There were dreams. Endless, horrible dreams. Someday, if I live so long, if I survive what is yet to come, I may record them, for they were the story of a god that is a tree, and of the thing his roots bind…
No. I think not. One life of struggle and horror is enough to report. And this one goes on.
The Lady stirred first. She reached over, pinched me. The pain wakened my nerves. She gasped, in a voice so soft I barely heard it, "Get up. Help me. We have to move your White Rose."
Made no sense.
"The null."
I was shivering. I thought it was reaction to whatever struck me down.
"The thing below is of this world. The tree is not."
Wasn't me shivering. It was the ground. Ever so gently and rapidly. And now I became aware of a sound. Something far away, deep down.
I began to get the idea.
Fear is one hell of a motivator. I got my feet under me. Above, the Tinkle of Old Father Tree beat maddeningly. There was panic in his wind-chimes song.
The Lady rose too. We staggered toward Darling, supporting one another. Each groggy step spiced more life into my sluggish blood. I looked into Darling's eyes. She was aware, yet paralyzed. Her face was frozen halfway between fear and disbelief. We hoisted her up, each slipping an arm around her. The Lady began counting steps. I remember no other labor so damnably great. I do not recall another time when I ran so much on will alone.
The shaking of the earth waxed rapidly into the shudder of passing horsemen, then to a landslide's uproar, then to an earthquake. The ground around Father Tree began to writhe and buckle. A gout of flame and dust blasted upward. The tree tinkled a shriek. Blue lightning rioted in his hair. We pressed even harder in our flight down and across the creek.
Something behind us began to scream.
Images in mind. That which was rising was in agony. Father Tree subjected it to the torments of Hell. But it came on, determined to be free.
I no longer looked back. My terror was too great. I did not want to see what an ancient Dominator looked like.
We made it. Gods. Somehow the Lady and I got Darling sufficiently far away for Father Tree to regain his full otherworldly power.
The shriek rose rapidly in pitch and fury; I fell down grasping my ears. And then it went away.
After a time the Lady said, "Croaker, go see if you can help the others. It's safe. The tree won."
That quickly? Out of that much fury?
Getting my feet under me seemed an all-night job.
A blue nimbus still shimmered among Father Tree's branches. You could feel his aggravation from two hundred yards. Its weight grew as I moved nearer.
The ground around the tree's feet hardly seemed disturbed, considering the violence of moments ago. It looked freshly plowed and harrowed, was all. Some of my friends were partially buried, but no one appeared injured. Everyone was moving at least a little. Faces looked wholly stunned. Except Trucker's. That ugly character had not resumed his fake human form.
He was up early, placidly helping the others, dusting their clothing with hearty, friendly slaps. You would not have known that a short time before he had been a deadly enemy. Weird.
Nobody needed any help. Except the walking trees and menhirs. The trees had been overturned. The menhirs… Many of them were down, too. And unable to right themselves.
That gave me a chill.
I got me another shudder when I neared the old tree.
Reaching out of the ground, fumbling at the bark of a root, was a human hand and forearm, long, leathery, greenish, with nails grown to claws then broken and bleeding upon Father Tree. It did not belong to anyone from the Hole.
It twitched feebly, now. . Blue sparks continued to crackle above.
Something about that hand stirred the old beast within me. I wanted to run away shrieking. Or seize an axe and mutilate it. I took neither course, for I got the distinct feeling that Father Tree was watching me and glowering more than a little, and maybe blaming me personal-like for wakening the thing to which the hand belonged.
"I'm going," I said. "Know how you feel. Got my own old monster to keep down." And I backed away, bowing some each three or four steps.
"What the hell was that?"
I whirled. One-Eye was staring at me. He had a Croaker-is-up-to-another-of-his-crazies look.
"Just chatting with the tree." I looked around. People seemed to be finding their sea legs. Some of the less flustered were starting to right the walking trees. For the fallen menhirs, though, there seemed no hope. Those had gone to whatever reward a sentient stone may expect. Later they would be discovered righted, standing among the other dead menhirs near the creek ford.
I returned to Darling and the Lady. Darling was slow to come around, too groggy to communicate yet. The Lady asked, "Everyone all right?"
"Except the guy in the ground. And he came close to making himself well." I described the hand.
She nodded. "That's a mistake not likely to be made again soon."
Silent and several others had gathered around, so we could say little that would not sound suspect. I did murmur, "What now?" In the background I heard the Lieutenant and Elmo hollering about getting some torches out to shed a little light.
She shrugged.
"What about the Taken?"
"You want to go after them?"
"Hell, no! But we can't have them running around loose in our backyard, either. No telling…"
"The menhirs will watch them. Won't they?"
"That depends on how pissed the old tree is. Maybe he's ready to let us go to hell in a bucket after this."
"You might find out."
"I'll go," Goblin queaked. He wanted an excuse to put a lot of yards between him and the tree.
"Don't take all night," I said. "Why don't the rest of you help Elmo and the Lieutenant?"
That got rid of some folks, but not Silent.
There was no way I was going to get Silent out of sight of Darling. He had some reservations still.
I chaffed Darling's wrists and did other silly things when time was the only cure. After some minutes I mumbled, "Seventy-eight days."
And the Lady, "Before long it will be too late."
I lifted an eyebrow.
"He can't be beaten without her. It won't be long before the hardest ride won't get her there in time."
I do not know what Silent made of that exchange. I do know that the Lady looked up at him and smiled thinly, with that look she gets when she knows your thoughts. "We need the tree." And: "We didn't get to finish our picnic."
"Huh?"
She went away for a few minutes. When she returned she had the blanket, dirtier than ever, and the bucket. She snagged my hand and headed for the dark. "You watch for the traps," she told me. What the hell was this game?
Later a broken boat of a moon arose. We did not< go far before it did, for there was not enough starlight to risk much movement. Once the moon did rise, the Lady guided me in a slow circle toward where the Taken had come down. We halted in a clear area, sandy but not dangerous. She spread the blanket. We were outside the null. "Sit."
I sat. She sat. I asked, "What?…"
"Be quiet." She closed her eyes and went inside herself.
I wondered if Silent had torn himself away from Darling to stalk us. Wondered if my comrades were making crude jokes about us as they labored over the walking trees. Wondered what the hell kind of game had me caught in its toils.
You learned something out of it, anyway, Croaker.
After a while I realized she was back from wherever she had gone. "I am amazed," she whispered. "Who would have thought they had the guts?"
"Eh?"
"Our sky-borne friends. I expected Limper and Whisper, up to their old crimes. But I got Scorn and Blister. Though I might have suspected her, had I thought. Necromancy is her great talent."
Another round of her thinking aloud. I wondered if she did that often. I am sure she was unaccustomed to having witnesses around if she did. "What do you mean?"
She ignored me. "I wonder if they told the others?"
I harkened back, put a few things together. The Lady's divinations about three possible futures and no place in any of them. Maybe that meant there was no place in them for Taken, either. And maybe they figured they could take their futures into their own hands by ridding themselves of their mistress.
A light step startled me. But I did not get excited. I just figured Silent had chosen to follow. So I was very surprised when Darling sat down with us, unchaperoned.
How had I overlooked the return of the null? Distracted, of course.
The Lady said, as though Darling had not appeared, "They haven't yet gotten out of the coral. It's very slow going, and they're both injured. And though the coral can't kill them, it can cause a lot of pain. Right now they're lying up, waiting for first light."
"So?"
"So maybe they won't get out at all."
"Darling can read lips."
"She knows already."
Well, I have said a thousand times that the girl is not stupid.
I think Darling's knowledge was implicit in the position she took. She placed me squarely in the gap between them.
Oh yeah.
I found myself playing interpreter.
Trouble is, I cannot record what went back and forth. Because someone tampered with my memories later. I got only one chance to make notes, and those now make no sense.
Some sort of negotiation took place. I can still conjure a sense of profound astonishment at Darling's willingness to deal. Also an amazement at the Lady for the same reason.
They reached an accommodation. An uneasy one, to be sure, for the Lady henceforth stuck very close and kept me between her and anyone else while she was within the null. Great feeling, knowing you're a human shield… And Darling kept near the Lady to prevent her calling on her power.
But she did turn her loose once.
That is getting ahead, slightly. First we all sneaked back, not letting anyone know there had been summit. The Lady and I returned after Darling, trying to look like we had had an energetic and thorough encounter. I could not help chuckling at some envious looks.
The Lady and I went outside the null again next morning, after Darling distracted Silent, One-Eye, and Goblin by sending them to dicker with the menhirs. Father Tree could not make up his mind. We went the other direction. And tracked Taken.
Actually, there was little tracking to do. They were not yet free of the coral. The Lady called upon that power she held over them and they ceased to be Taken.
Her patience was exhausted. Maybe she wanted them to serve as an object lesson… In any event, buzzards-real buzzards-were circling before we returned to the Hole.
That easy, I thought. For her. And for me, when I tried to kill the Limper, with every damned thing going my way, impossible.
She and I went back to translating. So busy did we stay that I did not remain abreast of the news from outside. I was a little vacant, anyway, because she had expunged my memories of the meeting with Darling.
Anyhow, somehow, the White Rose got right with Father Tree. The shaky alliance survived.
One thing I did notice. The menhirs stopped ragging me about strangers on the Plain.
They meant Tracker and Toadkiller Dog all the time. And the Lady. Two of three were no longer strangers. No one knew what had become of Toadkiller Dog. Even the menhirs could not trace him.
I tried to get Tracker to explain the name. He could not remember. Not even Toadkiller Dog himself. Weird.
He was the tree's creature now.
I was nervous. I had trouble sleeping. Days were slipping away. Out west, the Great Tragic was gnawing its banks. A four-legged monster was running to its overlord with news that it had been found out. Darling and the Lady were doing nothing.
Raven remained trapped. Bomanz remained trapped in the long fires he had called down on his own head. The end of the world tramped ever closer. And nobody was doing anything.
I completed my translations. And was no wiser than before. It seemed. Though Silent, Goblin, and One-Eye kept fooling with charts of names, cross-indexing, seeking patterns. The Lady watched over their shoulders more than did I. I fiddled with these Annals. I bothered myself with how to phrase a request for the return of those I had lost at Queen's Bridge. I fussed. I grew ever more antsy. People became irritated with me. I began taking moonlight walks to work off my nervous energy.
One night the moon was full, a fat orange bladder just scaling the hills to the east. A grand sight, especially with patrolling manias crossing its face. For some reason the desert had a lilac luminescence upon all its edges. The air was chill. There was a dust of powder swirling on the breeze, fallen that afternoon. A change storm flickered far away to the north…
A menhir appeared beside me. I jumped three feet. "Strangers on the Plain, rock?" I asked.
"None stranger than you, Croaker."
"I get a comedian. You want something?"
"No. The Father of Trees wants you."
"Yeah? See you." Heart pounding, I headed toward the Hole.
Another menhir blocked the path.
"Well. Since you put it that way." Faking bravery, I headed upstream.
They would have herded me. Best accept the inevitable. Less humiliation.
The wind was bitter around the barren, but when I crossed the boundary it was like stepping into summer. No wind at all, though the old tree was tinkling. And heat like a furnace.
The moon had risen enough to flood the barren with light now argent. I approached the tree. My gaze fixed on that hand and forearm, still protruding, still gripping a root, still, it seemed, betraying the occasional feeble twitch. The root had grown, though, and seemed to be enveloping the hand, as a tree used for a line post will envelope a wire tacked to it. I stopped five feet from the tree.
"Come closer," it said. In plain voice. In conversational tone and volume.
I said, "Yipe!" and looked for the exits.
About two skillion menhirs surrounded the barren. So much for running away.
"Stand still, ephemeral."
My feet froze to the ground. Ephemeral, eh?
"You asked help. You demanded help. You whined and pleaded and begged for help. Stand still and accept it. Come closer."
"Make up your mind." I took two steps. Another would have me climbing him.
"I have considered. This thing you ephemera fear, in the ground so far from here, would be a peril to my creatures if it rose. I sense no significant strength in those who resist it. Therefore…"
I hated to interrupt, but I just had to scream. You see, something had me by the ankle. It was squeezing so hard I felt the bones grinding. Crushing. Sorry about that, old-timer.
