuza let go of the professor’s sleeve and straightened up. “I’m sorry, did you want to keep a corpse in here for the next twelve days? Because he isn’t going to last long in this heat, and I can’t exactly shut off the boiler if you ever want to see home again.”
“But he was your friend, dear lady, your colleague! And you’re just going to dump his body out in the wilderness, alone, unburied, and forgotten?”
“He wasn’t my friend. And yes, I am going to dump his body in the wilderness. I have a schedule to keep, a mission to carry out, and several living people to see safely home. There isn’t time for a burial detail. I suppose we could lash his body to the outside of the gondola where it will freeze and keep well enough until we return to Marrakesh. Would you like to try that?”
Omar sighed. “No.”
“Then help me with him. Now.”
Omar still wanted to argue, but he couldn’t see any way around the facts as she had stated them. “So then you mean to continue the expedition without a naturalist? We’re not going back for a replacement?”
“Well, we won’t be stopping to inspect the local wildlife, but yes, we’re still heading north. We don’t scrap a mission just because something goes wrong. As long as we can fly, we do fly. The professor here knew the risks when he signed on. And we can still map the islands we came to see, including yours. Now, if you please.” She gripped the professor’s sleeve again.
Omar frowned, but there was nothing left to say. He grabbed hold of Garai’s coat and helped the captain wrestle the little man out the hatch and onto the glacier. They laid him out on his back in a restful looking position, and then went back inside.