No grand effort had been made to train these troops or clothe them well. Which reflected the Protector’s disdain for petty detail. What threat could the fledgling Taglian empire possibly face out here at the edge of beyond, anyway? There were no threats from beyond the borders.
The officer leading the pack was overweight, which also told me something about the local military. Peace had persisted for a decade but times were not yet so favorable that this country could support many fat men.
Huffing and puffing, the officer could not speak first. I told him, “Thank you for coming. It shows initiative and a mind capable of recognizing the inevitable swiftly. Have your men stack their weapons over there. Assuming everything goes the way it should, we’ll be able to let them go home in two or three days.”
The officer gulped some more air while he strove to understand what he was hearing. Evidently this little person had some mad notion that she had the upper hand. Though he had no way of telling if I was he, she or it.
I allowed the rags at my throat to fall open long enough for him to see the Black Company medallion I wore as a pendant on a silver chain. “Water sleeps,” I told him, sure rumor had had plenty of time to carry that slogan to the ends of the empire.
Though I failed to intimidate him into ordering his men to disarm instantly, I did buy a few moments for the rest of the gang to gather. And a grim-looking band of cutthroats they were. Goblin and Tobo came down to stand beside me. Sahra shouted at her son from somewhere behind us but he ignored her. He had decided he was one of the big boys now and that stinking Goblin kept encouraging his fantasies.
I said, “I suggest you disarm. What’s your name? What’s your rank? If you don’t get rid of the weapons, a lot of people will get hurt and most of them are going to be you. It doesn’t have to be that way. If you cooperate.”
The fat young man gulped air. I do not know what he had expected. This was not it. I was not it. I expect he was used to bullying refugees too battered by fate to even consider resisting another humiliation.
Goblin cackled. “Here’s your chance, kid. Show us what you got.”
“Here’s one I’ve been practicing when nobody was around.” Tobo kept on talking but in a whisper so soft I could not make out the words. In a few seconds I did not care about the words, anyway. Tobo began turning into something that was no gangly teenage boy. Tobo began turning into something I did not want to be around.
The kid was a shapeshifter? Impossible. That stuff took ages to master.
At first I thought he was going to become some mythical being, a troll, an ogre, or some misshapen and befanged creature still essentially human in shape, but he went on to become something insectoid, mantislike but big and really ugly and really smelly and getting bigger and uglier and smellier by the second.
I realized I did not smell so good myself. Which is usually a clue that you smell pretty awful to those around you, since you are not normally aware of your own odor.
Like most of what he saw from his teachers, Tobo was presenting an illusion, not undergoing a true transformation. But the southerners did not know that.
I was part of an illusion of my own. Goblin’s huge grin told me who was behind the little practical joke, too. He was not too far over the top with it, either, so I might not have noticed had I not been alerted by what was happening with Tobo.
I seemed to be becoming some more-traditional nightmare. Something like what you might expect to see if for generations they had been saying that the Black Company was made up of guys who ate their own young when they could not roast yours.
“Have your men stack their weapons. Before this gets out of hand.”
Tobo made a clacking noise with his mouth parts. He sidled forward, rotating his bug head oddly as he considered where to start munching. The officer seemed to understand instinctively that predators take the fat ones first. He discarded his weapons where he stood, having no inclination to get any closer to Tobo.
I said, “Men, you might help these fellows dispose of their tools.” My own people were as stunned as the native soldiers were. I was stunned myself but remained plenty scared enough to take advantage while we retained the upper hand psychologically. I went around to the other side of the soldiers, putting them between horrors. Horrors they were not yet sure were entirely illusions. Sorcerers conjured some pretty nasty creatures sometimes. Or so I have heard.
That must be true. My brothers had told me about the ones they had seen. The Annals told me about more.
The southerners began to give up their weapons. Spiff or Wart or somebody remembered to make them lie down on their bellies. Once a handful got it started, the rest found themselves short on the will to resist, too.
Sahra could not hold back anymore. She tied into Goblin. “What are you doing to my son, you crazy old man! I told you I don’t want him playing with—”
A Ssss! and a Clack! erupted from Tobo. A claw on the tip of a very long limb snipped at Sahra’s nose.
The kid was going to be sorry about that stunt later.
Uncle Doj hustled up. “Not now, Sahra. Not here.” He pulled her away. His grip evidently caused her considerable distress. Her anger did not subside but her voice did. The last thing I heard her say was something unflattering about her grandmother, Hong Tray.
I said, “Goblin, enough with the show. I can’t talk to this man if I look like a rakshasa’s mother.”
“It ain’t me, Sleepy. I’m just here to watch. Take it up with Tobo.” He sounded as innocent as a baby.
Tobo was preoccupied, having altogether too much fun playing the scary monster. I told Goblin, “You’re going to be teaching him that stuff, you’d better put some time into getting across the concept of self-discipline, too. Not to mention, you need to teach him not to bullshit people. I know who’s doing what to whom here, Goblin. Stop it.”
I was not disappointed to discover that Tobo had some talent. It was almost inevitable, actually. It was in his blood. What troubled me was the time of life when Goblin and, presumably, One-Eye had chosen to lure his talent into the open. In my opinion, Tobo was at exactly the wrong age to become all-powerful. If no one controlled him while he learned to rule himself, he could become another perpetual adolescent chaotic like Soulcatcher.
“All part of the program, Sleepy. But you need to understand that he’s already more mature and more responsible than you or his mother want to admit. He’s not a baby. You have to remember that most of what you see in him is him showing you what he thinks you expect to see. He’s a good kid, Sleepy. He’ll be all right if you and Sahra don’t mother him to death. And right now he’s at an age when you have to back off and let him stub his toes or regret it later.”
“Child-rearing advice from a bachelor?”
“Even a bachelor can be smart enough to know when the child-rearing part is over. Sleepy, this boy has a big, hybrid talent. Be good to him. He’s the future of the Black Company. And that’s what that old Nyueng Bao granny woman foresaw when she first saw Murgen and Sahra together, back during the siege.”
“Marvelous reasoning, old man. And your choice of time to bring that to my attention is typically, impeccably inconvenient. I’ve got fifty prisoners to deal with. I’ve got a pudgy little new boyfriend here and I need to convince him that he ought to help me talk his fellow captains into cooperating with us. What I don’t have is time to deal with the difficult side of Tobo’s adolescence. Pay attention. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re no longer a secret. The Kiaulune wars have started up again. I wouldn’t be surprised if Soulcatcher herself didn’t turn up someday. Now get me out of this imaginary ugly suit so I can do whatever I have to do.”
“Oh, you’re so forceful!” Goblin made the illusion go away. He made the one surrounding the boy fade, too. Tobo seemed surprised that he could be overruled so easily, but the little wizard softened the blow to his ego by immediately engaging him in a technical critique of what he had accomplished.
I was impressed by what I had seen. But Tobo as the future of the Company? That made me real uncomfortable, despite its questionable reassurance that the Company did have a future.
I stirred the fat officer with a toe. “Come on. Hop up here. We need to talk. Spiff, let the rest of these people sit up as soon as their weapons are cleared away. I’ll probably let them go home in a little while. Goblin, you want to go face the music with Sahra? Get that out of the way so it isn’t just waiting for a bad time to blow up on us?”
The fat officer got his feet under him. He looked very, very unhappy, which I could understand. This was not his best day. I took hold of his arm. “Let’s you and me take a walk.”
“You’re a woman.”
“Don’t let it go to your head. Do you have a name? How about a rank or title?”
He offered a regional name about a paragraph long, filled with the unmanageable clicks that mess up a language otherwise already unfit for the normal human tongue. As proof of my assertion, I offer my inability to manage it at much more than a pidgin level despite having spent years in the area.
I picked out what sounded like it identified his personal place in the genealogy of a nation. “I can call you Suvrin, then?” He winced. I got it after a moment. Suvrin was a diminutive. No doubt he had not been called that by anyone but his mother for twenty years.
Oh, well. I had a sword. He did not.