The universe turned blue. I rolled in a hurricane of anger. Lightning roared in Father Tree's branches. Thunder rolled across the desert. I yelled some more.
Bolts of blue hammered around me, crisping me almost as much as my tormentor. But, at last, the hand turned me loose.
I tried to run away.
One step and down I went. I kept on, crawling, while Father Tree apologized and tried to call me back.
Like Hell. I would crawl through the menhirs if I had to…
My mind filled with a waking dream. Father Tree delivering a message direct. Then the earth got quiet, except for the wish as menhirs vanished.
Big hoopla from the direction of the Hole. A whole gang charged out to find the cause of the uproar. Silent reached me first. "One-Eye," I said. "I need One-Eye." He is the only one beside me with medical training. And contrary though he is, I could count on him to take medical instructions.
One-Eye showed up in a moment, along with twenty others. The watch had reacted quickly. "Ankle," I told him. "Maybe crushed. Somebody get some light up here. And a damned shovel."
"A shovel? Are you off your gourd?" One-Eye demanded.
"Just get it. And do something for the pain."
Elmo materialized, still buckling buckles. "What happened, Croaker?"
"Old Tree wanted to talk. Had the rocks bring me over. Says he wants to help us. Only while I was listening, that hand got ahold of me. Like to ripped my foot off. The racket was the tree saying, 'Now stop that. That's not polite.'"
"Cut his tongue out after you fix his leg," Elmo told One-Eye. "What did it want, Croaker?"
"Your ears gone? To help with the Dominator. Said he thought it over. Decided it was in his own best interest to keep the Dominator down. Give me a hand up." One-Eye's efforts were paying dividends. He had sponged one of his wild jungle glops onto my ankle-it had swollen three times normal size already-and the pain was fading.
Elmo shook his head.
I said, "I'll break your damned leg if you don't get me up." So he and Silent hoisted me, but supported me.
"Bring them shovels," I said. A half dozen had appeared.
They were entrenching tools, not real ditchdiggers. "You guys insist on helping, get me back over to the tree."
Elmo growled. For a moment I thought Silent might say something. I eyed him expectantly, smiling. I had been waiting twenty-some years.
No luck.
Whatever vow he had taken, whatever it was that had driven him to abstain from speech, it had put a steel lock on Silent's jaw. I have seen him so pissed he could chew nails, so excited he lost sphincter control, but nothing has shaken his resolution against talking.
Blue still sparkled in the tree's branches. Leaves tinkled. Moonlight and torchlight mixed into weird shadows the sparks sent dancing… "Around him," I told my body slaves. I had not seen it myself, so it must be beyond that trunk.
Yep. There it was, out twenty feet from the base of the tree. A sapling. It stood about eight feet tall.
One-Eye, Silent, Goblin, those guys gobbled and gaped like startled apes. But not old Elmo. "Get a few buckets of water and soak the ground good," he said. "And find an old blanket we can wrap around the roots and the dirt that comes up with them."
He caught right on. Damned farmer. "Get me back downstairs," I said. "I want to see this ankle myself, in better light."
Going back, with Elmo and Silent carrying me, we encountered the Lady. She put on a suitably solicitous act, fussing all over me. I had to endure a lot of knowing grins.
Only Darling knew the truth even then. With maybe a little suspicion on Silent's part.
There was no time inside the Barrowland, only shadow and fire, light without source, and endless fear and frustration. From where he stood, snared in the web of his own device, Raven could discern a score of Domination monsters. He could see men and beasts put down in the time of the White Rose to prevent those evils from escaping. He could see the silhouette of the sorcerer Bomanz limned against frozen dragon fire. The old wizard still struggled to take one more step toward the heart of the Great Barrow. Didn't he know that he had failed generations ago?
Raven wondered how long he had been caught. Had his messages gotten through? Would help come? Was he just marking time till the darkness exploded?
If there was a clock to count the time, it was the growing distress of those set to guard against the darkness. The river gnawed ever closer. There was nothing they could do. No way for them to summon the wrath of the world.
Raven thought he would have done things differently had he been in charge back when.
Vaguely, Raven recalled some things passing nearby, shades like himself. But he knew not how long ago, or even what they were. Things moved at times, and one could tell nothing certain. The world had a whole different look from this perspective.
Never had he been so helpless, so frightened. He did not like the feeling. Always he had been master of his destiny, dependent upon no one…
There was, in that world, nothing to do but think. Too much, too often, his thoughts came back to what it meant to be Raven, to things Raven had done and not done and should have done differently. There was time to identify and at least confront all the fears and pains and weaknesses of the inside man, all of which had created the ice and iron and fearless mask he had presented to the world. All those things which had cost him everything he had valued and which had driven him into the fangs of death again and again, in self-punishment…
Too late. Far too late.
When his thoughts cleared and coagulated and he reached this point, he sent shrieks of anger echoing through the spirit world. And those who surrounded him and hated him for what he might have triggered, laughed and reveled in his torment.
Despite my exoneration by the tree, I never quite regained my former status with my comrades. Always there was a certain reserve, perhaps as much from envy of my apparent sudden female wealth as from trust slow to heal. I cannot deny the pain it caused me. I had been with those guys since I was a boy. They were my family.
I did take some ribbing about getting onto crutches in order to get out of work. But my work would have gone on had I had no legs at all.
Those damned papers. I had them committed to memory, set to music. And still I did not have the key we sought, nor what the Lady hoped to find. The cross-referencing was taking forever. The spelling of names, in pre-Domination and Domination times, had been free-form. KurreTelle is one of those languages where various letter combinations can represent identical sounds.
Pain in the damned fundament.
I do not know how much Darling told the others. I was not at the Big Meeting. Neither was the Lady. But word came out: The Company was moving out.
One day to get ready.
Topside, near nightfall, on my crutches, I watched the windwhales arrive. There were eighteen of them, all summoned by Father Tree. They came with their mantas and a whole panoply of Plain sentient forms. Three dropped to the ground. The Hole puked up its contents.
We began boarding. I got a ration because I had to be lifted, along with my papers, gear, and crutches. The whale was a small one. I would share it with just a few people. The Lady. Of course. We could not be separated now. And Goblin. And One-Eye. And Silent, after a bloody sign battle, for he did not want to be separated from Darling. And Tracker. And the child of the tree, for whom Tracker was guardian and I was in loco parentis. I think the wizards were supposed to keep an eye on the rest of us, though little they could have done had a situation presented itself.
Darling, the Lieutenant, Elmo, and the other old hands boarded a second windwhale. The third carried a handful of troops and a lot of gear.
We lifted off, joined the formation above.
A sunset from five thousand feet is unlike anything you will see from the ground. Unless you are atop a very lonely mountain. Magnificent.
With darkness came sleep. One-Eye spelled me under. I still had a good deal of swelling and pain.
Yes. We were outside the null. Our whale flew the far flank from Darling. Specifically for the Lady's benefit.
Even then she did not give herself away.
The winds were favorable and we had the blessing of Father Tree. Dawn found us passing over Horse. It was there the truth finally surfaced.
Taken came up, all in their fish-carpets, armed to the gills.
Panic noises wakened me. I got Tracker to help me stand. After one glance at the fire of the rising sun, I spied the Taken drifting into guardian positions around our whale. Goblin and them expected an attack. They howled their hearts out. Somehow One-Eye found a way for it all to be Goblin's fault. They went at it.
But nothing happened. Almost to my surprise, too. The Taken merely maintained station. I glanced at the Lady. She startled me with a wink. Then: "We all have to cooperate, whatever our differences."
Goblin heard that. He ignored One-Eye's ranting for a moment, stared at the Taken. After a bit he looked at the Lady. Really looked.
I saw the light dawn. In a more than normally squeaky voice, and with a truly goofy look, he said, "I remember you." He remembered the one time he had had a sort of direct contact with her. Many years ago, when he tried to contact Soulcatcher, he had caught her in the Tower, in the Lady's presence…
She smiled her most charming smile. The one that melts statues.
Goblin threw a hand in front of his eyes, turned away from her. He looked at me with the most awful expression. I could not help laughing. "You always accused me…"
"You didn't have to go and do it, Croaker!" His voice climbed the scale till it became inaudible. He sat down abruptly.
No lightning bolt splattered him across the sky. After a time he looked up and said, "Elmo is going to crap!" He giggled.
Elmo was the most unremitting of them all when it came to reminding me of my romances about the Lady.
After the humor went out of it, after One-Eye had been through it, too, and Silent had had his worst fears confirmed, I began to wonder about my friends.
One and all, they were westward bound on Darling's say-so. They had not been informed, in so many words, that we were allied with our former enemies.
Fools. Or was Darling? What happened once the Domi-nator was down and we were ready to go after each other again?…
Whoa, Croaker. Darling learned to play cards from Raven. Raven was a cutthroat player.
It was the Forest of Cloud by nightfall. I wonder what they made of us in Lords. We passed right over. The streets filled with gawkers.
Roses passed in the night. Then the other old cities of our early years in the north. There was little talk. The Lady and I kept our heads together, growing more tense as our strange fleet neared its destination and we drew no nearer unearthing the nuggets we sought.
"How long?" I asked. I had lost track of time.
"Forty-two days," she said.
"We were in the desert that long?"
"Time flies when you're having fun."
I gave her a startled look. A joke? Even an old cliche? From her?
I hate it when they go human on you. Enemies are not supposed to do that.
She had been crawling all over me with it for a couple months.
How can you hate?
The weather stayed halfway decent till we got to Forsberg. Then it became clabbered misery.
It was solid winter up there. Good, briskly refreshing winds loaded up with pellets of powder snow. A nice abrasive for a tender face like mine. A bombardment to clear out the lice on the backs of the whales, too. Everybody cussed and fussed and grumbled and huddled for warmth that dared not be provided by man's traditional ally, fire. Only Tracker seemed untouched. "Don't anything bother that thing?" I asked.
In the oddest voice I ever heard her use, the Lady replied, "Loneliness. If you want to kill Tracker the easy way, lock him up alone and go away."
I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. Whom did I know who had been alone a long time? Who, maybe, just maybe, had begun to wonder if absolute power were worth the absolute price?
I knew beyond the glimmer of doubt that she had enjoyed every second of pretend on the Plain. Even the moments of danger. I knew that had I had the hair on my ass, there in the last days, I could have become more than a pretend boyfriend. There was a growing and quiet desperation to her in that time as going back to being the Lady approached.
Some of that I might have appropriated out of ego, for a very critical time faced her. She was under a lot of stress. She knew the enemy we faced. But not all was ego. I think she actually did like me as a person.
"I got a request," I said softly, in the middle of the huddle, banishing thoughts caused by a woman pressed against me. "What?" "The Annals. They're all that's left of the Black Company." Depression had set in fast. "There was an obligation undertaken ages ago, when the Free Companies of Khatovar were formed. If any of us get through this alive, someone should take them back."
I do not know if she understood. But: "They're yours," she said.
I wanted to explain, but could not. Why take them back? I am not sure where they are supposed to go. Four hundred years the Company drifted slowly north, waxing, waning, turning over its constituents. I have no idea if Khatovar still exists or if it is a city, country, a person, or a god. The Annals from the earliest years either did not survive or went home already. I have seen nothing but digests and excerpts from the earliest century… No matter. Part of the Annalist's undertaking has always been to return the Annals to Khatovar should the Company disband.
The weather worsened. By Oar it seemed actively inimical, and may have been. That thing in the earth would know we were coming.
Just north of Oar all the Taken suddenly dropped away like rocks. "What the hell?"
"Toadkiller Dog," the Lady said. "We've caught up with him. He hasn't reached his master yet." "Can they stop him?" "Yes."
I crutched over to the side of the whale. I do not know what I expected to see. We were up in the snow clouds.
There were a few flashes below. Then the Taken came back. The Lady looked displeased. "What happened?" I asked.
"The monster got crafty. Ran into the null where it brushes the ground. The visibility is too poor to go after him."
"Will it make much difference?"
"No." But she did not sound entirely confident.
