Dragonforge (46 page)

“Warrior-philosopher? Is that what you are?”

“My last official title was assistant librarian,” Hex said. “Confronting a god as an assistant librarian is a risky undertaking; a warrior-philosopher, however, is suited for the task.”

Jandra smiled. She appreciated Hex’s dry humor. She handed Hex a silver ring that she’d created from the dust in her pouch. It was scaled to fit his talons; on her, it would have been a bracelet.

“Wear this,” she said. “It might come in handy.”

“What does it do?” Hex asked.

“You’ve seen me turn invisible. I do it with the aid of the silver dust. It fills the air and configures itself into a billion tiny mirrors that carefully guide the light around me. I’ve taken that dust and shaped it into this ring with a preprogrammed command to form an invisibility sphere around you. Unfortunately, I can’t make the sphere big enough to cover you if your wings are fully outstretched. The illusion falls apart once you get much past a twenty-foot diameter. Too many gaps in the integrated mirrors. So, it won’t work if you’re flying, or fighting all out. But it might help you hide, or ambush someone as long as you stay compact. Keep your wings and tail tucked in, don’t stretch your neck too far, and no one will be able to see you.”

“How do I activate it?”

“I’m keeping it simple,” she said. “All it needs is a good jolt of kinetic energy. Just hit it against something hard and part of the ring will flake off and form the field. There’s only enough dust in the ring to work a half dozen times, so use it wisely.”

“Thank you,” said Hex, sliding the ring on. “Though, I confess, stealth and invisibility aren’t my style.”

“Not your warrior style,” said Jandra. “But it may come in handy for a moment of philosophy. Jazz can probably see straight through the illusion, but maybe not. Here’s what I do know about her: despite all her seeming power, she’s only human. She’s no doubt enhanced herself physically; she can probably heal from grievous wounds almost instantly. Mentally, she seems to think she has the right to do anything she wants because the world owes her. She claims to have saved the world from environmental catastrophe.”

“Do you think she did?”

“No. I think like most people she wants to believe her presence makes the world a better place. She pushed a bunch of her memories into my head that I think are supposed to make me sympathize with her. For instance, I have this memory of her when she was only a teenager; she’s crouching on a beach covered with oil, cradling a dying seagull. I can feel her sorrow, her genuine longing to keep this from ever happening again. Two years later, she was the mastermind behind the bombing of an oil refinery. She killed nine people and triggered economic turmoil that ruined the lives of millions. She’s given me this as one of her good memories, one of the things she’s most proud of. She wants me to see that while her methods may be harsh and violent, she’s always striving for the greater good.”

“Just as my father justified war in the name of peace, and oppression in the name of order,” said Hex. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about life, it’s that those with the most passionate convictions can justify the most savage cruelties.”

“I don’t know that I agree with you,” said Jandra. “You’re passionate about your beliefs, but it hasn’t left you bloodthirsty and ruthless like Jazz. Or like Bitterwood, now that I think about it. You’re a living contradiction to your own assertion.”

“If there’s a second thing I’ve learned about life, it’s that any truth I can sum up in a single sentence is almost certainly going to snap once I place the weight of reality upon it.”

“One thing I’ve learned from these new memories is not to be intimidated by Jazz any more. She may be powerful and smart, but she’s not omnipotent or omniscient. She’s just a woman with a human brain in a human skull. Not to be gruesome, but I’ve seen what you can do to a human skull. We stand a chance if we get close enough. I believe we can beat her.”

“Well then,” said Hex, moving toward the gate. “The time has come to once more test a belief against reality.” He leapt, vanishing into nothingness.

As he did so, the rainbow seemed to vibrate, and the air around it shimmered with countless tiny prisms that faded as quickly as they’d formed. Yet in that brief flash, Jandra was certain that she’d once more heard her name spoken by Zeeky. Bracing herself, Jandra stepped into the rainbow…

… and now
the void was endless. Rather than emerging from the other side, Jandra was adrift in darkness and silence. She couldn’t breathe; she couldn’t feel her heart beating within her. The disembodied sensation felt the way she imagined death must feel. And yet… she wasn’t dead. She was thinking. What was happening to her?

She tried to summon fire around her hands to break the darkness, but she couldn’t feel her hands. She wasn’t certain she even had hands any more. It was as if all that was physical about her had been stripped away and she was left as only a mind.