“Suvrin, you’ve probably heard rumors to the effect that we’re not nice people. I want to put your mind at ease. Everything you’ve ever heard is true. But this time we’re not here to loot and pillage and rape the livestock the way we did last time. We’re really just passing through, we hope with minimal dislocation for everybody, both us and you. What I need from you, assuming you’d rather cooperate than lie in a grave being walked on by some replacement who will, is a bit of official assistance aimed at hurrying us on our way. Have I been going too fast for you?”
“No. I speak your language well.”
“That’s not what I—never mind. Here’s what’s happening. We’re going to go up on the glittering plain—”
“Why?” Pure fear filled his voice. He and his ancestors had lived in terror of the plain since the coming of the Shadowmasters.
I offered a bit of nonsense. “For the same reason the chicken crossed the road. To get to the other side.”
Suvrin found that concept so novel he could think of no response.
I continued, “It’ll take us a while to get ready. We have to assemble provisions and equipment. We have to scout some things. And not all of our people have arrived yet. I’d just as soon not fight a war at the same time. So I want you to tell me how to avoid that.”
Suvrin offered an inarticulate grumble.
“What’s that?”
“I never wanted to be in the army. My father’s doing. He wanted me away from the family, someplace where I couldn’t embarrass him, but he also wanted me doing something he felt to be in keeping with the family dignity. He thought if I was a soldier, there’d be nothing I could mess up. We had no enemies who could embarrass me.”
“Stuff happens. Your father should know that. He’s lived long enough to have a grown-up son.”
“You don’t know my father.”
“You might be surprised. I’ve met plenty just like him. Probably some that were way worse. There’s nothing new in this world, Suvrin. And that includes all kinds of people. How many more soldiers are there around here? How many all told on this side of the mountains? Do any of them have any special loyalty to Taglios? Will they abandon Taglios if the pass is closed?” The Territories south of the Dandha Presh were vast but weak. Longshadow had exploited them mercilessly for more than a generation, then the Shadowmaster and Kiaulune wars had devastated them.
“Uh . . . ” He wriggled but not hard. Just enough to satisfy his self-image.
We spent the remainder of the day together. Suvrin made the transitions from grudging prisoner to nervous accomplice to helpful ally. He was easily led, overresponding to modest praise and expressions of gratitude. My guess was that he had not had many nice things said to him during his young life. And he was scared to death that I would demolish him the instant he did fail to cooperate.
We sent the rest of the soldiers home as soon as our men stripped the New Town armory. Most of the weapons stored there looked like they had been picked up off old battlefields and treated with contempt ever since by the armorer whose work I had so much admired earlier.
I found the man and drafted him. He was a prima donna, a master with an artist’s attitude. I figured One-Eye could tame him.
Suvrin accompanied me when I went across to the farm Sahra had acquired. Poor leader though he was, Suvrin really was in charge of all the armed forces in the Kiaulune region. Which said very little for the quality of his men or for the wisdom and commitment of his superiors. But I decided to keep him handy. He was useful as a symbol, if nothing else.
When I went across I insisted that everyone else make the move, too. I wanted everyone not out on picket duty or patrol in one place so we could respond quickly, in strength, to any threat.
I told Suvrin, “I’ve neutralized the whole province except for that little fort below the Shadowgate. Right?” That stronghold had sealed its gate. The men inside would not respond to the messenger I sent.
Suvrin nodded. He was having second thoughts, too late.
“Will they leave if you tell them to go?”
“No. They’re foreigners. Left by the Great General to keep the road to the Shadowgate closed.”
“How many?”
“Fourteen.”
“Good soldiers?”
Embarrassed, “Much better than mine.” Which might only mean that they could march in step.
“Tell me about their fort. How are they set for water and provisions?”
The fat man hemmed and hawed.
“Suvrin, Suvrin. You have to think about this.”
“Uh . . . ”
“You can’t get in any deeper than you already are. You can only do your best to get back out. Too many people have seen you cooperating already. I’m sorry, buddy. You’re stuck.” I fought sliding into the character of Vajra the Naga, seductive as it was. It was so blessedly useful.
Suvrin made a sound suspiciously like a whimper.
“Courage, Cousin Suvrin. We live with it every day. All you can do is put on a death’s-head grin and tug on their beards and yank out their tail feathers. Here we go. This looks like the place.” A poorly built structure had loomed out of the darkness. Light leaked out through the roof and walls both. I wondered why they bothered. Maybe it was still under construction. I could make out the vague shapes of tents beyond it.
Something stirred on the rooftree as I pulled the door hanging aside so Suvrin could enter. The white crow. A soft chuckle came from the bird. “Sister, sister. Taglios begins to waken.” The thing took wing. I watched it fade in the light of a rising fragment of moon. That had been pretty clear.
I shrugged and went inside. I could worry about the white crow next week, once I finally got a chance to go to bed. “Are any of you guys aware that we’re at war? That under similar circumstances every army since the dawn of time has put out sentries to watch for people sneaking up?”
Several dozen faces watched me blandly. Goblin asked, “You didn’t see anybody?”
“There’s nothing out there to see, old man.”
“Ah. And you got here alive, too.” Which remark left me to understand that there were dire traps out there, held in abeyance only by the alert decision-making of sentries I not only overlooked but whose presence I never suspected.
“All I can say to that is, somebody must have taken a bath sometime since the turn of the century.” The same could not be said for most of the crowd inside that shelter. Which might be the reason the roof and walls were so porous. “This is my new friend Suvrin. He was the captain of the local garrison. I blew in his ear and he decided he wanted to help us so we would go away before the Protector shows up and makes life tough for everybody.”
Somebody in back said, “You could blow in mine and—ow! What the fuck you hit me for, Willow?”
Vajra the Naga said, “Knock it off. Swan, keep your hands to yourself. Vigan, I don’t want to hear your mouth again. You should know better. What’ve you guys done to get ready to knock over that tower over by the Shadowgate?”
Nobody said a word.
“You guys obviously did something while you were waiting around.” I gestured at our surroundings. “You managed to build a house. Badly. Or a barracks. But you didn’t do anything else? There’re no scouts out? No planning got done? No preparations got made? Was there something going on that I haven’t heard about yet?”
Goblin sidled up. In an uncharacteristic tone he murmured, “Don’t press these issues. Now isn’t the time. Just tell people what to do and send them out to do it.”
I trust the little wizard’s wisdom occasionally. “Sit down. Here’s what we’ll do. Dig out whatever fireball launchers we have left. Vigan, pick ten men. Carry the heaviest launcher yourself. The others can carry lighter ones. If there aren’t enough to go around, bring bows. We’ll go take care of this right now. Vigan, choose your team.”
The man who had made the mistake of irritating me rose. In a surly tone he named his helpers. Chances were all of them had irritated him sometime recently. It rolls downhill.
In the few minutes it took Vigan to get ready, I had the others tell me things they thought I ought to know.
I had the men encircle the little fort. We carried torches and made no effort to sneak. Per instructions, Vigan carried the heaviest piece of bamboo. It had an interior diameter of three inches. He told me, “There’s supposed to be only a couple, three balls left in this one.”
“That ought to be enough. Right here should be fine.” A good archer with a strong bow might cause us trouble but those were exceeding rare in modern Taglian armies. Mogaba was a warrior. He believed real men got in close, where they could get splattered with each other’s blood when they fought. It was a blind spot we had exploited more than once during the Kiaulune wars and would exploit again until he figured it out.
Goblin shuffled into position behind us. Tobo did, too. They said nothing, which must have been a trial for the boy. He talked in his sleep.
“What do I do?” Vigan asked.
“Let them have one. Through the stonework right above the gate.” Louder, I said, “Stand fast. Nobody do anything until I tell you.”
The first two times Vigan turned his hand release crank, nothing happened.
“Is it empty?” I asked.
“It’s not supposed to be.”
Goblin advised, “Try again, then. It’s been over ten years since it was used. Maybe it just needs to be loosened up.”
I mused, “I’ll bet nobody’s bothered to keep the mechanism clean. And you folks wondered why I wanted to hire an armorer. Go ahead. Crank it again. Carefully, so you don’t lose your aim.”
Whack! Crackle-crackle-crackle-sizzle! into the distance. The fireball ripped right through the little fortification’s two outside walls and whatever lay between them. Stone steamed and ran. The scarlet ball wobbled through the air for several miles more, gave up the last of its momentum, gradually darkened as it drifted to earth beyond the ruins of Overlook.
