A Different Kind of Despair (18 page)

I take offense to that.

Marvin sighed, "Let me talk to
him."

"Are you sure?"

"Just do it."

I relinquished control of my mouth. Marvin
narrowed his eyes a minute later.

"Really, Koronos? Have you seriously stooped
so low as to go harassing my wife?"

"Demon. I don't care whose wife it is.
Although I do feel some remorse…" He lifted my blouse. I shrieked
on the inside. "Since all this is wasted on someone like
you."

I snatched control back from him, startled at
how easy it was now that we were bound together.

"That was a bad idea. I am never letting you
out again after that."

It was worth it for the look on
his face.

"Wait a minute." I got an idea. Since it was
that simple to take control then why couldn't I mute him on the
inside? I thought about it long and hard, and when I didn't hear
Koronos for a full minute I sighed in relief. "Okay, I think I
figured out how this works."

Marvin waited at the door to the cavern,
nodding into the darkness. I grinned sheepishly as I walked in
first.

We heard the sounds of activity as we came
closer. Once again, the necromancers were up to their old habits,
arguing semantics over obscure medical terminology and scribbling
down the remainder of Purilo's requested notes.

Leo and Will greeted us with an enthusiastic
wave and a mock-salute, respectively.

We joined them at their table. Leo shoved food
under our noses.

"So where were you two last night?"

My lips puckered on reflex. Marvin wasn't
doing much better than I was in that regard. Will seemed to catch
on faster than Leo. His expression brightened a bit.

"You son of a bitch."

Add that to a list of terrible things to say
right after a mother's funeral.

"Good for you."

That was… unexpectedly polite, coming from
Will.

Leo seemed to catch up at that precise moment
in time. His expression cycled from congratulations to envy to
accusation.

"Really, Marv? You reaaaaally had to go and
become an adult before me?"

"It's not a competition, Leo."

Leo rose, stood on his seat, and set a foot on
the surface of the table.

"Of course it's a competition! It's a battle
between men!"

"If," Will cut in, "men are adults, then by
your definition it's a competition between little boys."

Leo narrowed his eyes at his
Doll. "
Traitor
,"
he hissed.

"I don't understand your fixation on the whole
thing," Marvin added. But this only seemed to throw fuel onto the
fire.

"Fixation?
Fixation
?" Leo pointed
across the room, to the nearest set of conspicuous cleavage. "This
is not fixation! It is our sacred rite as men! Men, I say! It's
natural! It's evolution! IT'S SCIENTIFIC!"

I heard the members of House Soma groan as a
group behind us. Marvin went on eating. Will kept on being Will. It
quickly became apparent that this wasn't the first time Leo has
gone off on a tirade like this.

"What true man can keep still his inner beast
when presented with a pair of plump thighs or heaving
breasts?!"

I chewed on a sandwich, amused that Leo
suddenly sounded like a bad pornographic novel.

Inner beast? I'm a demon with an
inner demon, but I mean, seriously? What's next? Burning Rod of
Love?

"And YOU!" he bellowed, pointing
at Marvin. "You are the worst offender! For years you've mocked my
passions and then you go ahead and experience this sacred realm
behind my back!"

"Well what did you expect me to
do, Leo?" Marvin shot back at him, swallowing a mouthful of food.
"Let you watch?"

"YES, BECAUSE THAT WOULD'VE BEEN
THE POLITE THING TO DO!"

Will took this as his cue to punch himself in
the side of the head. Leo was effectively knocked off his
perch.

"Thank you," said Marvin.

"Don't mention it."

Leo sniffed. "I thought we were friends,
Marv."

"We
are
friends," he said. "Look. We
might even find some Sand Whales while we go look for this Ice
Empress character. Will that cheer you up?"

Leo's face lit up.

Will groaned, "Now look at what
you've done. It took me eight months to get him to shut up on
that."

"I'm sorry," I interjected. "But what are Sand
Whales?"

"
Don't ask
," Marvin and Will said in
unison.

Leo leaned closer to me. "They all think I'm
crazy-"

"-think? And do you honestly
believe we can't hear you?" Will asked.

But Leo, dearest cousin Leo, wasn't fazed at
all.

"-but Sand Whales are
real
. You see, we saw
this elf once. Jiki's old boyfriend or something. Well, he killed
her and then she kept his body around as a souvenir, but
anyway
-"

Already I was regretting having asked. Marvin
must've seen the look on my face because he tried to diverge the
lengthy explanation.

"So the Ice Empress. Since you seem to know
the most about her then do you have any idea of where she
is?"

Leo was stopped in his tracks. Thank Ayasha
for his short attention span.

"Well if Jiki and Formosa knew
about her then she's probably in a place filled with spirits. And
since she's exiled from her lands then my guess would be that she's
in Faespeare Wood. It's about four hundred miles east of
here."

"Exile?" Marvin asked. "What kind of Empress
is exiled from her own lands?"

"A formality. Some kind of treaty, or so I
heard." Leo waved his hands at the details. "She did some great and
not so great things, but mostly some hoity-toity noble folks got
all riled up because her claims to multiple High Cities upset the
balance of political power. So they tried to get her to give up
some of her claims under penalty of death, but she refused and
escaped."