“Jandra,” a voice whispered.

“Zeeky?” she asked, despite lacking a throat or mouth to form the words.

“Follow my voice,” said Zeeky. As she spoke, the darkness split and a sliver of light formed. Jandra wanted to move toward the light, but didn’t know how. She had no limbs to push herself with. Panic seized her. The presence of a way out of this void and her inability to reach it left her feeling trapped.

Then, hands that were not hands pressed against her, or the idea of her, and pushed.

Jandra landed hard
on a concrete floor in a gray, windowless, room. The presence of gravity felt both reassuring and confining. She was pinned to the cold, hard surface by the weight of her body. The light here was dim, but after her encounter with the void even this faint illumination felt like daggers stabbing her eyes. She threw her arm across her face to block the light. She took long, slow breaths, welcoming the air across her lips after her brief encounter with airless, lipless nothingness.

Something wet, cold, and circular pressed against her forehead. Jandra moved her hand to see what it was and found her fingers touching the snout of some kind of animal. She opened her eyes and looked up into the face of a pig, its hide mottled black and white. The pig looked down at her with an expression that resembled concern.

She’d never actually met Zeeky’s pig, but her porcine examiner seemed to fit the bill.

“Poocher?” she asked.

“Yes.”

It took her half a second to realize it hadn’t been the pig who answered. She sat up and discovered a girl standing in the center of the room. She was dressed in a white robe; her golden hair was washed and braided. She stood before a glass orb the size of a man’s fist, which floated in the air seemingly without support. The girl’s eyes were fixed upon the orb in an almost hypnotic gaze.

“Zeeky!” Jandra cried. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” said Zeeky, not taking her eyes off the orb. Her tone made it sound as if Jandra’s voice was an unwelcome distraction.

She rose, looking once more around the room. Jandra somehow recognized it though she’d never been here before. It was a cell built by Jazz, accessible only via an underspace gate. She had a faint memory of building it.

“How did I get here?” Jandra asked. “Did you guide me here somehow?”

“Yes,” Zeeky said again, tersely.

Jandra walked over to her and placed her hand on Zeeky’s shoulder.

“Is something wrong?”

Zeeky turned away from the orb. Tears welled in her eyes as she said, with a trembling voice, “Everything is wrong! I don’t know what to do!”

“What’s happening,” Jandra said, squatting down to Zeeky’s level. “What’s the problem?”

“My family and my neighbors are still inside,” Zeeky said, wiping her cheeks. “I can hear them; we’ve been talking. But they’ve been in there too long. It’s changing them. They’ve forgotten what their bodies looked like. They say they don’t want to come out. They say it’s like heaven in there.”

“Heaven isn’t what I experienced,” said Jandra.

“It wasn’t what they first experienced either,” said Zeeky, running her fingers along the glass orb. “They said it was more like being dead. They’re spirits without bodies. It terrified them at first. But, slowly, they found out that the place responded to their thoughts. It became what they wanted it to become. They imagined heaven, and it became heaven. Now they want me to go inside with them.”

“Could you?” Jandra asked. “Does this crystal ball have that power?” She looked into the transparent sphere, but saw nothing but the distorted image of Poocher on the other side.

“Jazz left it here for me. She says there’s a tiny slice of underspace forever opened at its heart, but I can’t reach it while it’s sealed in the globe. The globe isn’t really glass… it’s some sort of energy that that looks like glass. Nothing in this world can ever break it.”

“How do you know that?”

“The villagers told me. They’re telling me so many things. I don’t understand half of what they’re saying. Freed of their bodies, existing as pure thought, they’re beginning to know everything… but they’re forgetting what it was to be human.”

“Jazz told me she wanted to stay inside underspace because it would make her omniscient,” said Jandra. “Perhaps she was right.”

“Jazz can’t be allowed inside,” said Zeeky. “They don’t want her there. Jazz is a bad person.”

“I know.”

“They say I should go with them to escape her,” said Zeeky. “But, I don’t want to. I don’t want to live without a body. I want to stay in this world with Poocher. I want to see Jeremiah again. I just want things back like they were.” A tear traced down her cheek as she spoke. Her lower lip trembled.

Jandra wrapped her arms around Zeeky and pressed her wet cheek against her own. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“How touching,” said a woman’s voice behind her.

Suddenly, the room smelled of cigarettes.