“Move to the left a few yards, drop your aiming point five feet, then do it again.”
Vigan was having fun now. There was a bounce to his step as he moved to his new position. This time it took only one extra turn of the crank to get the fireball launched.
A blistering, lime-colored ball ripped through the fortification. It hit something significant inside. It had almost no energy left when it appeared on the far side.
A gout of steam blew out the top of the tower. “Must’ve gotten a water barrel,” I said. Water and the fireballs made a wicked combination resulting in storms of superheated steam. “Suvrin, where are you?” Two fireballs should have gotten their attention inside, should have gotten the survivors to thinking. Now I could begin placing my shots. “Suvrin! Have you ever been inside that rockpile?”
The fat man came forward reluctantly. When he was close by me, his face was in the light. The garrison inside would remember him. He wanted to lie to me, too, I could see. But he did not have the courage. “Yes.”
“What’s the layout? It doesn’t look like it could be that complicated.”
“It isn’t. Animals and storage on the ground floor. They can pile up stuff behind the gate so you can’t knock it in. They live on the second floor. It’s just one big room. There’s a stove for cooking and pallets for sleeping and racks of weapons and that’s about it.”
“And the roof is basically just a fighting platform, right? Wait a minute, Vigan. Don’t spend any more fireballs than we have to. Let them think for a while now. Maybe they’ll give up. They know I didn’t hurt Suvrin’s men. Tobo, circle around and tell all the men that if they have to launch a fireball, we need it to go through the second level. Preferably low. They’ll probably get down on the floor when death starts coming through.”
“Can I shoot one of those things, Sleepy?”
“Get the message out first.” I watched him scoot off. He did not expose himself unnecessarily. Faces could be seen occasionally behind the archers’ embrasures over yonder. A couple of arrows had come out and fallen harmlessly. I told Goblin, “If anybody had been paying attention, we’d have the place mapped down to the last cot and table and we’d know exactly where to aim every fireball to get the best effect.”
“You’re absolutely right again. Just as you always are. Be quiet for a second. There’s something going on here. Those men aren’t as scared as they should be.”
As he spoke, I glimpsed a face peeking over the parapet. A moment later the white crow plummeted out of the night. It knocked the leather helmet off the soldier.
I yelled, “Everybody wake up! They’re about to pull something!”
Goblin had started muttering already. He was doing something odd with his fingers.
Men jumped up atop the little fort. Each had something in hand, ready to throw. A half-dozen fireballs squirted their way without my approval. One grenadier went down but not before he launched his missile.
Glass, I saw. Same type One-Eye had used to make firebombs, years ago. We still had a few of those, too. But throwing firebombs at us out here would be pointless. We were too far away to be reached.
“Aim low!” I yelled. “Shadows coming!” That was not a shout that had been heard for an age but it was one the veterans remembered and could respond to without ever thinking.
Goblin was already wobbling across the slope in as near a sprint as his old bones could manage, still muttering and wiggling his fingers. Pink sparks leaped between his fingers and slithered around amongst his few remaining hairs. He grabbed a skinny little bamboo pole from one of the men. It had been painted with black stripes, meaning that its dedicated purpose was use against shadows.
Fireballs flew. Some peppered the fortress. Some dove after the shadows that spilled out of the breaking glass containers. Suvrin began whimpering behind me. I told him, “Don’t run. They’ll get you for sure. They love a fleeing victim.”
There was a lot of screaming inside the fortress. Fireballs streaking through had found human targets. In their way, the fireballs were almost as bad as the killing shadows.
One of my men began shrieking when a shadow found him. But he was the only one. Goblin’s spell helped some. The quick use of fireballs helped more.
Goblin began loosing fireballs from the pole he had snagged but sent them racing northward instead of toward the stubborn little fort. He quit after only a few tries. He came back to me. “They’ve done their job, those brave boys in there. They got their warning away.” He was as sour as a lemon slice under the tongue.
“So I take it Soulcatcher didn’t die when she hit the water.” I had heard the news from Taglios only up to the part where the Protector’s carpet had fallen apart in midair, with her streaking along four hundred feet above the river. The break coming at that point had not been because anyone was trying to make things particularly dramatic, it was just because there was too much going on to have a lot of time left for catching up. Especially where Murgen was concerned. Murgen seemed to be employed full time easing Sahra’s frights and concerns.
“She was one of the Ten Who Were Taken, Sleepy. Those people don’t hurt easy. Hell, she survived having her head cut off. She carried it around in a box for about fifteen years.”
I grunted. Sometimes it was hard to remember that Soulcatcher was much more than just an unpleasant, distant senior official. “They likely to have any more surprises in there?” I meant the question for Suvrin but Goblin answered.
“If they did, they would’ve used them. You thinking about going in after them?”
“Oh, heck no! Somebody might get hurt. Somebody besides them. Suvrin, go over there and tell them if they surrender in the next half hour, I’ll let them go. If they don’t, I’ll kill them all before the hour is up.”
The fat man started to protest. Vigan poked his behind with the tip of a dagger. I told Suvrin, “If they do anything to you, I’ll avenge you.”
“That’s a big weight off my heart.”
Goblin asked, “How are you going to avenge anybody? Considering you’re not going to go in there after them.”
“That’s what we have wizards for. This looks like a wonderful opportunity for you to give Tobo some on-the-job training.”
“Am I surprised? Not hardly. For a hundred years it’s been, ‘What do we do now?’ ‘I don’t know. Let’s let Goblin handle it.’ I oughta just take a hike and let you figure it out for yourself.”
“I’m tired. I’m going to sit down here and rest my eyes until Suvrin gets back.”
I heard Goblin tell Vigan to put another heavyweight fireball into the corner of the fortification, along the length of the wall so all its energy would be spent devouring the pale limestone. There was a solid thump! swiftly followed by the smell of superheated limestone. As I drifted away, Goblin muttered something about burning them out.
The surface of the river was not friendly when Soulcatcher hit it but neither was the impact like hitting stone from the same altitude. Her fall had been long enough to allow her time to prepare for the landing.
Even so, the collision was brutal enough to extract her consciousness temporarily. But she had prepared for that, too, between curses. When consciousness returned she was drifting downriver with the flood, head above the surface. It being the rainy season, the river was high and the current brisk. It took a great effort to complete the swim to the south bank. By the time she crawled out of the flood and collapsed, she was a half-dozen miles downstream from where she had gone in, which was outside the city proper, in a domain best known for its jackals, of both the two- and four-legged varieties. It was said that leopards still hunted there at night, the occasional crocodile could be found along the shore, and it was not that many years since a tiger had come visiting from down the river.
The Protector experienced no difficulties with any mad or hungry thing. A hundred crows perched around her, standing guard. Others flapped about in the darkness until squadrons of bats had gathered. Birds and bats together discouraged the scavengers and predators till Soulcatcher awakened and in a fit of pique, sent an entire band of jackals racing away with their pelts aflame.
She stumbled toward home, regaining strength slowly, muttering about growing old and less resilient. A tremor entered the voice she chose to inveigh against the predations of time.
Eventually she reached the home of a moneylender, where she commandeered transportation back to the Palace. She arrived there somewhat after the breakfast hour in a temper so foul that the entire staff made a point of becoming invisible. Only the Great General came to inquire after her well-being. And he went away when she started snarling and snapping.
Though she reveled in her paranoia, Soulcatcher did not suspect that her accident had been anything else until she examined her remaining carpet preparatory to another effort to fly off to entertain the Nyueng Bao. Then she discovered that the light wooden-frame members on which the carpet was stretched had been weakened by strategic saw cuts.
The who and probable why became clear within seconds. She sent out a summons to Jaul Barundandi and his associates.
Surprise. Barundandi was nowhere to be found. He had been called out of the Palace for a family emergency, he had said, just moments after her return. So the Greys reported when told to investigate.
“What an amazing coincidence. Find him. Find the men he worked with regularly. We have a great deal to discuss.”
Greys scattered. One bold captain, however, remained behind to report, “Rumor in the city says the Bhodi intend to resume their self-immolations. They want the Radisha to come out and address their concerns personally.”
