James Maxey - Greatshadow

“That is an excellent bonus,” said Stallion, nodding.

Later, after the letter of safe passage had been written, Blade left the pirate cave, following the same path that Aurora and Infidel had taken. Tower met him at the first ledge.

“I was waiting in the shaft the whole time, listening,” said the knight, carrying them skyward. “It seemed as if you had the situation in hand. But, are you certain you can trust him with Numinous?”

“Stallion wants that pardon. He wanted it five years ago. Other pirates can slip into towns in disguise from time to time to spend their ill-gotten gains. Stallion doesn’t have that option. He’s got to be the most recognizable pirate in the world. Just as I’m probably the most recognizable secret agent in the world. We understand each other.”

The reached the top of the cliff. Blade sat down on a rock and the Whisper slipped behind him and wrapped her arms around his neck. Tower hadn’t carried her up. Could she fly? Or was she just as fast at climbing as she was at cutting throats?

Tower hadn’t been joking about using the War Doll as a mule. After the gear was all brought up from the camp, they began to test how much weight she could carry, piling more and more tents, rations, and tools upon her shoulders until the mound was almost comical. Infidel bore it all with mechanical stoicism. After a certain point, the roped-together pile on her shoulders was so large it risked getting tangled by branches as they walked, so they gave the rest of the gear to Aurora before reaching the limits of the War Doll’s strength. I wasn’t surprised. Infidel was probably strong enough to carry all the gear and the rest of the party as well, along with an actual mule if we’d had one.

Of course, pack animals were out of the question. The part of Greatshadow that was still a big hungry lizard had a taste for livestock. Paintings and sculpture from the Vanished Kingdom showed that cows, horses, and oxen had once had a home here. After Greatshadow rose to power, he stripped the land of any mammals larger than pygmies. It’s rumored that the pygmies’ bitter dyes protect them; more likely, Greatshadow doesn’t hunt pygmies for the same reason that men don’t hunt mice. The meat you get isn’t worth the effort.

I floated next to Relic as we set off into the jungle. I said, “The Black Swan was a bit off. She said a dozen adventurers would join the hunt for Greatshadow. With Numinous down, there’s only eleven.”

Perhaps she’s counting you, said Relic.

“Was she? She can see me?”

Relic shrugged. I could read her thoughts before she became undead. Now, her thoughts are lost to me.

“Eleven against Greatshadow doesn’t seem like good odds,” I said.

The king has chosen quality over quantity. As to whether the king has chosen well, we shall see.

Progress up the slopes was frustratingly slow. The terrain was steep and rugged, dotted with boulders as big as houses all tangled with tenacious vines. No-Face was armed with a machete and turned loose on the foliage, but we still barely covered a mile by mid-day. Despite the thick canopy above us, the sun directly overhead soon raised the temperature from sweltering to unbearable. As we paused for No-Face to chop away a particularly nasty tangle, Father Ver leaned wearily against a tree, looking pale. His heavy clerical robes were better suited to a chilly mountain monastery than the tropics. Aurora, taking pity, approached him. She cupped her oversize hands and, within seconds, crafted a bowl of ice, filled to the rim with cool water drawn from the soggy air.

“Have a drink,” she said.

Father Ver wrinkled his nose at the offering. “I must decline,” he said. “I’m certain you mean well, but it would be a sin to drink water created by your pagan magic.”

“I didn’t create the water. I just gathered it. But, suit yourself.” She turned around, only to find Reeker standing just behind her. He took the cup from her hands without asking and gulped it, rivulets running down his chest.

I didn’t notice if Aurora took offense at this because from the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of the Whisper giving a canteen to Ivory Blade. As Blade drank the water, the Whisper unbuttoned the top few clasps of his armor and folded back a flap of white leather to expose the skin around his collarbones. Then, in a move that probably warmed him rather than cooled him, she leaned her invisible face to his chest and began to lick at his sweat. I looked around, feeling squeamish about witnessing such an intimate act.

After a few more hours of hacking, we eventually made it through the worst of the vines into the denser jungle beyond. It’s counterintuitive, but the deeper you go into a jungle, the easier the going becomes. The canopy above is so thick with plants growing on other plants that most of the available sunlight gets captured long before it reaches the ground, creating a semi-permanent twilight in which only a few hardy, broad-leafed plants grow. You might expect the ground to be covered by fallen leaves and branches, but the soil is constantly scoured by ants and beetles that make short work of anything that hits the jungle floor.

With most of the machete work behind us, Menagerie took the lead, scouting ahead of the party as a panther. Ivory Blade and the Whisper followed, then Lord Tower, Father Ver, and No-Face. No-Face, when not on machete duty, was assigned as Father Ver’s bodyguard. Despite his deformity, No-Face wasn’t a half-seed, nor did he openly dabble in blood magic. Apparently, this made him acceptable to walk within an arm’s length of the holy man.

Reeker and Zetetic were next. Reeker was the Deceiver’s bodyguard, or perhaps just his guard, period, since he had orders from Lord Tower to give the Deceiver a snoot full of skunk juice at the first sign of anything suspicious. I had to wonder why the Deceiver was part of this team, if he couldn’t be trusted.

Relic took my private musings and turned them into a prompt for a telepathic exposition.

The Deceiver is immensely powerful. He is the master of falsehoods, and the things that are false in this world far outnumber the things that are true. Zetetic may be the greatest threat Greatshadow faces, assuming he can find the courage to stand up to the dragon. He’s definitely not undertaking this quest out of choice.

“How can you know that?” I asked. “I thought you couldn’t read his mind.”

His mind is labyrinth of hallucination that protects his innermost thoughts, but I am slowly navigating that labyrinth. I’ve learned that he blames his presence here on the Black Swan. She paid a substantial fee to persuade King Brightmoon of the importance of including him.

I scratched my ghostly scalp as I contemplated this. It was difficult to wrap my head around the idea that the Black Swan had already witnessed the next twenty years. I wondered what else she’d changed on this mission, beside including Zetetic and Aurora? I glanced back at the ogress, who was bringing up the rear along with Infidel. One thing conspicuously absent from the mountains of gear upon their backs was a harpoon. From the way Aurora had described it, the shaft of the harpoon was over fifteen feet long. It plainly wasn’t with the gear, and Tower wasn’t carrying it either. Could it have been broken down into something smaller?

I spent most of my time drifting near the two women, mostly because of my craving for Infidel’s company, but also because of the circle of chilled air that surrounded Aurora. Even as a ghost, the jungle heat was unpleasant. Still, being a traveling ghost wasn’t all bad. On my trips through the jungle while I was alive, I was normally too exhausted by hiking to enjoy the scenery. In my weightless, ogre-cooled comfort zone, I had time to appreciate the rich tapestry we walked through. If everything around us was the work of the Divine Author, he had a sense of playfulness when it came to the colors surrounding us. Translucent pink salamanders the size of bananas crawled over dark jade leaves big enough to use as a tent. Parrots and parakeets the color of lemons and oranges flitted between chocolate-brown tree trunks, devouring iridescent copper beetles and finger-length ants red as chili peppers. Orchids blossomed in every nook and cranny, flowers I’d only seen in botany books — yellow and black tipsy tigers, snow-white wedding gloves, pale purple danglers. The breeze was a heady mix of their perfumes; though, little by little, the floral aroma was getting drowned out by the low-tide stench of Reeker as he and the Deceiver slowed their pace to skirt the bubble of cool air surrounding Aurora.