The weather worsened. But the whales remained undaunted. We reached the Barrowland. My group went to the Guards compound. Darling's put up at Blue Willy. The boundary of the null fell just outside the compound wall.
Colonel Sweet himself greeted us. Good old Sweet who I thought was dead for sure. He had a gimp leg now. I cannot say he was convivial. But then, it was a time when nobody was.
The orderly assigned us was our old friend Case.
The first time Case appeared he rode the edge of panic. Me doing a kindly uncle act did not soothe him. The Lady doing her bit almost kicked him over the edge into hysteria. Having Tracker lurking around in natural form was no help either.
One-Eye, of all people, calmed him down. Got him onto the subject of Raven and how Raven was doing, and that did the job.
I had my own near case of hysteria. Hours after we put down, before I even got set up for it, the Lady brought Whisper and Limper to double-check our translations.
Whisper was supposed to see if any papers were missing. Limper was supposed to plumb his memory of olden times for connections we may have missed. He, it seems, was much into the social whirl of the early Domination.
Amazing. I could not imagine that hunk of hatred and human wreckage ever having been anything but nastiness personified.
I got Goblin to keep an eyeball on those two while I broke away to look in on Raven. Everyone else had given him a look-see already.
She was there, leaning against a wall, gnawing a fingernail, not looking anything like the great bitch who had tormented the world for lo! so many years. Like I said before, I hate it when they go human. And she was human and then some. Flat-assed scared.
"How is he?" I asked, and when I saw her mood: "What's the matter?"
"He's unchanged. They've taken good care of him. Nothing is the matter that a few miracles won't cure."
I dared raise a questioning eyebrow.
"All the exits are closed. Croaker. I'm headed down a tunnel. My choices grow ever more narrow, and each is worse than the other."
I settled on the chair Case used while watching over Raven, began playing doctor. Needlessly, but I liked to see for myself. Half-distracted, I said, "I expect it's lonely, being queen of the world."
Slight gasp. "You grow too bold."
Didn't I? "I'm sorry. Thinking out loud. An unhealthy habit known to be the cause of bruises and major hemorrhaging. He does look sound. You think Limper or Whisper will help?"
"No. But every angle has to be tried."
"What about Bomanz?"
"Bomanz?"
I looked at her. She seemed honestly puzzled. "The wizard who sprung you."
"Oh. What about him? What could a dead man contribute? I disposed of my necromancer… You know something I don't?"
Not bloody likely. She had me under the Eye. Nevertheless…
I debated for half a minute, not wanting to give up what might be a whisker of advantage. Then: "I had it from Goblin and One-Eye that he's perfectly healthy. That he's caught in the Barrowland. Like Raven, only body and all."
"How could that be?"
Was it possible she had overlooked this while interrogating me? I guess if you do not ask the right questions, you will not get the right answers.
I reflected on all we had done together. I had sketched Raven's reports for her, but she had not read those letters. In fact… The originals, from which Raven drew his story, were in my quarters. Goblin and One-Eye lugged them all the way to the Plain only to see them hauled right back. Nobody had plumbed them because they repeated a story already told…
"Sit," I said, rising. "Back in two shakes."
Goblin fish-eyed me when I breezed in. "Be a few minutes more. Something came up." I scrounged up the case in which Raven's documents had traveled. Only the original Bomanz manuscript resided there now. I fluttered back out, ignored by the Taken.
Nice feeling, I'll tell you, being beneath their notice. Too bad it was just because they were fighting for their existence. Like the rest of us.
"Here. This is the original manuscript. I went over it once, lightly, to check Raven's translation. It looked good to me, though he did dramatize and invent dialog. But the facts and characterizations are pure Bomanz."
She read with incredible swiftness. "Get Raven's version."
Out and back, under Goblin's scowl and growl at my departing back: "How long is a few minutes these days. Croaker?"
She went through those swiftly, too. And looked thoughtful when she finished.
"Well?" I asked.
"There may be something here. Actually, something that's not here. Two questions. Who wrote this in the first place? And where is the stone in Oar that the son mentioned?"
"I assume Bomanz did most of the original and his wife finished it."
"Wouldn't he have used first person?"
"Not necessarily. It's possible the literary conventions of the time forbade it. Raven often chided me for interjecting too much of myself into the Annals. He came of a different tradition."
"We'll accept that as a hypothesis. Next question. What became of the wife?"
"She came of a family from Oar. I would expect her to go back."
"When she was known as the wife of the man responsible for loosing me?"
"Was she? Bomanz was an assumed name."
She brushed my objection aside. "Whisper acquired those documents in Lords. As a lot. Nothing connects Bomanz with them except his story. My feeling is that they were accumulated at a later date. But his papers. What were they doing between the time they left here and the time Whisper found them? Have some ancillary items been lost? It's time we consulted Whisper."
We, however, included me out.
Whatever, a fire was ignited. Before long, Taken were roaring off to faraway places. Within two days Benefice delivered the stone mentioned by Bomanz's son. It proved useless. Some Guards appropriated it and used it for a doorstep to their barracks.
I caught occasional hints of a search progressing from Oar south along the route Jasmine had taken after fleeing from the Barrowland, widowed and shamed. Hard to find tracks that old, but the Taken have remarkable skills.
Another search progressed from Lords.
I had the dubious pleasure of hanging around with the Limper while he pointed out all the mistakes we made transliterating UchiTelle and KurreTelle names. Seems not only were spellings not uniform in those days, but neither were alphabets. And some of the folks mentioned were not of UchiTelle or KurreTelle stock, but outsiders who had adapted their names to local usage. Limper busied himself doing things backwards.
One afternoon Silent gave me the high sign. He had been spying over the Limper's shoulder, off and on, with more devotion than I.
He had found a pattern.
Darling has a self-discipline that amazes me. All that time she was over there at Blue Willy and not once did she surrender to her desire to see Raven. You could see the ache in her whenever his name came up, but she held off for a month.
But she came, as inevitably we knew she must, with the Lady's permission. I tried to ignore her visit entirely. And I made Silent, Goblin, and One-Eye stay away too, though with Silent it was a tight thing. Eventually he did agree; it was a private thing, for her alone, and his interests would not be served by sticking his nose in.
If I would not go to her, she would come to me. For a while, while everyone else was busy elsewhere. For a hug, to remind her there were those of us who cared. To have some moral support there while she worked out something in her mind.
She signed, "I cannot deny it now, can I?" And a few minutes later: "I still have the soft place for him. But he will have to earn his way back in." Which was her equivalent of our thinking aloud.
I felt more for Silent at that moment than for Raven. Raven I'd always respected for his toughness and fearlessness, but I'd never really grown to like him. Silent I did like, and did wish well.
I signed, "Do not be brokenhearted if you find he is too old to change."
Wan smile. "My heart was broken a long time ago. No. I have no expectations. This is not a fairy-tale world."
That was all she had to say. I did not take it to heart till it began to illuminate later events.
She came and she went, in sorrow for the death of dreams, and she came no more.
In moments when his needs called him away, we copied everything the Limper left behind and compared it with our own charts. "Oh, hey," I breathed once. "Oh, hey."
Here was a lord from a far western kingdom. A Baron Senjak who had four daughters said to vie with one another in their loveliness. One wore the name Ardath.
"She lied," Goblin whispered.
"Maybe," I admitted. "More likely, she didn't know. In fact, she couldn't have known. Nor could anyone else have, really. I still don't see how Soulcatcher could have been convinced that the Dominator's true name was in here."
"Wishful thinking, maybe," One-Eye guessed.
"No," I said. "You could tell she knew what she had. She just didn't know how to dig it out."
"Just like us."
"Ardath is dead," I said. "That leaves three possibilities. But if push comes to shove, we only get one shot."
"Catalog what else we know."
"Soulcatcher was one sister. Name not yet known. Ardath may have been the Lady's twin. I think she was older than Catcher, though they were children together and not separated by many years. Of the fourth sister we know nothing."
Silent signed, "You have four names, given and family. Consult the genealogies. Find who married whom."
I groaned. The genealogies were over at Blue Willy. Darling had had them loaded onto the cargo whale with everything else.
Time was short. The work daunted me. You do not go into those genealogies with a woman's name and find anything easily. You have to look for a man who married the woman you are seeking and hope the recorder thought enough of her to mention her name.
"How are we going to manage all this?" I wondered. "With me the only one who can decipher these chicken tracks?" Then a brilliant idea. If I say so myself. "Tracker. We'll put Tracker on it. He don't have nothing to do but watch that sapling. He can do that over at Blue Willy and read old books at the same time."
Easier said than done. Tracker was far from his new master. Getting the message into his pea brain was a major undertaking. But once that had been accomplished there was no stopping him.
One night, as I snuggled down under the covers, she appeared in my quarters. "Up, Croaker."
"Huh?"
"We're going flying."
"Uh? No disrespect, but it's the middle of the night. I had a hard day."
"Up."
So you don't argue when the Lady commands.
A freezing rain was falling. Everything was glazed with crystal ice. "Looks like a warm snap," I said.
She was without a sense of humor that night. It took an effort to overlook my remark. She led me to a carpet. It had a crystal dome covering the forward seats. That was a feature recently added to Limper's craft.
The Lady used some small magic to melt the ice off. "Make sure it's sealed tightly," she told me.
"Looks good to me."
We lifted off.
Suddenly I was on my back. The nose of the fish pointed at unseen stars. We climbed at a dreadful rate. I expected momentarily to be so high I could not breathe.
We got that high. And higher. We broke through the clouds. And I understood the significance of the dome.
It kept in breathable air. Meaning the windwhales could no longer climb higher than the Taken. Always chipping away, the Lady and her gang.
But what the hell was this all about?
"There." A sigh of disappointment. A confirmation that a shadow darkened hope. She pointed.
I saw it. I knew it, for I had seen it before, in the days of the long retreat that ended in the battle before the Tower. The Great Comet. Small, but no denying its unique silver scimitar shape. "It can't be. It isn't due for twenty years. Celestial bodies don't change their cycles."
"They don't. That's axiomatic. So maybe the axiom makers are wrong."
She-tilted the carpet down. "Note it in your writings, but don't mention it otherwise. Our peoples are troubled enough."
"Right." That comet has a hold on men's minds.
Back down into the yuck of a Barrowland night. We came in over the Great Barrow itself, only forty feet up. The damned river was close. The ghosts were dancing in the rain.
I sloshed into the barracks in a numb state, checked the calendar.
Twelve days to go.
The old bastard was probably out there laughing it up with his favorite hound, Toadkiller Dog.
Something that lies down in that mind below the mind would not let me be. I tossed and turned, wakened, fell asleep, and finally, in the wee hours, it surfaced. I got up and shuffled through papers.
I found that piece that made the Lady gasp once, ploughed through that interminable guest list till I found a Lord Senjak and his daughters Ardath, Credence, and Sylith. The youngest, one Dorotea, the scribbler noted, could not attend.
"Ha!" I crowed. "The search narrows."
There was no more information, but that was a triumph. Assuming the Lady was indeed a twin and Dorotea was the youngest and Ardath dead, the odds were now fifty-fifty. A woman named Sylith or a woman named Credence. Credence? That is how it translated.
I was so excited I got no more sleep. Even that damned off-schedule comet fled my thoughts.
But excitement perished between the grinding stones of time. Nothing came from those Taken tracing Bomanz's wife and papers. I suggested the Lady go to the source himself. She was not prepared for the risk. Not yet.
Our old and stupid friend Tracker produced another gem four days after I eliminated sister Dorotea. The big goof had been reading genealogies day and night.
Silent came back from Blue Willy wearing such a look I knew something good had happened. He dragged me outside, toward town, into the null. He gave me a slip of damp paper. In Tracker's simple style, it said:
Three sisters were married. Ardath married twice, first a Baron Kaden ofDartstone, who died in battle. Six years later she married Erin NoFather, an unlanded priest of the god Vancer, from a town called Slinger, in the kingdom of Vye. Credence married Barthelme of Jaunt, a renowned sorcerer. It is in my memory that Barthelme of Jaunt became one of the Taken, but my memory is not trustworthy.
No lie.