The news did not improve Soulcatcher’s temper. “Ask them if they would like me to donate the naphtha they need. I’m feeling particularly charitable today. Also ask them if they can hold off starting long enough for the carpenters to put up grandstands so more of the Radisha’s good subjects can enjoy the entertainment. I don’t care what those lunatics do. Get out of here! Find that Barundandi slug!” The voice she used was informed with a potent lunacy.
Jaul Barundandi’s luck was mixed. He managed to avoid the attentions of the bats and crows and shadows the Protector released when the Greys had no immediate success in locating him, but an informer eventually betrayed him when the reward for his capture grew large enough. The lie was that he had attacked and severely wounded the Radisha, that only the Protector’s swift intercession with her most powerful sorcery had saved the Princess’s life. The Radisha’s situation remained grave.
The Taglian people loved their Radisha. Jaul Barundandi discovered that he had no friends but his accomplices and it was one of those who betrayed him in exchange for a partial reward (the Grey officers pocketing the bulk) and a running start.
Jaul Barundandi suffered terrible torments and tried hard to cooperate so the pain would stop but he could tell the Protector nothing that she wanted to know. So she had him put into a cage and hung fifteen feet above the place where the Bhodi disciples generally chose to give up their lives and issued a rescript encouraging passersby to throw stones. It was her intent that he hang there indefinitely, his suffering neverending, but sometime during the first night, somehow, someone managed to toss him a piece of poisoned fruit while leaving his betrayer and a murdered Grey below, each with a piece of paper in his mouth bearing the characters for “Water Sleeps.” Crows savaged both corpses before they were discovered.
It was the last time Black Company tokens would be seen but their appearance was sufficient to provoke the Protector almost beyond reason. For days the still-loyal remnants of the Greys remained extremely busy making arrests, most of them of people unable to guess what they had done to irk Soulcatcher.
She never did get to the Nyueng Bao swamp despite having made necessary repairs to her remaining carpet. Taglios became more fractious by the hour. She had to devote her entire attention to keeping the city tamed.
Then came the faithful and tattered little shadow that had made its way through mountains and forests, over lakes and rivers and plains, in order to bring her news of what was happening in the nethermost south.
Soulcatcher screamed a scream of rage so potent that the entire city became informed of it instantly. Immigrants began to rehearse the wisdom of a return to the provinces.
The Great General and two of his staff officers broke through the door to the Protector’s apartment, certain she needed rescuing. Instead, they found her pacing furiously and debating herself in half a dozen voices. “They have the Key. They must have the Key. They must have murdered the Deceiver. Maybe they made an alliance with Kina. Why would they go down there? Why would they go onto the plain after what happened to the last group? What keeps pulling them out there? I’ve read their Annals. There’s nothing in those. What do they know? The Land of Unknown Shadows? They cannot have developed an entirely new and independent oral tradition since they served me in the north. If it’s important one of them will record it. Why? Why? What do they know that I don’t?”
Soulcatcher became aware of Mogaba and his men. The latter looked around nervously, trying to figure out where the voices were coming from. When Soulcatcher became excited, those seemed to come from everywhere at once.
“You. Have you caught me any terrorists yet?”
“No. Nor shall I unless an angry family member comes forward because he thinks it would be a good way to get even. There won’t be more than a handful left here and those probably don’t know each other. I gather, from what I overheard, that they’ve gone back to Shadowcatch.” He had worked for the Shadowmaster Longshadow. He could not get out of the habit of calling Kiaulune by the name given it by his previous employer.
“Exactly. We’re back where we were fifteen years ago. Only now they have the Radisha and the Key.” Her tone left no doubt she placed the blame entirely on him.
Mogaba was not bothered. Not immediately. He was accustomed to being blamed for the shortcomings of others and he did not believe the remnants of the Black Company could offer any real threat any time soon. They had been beaten down too thoroughly and had been away from it too long. They were more military than the Deceivers only inside their own fantasies. Even the comic-opera functionaries down there ought to be able to wear them down and bury them eventually. They would find no aid or sympathy in the Shadowlands. The people down there really did remember the Black Company’s last visit. “The Key? What is that?”
“A means of passing through the Shadowgate unharmed. A talisman that makes it possible to travel on the plain.” Her voice had become pedantic. Now it became angry. “I possessed that talisman at one time. Long ago I used it to go up there and explore. Longshadow would have been unmanned had he known. More unmanned than the eunuch he already was. But it disappeared in the early excitement around Kiaulune. I suspect that Kina clouded my mind while the Deceiver Singh stole both it and my sister’s darling daughter. I can’t imagine why that rabble would want to go onto the plain after the previous disaster but if it’s something they want to do, it’s something I want to prevent. Prepare for a journey.”
“We can’t leave Taglios unsupervised for as long as it would take us to travel all the way to Shadowcatch. We don’t have the stallion anymore, even if it could carry double.”
Soulcatcher was baffled. “What?”
“The black stallion from the north. The one I’ve been using all these years. It’s vanished. It broke down its stall and ran off. I told you that last month.” She did not recall that, obviously.
“We’ll fly.”
“But—” Mogaba hated flying. In the days when he had been Longshadow’s general he had had to fly with the Howler almost daily. He still loathed those times. “I thought the larger carpet was the one that was destroyed.”
“The small one will carry both of us. It’ll be hard work. I’ll have to rest a lot. But we’ll still be able to get down there and back before these people know we’re gone and try to take advantage. A week for the round trip. Ten days at the outside.”
The Great General had a few dozen reservations but kept them behind his teeth. The Protector was worse than Longshadow had been about suffering opinions she did not want to hear.
Soulcatcher said, “We’ll adopt disguises once we get there and go among them. I want you to keep an eye out for a hammer, so by so, made of cast iron but far heavier than it ought to be.”
Mogaba bowed slightly. He said nothing about how difficult it would be for either of them to blend in with the crowd they would be chasing.
Soulcatcher told him, “Prepare your men. They’ll have to keep Taglios under control for a cquple of weeks.”
Mogaba withdrew, saying nothing about the proposed time changing already. In his position it was necessary to do a lot of saying nothing.
The Protector watched him go, amused. He did not conceal his thinking nearly as well as he believed. But she was ancient in her wickedness and had studied the dark side of humanity so thoroughly that she could almost read minds.
The little fortress settled in upon itself slowly, as though made of wax only slightly overheated. As soon as I fell asleep and could not interfere, Goblin handed the magical siege work over to Tobo, who did a creditable job of rooting the enemy survivors out of their shelter. The wicked little thing had been taking lessons a lot longer than he and his teachers would admit.
The garrison was bringing out its dead and wounded when a shout awakened me. I sat up. Morning had begun to arrive. And the world had changed.
“What’s Spiff’s problem?” I asked.
One of my veterans had recognized one of theirs.
The devil himself arrived to explain. “The guy in charge. That’s Khusavir Pete, Sleepy. You remember, we thought he was killed when the Bahrata Battalion got wiped out in the ambush at Kushkhoshi.”
“I remember.” And I recalled something that Spiff did not know, a fact I shared only with Murgen, who had been the ghost in the rushes while the slaughter was taking place. Khusavir Pete, at that time a sworn brother of the Company, had led our largest surviving force of allies into a trap that efficiently took us out of the Kiaulune wars. Khusavir Pete had cut a deal. Khusavir Pete had betrayed his own brothers. Khusavir Pete was high on my list of people I wanted to meet again, though until just now I had been the only one who knew that he had survived and that his treachery had been rewarded with a high post, money and a new name. But just seeing him had some of the men figuring it out fast.
“You should’ve asked her to change your face, too,” I told him when they flung him down bleeding in front of me. “Though you’ve had a better run than you probably expected when she turned you.” I held his eyes with mine. What he saw convinced him it would not be worth his trouble to deny anything. Vajra the Naga had come out to play.
More and more of the men gathered around, most of them not getting it until I explained how Khusavir Pete had been seduced by Soulcatcher into betraying and helping destroy more than five hundred of our brothers and allies. Would-be greetings quickly became imaginative suggestions of ways whereby we might reduce the traitor’s life expectancy. I let the man listen until some of the troops tried to lay hands on. Then I told Goblin, “Hide him somewhere. We may have a use for him yet.”