"So now an Empress is on the run from her own
Empire," Marvin surmised. "Gods, it seems like more trouble than
it's worth."

"Yeap. But whatever. I don't pretend to try to
understand women."

"Maybe if you tried to understand them at all
you might be able to get a woman in the first place," I muttered
under my breath. Marvin elbowed me under the table, signaling that
I'd just entered some very dangerous grounds.

Thankfully, Leo didn't seem to hear that
comment.

"Actually, about the time went to
the Moor of Souls was when the calendar got switched over because
of all the fuss. We're now in year 2 A.E. After Exile."

Marvin and I blinked.

"The calendar changed?" I asked. "How come I
didn't hear about that from merchants?"

"Any idea how many people survive
crossing the continent from east to west each year?" Leo asked back
at me. "Between two and six. Faespeare is a dangerous place.
Spirits lead people astray all the time. There's all kinds of death
traps in those woods, and you can forget about the marshlands to
the south of that. I've heard rumors that place is twice as bad.
The reason most travel takes so long is you have to go to Isoviel,
get on a tiny boat that only comes by twice a year, and sail all
the way around Dalani if you want to end up on the other side of it
in one piece."

"Somehow," said Will. "I'm not
surprised that we're heading off into a potential death trap all
over again."

Marvin pushed his plate away.

"I'm surprised you want to tag along at
all."

"We're at fault for allowing ourselves to get
routed into the Crone's trap," Will said matter-of-factly, "if you
look at it that way then everything from Miraj having to fuse with
Koronos to your mother's death is partially on our heads as well.
Consider it our way of making it up to you."

Leo slung his arm around Will's neck, much to
the Doll's displeasure.

"What Willy here means to say is that we care
about the two of you. It's easier to get into trouble together than
worry about you meeting some grisly death and falling off the map
into oblivion. Isn't that right?"

"Fuck off, Leo."

"See?" Leo beamed. "Isn't he just
precious?"

We snorted altogether, entertained at Will's
expense. The Doll cracked a reluctant smile at our jokes, and
somewhere in the back of my mind, in a place where Koronos was
blissfully silent, I thought, it's good to be home.

I never expected, not in my
wildest dreams, that I might feel as though I belonged anywhere
beyond the Hikari. Yet here I was, a child of the Cascadian Plains
having a meal with sun-starved necromancers beneath the earth. I
was host to an evil entity, I was in the guise of a being from
hell. My cousin was a Sand Whale maniac and his keeper was a living
Doll. My husband was a necrophobic necromancer who was,
paradoxically, the reincarnation of an ancient genius. Spirits both
bad and inconsequential have aided and impeded us, and somehow we
have survived to tell the tale.

"Leo," I said, before I forgot. "What happened
to the Eyes after you had Tully swallow them?"

He fished them out of his pocket as though
they were a pile of old coins and not artifacts of ancient
power.

We stared at them for a good moment, getting
lost in their depths.

"Safe and sound," my cousin announced,
obviously quite pleased with his efforts. "Why'd you want to them
all of the sudden, Miraj?"

"Just a feeling…" my voice drifted off. "I
feel as though I've seen them before."

"Where?" Marvin asked. "Were they a part of
some stories told back at the Tribe?"

"No. At least not any
stories I've heard of." I shrugged. "It's hard to explain. Maybe
it's because I'm Shaman now; maybe it's nothing. But it feels as
though I
know
them, like a distant dream you can't quite shake after you
wake up in the morning. I don't know. I'm starting to think I might
be imagining things."

Marvin sighed and stretched across the table.
"After everything Jiki said about there being no such thing as
coincidence, I don’t know if I can believe in chance anymore. If
you say you think you know the Eyes from somewhere then I say it's
true until proven otherwise."

"I agree," said Will, much to our collective
surprise. "I remember Koronos telling me that luck is made every
day, but most people are too stupid to realize it. Marvin being
Inval's reincarnation. Their phobias lining up perfectly. His
mother suddenly turning out to be a Shaman. Miraj becoming a Shaman
and a demon, and somehow this ties back to Inval all over again
with this Ghostwalker nonsense… everything is interconnected. Only
now it's becoming clear that we've been strung along."

"But by whom?" asked Leo.

"Or what?" Marvin countered.

I cradled the Eyes in the palms of my hands,
staring into them as the Crone once did. I saw mist and fire. I
wondered whether it was the same for her.

We left the table shortly after
that. Purilo and Jiki had already gathered and packed of all the
supplies we could need on our journey. I quick nod to my father,
Larry, about summed up any extraneous farewells. Jiki was left in
charge of the surviving necromancers. They lined the halls on our
exit, silently wishing us well.

The sun was setting as we started
out on our journey, on a quest to rid me of the hourglass that
would lead to my premature demise, a journey that might also bring
us answers we desperately needed.

What was a Ghostwalker? How did Inval know
Ayasha? Who was Neith?

I knew in my heart that if we ever found this
woman known as the Ice Empress, all these questions and more would
be answered.

15: Frozen
Reception