Dorotea married Raft, Prince-in-Waiting, of Start. Sylith never married.
Tracker then proved that, slow though he might be, an occasional idea did perk through his murk of a mind.
The death rolls reveal that Ardath and her husband, Erin NoFather, an unlanded priest of the god Vancer, from a town called Slinger, in the kingdom of Vye, were slain by bandits while traveling between Lathe and Ova. My untrustworthy memory recalls that this took place just months before the Dominator proclaimed himself.
Sylith drowned in a flood of the River Dream some years earlier, swept away before countless witnesses. But no body was found.
We had an eyewitness. It never occurred to me to think of Tracker that way, though the knowledge had been there for the recognition. Maybe we could figure some way to get at his memories.
Credence perished in the fighting when the Dominator and Lady took Jaunt in the early days of their conquests. There is no record of Dorotea's death.
"Damn," I said. "Old Tracker is worth something after all."
Silent signed, "It sounds confused, but reason should provide something."
More than something. Without drawing charts, connecting all those women, I felt confident enough to say, "We knew Dorotea as Soulcatcher. We know Ardath wasn't the Lady. Odds are, the sister who engineered the ambush that killed her…" There was something missing still. If I just knew which were twins…
In response to my question, Silent signed, "Tracker is looking for birth records." But he was unlikely to score again. Lord Senjak was not KurreTelle.
"One of the purported dead didn't die. I'd put my money on Sylith. Assuming Credence was killed because she recognized a sister who was supposed to be dead when the Dominator and Lady took Jaunt."
"Bomanz mentions a legend about the Lady killing her twin. Is that this ambush? Or something more public?"
"Who knows?" I said. It really did get confusing. For a moment I wondered if it mattered.
The Lady called an assembly. Our original estimate of time available now appeared overly optimistic. She told us, "We appear to have been misled. There is nothing in Catcher's documents to betray my husband's name. How she reached that assumption is beyond us now. If documents are missing, we cannot be sure. Unless news comes from Lords or Oar soon, we can forget that avenue. It's time to consider alternatives."
I scribbled a note, asked Whisper to pass it to the Lady. The Lady read it, then looked at me with narrowed, thoughtful eyes. "Erin NoFather," she read aloud. "An unlanded priest of the god Vancer, from Slinger, in the kingdom of Vye. This, from our amateur historian. What you found is less interesting than the fact that you found it. Croaker. That news is five hundred years old. It was worthless then. Whoever Erin NoFather was before he left Vye, he did an absolute job of eliminating traces. By the time he became interesting enough to have his antecedents investigated, he had obliterated not only Slinger but every person to have lived in that village during his lifetime. In later years he went even farther, wasting all Vye. Which is why the notion that those papers might contain his true name constituted such a surprise."
I felt about half-size, and stupid. I should have known they would have tried to unmask the Dominator before. I had surrendered some small advantage for nothing. So much for the spirit of cooperation.
One of the new Taken-I cannot keep them straight, for they all dress the same-arrived soon afterward. He or she gave the Lady a small carved chest. The Lady smiled when she opened it. "There were no papers that survived. But there were these." She dumped some odd bracelets. "Tomorrow we go after Bomanz."
Everyone else knew. I had to ask. "What are they?"
"The amulets made for the Eternal Guard in the time of the White Rose. So they could enter the Barrowland without hazard."
The resulting excitement surpassed my understanding.
"The wife must have carried them away. Though how she laid hands on them is a mystery. Break this up now. I need time to think." She shooed us like a farm wife shooes chickens.
I returned to my room. The Limper floated in behind me. He said nary a word, but ducked into the documents again. Puzzled, I looked over his shoulder. He had lists of all the names we had unearthed, written in the alphabets of the languages whence they sprang. He seemed to be playing with both substitution codes and numerology. Baffled, I went to my bed, turned my back on him, faked sleep.
As long as he was there, I knew, sleep would evade me.
It resumed snowing that night. Real snow, half a foot an hour and no letup. The racket raised by the Guards as they strove to clear it from doorways and the carpets wakened me.
I had slept despite the Limper.
An instant of terror. I sat bolt upright. He remained at his task.
The barracks was overly warm, holding the heat because it was all but buried.
There was a bustle despite the weather. Taken had arrived while I slept. Guards not only dug but hurried about other tasks.
One-Eye joined me for a rude breakfast. I said, "So she's going ahead. Despite the weather."
"It won't get any better, Croaker. That guy out there knows what's going on." He looked grim.
"What's the matter?"
"I can count. Croaker. What do you expect from a guy with a week to live?"
My stomach tightened. Yes. I had been able to avoid thoughts of the sort so far, but… "We've been in tight places before. Stair of Tear. Juniper. Beryl. We made it."
"I keep telling myself."
"How's Darling?"
"Worried. What do you think? She's a bug between hammer and anvil."
"The Lady has forgotten her."
He snorted. "Don't let your special dispensation erode your common sense, Croaker."
"Sound advice," I admitted. "But unnecessary. A hawk couldn't watch her more closely."
"You going out?"
"I wouldn't miss it. Know where I can get some snow-shoes?"
He grinned. For an instant the devil of years past peeped forth. "Some guys I know-mentioning no names, you know how it is-swiped a half dozen pairs from the Guard Armory last night. Duty man fell asleep on post."
I grinned and winked. So. I was not seeing enough of them to keep up, but they were not just sitting around and waiting.
"Couple pairs went off to Darling, just in case. Got four pair left. And just a smidgen of a plan."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. You'll see. Brilliant, if I do say so myself."
"Where are the shoes? When are you going?"
"Meet us in the smokehouse after the Taken get off the ground."
Several guards came in to eat, looking exhausted, grumbling. One-Eye departed, leaving me in deep thought. What were they plotting?
The most carefully laid plans… Like that.
The Lady marched into the mess hall. "Get your gloves and coats, Croaker. It's time."
I gaped.
"Are you coming?"
"But…" I flailed around for an excuse. "If we go, somebody will have to do without a carpet."
She gave me an odd look. "Limper is staying here. Come. Get your clothing."
I did so, in a daze, passing Goblin as we went outside. I gave him a baffled little headshake.
A moment before we lifted off the Lady reached back, offering me something. "What's this?"
"Better wear it. Unless you want to go in without an amulet."
"Oh."
It did not look like much. Some cheap jaspar and jade on brittle leather. Yet when I secured the buckle around my wrist, I felt the power in it.
We passed over the rooftops very low. They were the only visual guides available. Out on the cleared land there was nothing. But being the Lady, she had other resources.
We took a turn around the bounds of the Barrowland. On the river side we descended till the water lay but a yard beneath us. "Lot of ice," I said.
She did not reply. She was studying the shoreline, now within the Barrowland itself. A sodden section of bank collapsed, revealing a dozen skeletons. I grimaced. In moments they were covered with snow or swept away. "Just about on schedule, I'd guess," I said. "Uhm." She moved on around the perimeter. A couple times I glimpsed other carpets circling. Something below caught my eye. "Down there!" "What?"
"Thought I saw tracks." "Maybe. Toadkiller Dog is nearby." Oh, my.
"Time," she said, and turned toward the Great Barrow. We put down at the mound's base. She piled out. I joined her. Other carpets descended. Soon there were four Taken, the Lady, and one scared old physician standing just yards from the despair of the world.
One of the Taken brought shovels. Snow began to fly. We took turns, nobody exempt. It was a bitch of a job, and became more so when we reached the buried scrub growth. It got worse when we reached frozen earth. We had to go slow. The Lady said Bomanz was barely covered.
It went on, it seemed, forever. Dig and dig and dig. We uncovered a withered humanoid thing the Lady assured us was Bomanz.
My shovel clicked against something my last turn. I bent to examine it, thinking it a rock. I brushed frosty earth away…
And dived out of that hole, whirled, pointed. The Lady went down. Laughter drifted upward. "Croaker found the dragon. His jaw, anyway."
I kept on retreating, toward our carpet…
Something huge vaulted it, trailing a basso snarl. I flung myself to one side, into snow that swallowed me. There were cries, growls… When I emerged it was over. I glimpsed Toadkiller Dog clearing the carpet in retreat, more than a little scarred.
The Lady and Taken had been ready for him.
"Why didn't somebody warn me?" I whined.
"He could have read you. I'm just sorry we didn't cripple him."
Two Taken, probably of the male vice, lifted Bomanz. He was stiff as a statue, yet there was that about him which even I could sense. A spark, or something. No one could have mistaken him for dead.
Into a carpet he went.
The anger in the mound had been a trickle, barely sensed, like the buzzing of a fly across a room. It smacked us now, one hard hammer stroke reeking madness. Not an iota of fear informed it. That thing had an absolute confidence in its ultimate victory. We were but delays and irritants.
The carpet carrying Bomanz departed. Then another. I settled into my place and willed the Lady to hurry me away.
A spate of snarling and yelling broke out toward town. Brilliant light slashed through the snowfall. "I knew it," I growled, one fear realized. Toadkiller Dog had found One-Eye and Goblin.
Another carpet lifted. The Lady boarded ours, closed the dome. "Fools," she said. "What were they doing?"
I said nothing.
She did not see. Her attention was on the carpet, which was not behaving as it should. Something seemed to pull it toward the Great Barrow. But I saw. Tracker's ugly face passed at eye level. He carried the son of the tree.
Then Toadkiller Dog reappeared, stalking Tracker. Half the monster's face was gone. He ran on three legs. But he was plenty enough to take Tracker apart.
The Lady saw Toadkiller Dog. She spun the carpet. Systematically she loosed its eight thirty foot shafts. She did not miss. And yet…
Dragging the missiles, engulfed in flame, Toadkiller Dog crawled into the Great Tragic River. He went under and did not come up.
"That'll keep him out of the way for a while."
Not ten yards away, oblivious, Tracker was clearing the peak of the Great Barrow so he could plant his sapling. "Idiots," the Lady murmured. "I'm surrounded by idiots. Even the Tree is a dolt."
She would not explain. Neither did she interfere.
I sought traces of One-Eye and Goblin as we flew homeward. I saw nothing. They were not in the compound. Of course. There had not yet been time for them to snowshoe back. But when they had not appeared an hour later, I began having trouble concentrating on the reanimation of Bomanz.
That started with repeated hot baths, both to warm his flesh and to cleanse him. I did not get to see the preliminaries. The Lady kept me with her. She did not look in till the Taken were ready for the final quickening. And that was unimpressive. The Lady made a few gestures around Bomanz-who looked pretty moth-eaten-and said a few words in a language I did not understand.
Why do sorcerers always use languages nobody understands? Even Goblin and One-Eye do it. Each has confided that he cannot follow the tongue the other uses. Maybe they make it up?
Her words worked. That old wreck came to life grittily determined to push forward against a savage wind. He marched three steps before registering his altered circumstances.
He froze. He turned slowly, face collapsing into despair. His gaze locked on the Lady. Maybe two minutes passed. Then he looked the rest of us over and considered his surroundings.
"You explain, Croaker."
"Does he speak…"
"Forsberger hasn't changed."
I faced Bomanz, a legend come to life. "I am Croaker. A military physician by profession. You are Bomanz…"
"His name is Seth Chalk, Croaker. Let us establish that immediately."
"You are Bomanz, whose true name may be Seth Chalk, a sorcerer of Oar. Nearly a century has passed since you attempted to contact the Lady."
"Give him the whole story." The Lady used a Jewel Cities dialect likely to be outside Bomanz's capacity.
I talked till I was hoarse. The rise of the Lady's empire. The threat defeated at the battle at Charm. The threat defeated at Juniper. The present threat. He said not a word in all that time. Not once did I see in him the fat, almost obsequious shopkeeper of the story.
His first words were: "So. I did not entirely fail." He faced the Lady. "And you remain tainted by the light, Not-Ardath." He faced me again. "You will take me to the White Rose. As soon as I have eaten."
Nary a protest from the Lady.
He ate like a fat little shopkeeper.
The Lady herself helped me back into my wet winter coat. "Don't dawdle," she cautioned.