The excitement was over. I had indulged in a decent meal. My attitude much improved, I took the opportunity to renew my acquaintance with Master Surendranath Santaraksita. “This life seems to agree with you,” I told him as I arrived. “You look better now than you did when we left the city.” And that was true.
“Dorabee? Lad, I thought you were dead. Despite their endless assurances.” He leaned closer and confided, “They aren’t all honest men, your comrades.”
“By some chance did Goblin and One-Eye offer to teach you to play tonk?”
The librarian managed to look a little sheepish.
“Not to play with them is a lesson everyone has to learn.”
Sheepishness transformed into impishness. “I think I taught them a little something, too. Card tricks were one of my hobbies when I was younger.”
I had to laugh at the idea of those two villains getting taken themselves. “Have you discovered anything that would be useful to me?”
“I’ve read every word in every book we brought along, including all of your company’s modern chronicles written in languages known to me. I found nothing remarkable. I have been amusing myself by trying to work backward into the chronicles I can’t read by comparing materials repeated in more than one language.”
Murgen had done a lot of that. He had had a thing about copying stuff over, in cleaner drafts, and one of his great projects had been to revise Lady’s and the Captain’s Annals for accuracy, based on evidence provided by other witnesses, while rendering them into modern Taglian. We have all done that to our predecessors, some, so that every recent volume of the Annals is really an unwilling collaboration.
I said, “We drag a lot of books around, don’t we?”
“Like snails, carrying your history on your back.”
“It’s who we are. Cute image, though. Doesn’t all that study get dull after a while?”
“The boy keeps me sharp.”
“Boy?”
“Tobo. He’s a brilliant student. Even more amazing than you were.”
“Tobo?”
“I know. Who would expect it of a Nyueng Bao? You’re destroying all my preconceptions, Dorabee.”
“Mine are taking a beating, too.” Tobo? Either Santaraksita had an unsuspected talent for inspiring students or Tobo had suffered an epiphany and had become miraculously motivated. “You sure it’s Tobo and not a changeling?”
The demon himself popped in. “Sleepy. Runmust and Riverwalker and them are on their way over. Good morning, Master Santaraksita.” Tobo actually seemed excited to be there. “I don’t have any other duties right now. Oh, Sleepy, Dad wants to talk to you.”
“Where?” Things had been happening too fast. There had been no chance to catch up with Murgen.
“Goblin’s tent. Everybody but Mom thought that would be the safest place to keep him.”
I had no trouble picturing Sahra being irritated about not being able to share the occasional private moment with her husband.
When I ducked out, the young man and the old were already settling with a book. I glared a warning at Santaraksita which, it developed, was both wasted and unnecessary.
Goblin was not home. Of course not. He was working his way through a long list of jobs bestowed upon him by me. Chuckle.
I found it hard to credit the possibility that one human being could make so huge a mess in a space so constricted. The inside of Goblin’s tent was barely wider than either of us was tall and twice as deep. At its peak it was tall enough for me to stand up with two inches to spare. What looked like a milkmaid’s stool, undoubtedly stolen, constituted the wizard’s entire suite of furniture. A ragged burrow of blankets betrayed where he slept. The rest of the space was occupied by a random jumble, mostly stuff that looked like it had been discarded by a procession of previous owners. There was no obvious theme to the collection.
It had to be stuff he had acquired since his arrival here. Sahra would never have allowed him space on a barge for such junk.
The mist projector stood at the head of Goblin’s smelly bedding, tilted precariously, leaking water. “If this is the safest place to keep that darned thing, then the whole Company is mad with delusions of adequacy.”
A whisper came from the mist projector. I got down close to it, which offered me an opportunity to become intimately aware of the aroma permanently associated with Goblin’s bedding, some pieces of which must have been with him since he was in diapers. “What?”
Murgen’s strongest effort was barely audible. “More water. You need to add more water or there won’t be any mist much longer.”
I started to drag the evidence out of the tent.
Anger gave Murgen a little more voice. “No, dammit! Bring the water to me, don’t take me to the water. If you suffer from a compulsion to drag me around, at least wait until after you water me. And don’t waste time. I’m going to lose my anchor here in a few minutes.”
Finding a gallon of water turned out to be a challenging experience.
“What took you so damned long?”
“Bit of an adventure coming up with the water. Seems it never occurred to any of these morons that we need to have some handy somewhere. Just in case the royal army decides to camp between us and the creek where we’ve been getting it, which is almost a mile away. I just unleashed several geniuses on the problem. How am I supposed to put this in here?”
“There’s a cork in the rear. It might be of some use to you to start doing readings from the Annals. Like they do in temples. The way I used to do sometimes. Pick something situationally appropriate. ‘In those days the Company was in service’ and so on, so they have examples of why it might be useful to haul water up the hill before you have to use it, and such like. These are grown men. You can’t just bully them into doing the right things. But if you start reading to them, they’ll have heard tell of other times when the Annalist did that and they’ll recall it was always right before the big shitstorm moved in. You’ll get their attention.”
“Tobo said you want to talk to me.”
“I need to catch you up on what’s going on elsewhere. And I want to make suggestions about your preparations for the plain, one of which is to listen to Willow Swan but the most critical of which is, you’re going to have to upgrade discipline. The plain is deadly. Even worse than the Plain of Fear, which you don’t remember. You can’t ignore the rules and stay alive there. One idea would be for you not to burn or bury the man who was killed by the shadow last night. Make every survivor look at him and think about what will happen to all of you if even one of you screws up up there. Read them the passages chronicling our adventures. Have Swan bear witness.”
“I could just bring a handful of reliables in to get you.”
“You could. But the rest of the world wouldn’t be very nice to the men you leave behind. Right now there’s a shadow heading north to tell Soulcatcher where you are. She may know enough already to figure out what you’re trying to do. She definitely doesn’t want her sister and Croaker on the loose and nursing a grudge. She’ll get here as fast as she can. And aside from Soulcatcher, there’s Narayan Singh. He retains Kina’s countenance, so he’s extremely hard to trace but I do catch glimpses occasionally. He’s on this side of the Dandha Presh and he’s probably not far away. He wants to recapture the Daughter of Night and reunite her with the book you traded for the Key. Which, by the way, you should take away from Uncle Doj before he becomes overly tempted to try something on his own. And so Goblin can study it.”
“Uhm?” He was a gush of information this morning, all of it carefully rehearsed.
“There’s more to the Key than you see right away. I have a feeling the Deceiver overlooked something. Doj keeps picking at it, trying to find out what’s inside the iron. We should find out more about it before we trust it. And we need to find out fast. It won’t be all that long before that shadow gets to Taglios.”
“River and Runmust are coming in. They’re halfway responsible people. I’ll turn some of the work over to them as soon as they’re rested up. Then I can worry about—”
“Worry about it now. Let Swan sergeant for you. He’s experienced and he’s got no choice but to throw in with us now. Catcher will never believe that he didn’t betray her.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“You don’t have to do everything yourself, Sleepy. If you’re going to take charge, you need to learn to tell people what needs doing, then get out of the way and let them do it. You keep hanging over their shoulders nagging like somebody’s mother, you aren’t going to get much cooperation. You seduced that fat boy yet?”
“What?”
“That local-yokel captain. The one who couldn’t keep in step if you painted his feet different colors. You got him wrapped up yet?”
“You’re zigging when I’m zagging. You lost me completely.”
“Let me draw you a picture. You forget to tell him Catcher is going to stop by. You get him to make a deal. He keeps his job. He helps us out so he can get us out of his hair. When he isn’t looking, you fix him up so when the shitstorm starts, he don’t have no choice but to take his chances with us.”
“I have him wrapped up, then. Seventy percent.”
“Hey. Blow in his ear. Throw a liplock on his love muscle. Do whatever you have to. If Catcher loses him, she won’t ever trust anybody else down here, either.”
Goblin used almost the same language as Murgen had when I stopped to visit again. He found Murgen’s advice fully excellent. “Grab fat boy by his prong and never let go. Give him a little squeeze once in a while to keep him smiling.”
“I’ve probably said it before. You’re one cynical mud-sucker.”