Bitterwood had come
once more to the shores of the island. He walked its perimeter, trying to find something he could use as a boat. He came at last to a broad beach of black sand. In the distance, he could see a second island. Perhaps Zeeky was there. His search of the temple island had certainly proven unproductive.

Bitterwood looked up as he heard the rustling of leaves in the forest behind him. The greenery parted as the copper-colored heads of three long-wyrms pushed through onto the beach. Adam rode the wyrm that led the way. Behind him were two riders Bitterwood had never seen.

Adam’s voice shook with outrage as he spoke. “The temple is destroyed! Gabriel is dead! One of your arrows was discovered near his remains. What have you done, father?”

“You know what I have done,” said Bitterwood.

“The goddess possesses infinite grace,” Adam said. “She may forgive any insult if you approach her with a repentant heart. Throw down your bow, father. Surrender yourself. She may yet show you mercy.”

“I do not desire mercy,” said Bitterwood. “I have slain her angel. Is this the act of a repentant heart? Let Ashera show herself if my actions anger her. I want very much to see her; I still have arrows in my quiver. Let her test her power against me.”

“Blasphemer!” shouted the rider to Adam’s left.

“Calm yourself, Palt,” said Adam.

“No!” he cried. “He speaks of arrows. We are the arrows in the quiver of the goddess! We are the missiles of her wrath! Let us fly, Adam. We shall strike this heretic down!”

Adam looked toward Bitterwood once more. “Father, if you’ve any love of life, you will drop your bow. Do not make us kill you.”

Bitterwood lifted his bow and calmly drew an arrow. He took aim, dead center of Adam’s chest.

“I have no love of anything,” he said. “Kill me if you can.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven:

Bad Woman

Jandra spun around.

“You’ve locked the helmet,” Jazz said, taking a drag on her cigarette. “Interesting.”

“I didn’t enjoy being your doll,” said Jandra.

“Then we won’t be having tea with Mr. Teddy?” Jazz said, her voice mocking Jandra’s accent. “Fine. You still need me, Jandra. Those memories I gave you won’t be of much use without me to guide you through them. And I kept a lot of the good stuff to myself. Wouldn’t you like to learn to open the underspace gates? Wouldn’t you like to tap into a thousand years of experience and wisdom without the tedium of actually having to trudge through all those centuries? Swear your loyalty to me Jandra, and I’ll help you become a goddess.”

Jandra guided Zeeky behind her. Poocher came up next to her knees, grunting as he stared at Jazz.

“Godhood doesn’t hold much attraction for me,” Jandra said. “I’m having a tough enough time learning to be human.”

Jazz rolled her eyes. “You’re such a drama queen. Fine. You don’t want to be my friend. But, we don’t have to be enemies, either.” Jazz stepped aside as a glowing rainbow opened in the air behind her.

“Here’s the door,” she said. “It leads back to Shandrazel’s palace, your old stomping grounds. Get out and don’t bother me again.”

Jandra looked at the gate. It would be so easy just to grab Zeeky and leap for it. But, escaping Jazz wouldn’t solve anything. If escape were all she wanted, she wouldn’t have come back from the Nest.

Then, to her surprise, Poocher charged toward the rainbow and leapt in. Zeeky ran past her, grabbing her hand. In Zeeky’s other hand, she cradled the crystal ball. “Hurry!” shouted Zeeky, dragging her toward the gate.

Seeing a look of shock flash across Jazz’s face, Jandra decided to trust Zeeky. She leapt once more into the place that was not a place.

The long-wyrms ridden
by Palt and Adam lunged toward Bitterwood and the third rider took aim with his crossbow. Bitterwood stepped aside as the man fired. The bolt whizzed through the air behind him. Bitterwood shifted his aim from Adam to Palt’s charging serpent. The creatures were more a threat than the riders. He let his arrow fly, targeting the long-wyrm’s left eye. The creature jerked, its legs twitching spastically. Black sand flew as the long-wyrm crashed and Palt fell from his saddle. By now, Trisky was only a yard away, opening her maw wide. Without dropping his bow, Bitterwood drew Gabriel’s sword, willing it to flare into white brilliance. He tossed the sword down Trisky’s gullet and jumped away from her charge at the last possible instant. As momentum carried Trisky past him, he reached out and grabbed Adam’s leg. With a violent tug, he tore his son from the saddle.