Hardly had we departed when Bomanz seemed to diminish. He said, "I'm too old. Don't let that back there fool you. An act. Going to play with the big boys, you have to act. What'll I do? A hundred years. Less than a week to redeem myself. How will I get a handle on things that quickly? The only principal I know is the Lady."
"Why did you think she was Ardath? Why not one of the other sisters?"
"There was more than one?"
"Four." I named them. "From your papers I've established that Soulcatcher was the one named Dorotea…"
"My papers?"
"So called. Because the story of you wakening the Lady was prominent among them. It's always been assumed, till a few days ago, that you assembled them and your wife carried them away when she thought you had died."
"Bears investigation. I collected nothing. I risked nothing but a map of the Barrowland."
"I know the map well."
"I must see those papers. But first, your White Rose. Meanwhile, tell me about the Lady."
I had trouble staying with him. He zigged and zagged, spraying ideas. "What about her?"
"There is a detectable tension between you. Of enemies who are friends, perhaps. Lovers who are enemies? Opponents who know one another well and respect one another. If you respect her, it's with reason. It's impossible to respect total evil. It cannot respect itself."
Wow. He was right. I did respect her. So I talked a bit. And my theme was, when I noticed it, that she did remain tainted by the light. "She tried hard to be a villain. But when faced by real darkness-the thing under the mound-her weakness started to show."
"It is only slightly less difficult for us to extinguish the light within us than it is for us to conquer the darkness. A Dominator occurs once in a hundred generations. The others, like the Taken, are but imitations."
"Can you stand against the Lady?"
"Hardly. I suspect my fate is to become one of the Taken when she finds time." He'd landed on his feet, this old boy. He halted. "Lords! She's strong!"
"Who?"
"Your Darling. An incredible absorption. I feel helpless as a child."
We stamped into Blue Willy, entering through a second-floor window. The snow was banked that high.
One-Eye, Goblin, and Silent were down in the common room with Darling. The first two looked a bit shopworn. "So," I said. "You guys made it. I thought Toadkiller Dog had you for lunch."
"No problem at all," One-Eye said. "We…"
"What do you mean, we?" Goblin demanded. "You were worthless as tits on a boar hog. Silent…"
"Shut up. This is Bomanz. He wants to meet Darling."
"The Bomanz?" Goblin squeaked.
"The very one."
Their meeting was about a three-question interview. Darling took charge immediately. When he realized Darling was leading him, Bomanz broke it off. He told me, "Next step. I read my alleged autobiography."
"It's not yours?"
"Unlikely. Unless my memory serves me worse than I suppose."
We returned to the compound in silence. He seemed reflective. Darling has that impact on those who meet her for the first time. She is just Darling to those of us who have known her all along.
Bomanz worked his way through the original manuscript, occasionally asking about specific passages. He was unfamiliar with the UchiTelle dialect.
"You had nothing to do with that, then?"
"No. But my wife was the primary source. Question. Was the girl Snoopy traced?"
"No."
"She is the one to follow up. She is the only survivor of significance."
"I'll tell the Lady. But there isn't time for it. In a few days Hell is going to break loose out there." I wondered if Tracker had gotten the sapling planted. Much good it would do when the Great Tragic reached the mound. Brave move but dumb, Tracker.
The effects of his effort were apparent soon, though. When I got around to relaying Bomanz's suggestion about Snoopy, the Lady asked, "Have you noted the weather?"
"No."
"It's getting better. The sapling stilled my husband's ability to shape it. Too late, of course. It will be months before the river falls."
She was depressed. She merely nodded when I told her what Bomanz had to say.
"Is it that bad? Are we defeated before we enter the lists?"
"No. But the price of victory escalates. I do not want to pay that price. I don't know if I can."
I stood there perplexed, awaiting an expansion upon the subject. None was forthcoming.
After a time she said, "Sit, Croaker." I sat in the chair she indicated, next to a roaring fire diligently tended by the soldier Case. After a time she sent Case away. But still nothing was forthcoming.
"Time tightens the noose," she murmured at one point, and at another, "I'm afraid to unravel the knot."
Days passed. No one of any especial allegiance gained any apparent ground. The Lady canceled all investigations. She and the Taken conferred often. I was excluded. So was Bomanz. The Limper participated only when ordered out of my quarters.
I gave up trying to sleep there. I moved in with Goblin and One-Eye. Which shows how much the Taken distressed me. Sharing a room with those two is like living amidst an ongoing riot.
Raven, as ever, changed not the least and remained mostly forgotten by all but his loyal Case. Silent did look in occasionally, on Darling's behalf, but without enthusiasm.
Only then did I realize that Silent felt more toward Darling than loyalty and protectiveness, and he was without means of expressing those feelings. Silence was enforced upon him by more than a vow.
I could not learn which sisters were twins. As I anticipated, Tracker found nothing in the genealogies. A miracle he found what he did, the way sorcerers cover their back trails.
Goblin and One-Eye tried hypnotizing him, hoping to plumb his ancient memories. It was like stalking ghosts in a heavy fog.
The Taken moved to stall the Great Tragic. Ice collected along the western bank, turning the force of the current. But they overtinkered and a gorge developed. It threatened to raise the river level. A two-day effort won us maybe ten hours.
Occasionally large tracks appeared around the Barrowland, soon vanished beneath drifting snow. Though the skies cleared, the air grew colder. The snow neither melted nor crusted. The Taken engineered that. A wind from the east stirred the snow continuously.
Case stopped by to tell me, "The Lady wants you, sir. Right away."
I broke off playing three-handed Tonk with Goblin and One-Eye. So far had things slowed-except the flow of time. There was nothing more we could do.
"Sir," said Case as we stepped out of hearing of the others, "be careful." "Uhm?"
"She's in a dark mood."
"Thanks." I dallied. My own mood was dark enough. It did not need to feed on hers.
Her quarters had been refurnished. Carpets had been brought in. Hangings covered the walls. A settee of sorts stood before the fireplace, where a fire burned with a comforting crackle. The atmosphere seemed calculated. Home as we dream it to be rather than as it is.
She was seated on the couch. "Come sit with me," she said, without glancing back to see who had come in. I started to take one of the chairs. "No. Here, by me." So I settled on the couch. "What is it?"
Her eyes were fixed on something far away. Her face said she was in pain. "I have decided."
"Yes?" I waited nervously, not sure what she meant, less sure I belonged there.
"The choices have narrowed down. I can surrender and become another of the Taken."
That was a Jess dire penalty than I had expected. "Or?" "Or I can fight. A battle that can't be won. Or won only in its losing."
"If you can't win, why fight?" I would not have asked that of one of the Company. With my own I would have known the answer.
Hers was not ours. "Because the outcome can be shaped. I can't win. But I can decide who does."
"Or at least make sure it isn't him?"
A slow nod.
Her bleak mood began to make sense. I have seen it on the battlefield, with men about to undertake a task likely to be fatal but which must be hazarded so others will not perish.
To cover my reaction, I slipped off the couch and added three small logs to the fire. But for our moods it would have been nice there in the crispy heat, watching the dancing flames.
We did that for a while. I sensed that I was not expected to talk.
"It begins at sunup," she said at last.
"What?"
"The final conflict. Laugh at me. Croaker. I'm going to try to kill a shadow. With no hope of surviving myself."
Laugh? Never. Admire. Respect. My enemy still, in the end unable to extinguish that last spark of light and so die in yet another way.
All this while she sat there primly, hands folded in her lap. She stared into the fire as if certain that eventually it would reveal the answer to some mystery. She began to shiver.
This woman for whom death held such devouring terror had chosen death over surrender.
What did that do for my confidence? Nothing good. Nothing good at all. I might have felt better had I seen the picture she did. But she did not talk about it.
In a very, very soft, tentative voice, she asked, "Croaker? Will you hold me?"
What? I didn't say it, but I sure as hell thought it.
I didn't say anything. Clumsily, uncertainly, I did as she asked.
She began crying on my shoulder, softly, quietly, shaking like a captive baby rabbit.
It was a long time before she said anything. I did not presume.
"No one has done this since I was a baby. My nurse…"
Another long silence.
"I've never had a friend."
Another long gap.
"I'm scared, Croaker. And alone."
"No. We'll all be with you."
"Not for the same reasons." She fell silent for good then. I held her a long time. The fire burned down and its light faded from the room. Outside, the wind began to howl.
When I finally thought she had fallen asleep, and started to disengage myself, she clung more tightly, so I stilled and continued to hold her, though half the muscles in my body ached.
Eventually she peeled herself away, rose, built up the fire. I sat. She stood behind me a while, staring at the flames. Then she rested a hand on my shoulder a moment. In a faraway voice she said, "Good night."
She went into another room. I sat for ten or fifteen minutes before putting on a last log and shuffling back into the real world.
I must have worn an odd look. Neither Goblin nor One-Eye aggravated me. I rolled into my bedroll, back to them, but did not fall asleep for a long time.
I wakened startled. The null! I had been out of it so much it disturbed me by its presence. I rolled out hurriedly, discovered I was alone in the room. Not only there, but in the barracks, practically. There were a few Guards in the mess hall.
The sun was not yet up.
The wind still howled around the building. There was a marked chill in the air, though the fires were burning high. I shoveled boiled oats in and wondered what I was missing.
The Lady entered as I finished. "There you are. I thought I'd have to leave without you."
Whatever her problems the night before, she was brisk and confident and ready for business now.
The null faded while I got my coat. I dropped by my own room momentarily. The Limper was there still. I left frowning thoughtfully.
Into the carpet. Full crew today. Every carpet was fully crewed and armed. But I was more interested in the absence of snow between town and the Barrowland., That howling wind had blown it away. We went up as it became light enough to see. The Lady took the carpet up till the Barrowland resembled a map taking shape as shadows vaporized. She set us to cruising in a tight circle. The wind, I noted, had faded.
The Great Barrow looked ready to collapse into the river. "One hundred hours," she said, as though divining my thoughts. So we were reduced to counting hours. I looked around the horizon. There. "The comet." "They can't see it from the ground. But tonight… it'll have to cloud up."
Below, tiny figures scurried around one quarter of the cleared area. The Lady unrolled a map similar to Bpmanz's. "Raven," I said. "Today. If we're lucky." "What're they doing down there?" "Surveying."
More than that was happening. The Guards were out in full battle regalia, forming an arc around the Barrowland. Light siege machines were being assembled. But some men were, indeed, surveying and setting up rows of lances flying colored pennons. I did not ask why. She would not explain.
A dozen windwhales hovered to the east, beyond the river. I had thought them long departed. The sky there burned with dawn's conflagration. "First test," the Lady said. "A feeble monster." She frowned in concentration. Our carpet began to glow.
A white horse and white rider came from the town. Darling. Accompanied by Silent and the Lieutenant. Darling rode into an aisle marked by pennons. She halted beside the last.
The earth erupted. Something that might have been first cousin to Toadkiller Dog, and even more closely related to an octopus, burst into the light. It raced over the Barrowland, toward the river, away from the null.
Darling galloped toward town.
Wizards' fury rained from the carpets. The monster was a cinder in seconds. "One," the Lady said. Below, men began another aisle of pennons.
And so it went, slowly and deliberately, all the day long. Most of the Dominator's creatures broke for the river. The few that charged the other way encountered a barricade of missile fire before succumbing to the Taken.
"Is there time to eliminate them all?" I asked as the sun was setting. I had been itchy for hours, sitting in one place.
"More than enough. But it won't stay this easy."
I probed, but she would not expand upon what she had said.
It looked slick to me. Just pick them off and keep picking them off, and go for the big guy when they were all gone. Tough he might be, but what could he do enveloped in the null?
When I staggered into the barracks, to my room, I found the Limper still at work. The Taken need less rest than we mortals, but he had to be on the edge of collapse. What the hell was he doing?
Then there was Bomanz. He had not appeared today. What was he trying to slip up his sleeve?
I was eating a supper very much like breakfast when Silent materialized. He settled opposite me, clutching a bowl of mush as if it were an alms bowl. He looked pale.
"How was it for Darling?" I asked.
He signed, "She almost enjoyed it. She took chances she should not have. One of those things almost got to her. Otto was hurt fending it off."
"He need me?"
"One-Eye managed."
"What're you doing here?"
