Europa by Joseph Robert Lewis Read Free Book Online Page B

and women. They walked slowly, their empty hands hanging at their sides. They did not seem to acknowledge one another, all of them walking just out of reach of those around them, never touching, never speaking, never even looking at each other. The army of the dead marched in stone-faced silence.
    Omar stood very still as the wall of ghosts approached him, and when they reached him he took a few steps forward here or backward there to avoid touching them as they passed. But he did study their faces. He saw men and women of all ages, and even a few children in the distance, and all of them bore the sharp noses and thin mouths he had come to associate with the Europan tribes. They wore heavy leather clothes and thick furs, and had small carved bones thrust through their ears and tied into their straw-colored hair.
    After a few minutes of watching the silent procession through the aether mist, Omar fell into step beside the shade of a young woman with a large fur hood resting on her insubstantial shoulders.
    “Good evening,” he said in Rus.
    “Hello.” Her accent was strange, but the word was clear enough.
    “Where are you from?”
    “My home is called Swansea,” she said. “Is this your homeland?”
    Omar glanced at the desolate glacier around them. “No. My home is far to the south and the east, in a land called Aegyptus. It’s much warmer in my homeland than here. Your home in Swansea must be very cold if it’s much farther to the north. Did you die in Swansea?”
    The woman nodded. She never looked at him, only at the southern horizon.
    “If you don’t mind the question, could you tell me how you died?”
    “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