“It’s all those years of watching out for One-Eye that done it to me. I was a sweet, innocent young thing when I joined this outfit. Not unlike yourself.”
“You were born wicked and cynical.”
Goblin chuckled. “How much stuff do you think you need to collect before we go up the hill? How long do you think it’ll take?”
“It won’t take forever if Suvrin cooperates.”
“Never, ever, forget that you don’t have long. I can’t emphasize that enough. Soulcatcher is coming. You’ve never seen her when she’s all worked up.”
“The Kiaulune wars don’t count?” He must have seen something extreme. He was determined to pound the point home.
“The Kiaulune wars don’t count. She was just entertaining herself with those.”
I forced myself to make the visit I had been avoiding.
The Daughter of Night wore ankle shackles. She resided inside an iron cage heavily impregnated with spells that caused ever-increasing agony as their victim moved farther away. She could escape but that would hurt. If she pushed it hard enough, she would die.
It appeared that every possible step had been taken to keep her under control. Except the lethal step reason urged me to take. I had no more motive for keeping her alive—except that I had given my word.
The men all took turns being exposed to her, in pairs, at mealtimes and such. Sahra had not been lax. She appreciated the danger the girl represented.
My first glimpse left me stricken with envy. Despite her disadvantages, she had kept herself beautiful, looking much like her mother in a fresher body. But something infinitely older and darker looked out through her pretty blue eyes. For a moment she struck me not as the Daughter of Night, but as the darkness itself.
She did have plenty of time to commune with her spiritual mother.
She smiled as though aware of the serpents of dark temptation slithering the black corridors of my mind. I wanted to bed her. I wanted to murder her. I wanted to run away, begging for mercy. It took an exercise of will to remind myself that Kina and her children were not evil in the sense that northerners or even my Vehdna co-religionists understood evil.
Nevertheless . . . she was the darkness.
I stepped back, tossed the tent flap open so my ally, daylight, could come inside. The girl lost her smile. She backed to the far side of her cage. I could think of nothing to say. There was really nothing we could say to one another. I had no inclination to gloat and little news of the world outside to report, which might motivate her to do something besides wait.
She had her spiritual mother’s patience, that was sure.
A blow from behind rocked me. I clawed at my stubby little sword.
White wings mussed my nattily arranged hair. Talons dug into my shoulder. The Daughter of Night stared at the white crow and revealed real emotion for the first time in a long time. Her confidence wavered. Fear leaked through. She pressed back against the bars behind her.
“Have you two met?” I asked.
The crow said something like, “Wawk! Wiranda!”
The girl began to shake. If possible, she became even paler. Her jaw seemed clenched so tight her teeth ought to be cracking. I made a mental note to discuss this with Murgen. He knew something about the crow.
What could rattle the girl so badly?
The crow laughed. It whispered, “Sister, sister,” and launched itself back into the sunlight, where it startled some passing brother into a fit of curses.
I stared at the girl, watched the inner steel reassert itself. Her gaze met mine. I felt the fear within her evaporate. I was nothing to her, less than an insect, certainly less than a stubbed toe at the beginning of her long trek across the ages.
Shuddering, I broke eye contact.
That was a scary kid.
Our days began before sunrise. They ended after sunset. They included a great deal of training and exercise of the sort that had been let slide for too long. Tobo worked with almost fanatic devotion to improve his skills as an illusionist. I insisted upon daily readings from the Annals in an effort to reinforce the depth and continuity of brotherhood that were so much the foundation of what the Company was. There was resistance at first, of course, but the message sank in at a pace not unrelated to a growing realization that we were going to go up onto the glittering plain—really!—or were going to die here in front of the Shadowgate when Soulcatcher chose to write our final chapter.
The renewed training paid dividends quickly. Eight days after we reduced the fort below the Shadowgate, another mob like Suvrin’s, but much larger, trudged in out of the country west of the New Town. Thanks to Murgen, we had plenty of warning. With Tobo and Goblin assisting, we sprang a classic Company ambush using illusions and nuisance spells that confused and disorganized a force that had had almost no idea what it was doing already. We hit fast and hard and mercilessly and the threat evaporated in a matter of minutes. In fact, the relief force fell apart so fast we could not take as many prisoners as I wanted, though we did round up most of the officers. Suvrin generously identified those he recognized.
Suvrin was practically an apprentice Company man by now, so desperate was he to belong to something and to gain the approval of those around him. I felt halfway guilty exploiting him the way I did.
The prisoners we did take became involuntary laborers in our preparations for the future. Most jumped on the opportunity because I promised to release those who did work hard before we went up onto the plain. Those who failed to work hard would go along as porters. Somehow a rumor got started amongst the prisoners that human sacrifice might be involved in what we were going to be doing once we passed the Shadowgate.
I found Goblin in with One-Eye, whose recovery seemed to have been sped by Gota’s presence. Possibly because he needed to be well enough to get away from her and her cooking. I do not know. They had the Key laid out on a small table between them. Doj, Tobo and Gota watched. Even Mother Gota kept her mouth shut.
Sahra was conspicuously absent.
She was carrying her snit over Tobo too far. I expect there was more to it than what she admitted, though. A big part would center on her fear of the near future.
“Right there,” One-Eye said just as I leaned forward to see what Goblin was doing. The little bald man had a light hammer and a chisel. He tapped the chisel. A piece of iron flipped off the Key. This had been going on for a while, evidently, because about half the iron was gone, revealing something made of gold. I was so surprised at the wizard’s lack of greed that I almost forgot to worry about what they were doing to the Key.
I opened my mouth. Without looking up, One-Eye told me, “Don’t shit your knickers yet, Little Girl. We ain’t hurting a thing. The Key is this thing inside. This golden hammer. You want to bend down a little closer? Maybe you can read what’s inscribed on it.”
I bent. I scanned the characters made visible by removal of the iron. “Looks like the same alphabet as the first book of the Annals.” Not to mention the first Book of the Dead. Which I did not mention.
Goblin used the tip of his chisel to indicate a prominent symbol that appeared in several places. “Doj says he saw this sign at the temple in the Grove of Doom.”
“It should be there.” I knew that one. Master Santaraksita had taught me its meaning. “It’s the personal sign of the goddess. Her personal chop, if you want.” I did not name a name. I suggested, “Don’t speak the name. Not in any of its forms. In the presence of this thing, that would be guaranteed to attract her attention.” Everyone stared at me. I asked, “You didn’t do that already, did you? No? Uncle, you don’t know what this thing might really be, do you?” I had an intuition it was something Narayan Singh might never have surrendered had he been aware that it was in his possession. I thought it might exist solely so that the priest who carried it could obtain the attention of his goddess instantly. Even in my own religion, people had had a much more immediate and scary relationship with the godhead in ancient times. The scriptures told us so. But no such golden hammer played any part in the Kina mythology, insofar as I could recall. Curious. Maybe Master Santaraksita could tell me more.
Goblin continued chipping away. I continued watching. The process went faster as each fragment fell.
“That isn’t any hammer,” I said. “That’s a kind of pickax. It’s a Deceiver cult thing. And older than dirt. It has to be something of huge religious significance.” I suggested, “Show it to the girl. See how she responds.”
“You’re as close to a Kina expert as we’ve got, Sleepy. What could it be?”
“There’s actually a name for that kind of tool but I can’t remember what it is. Every Deceiver band had a pickax like this. Not made out of gold, though. They used them in the burial ceremonies after their murders. To break the bones of their victims so they would fold up into a smaller wad. Sometimes they used them to help dig graves. All with the appropriate ceremonies aimed at pleasing Kina, of course. I really do think somebody should show this to the Daughter of Night and see what she says.”
It seemed like a thousand pairs of eyes were staring at me, waiting for me to volunteer. I told them, “I’m not doing it. I’m going to bed.”
All those eyes kept right on staring. I had put myself in charge. This was something nobody but the guy in charge ought to handle.
“All right. Uncle. Tobo. Goblin. You back me up on this. That child has talents we can’t guess at yet.” I had been warned that she still tried to walk away from her flesh at night, despite all the constraints surrounding her. She was both her mothers’ daughter and there was no telling what might happen when she had to suffer too much stress.