"It is the night to bring Raven out."
"Oh." Again I had forgotten Raven. How could I number myself among his friends when I seemed so indifferent to his fate?
Silent followed me to where I was staying with One-Eye and Goblin. Those two joined us shortly. They were subdued. They had been assigned major roles in the recovery of our old friend.
I worried more about Silent. The shadow had passed over him. He was fighting it. Would he be strong enough to win?
Part of him did not want Raven rescued.
Part of me did not, either.
A very tired Lady came to ask, "Will you participate in this?"
I shook my head. "I'd just get in the way. Let me know when it's done."
She gave me a hard look, then shrugged and went away.
Very late a feeble One-Eye wakened me. I bolted up. "Well?"
"We managed. I don't know how well. But he's back."
"How was it?"
"Rough." He crawled into his bedroll. Goblin was in his already, snoring. Silent had come with them. He was against the wall, wrapped in a borrowed blanket, cutting logs. By the time I wakened fully One-Eye was sawing with the rest.
In Raven's room there was nothing to see but Raven snoring and Case looking worried. The crowd had cleared out, leaving a ripe stench behind.
"He seem all right?" I asked.
Case shrugged. "I'm no doctor."
"I am. Let me look him over."
Pulse strong enough. Breathing a little fast for a sleeper, but not disturbingly so. Pupils dilated. Muscles tense. Sweaty.-"Don't look like much to worry about. Keep feeding him broth. And get hold of me as soon as he's talking. Don't let him get up. His muscles will be clay. He might hurt himself."
Case nodded and nodded.
I returned to my bedroll, lay there a long time alternately wondering about Raven and about the Limper. A lamp still burned in my former quarters. The last of the old Taken still pursued his monomaniacal quest.
Raven became the greater worry. He was going to demand an accounting of our care for Darling. And I was in a mood to challenge his right.
Dawn comes early when you wish it would not. The hours flash when you want them to drag. The following day was another of executions. The only thing unusual was that the Limper came out to watch. He seemed satisfied we were doing things right. He returned to my quarters-where he sacked out in my bed.
My evening check on Raven showed little change. Case reported that he had come near wakening several times and was mumbling in his sleep.
"Keep pouring soup down him. And don't be afraid to yell if you need me."
I could not sleep. I tried roaming the barracks, but near silence reigned. A few sleepless Guards haunted the mess hall. They fell silent at my arrival. I thought about going over to Blue Willy. But I would find no better reception there. I was on everybody's list.
It could do nothing but get worse.
I knew what the Lady meant about lonely.
I wished I had the nerve to visit her now that I needed a hug.
I returned to my bedroll.
I did fall asleep this time; they had to threaten mayhem to get me up.
We polished off the last of the Dominator's pets before noon. The Lady ordered a holiday for the remainder of the day. Come next morning we were to rehearse for the big show. She guessed we had about forty-eight hours before the river opened the tomb. Time to rest, time to practice, and ample time to get in the first whack.
That afternoon Limper went out and flew around a while. He was in high spirits. I seized the opportunity to visit my quarters and poke around, but all I could find were a few black wood shavings and a hint of silver dust, and barely enough of either to leave traces. He had cleaned up hastily. I did not touch. No telling what curiosities might occur if I did. Otherwise, I learned nothing.
The practice for the Event was tense. Everyone turned out, including Limper and Bomanz, who had kept so low most everyone had forgotten him. The wind whales ranged above the river. Their manias soared and swooped. Darling charged the Great Barrow down a prepared aisle, stopping just short of far enough. The Taken and Guards stood to their respective weapons.
It looked good. Looked like it would work. So why was I convinced we were in for big trouble?
The moment our carpet touched down Case was beside it. "I need your help," he told me, ignoring the Lady. "He won't listen to me. He keeps trying to get up. He fell on his face already twice." I glanced at the Lady. She gave me a go-ahead nod. Raven was seated on the edge of his bed when I arrived. "I hear you're being a pain in the ass. What's the point of pulling your butt out of the Barrowland if you're going to commit suicide?"
His gaze rose slowly. He did not appear to recognize me. Oh, damn, I thought. His mind is gone. "He talked any, Case?"
"Some. He don't always make sense. He don't realize how long it's been, I think."
"Maybe we should restrain him."
"No."
Startled, we looked at Raven. He knew me now. "No restraints, Croaker. I'll behave." He flopped onto his back, smiling. "How long, Case?"
"Tell him the story," I said. "I'm going to go whip up some medicine."
I just wanted away from Raven. He looked worse with his soul restored. Cadaverous. Too much a reminder of my mortality. And that was one thing I did not need on my mind more than it was.
I whipped up a couple potions. One would settle Raven's shakes. The other would knock him out if he gave Case too much trouble.
Raven gave me a dark look when I returned. I do not know how far Case had gotten. "Stay off your high horse," I told him. "You got no idea what's happened since Juniper. In fact, not a whole lot since the Battle at Charm. You being the brave and rugged loner hasn't helped. Drink this. It's for the shakes." I gave Case the other mixture with whispered instructions.
In a voice little above a whisper, Raven asked, "Is it true? Darling and the Lady are going after the Dominator tomorrow? Together?"
"Yes. Do-or-die time. For everybody."
"I want to…"
"You'll stay put. You, too, Case. We don't want Darling distracted."
I had managed to abolish worries about the tangled ramifications inherent in tomorrow's confrontations. Now they rushed in on me again. The Dominator would not be the end of it. Unless we lost. If he fell, the war with the Lady would resume instantly.
I wanted to see Darling badly, wanted in on her plans. I dared not go. The Lady was keeping me on the leash. She might interrogate me any time.
Lonely work. Lonely work.
Case went on tale-telling. Then Goblin and One-Eye dropped in to tell stories from their perspectives. The Lady even looked in. She beckoned me.
"Yes?" I asked.
"Come."
I followed her to her quarters.
Outside, night had fallen. In about eighteen hours the Great Barrow would open of its own accord. Sooner if we followed plan. "Sit."
I sat. I said, "I'm getting fixated on it. Butterflies the size of horses. Can't think about anything else."
"I know. I considered you as a distraction, but I cared too much." Well, that distracted me. "Perhaps one of your potions?" I shook my head. "There is no specific for fear in my arsenal. I've heard of wizards…"
"Those antidotes cost too dearly. We'll need our wits about us. It won't go like it did in rehearsal."
I raised an eyebrow. She did not expand. I suppose she expected a lot of improvisational behavior from her allies.
The mess sergeant appeared. His crew rolled in a grand meal they set out on a table brought in special. A last feast for the condemned? After the crowd dispersed, the Lady said, "I ordered the best for everyone. Your friends in town included. Breakfast likewise." She seemed calm enough. But she was more accustomed to high-risk confrontations…
I snorted at myself. I recalled being asked for a hug. She was as scared as anybody.
She saw but did not ask-tip enough that she was focused inward.
The meal was a miracle considering what the cooks had to work with. But it was nothing grand. We exchanged no words during its course. I finished first, rested my elbows on the table, retreated into thought. She followed suit. She had eaten very little. After a few minutes she went to her bedroom. She returned with three black arrows. Each had silver inlays in Kurre Telle script. I had seen their like before. Soulcatcher gave Raven one the time we ambushed Limper and Whisper. She said, "Use the bow I gave you. And stay close." The arrows appeared identical. "Who?" "My husband. They can't kill him. They lack his true name. But they'll slow him down."
"You don't think the rest of the plan will work?" "Anything is possible. But all eventualities should be considered." Her eyes met mine. There was something there… We looked away. She said, "You'd better go. Sleep well. I want you alert tomorrow."
I laughed. "How?"
"It's been arranged. For all but the duty section."
"Oh." Sorcery. One of the Taken would put everyone to sleep. I rose. I dithered for a few seconds, putting logs on the fire. I thanked her for the meal. Finally I managed to say what was on my mind. "I want to wish you luck. But I can't put my whole heart into it."
Her smile was wan. "I know." She followed me to the door.
Before I went out I yielded to the final impulse, turned- found her right there, hoping. I hugged her for half a minute.
Damn her for being human. But I needed that, too.
We were permitted to sleep in, then given an hour to breakfast, make peace with our gods, or whatever we had to do before entering battle. The Great Barrow was supposed to hold till noon. There was no rush.
I wondered what the thing in the earth was doing.
Battle muster came about eight. There were no absences. The Limper drifted around on his little carpet, his path seeming to intersect that of Whisper more often than was necessary. They had their heads together about something. Bomanz skulked around the edges of things, trying to remain invisible. I did not blame him. In his shoes I might have made a run for Oar… In his shoes? Were mine more comfortable?
The man was a victim of his sense of honor. He believed he had a debt to repay.
A drumbeat announced time to take positions. I followed the Lady, noting that the remaining civilians were headed down the road to Oar with what possessions they could carry. It was going to be a crazy road. The troops the Lady had summoned were reported our side of Oar, coming in their thousands. They would arrive too late. Nobody thought to tell them to hold up.
Attentions had narrowed. The outside world no longer existed. I watched the civilians and for a moment wondered what difficulties faced us if we had to flee. But my concern did not persist. I could not worry past the Dominator.
Windwhales took station over the river. Mantas searched for updrafts. Taken carpets rose. But today my feet remained on the ground. The Lady intended meeting her husband toe to toe.
Thanks a bunch, friend. There was Croaker in her shadow with his puny bow and arrows.
Guards all in position, entrenched, behind low palisades, ditches, and artillery. Pennons all in place, to guide Darling's carefully surveyed ride. Tension mounting. What more was there to do?
"Stay behind me," the Lady reminded. "Keep your arrows ready."
"Yeah. Good luck. If we win, I'll buy you dinner at the Gardens in Opal." I don't know what possessed me to say that. Frenzied attempt at self-distraction? It was a chilly morning, but I was sweating.
She seemed startled. Then she smiled. "If we win, I'll hold you to that." The smile was feeble. She had no cause to believe she would survive another hour.
She started walking toward the Great Barrow. Faithful pup, I dogged her.
The last spark of light would not die. She would not save herself through surrender.
Bomanz gave us a head start, then followed. Likewise, the Limper.
Neither's action was in the master plan.
The Lady did not react. Perforce, I let it go, too.
Taken carpets began to spiral down. The windwhales seemed a little bouncy, the manias a little frenetic in their search for favorable air.
Edge of the Barrowland. My amulet did not tingle. All the old fetishes outside the Barrowland's heart had been removed. The dead now lay in peace.
Moist earth sucked at my boots. I had trouble maintaining my balance, keeping an arrow across my bow. I had one black shaft set to string, the other two gripped in the hand that held the bow.
The Lady halted a few feet from the pit whence we had dragged Bomanz. She became oblivious to the world, almost as if she were communing with the thing underground. I glanced back. Bomanz had halted a little to the north, about fifty feet from me. He had his hands in his pockets and wore a look that dared me to protest his presence. The Limper had set down about where the moat was when a moat surrounded the Barrowland. He did not want to fall when the null swept over him.
I glanced at the sun. About nine. Three hours margin if we wanted to use it.
My heart was setting records for carrying on. My hands shook so much it seemed the bones ought to rattle. I doubted I could put an arrow into an elephant from five feet.
How come I got lucky and got picked to be her buttboy?
I reviewed my life. What had I done to deserve this? So many choices I might have made differently… "What?"
"Ready?" she asked.
"Never." I pasted on a sickly grin.
She tried to smile back, but she was more scared than I was. She knew what she faced. She believed she had only moments to live.
She had guts, that woman, going on when there was nothing she could win but, perhaps, some small redemption in the eyes of the world.
Names flashed through my mind. Sylith. Credence. Which? In a moment a choice might be critical.
I am not a religious man. But I sped a silent prayer to the gods of my youth asking that it not be me required to complete the ritual of her naming.
She faced the town and raised an arm. Trumpets winded. As though anyone were not paying attention.
Her arm dropped.
Hoofbeats. Darling in her white, with Elmo, Silent, and the Lieutenant all three dogging her, galloped the lane defined by the pennons. The null was to come sudden, then freeze. The Dominator was to be allowed to break out, but not with his power intact.
