Page 129 of Fortune's Blade

On the floor beside it was another of the things, this one not floating, or at least not anymore. It reminded me of Humpty-Dumpty after his fall, as it was on its side and shattered into pieces. Inside was a hollow area and some dried up . . . stuff . . . clinging to the “shell”.

It was no longer glowing.

Marlowe knelt down and gingerly poked at a piece of the dried stuff. When it failed to melt his skin or do anything else except lie there, he broke some off and brought it up to his face to sniff it. I doubted that that was going to tell him much, however, as troll noses were also quite good and I couldn’t smell anything. Except for the black, coal-like substance that coated everything here other than for the sloping side of the egg, the remnants of the fissure’s creation, I supposed.

We sent the black dust swirling upward every time we took a step, and its strangely fine texture caused it to stay suspended in the air for a time, making it hard to breathe. While little avalanches in the remaining ankle-deep stuff on the floor filled in our footsteps almost as soon as we’d made them. As if the cavern was erasing any evidence of us being here even before we left.

It was eerie and I didn’t like it, and I wasn’t the only one.

I had been watching Marlowe, not concentrating on controlling my ride, and he was becoming skittish. He didn’t like this place; he didn’t like it at all. And while I wasn’t paying attention, he had been slowly moving toward the crevasse again.

But he’d been doing it backwards, one step at a time, and had gotten a little off course. So, instead of hitting the exit, he had stumbled across something else. Something weird.

Our foot broke through what I guessed was a ward, and the air around us lit up like a searchlight had just gone off. Or like a video had started to play, I realized, as someone walked right through us, making my troll jump and swing his weapon. But the ax cleaved only dusty air, as whatever this was, it wasn’t real.

At least, not anymore.

“What is that? What did you find?” Marlowe demanded, coming over.

Neither my troll nor I answered, as neither of us knew. But I moved him further into the room and turned us around so that I could see what was going on. And there it was: a 3-D image that reminded me of Zeus in my crow-vision, shining and oversized, only this one was maybe fifteen feet tall, blue-tinged and ghostly.

She was also female.

Her dark hair was the first thing I noticed, being elaborately braided and piled up on top of her head, although the beautiful mass was leaning to the side somewhat precariously, as if she hadn’t bothered to secure it properly. She was dark skinned and pretty, with African features, yet was wearing a silvery gown in the Grecian style, although not as I would have expected a possible goddess to do. The material had been bunched up under a plain leather belt to keep the hem from tripping her up; she wore no adornment other than a brooch to hold the gown together; and had a fussy, no-nonsense air about her that I hadn’t expected from one of her kind.

I didn’t recognize her, but Marlowe, surprisingly, did. “Fortuna,” he muttered, those sharp dark eyes taking her in.

“What?” I asked, before I could stop myself. But he barely seemed to notice that he was talking to a curious troll.

“The brooch, you see here?” he tried to indicate the lone item of jewelry, but his hand broke the light, causing that part of the image to disappear. So, he settled for gesturing at it instead. “Carved like a cornucopia. That was one of her symbols. The Romans regarded her as the personification of luck, but to the Etruscans who came before them, she was a fertility deity who ruled over the bounty of the soil and the fruitfulness of women.”

I didn’t say anything, still trying to take that in, but my troll did. He had been staring at the ghostly figure, who had begun speaking although I did not know the tongue. But he did; I felt the recognition in his mind and heard it in his sudden, high pitched, piercing wail.

The one he made right before diving for the exit.

Marlowe caught him halfway there and pulled him back. “You know what she’s saying, don’t you?” he demanded.

The troll looked down at the spymaster’s hand, which appeared tiny and almost childlike next to his massive bicep. Yet when he tried to break away, it didn’t work. He tried some more, putting muscle behind it, and still went nowhere.

This did not help his panic.

“Answer me!” Marlowe said, shaking him slightly. “I’m working with your queen. She will want to know about this!”

That seemed to get through, and the troll finally stopped fighting and licked his lips. But his eyes flickered nervously around the room, as if expecting an attack at any moment. “Old tongue. Gods’ tongue,” he finally said, his voice hoarse.

“Can you translate it?”

The troll listened for a moment, then nodded unhappily. He spoke English, so I assumed he was one of those who had been to Earth at some point. But like most trolls, he was not loquacious.

“She say . . . he number five.”

Marlowe waited, for the goddess was still talking, but that was it. “Five what?” he finally asked.

“Five . . .” the troll searched for the English word, but it wouldn’t come. “Like that,” he said, threading his fingers together and then waggling them at Marlowe.

Marlowe looked from the fingers to the troll. “What?”

My ride was surprised that the strange Earth creature wanted more, as from his perspective they had had a good chat. But he obliged. “She say he too violent. Not good.”