Tobo protested. “I don’t like to be around her. She gives me the creeps.”
Goblin beat me to it. “Kid, she gives everybody the creeps. She’s the creepiest thing I’ve run into in a hundred fifty years. Get used to it. Deal with it. It’s part of the job. Which they say you were born to do and which you did ask for.”
Curious. Goblin the mentor and instructor seemed much more articulate than Goblin the want-to-be-layabout and slacker.
The little wizard suggested, “You carry the Key. You’re young and strong.”
The Daughter of Night did not look up when we entered the tent. Perhaps she was not aware of us. She seemed to be meditating. Possibly communing with the Dark Mother. Goblin kicked the bars of her cage, which rattled nicely and shed a shower of rust. “Well, look at her. Cute.”
“What?” I asked.
“She’s been working some kind of spell on the iron. It’s rusting away a thousand times faster than it ought to. Clever girl. Only—”
The clever girl looked up. Our eyes met. Something behind hers chilled me to the bone. “Only what?” I asked.
“Only every spell holding her and controlling her has that cage for an anchor. Anything that happens to it will happen to her. Look at her skin.”
I saw what he meant. The Daughter of Night was not exactly rusty herself but did look spotty and frayed at the surface.
Her gaze shifted to Uncle, Goblin, Tobo . . . and she gasped, like she was seeing the boy for the first time. She rose slowly, drifted toward the bars, gaze locked with his. Then a little frown danced across her brow. Her gaze darted down to Tobo’s burden.
Her mouth opened and, I swear, a sound like the angry bellow of an elephant rolled out. Her eyes grew huge. She lunged forward. Her shackles gave way. The bars of the cage creaked and let fall another shower of rust. They bent but did not give. She thrust an arm through in a desperate effort to reach the Key. Little bits of skin blackened and fell off her. And still she was beautiful.
I observed, “I guess we can safely say the thing does hold some significance for the Deceivers.”
“You could say so,” Goblin admitted. The girl’s whole arm had begun to look like it had been badly burned.
“So let’s take it away and see what else we can find out. And get the cage reinforced and her shackles replaced. Tobo!” The boy kept staring at the girl like he was seeing her for the first time. “Don’t tell me he just fell in love. I couldn’t handle it if we had to worry about that in addition to everything else.”
“No,” Uncle Doj reassured me. “Not love, I think. But the future, just maybe.”
Although I tried to insist, he would not expand upon that remark. He was still Uncle Doj, the mystery priest of the Nyueng Bao.
Things came together nicely after the defeat of the relief column. Murgen said nobody else was likely to challenge us without help from beyond the mountains. Which help, unfortunately, was on the way already. Soulcatcher was airborne and lurching southward in small, erratic leaps that, nevertheless, were bringing her closer faster than any animal could do—even one of those magical stallions from the Tower at Charm—but still definitely very feebly for a flying carpet. Once upon a time the Howler could conquer the miles between Overlook and Taglios in a single night.
Soulcatcher had to rest several hours for every hour she spent aloft. Even so, she was on her way. And the impact of the news on the troops was electric. With only days left, or possibly only hours, everyone buckled down and put their back into it. I saw very little slacking, little wasted effort, and some very serious concentration when it came to honing military skills.
Suvrin was right in there with the troops, drilling his behind off. Literally. Though he had been with us only a short time, he had begun to lose weight and show signs of shaping up. He approached me soon after Murgen and Goblin began issuing regular reports about Soulcatcher’s progress. “I want to stay with you, ma’am,” he told me.
“You what?” I was surprised.
“I’m not sure I want to be part of the Black Company but I do know for sure that I don’t want to be here when the Protector shows up. She has a reputation for seldom letting herself be swayed by the facts. The futility of me having resisted you won’t impress her.”
“You’re right about that. If you shirked because you would’ve gotten killed doing what she expected, she’ll arrange it so you get dead anyway. In a less pleasant way, if possible. All right, Suvrin. You’ve kept your word and you’ve been a good worker.”
He winced. “You understand what ‘Suvrin’ actually means?”
“Junior, essentially. But you’re stuck with it now. Most people in the Company don’t go by their birth names. Even most of the men who go by regular names don’t go by their real ones. They’re all getting away from their past. And you will be, too.”
He grimaced.
“Report to Master Santaraksita. Until I find something else for you, your job will be to assist him. Old Baladitya is no use at all. He’s worse than Santaraksita, who keeps getting farther and farther behind in his packing because he keeps getting distracted by his books.” Santaraksita had managed to acquire several antique volumes locally that had, miraculously, survived the countless disasters that had beset the region these past several decades.
Suvrin bowed. “Thank you.” There was a fresh bounce in his step as he walked away.
I suspected he and Master Santaraksita might have a lot in common. Heck, Suvrin could even read.
Tobo materialized. “My father says to tell you that Soulcatcher has reached Charandaprash. And that she’s decided to rest there before she crosses the Dandha Presh.”
“A few more hours’ grace. Excellent. Means there’s a good chance there won’t be anything left here for her to find but our tracks. How are you getting along with your mother? Did you make any effort at all?”
“Dad also says he wants you to post somebody with a warning horn that can be sounded once the Protector gets dangerously close. And he says you should pull in the pickets watching the pass now, just in case Soulcatcher changes her mind about taking some time off.”
That was a good idea.
Runmust and Riverwalker made the mistake of being close enough to be seen. I sent them to go bring the scouts home. “Tobo, you can’t ignore your mother. You’ll end up getting along with her worse than she gets along with your grandmother.”
“Sleepy . . . why can’t she just let me grow up?”
“Because you’re her baby, you idiot! Don’t you understand that? When you’re twice as old as One-Eye you’ll still be her baby. The only baby that cruel fate hasn’t gobbled down. You do remember that your mother had other children and she lost them?”
“Uh . . . yeah.”
“I’ve never had children. I never want to have children. In part because I can see how horrible it would be to see my own flesh and blood die and not be able to do anything to prevent it. Family is supposed to be extremely important to you Nyueng Bao. I want you to drop whatever you’re doing. Right now. Go over and sit on that boulder. Spend two hours not thinking about anything but what it must have meant to your mother to see your brother and sister die. Think about how badly she must not want to go through that again. Think about what it must be like to be her after everything else she’s had to go through. You’re a smart kid. You can figure it out.”
When you are around people long enough you get a feel for how they react. I could see his first petulant inclination was to remind me that I had been younger than he was now when I attached myself to Bucket and the Company, which had little to do with the argument at hand but which was the sort of tool you grab when you are that age.
“If you intend to say something, make sure it makes sense before you do. Because if you can’t think logically and argue logically, then there isn’t much hope that you’ll have any success with the sorcery, no matter how talented you are. I know. I know. From everything you’ve seen, the bigger the wizards are, the crazier they are. But within the boundaries of their insanity, every one of them is rigorously, mathematically rational. The entire power of their minds serves their insanity. When they stumble it’s because they let emotions or wishful thinking get in the way.”
“All right. I surrender. I’ll sit on the damned rock until it hatches. Oh, Dad also said to tell you that Narayan Singh is somewhere close by. He can sense the Deceiver but he can’t pinpoint him. Kina is protecting him with her dreams. Dad says you should ask the white crow to look for him. If you can find it and get it to sit still long enough.”
“Crowhunter. Maybe I’ll call myself that. It sounds more glamorous than Sleepy.”
“Tobo sounds more glamorous than Sleepy.” Tobo headed for the boulder and settled in an approved attitude. I hoped I had planted seeds that would take root and sprout while he was trying to think of everything else but.
“At least you get to change your name when you grow up . . . ” Stupid. Anytime I feel like it I can tell everyone to call me whatever strikes my fancy.
Crowhunter gave up her name. She was a failure. The white monster was nowhere to be found. So I went and spent some time with Sahra even though she did not welcome me right away. We recalled old days, hard times, her husband’s lack of perfection, till I thought she was relaxed enough to actually listen to what I had to say about Tobo.
The villain himself scored a coup by showing up with an olive branch at the perfect time. I elected to remove myself while things were going well. I hoped the peace would last but did not count on forever.