I felt the null. It hit me hard, so unaccustomed to it was I. The Lady staggered too. A mewl of fear fled her lips. She did not want to be disarmed. Not now. But it was the only way.
The ground shuddered once, gently, then geysered upward. I retreated a step. Shivering, I watched the fountain of muck disperse… and was amazed to see not a man but the dragon…
The damned dragon! I hadn't thought about that.
It reared fifty feet high, flames boiling around its head. It roared. What now? In the null the Lady could not shield us.
The Dominator fled my mind entirely.
I drew a shaft to its head, aimed for the beast's open mouth.
A shout restrained me. I turned. Bomanz pranced and shrieked, calling insults in KurreTelle. The dragon eyeballed him. And recalled that they had unfinished business.
It struck like a snake. Flames surged ahead of it.
Fire masked Bomanz but did not harm him. He had taken his stand beyond the null.
The Lady moved a few steps to her right, to look past the dragon, whose forelegs were now free and scrabbling to drag the rest of its immense body loose. I could see nothing of our quarry. But the flying Taken were into their attack runs. Heavy fire-carrying spears were in flight already. They roared down, burst.
A thunderous voice announced, "Headed for the river." The Lady hurried forward. Darling resumed moving, carrying the null toward the water. Ghosts cursed and pranced around me. I was too distracted to respond.
Mantas dropped in swift, dark pairs, dancing between bolts of lightning loosed by windwhales. The air went crackly, smelled dry and strange.
Suddenly Tracker was with us, muttering about having to save the tree.
I heard a rising bray of horns. I dodged a flailing dragon leg, ducked a hammering wing, looked back.
Scores of ill-clad human skeletons poured from the forest in the wake of a limping Toadkiller Dog. "I knew we hadn't seen the last of that bastard." I tried to get the Lady's attention. "The forest tribes. They're attacking the Guard." The Dominator had had at least one ace in the hole.
The Lady paid me no heed.
What the tribesmen and Guard did were of no consequence to us at the moment. We had prey on the run and dared concern ourselves with nothing else.
"In the water!" that voice thundered from above. Darling moved some more. The Lady and I scrambled over earth still rippling with the dragon's efforts to break free. It ignored us. Bomanz had its entire attention.
A windwhale dropped. Its tentacles probed the river. It caught something, dropped ballast water.
A human figure writhed in the whale's grasp, screaming. My spirits rose. We had done it…
The whale lifted too high. For a moment it raised the Dominator out of the null.
Deadly mistake.
Thunder. Lightning. Terror on hot hooves. Half the town and a swath to the edge of the null shattered, scattered, burned, and blackened.
The whale exploded.
The Dominator fell. As he plunged toward both water and null, he bellowed, "Sylith! I name your name!"
I loosed an arrow.
Deadeye. One of the best wing shots I have ever made. It got him in the side. He shrieked and clawed at the shaft. Then he hit water. Manta lightning made the river boil. Another whale dropped and shoved tentacles beneath the surface. For a long moment I was terrified the Dominator would stay under and escape.
But up he came, again in a monster's grasp. This whale, too, went too high. And paid the price, though the Dominator's magic was much enfeebled, probably by my arrow. He got off one wild spell which went astray and started fires in the Guards compound. The Guards and tribesmen were closely engaged nearby. The spell slew scores from both forces.
I did not get another arrow off. I was frozen. I had been assured that the naming of a name, once suitable rituals had been observed, could not be stilled by the null. But the Lady had not faltered. She stood a step short of the edge of land, staring at the thing that had been her husband. The naming of the name Sylith had not disturbed her at all.
Not Sylith! Twice the Dominator had named her wrong… Only one left to try. But my grin was hollow. I would have named her Sylith.
A third windwhale caught the Dominator. This one made no mistake. It carried him to shore, toward Darling and her escort. He struggled furiously. Gods! The vitality of that man!
Behind us, men screamed. Arms clashed. The Guards had not been as surprised as I. They were holding their ground. The airborne Taken hastened to support them, flinging a storm of deadly sorceries. Toadkiller Dog was the center of their attention.
Elmo, the Lieutenant, and Silent jumped the Dominator the moment the windwhale dropped him. That was like jumping a tiger. He threw Elmo thirty feet. I heard the crack as he broke the Lieutenant's spine. Silent danced away. I put another arrow into him. He staggered, but did not go down. Dazed, he started toward the Lady and me.
Tracker met him halfway. 'He set the son of the tree aside, grabbed hold of his man, started a wrestling match of epic scale. He and the Dominator shrieked like souls in torment.
I wanted to rush down and tend to Elmo and the Lieutenant, but the Lady gestured for me to stay. Her gaze roved everywhere. She expected something more.
A great shriek shook the earth. A ball of oily fire rolled skyward. The dragon flopped like an injured worm, screaming. Bomanz had disappeared.
To be seen was the Limper. Somehow he had dragged himself to within a dozen feet of me without my noticing. My fear was so great I nearly voided my bowels. His mask was gone. The devasted wasteland of his bare face glowered with malice. In a moment, he was thinking, he would even all scores with me. My legs turned to jelly.
He pointed a small crossbow, grinned. Then his aim drifted aside. I saw that his quarrel was close cousin to the arrow across my bow.
That electrified me, finally. I drew to the head.
He squealed, "Credence, the rite is complete. I name your name!" And then he let fly.
I loosed at the same instant. I could get the shaft off no faster, damn me. My arrow slammed into his black heart, knocked him over. But too late. Too late.
The Lady cried out.
Terror turned into unreasoning rage. I flung myself at the Limper, abandoning my bow for my sword. He did not turn to face my assault. He just held himself up on one elbow and gaped at the Lady.
I really went crazy. I guess we all can, in the right circumstances. But I had been a soldier for ages. I'd long ago learned you don't do that sort of thing and stay alive long.
The Limper was inside the null. Which meant he was barely clinging to life, barely able to sustain himself, wholly unable to defend himself. I made him pay for all the years of fear.
My first stroke half severed his neck. I kept hacking till I finished the job. Then I scattered a few limbs about, blunting my steel and madness on ancient bone. Sanity began to return. I whirled to see what had become of the Lady.
She was down on one knee, the weight of her body resting upon the other. She was trying to draw Limper's bolt. I charged over, pulled her hand away. "No. Let me. Later." This time I was less startled that the naming had not worked. This time convinced me that nothing could disarm her. She should have been gone, damn it! I gave myself up to a long fit of the shakes. The Taken pounding on the forest people were having an effect. Some of the savages had begun fleeing. Toadkiller Dog was enveloped by painful sorceries. "Hang on," I told the Lady. "We're over the hump. We're going to do it." I don't know that I believed that, but it was what she needed to hear.
Tracker and the Dominator continued to roll around, grunting and cursing. Silent pranced around them with a broad-bladed spear. When chance presented itself, he cut our great enemy. Nothing could survive that forever. Darling watched, stayed close, stayed out of the Dominator's way.
I scooted back to the wreck of the Limper and dug out the shaft I'd put into his chest. He glared at me. There was life in his brain still. I booted his head into the trench left by the dragon's rising.
That beast had ceased thrashing. Still no sign of Bomanz. Never any sign of Bomanz. He found the fate he feared, second try. He slew the monster from within.
Do not think Bomanz peripheral because he kept his head down. I believe the Dominator expected the dragon to preoccupy Darling and the Lady those few moments he needed to get shut of the null. Bomanz took that away. With the same determination and distinction as the Lady facing her inescapable fate.
I returned to the Lady. My hands had attained their battlefield steadiness. I wished for my kit. My knife would have to do. I laid her back, started digging. That quarrel would chew on her till I got it out. For all the pain, she managed a grateful smile.
A dozen men surrounded Tracker and the Dominator now, every one stabbing. Some did not seem particular as to whom they hit. , The sands were about gone for the old evil. I packed and bound the Lady's wound with material from her own clothing. "We'll change this as soon as we can."
The tribesmen were whipped. Toadkiller Dog was dragging himself toward the high country. That old mutt had as much staying power as his boss. Guards freed of the fighting hurried our way. They carried wood for the old doom's funeral Pyre-
Then I spotted Raven.
"The damned fool."
He was leaning on Case, hobbling. He carried a bare sword. His face was set.
Trouble for sure. His step was not quite as feeble as he pretended.
It took no genius to guess what he had in mind. In his simple way of seeing things, he was going to make everything right with Darling by finishing off her big enemy.
The shakes came back, but this time not from fear. If somebody did not do something, I was going to be right in the middle. Right where I would have to make a choice, to act, and nothing I did would make anyone happy.
I tried distracting myself by testing the Lady's dressing.
Shadows fell upon us. I looked up into Silent's cold eyes, into Darling's more compassionate face. Silent cast a subtle glance Raven's way. He was in the middle, too.
The Lady clawed at my arm. "Lift me," she said.
I did. She was as weak as water. I had to support her.
"Not yet," she told Darling, as though Darling could hear. "He is not yet finished."
They had gotten a leg and an arm off the Dominator. Those they threw into the woodpile. Tracker hung on so they could carve on the Dominator's neck. Goblin and One-Eye stood by, waiting for the head, ready to run like hell. Some Guards planted the son of the tree. Windwhales and manias hovered overhead. Others, with the Taken, were harassing Toadkiller Dog and the savages through the forest.
Raven was getting closer. And I was no closer to knowing where I stood.
That son-of-a-bitching Dominator was tough. He killed a dozen men before they finished carving him up. Even then he was not dead. Like Limper's, his head lived on.
Time for Goblin and One-Eye. Goblin grabbed the still-living head, sat down, held it tightly between his knees. One-Eye hammered a six-inch silver spike through its forehead, into its brain. The Dominator's lips kept forming curses.
The nail would capture his blighted soul. The head would go into the fire. When that burned out, the spike would be recovered and driven into the trunk of the son of the tree. Meaning one dark spirit would be bound for a million years. Guards brought Limper parts to the fire, too. They did not find his head, though. The sodden walls of the trench whence the dragon had risen had collapsed upon it. Goblin and One-Eye torched the woodpile. The fire leapt up as if eager to fulfill its mission. The Limper's bolt had struck the Lady four inches from the heart, midway between her left breast and collarbone. I confess to a certain pride in having drawn it under such terrible circumstances without killing her. I should have incapacitated her left arm, though.
She now lifted that arm, reached out to Darling. Silent and I were puzzled. But only for a moment.
The Lady pulled Darling to her. She had no strength, so it must be that, in a way, Darling allowed herself to be pulled. Then she whispered, "The rite is complete. I name your true name, Tonie Fisk."
Darling screamed soundlessly. The null began to fray.
Silent's face blackened. For what seemed an eternity he stood there in obvious torment, torn between a vow, a love, a hatred, perhaps the concept of an obligation to a higher duty. Tears began coursing down his cheeks. I got an old wish, and was ready to cry myself when I did.
He spoke. "The ritual is closed." He had trouble shaping his words. "I name your true name, Dorotea Senjak. I name your true name, Dorotea Senjak." I thought he would collapse in a faint then. But he did not.
The women did.
Raven was getting closer. So I had a pain atop all the other pains.
Silent and I stared at one another. I suspect my face was as tormented as his. Then he nodded through his tears. There was peace between us. We knelt, untangled the women. He looked worried while I felt Darling's neck. "She'll be all right," I told him. The Lady, too, but he did not care about that.
I wonder still how much each of the women expected in that moment. How much each yielded to destiny. It marked their end as powers of the world. Darling had no null. The Lady had no magic. They had canceled one another out.
I heard screaming. Carpets were raining. All those Taken had been Taken by the Lady herself, and after what had happened on the Plain, she had made certain her fate would be their fate. So now they were undone, and soon dead.
Not much magic left on that field. Tracker, too, was a goner, mauled to death by the Dominator. I believe he died happy.
But there was no end yet. No. There was Raven.
Fifty feet away, he let go of Case and bore down like nemesis itself. His gaze was fixed on the Lady, though you could tell by his very step that He was on stage, that he was going to do a deed to win back Darling.
Well, Croaker? Can you let it happen?
The Lady's hand shivered in mine. Her pulse was feeble, but it was there. Maybe…
Maybe he would bluff.
I picked up my bow and the arrow recovered from Limper. "Stop, Raven."
He did not. I do not think he heard me. Oh, damn. If he didn't… It was going to get out of hand.
"Raven!" I bent the bow.
He stopped. He stared at me as if trying to recall who I was.
That whole battleground fell into silence. Every eye fixed upon us. Silent stopped moving Darling away, took up a sword, made certain he was between her and potential danger. It was almost amusing, the two of us there, like twins, standing guard over women whose hearts we could never have.
One-Eye and Goblin began drifting our way. I had no idea where they stood. Wherever, I did not want them involved. This had to be made into Raven against Croaker.
Damn. Damn. Damn. Why couldn't he just go away?
"It's over. Raven. There ain't going to be no more killing." I think my voice began to rise in pitch. "You hear? It's lost and won."
He looked at Silent and Darling, not at me. And took a step.
"You want to be the next guy dead?" Damn it, nobody could ever bluff him. Could I do it? I might have to.
One-Eye stopped a careful ten feet to one side. "What are you doing, Croaker?"
I was shaking. Everything but my hands and arms, though my shoulders had begun to ache with the strain of keeping my arrow drawn. "What about Elmo?" I asked, my throat tight with emotion. "What about the Lieutenant?"
"No good," he replied, telling me what I already knew in my heart. "Gone. Why don't you put the bow down?"
"When he drops the sword." Elmo had been my best friend for more years than I cared to count. Tears began to blur my vision. "They're gone. That leaves me in charge, right? Senior officer surviving? Right? My first order is, peace breaks out. Right now. She made this possible. She gave herself up for this. Nobody touches her now. Not while I'm alive."
"Then we'll change that," Raven said. He started moving.
"Damned stubborn fool!" One-Eye shrieked. He flung himself toward Raven. I heard Goblin pattering up behind me. Too late. Both too late. Raven had a lot more fire in him than anyone suspected. And he was more than a little crazy.
I yelled, "No!" and let fly.
The arrow took Raven in the hip. In the very side he had been pretending was crippled. He wore a look of amazement as he stumbled. Lying there on the ground, his sword eight feet away, he looked up at me, still unable to believe that, in the end, I was not bluffing.
I had trouble believing it myself.
Case yelled and tried to jump me. Hardly looking at him, I whacked him up side the head with my bow. He went away and fussed over Raven.
Silence, and stillness, again. Everyone looking at me. I slung rny bow. "Fix him up, One-Eye." I limped over to the Lady, knelt, lifted her. She seemed awfully light and fragile for one who had been so terrible. I followed Silent toward what was left of the town. The barracks'were still burning. We made an odd parade, the two of us lugging women. "Company meeting tonight," I threw out.at the Company survivors. "You all be there."
I would not have believed myself capable before I did it. I carried her all the way to Blue Willy. And my ankle never hurt till I put her down.
I limped into the common room at what was left of Blue Willy, the Lady supported under one arm, bow used as a crutch. The ankle was killing me. I had thought it almost healed.
I deposited the Lady in a chair. She was weak and pale and only about half conscious despite the best One-Eye and I could do. I was determined not to let her out of my sight. Our situation was still fraught with peril. Her people no longer had any reason to be nice. And she was at risk herself- probably more from herself than from Raven or my comrades. She had fallen into a state of complete despair.
"Is this all?" I asked. Silent, Goblin, and One-Eye were there. And Otto the immortal, wounded as always after a Company action, with his eternal sidekick, Hagop. A youngster named Murgen, our standard-bearer. Three others from the Company. And Darling, of course, seated beside Silent. She ignored the Lady completely.
Raven and Case were back by the bar, present without having been invited. Raven wore a dark look but seemed to have himself under control. His gaze was fixed on Darling.
She looked grim. She had rebounded better than the Lady. But she had won. She ignored Raven more assiduously than she did the Lady.
There had been a showdown between them, and I had overheard his half. Darling had made very clear her displeasure with his inability to handle emotional commitment. She had not cut him off. She had not banished him from her heart. But he was not redeemed in her eyes.
He then had said some very unkind things about Silent, whom, it was obvious, she held in affection but nothing deeper.
And that had gotten her really angry. I had peeped then. And she had gone on in great length and fury about not being a prize in some men's game, like a princess in some dopey fairy tale where a gang of suitors ride around doing stupid and dangerous things vying for her hand.
Like the Lady, she had been in charge too long to accept a standard female role now. She was still the White Rose inside.
So Raven was not so happy. He had not been shut out, but he had been told he had a long way to go if he wanted to lay any claims.
The first task she had given him was righting himself with his children.
I halfway felt sorry for the guy. He knew only one role. Hard guy. And it had been stripped away.
One-Eye interrupted my thoughts. "This is it, Croaker. This is all. Going to be a big funeral."
It would. "Shall I preside as senior officer surviving? Or do you want to exercise your prerogative as oldest brother?"
"You do it." He was in no mood to do anything but brood.
Neither was I. But there were ten of us still alive, surrounded by potential enemies. We had decisions to make.
"All right. This is an official convocation of the Black Company, last of the Free Companies of Khatovar. We've lost our captain. First business is to elect a new commander. Then we have to decide how we're going to get out of here. Any nominations?"
"You," Otto said.
"I'm a physician."
"You're the only real officer left."
Raven started to rise.
I told him, "You sit down and keep quiet. You don't even belong here. You walked out on us fifteen years ago, remember? Come on, you guys. Who else?"
Nobody spoke. Nobody volunteered. Nobody met my eye, either. They all knew I did not want it.
Goblin squeaked, "Is anybody against Croaker?"
Nobody blackballed me. It's wonderful to be loved. Grand to be the least of evils.
I wanted to turn it down. The option was not there. "All right. Next order of business. Getting the hell out of here. We're surrounded, guys. And the Guard will get its balance pretty soon. We've got to get gone before they start looking around for somebody to whip on. But once we get clear, then what?"
Nobody offered an opinion. These men were as much in shock as the Guards.
"All right. I know what I want to do. Since time immemorial one of the jobs of the Annalist has been to return the Annals to Khatovar should the Company disband or be demolished. We've been demolished. I propose a vote to disband. Some of us have assumed obligations that are going to put us at odds as soon as we don't have anybody more dangerous to fuss at." I looked at Silent. He met my gaze. He'd just moved his seat so he was more into the gap between Darling and Raven, a gesture understood by everyone but Raven himself.
I had nominated myself guardian for the Lady, for the time being. There was no way we could keep those two women in one another's company for long. I hoped we could hold the group together as far as Oar. I would be satisfied with getting to the edge of the forest. We needed every hand. Our tactical situation could not have been worse.
"Shall we disband?" I asked.
That caused a stir. Everyone but Silent argued the negative.
I interjected, "This is a formal proposition. I want those with special interests to go their own ways without the stigma of desertion. That don't mean we have to split. What I'm saying is, we formally shed the name the Black Company. I'll head south with the Annals, looking for Khatovar. Anyone who wants can come. Under the usual rules."
Nobody wanted to give up the name. That would be like renouncing a patronym thirty generations old.
"So we don't give it up. Who would rather not go look for Khatovar?"
Three hands rose. All belonged to troopers who had enlisted north of the Sea of Torments. Silent abstained, though he wanted to go his own way, in pursuit of his own impossible dream.
Then another hand shot up. Belatedly, Goblin had noted that One-Eye was not opposed. They started one of their arguments. I cut it short.
"I won't insist on the majority dragging everybody along. As commander, I can discharge anyone who wants to follow another path. Silent?"
He had been a brother of the Black Company longer than I. We were his friends, his family. His heart was torn.
Finally, he nodded. He would go his own road, even without promises from Darling. The three who had opposed heading for Khatovar nodded too. I entered their discharges in the Annals. "You're out," I told them. "I'll deal out your shares of money and equipment when we clear the south edge of the forest. Till then we stick together." I did not pursue it further, or in a moment I would have been hanging all over Silent, bawling my eyes out. We had been through a lot, he and I.
I wheeled on Goblin, pen poised. "Well? Do I strike your name?"
"Go on," One-Eye said. "Hurry. Do it. Get rid of him. We don't need his kind. He's never been anything but trouble."
Goblin scowled at him. "Just for that I'm not leaving. I'm going to stay and outlive you and make your remaining days examples of misery. And I hope you live another hundred years."
I had not thought they would split. "Fine," I said, stifling a grin. "Hagop, take a couple men and round up some animals. The rest of you collect whatever might be useful. Like money, if you see any laying around."
They looked at me with eyes still dull with the impact of what had happened.
"We're getting out, guys. As soon as we can ride. Before any more trouble finds us. Hagop. Don't stint on pack animals. I want to carry off everything that isn't nailed down."
There was talk, argument, whatnot, but I closed the official debate at that point.
Cunning devil that I am, I got the Guards to do our burying. I stood over the Company graves with Silent and shed more than a few tears. "I never thought Elmo… He was my best friend." It had hit me. At last. Hard. Now I had done all the duties, there was nothing to hold it at bay. "He was my sponsor when I came in."
Silent lifted a hand, gently squeezed my arm. It was as much of a gesture as I could expect.
The Guards were paying their last respects to their own. Their daze was fading. Soon they would begin thinking about getting on with business. About asking the Lady what they should do. In a sense, they had been rendered unemployed.
They did not know their mistress had been disarmed. I prayed they did not learn, for I meant to use her as our ticket out.
I dreaded what might happen should her loss become general knowledge. On the broad canvas, civil wars to torment the world. On the fine, attempts at revenge upon her person.
Someday someone would begin to suspect. I just wanted the secret kept till we had a good run at getting out of the empire.
Silent took my arm again. He wanted to go. "One second," I said. I drew my sword, saluted our graves, repeated the ancient formula of parting. Then I followed him to where the others waited.
Silent's party would ride with us a while, as I'd wished. Our ways would part when we felt safe from the Guards. I did not look forward to that moment, inevitable though it was. How keep two such as Darling and the Lady in company when there was no survival imperative?
I swung into the saddle cursing my wretched aching ankle. The Lady gave me a dirty look. "Well," I said. "You're showing some spirit."
"Are you kidnapping me?"
"You want to be alone with all your folks? With maybe nothing better than a knife to keep order?" Then I forced a grin. "We've got a date. Remember? Dinner at the Gardens in Opal?"
For just a moment there was a spark of mischief behind her despair. And a look from a moment by a fire when we had come close. Then the shadow returned.
I leaned closer, trembling with the thought. I whispered, "And I need your help to get the Annals out of the Tower." I had not told anyone that I did not have them in my possession yet.
The shadow went. "Dinner? That's a promise?" The witch could promise a lot, just with a look and her tone. I croaked, "In the Gardens. Yes."
I gave the time-honored signal. Hagop started off on point. Goblin and One-Eye followed, bickering as usual. Then Murgen, with the standard, then the Lady and I. Then most of the others, with the pack animals. Silent and Darling brought up the rear, well separated from the Lady and I.
As I urged my mount forward, I glanced back. Raven stood leaning on his cane, looking more forlorn and abandoned than he should. Case was still trying to explain it to him. The kid had no trouble understanding. I figured Raven would, once he got over the shock of not having everyone jump to do things his way, the shock of discovering that old Croaker could fill his bluff if he had to. "I'm sorry," I murmured his way, not quite sure why. Then I faced the forest and did not look back again.
I had a feeling he would be on the road himself soon enough. If Darling really meant as much to him as he wanted us to think.
That night, for the first time in who knows how long, the northern skies were completely clear. The Great Comet illuminated our way. Now the north knew what the rest of the empire had known for weeks.
It was on the wane already. The hour of decision had passed. The empire awaited in fear the news that it portended.
Away north. Three days later. In the dark of a moonless night. A beast with three legs limped from the Great Forest. It settled on its haunches on the remains of the Barrowland, scratched the earth with its one forepaw. The son of the tree flung a tiny change storm.
The monster fled.
But it would return another night, and another, and another after that…
REVISION HISTORY
v2.0 - 31 mar 02 by wg
-reformat to standard html
-added chapter links