I would settle for one halcyon week. In a week we would know if it was possible to resurrect the Captured. In a week we would either be dead on the glittering plain or ready to return as a force of ultimate destruction. Or maybe . . .
The warning horn sounded deep in the night, when even those who were stuck with guard duty were at their most sluggish. But the man on horn duty was married to his job. He kept blowing and blowing. In minutes our entire encampment was seething. And I was out there with my heart in my throat, striding along, making sure the chaos was only apparent, not real. Everyone remained calm and focused. There was no panic. I was pleased. Even a little training and discipline are better than none.
I ducked into Goblin’s tent. Sahra and Tobo were there already and not at one another’s throats. I must have gotten through to the kid. I should keep after them both. In my copious free time. I bent close to the mist projector. “What’s the word?”
Murgen whispered, “Soulcatcher is airborne and moving south. She plans to arrive shortly after sunrise. She has a good idea where you are. During her rest time she sent a shadow down to scout your position. She didn’t learn a lot more. The shadow didn’t dare get close enough to eavesdrop. She plans to don one of her disguises and infiltrate your camp so she can find out what you’re really up to. From the beginning, she’s operated under the assumption that we’re dead out here. Even though she didn’t kill us directly when she trapped us. She flew out of there believing we’d be dead in just a few days. I expect learning that Croaker and Lady are still alive is going to be the kind of shock that ruins her whole century.”
“How fast is she moving? Strike that. You said she’d get here just after sunrise. Is Mogaba with her?” That would make a big difference in how fresh she would be when when she arrived. Which would determine the shape of what I started doing now.
“No. If she manages to get in among you and unearths all the answers to the questions she has, she’ll smash you, scatter you, grab the Key, then go back for the Great General.” Murgen sneered when he used Mogaba’s title. The fact that we never beat him once, heads up, during the Kiaulune wars, did nothing to ease our contempt for him as a deserter and traitor.
“Warn me if she does anything unexpected. Sahra, have you checked on your mother?”
“Briefly. Doj and JoJo are helping her and One-Eye. I think she was a little delirious. She kept muttering about a noose and a land of unknown shadows and calling the heaven and earth and the day and the night.”
“All evil dies there an endless death.”
“That, too. What is it?”
“I don’t know. A phrase I picked up somewhere. It has to do with the plain but I don’t know what. Doj might be able to tell you. He promised to be cooperative and forthcoming but since I passed on his offer to make me his apprentice, that hasn’t materialized. My fault as much as his, probably. I haven’t taken time to press him. I have work to do.” I ducked out.
The excitement had become more rigorously organized. There were torches and lanterns to light the road to the Shadowgate. A band of our bravest were up near the gate already, arranging more lighting and fine-tuning the colored powders used as road marks. Loaded animals were beginning to line up. Likewise a train of carts. Babies cried, children whined, a dog barked without pause. Sounds of men slipping through the darkness beyond the light came from all around. Prisoners who had been sure we meant to drag them onto the plain to become human sacrifices were being chivied toward the New Town. Some of the harder men had wanted to use them as bearers instead of the animals, disposing of them as their usefulness ended. I had demurred. They would become obstinate and obstreperous after the first few died and we would not be able to eat them after we ate up the consumables they carried. Not that the majority of us would eat flesh anyway. But those who could would from the beginning.
I spied Willow Swan strolling through the mob. He spun off orders like a drill instructor. I approached him. “Gone nostalgic for the good old days when you were the boss Grey?”
“A true genius, whose name we won’t bring up in present company, sent all the master sergeants to make preparations at the Shadowgate. She didn’t detail anybody to keep things moving down here.”
The unnamed genius had to admit that he was right. River, Runmust, Spiff, all the men I had known the longest and trusted the most, were up there or somewhere out in the darkness. I guess I just assumed Sahra and I could handle everything else. Forgetting that I would be sprinting around making decisions for everyone who could not make up their minds for themselves. “Thanks. If I don’t get a better offer by my fortieth birthday, I’ll marry you yet.”
Swan made a halfhearted effort to click his heels. “So. How old are you today?”
“Seventeen.”
“That’s about what I guessed. With maybe another twenty years of experience, plus wear and tear.”
“It’s tough being a teenager today. Just ask Tobo. Nobody’s ever had it as awful as he does.”
He chuckled. “Speaking of kids, who’s handling the Daughter of Night? Which I don’t want to be me.”
“Darn! I figured Goblin and Doj for that. But Goblin’s tied up helping keep track of Soulcatcher, and Doj has Gota and One-Eye to worry about. Thanks for reminding me.” I headed back toward Goblin’s tent. “Hey, Short Wart! Leave it to Tobo and Sahra a while. We got to get the Daughter of Night loaded up.”
Goblin came out muttering, surveyed the excitement, grumbled, “All right. Let’s get at it. Only, how come the fuck we never gave her a name? So what if she don’t want one. She don’t want to live in no cage, either. Even Booboo would be easier than calling her Daughter of Night all the time. Whoa! What the fuck is that?” He stared past me, downhill.
I turned, saw a pair of red eyes bobbing in the darkness, coming closer fast. I grabbed for my sword. Then I frowned as I heard the hoofbeats. Then I said, “Hey, buddy! Is that you? What the heck are you doing here? I thought you had yourself a job working for the traitor.”
The old black stallion stepped close, lowered its head to nuzzle the hair beside my right ear. I hugged it around the neck. We had been friends once upon a time but I had not thought we were so close that it would desert Mogaba and track me down over hundreds of miles once it discovered that I was still alive. The creatures had been created to serve the Lady of the Tower but were supposed to be used to passing from one secondary master to another. This one had been Murgen’s before it had become mine, then I had lost it.
“You ought to get out of here,” I told it. “Your timing’s really lousy. Soulcatcher is going to be all over us in just a few hours. If we’re not already up there on that plain.”
The horse surveyed my companions and what it could see of the Company, shuddered. Then, turning its gaze on Swan, the stallion managed a very human snort.
I patted its neck. “I’m not sure I don’t agree with you, but Willow does have his redeeming qualities. He just keeps them well hidden. Go ahead and tag along if you want. I’m not riding. Not without a saddle.”
Swan chuckled. “So much for the conquering Vehdna horsemen whose pride disdained both saddles and stirrups.”
“Admitting no shortcomings of my own, I still have to observe that most of those proud horsemen were over six feet tall.”
“I’ll find you a ladder. And promise never to say a word about how those proud conquerors fared as soon as they ran into cavalry who did favor saddles and stirrups.”
“Bite him, buddy.”
To my amazement, the stallion snorted and nipped at Willow’s shoulder. Swan leaped back. “You always did have a temper and bad manners, half-ass.”
“Might be the company.”
“Far be it from me to interfere with your sparking, Crowhunter,” Goblin said, “but I thought you had a notion to do something with Booboo.”
“Sarcastic, eavesdropping mudsucker. I did, didn’t I? And I overlooked our old pal Khusavir Pete, too. I haven’t checked in on him lately, either. Is he still healthy?” The horse nuzzled me again. I patted its neck. Maybe it felt more nostalgic about our good old days than I did.
“I can check. You definitely overlooked him in your master plan.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t. Not a bit. I have a very special mission cooked up specially for Khusavir Pete. And if he pulls it off, not only will he get to stay alive, I’ll forgive everything he did at Kushkhoshi.”
Somebody shouted. A scarlet fireball blistered across the night. It missed its target. It did not miss a tent, however. Then another tent after that, then the crude wooden barracks the men had built while they were waiting for me to arrive. All three began to smolder.
“That was Narayan Singh,” Willow Swan said, stating what two-score people had seen during the carmine instant. “And he had Booboo—”
“Can it, Swan.” I started yelling at everyone nearby, trying to organize a pursuit.
Goblin told me, “Calm down, Sleepy. All we need to do is wait till she starts screaming, then go pick her up.”
I had forgotten the incredible array of control spells attached to the Daughter of Night. Her pain would increase geometrically as she moved farther away from her cage. Then at some distance known only to Goblin and One-Eye, choke spells would kick in and tighten rapidly. Narayan could take her away from us but only at the cost of killing her. Unless . . .
I asked.
“The spells have to be taken off from outside. She could be her mother and sister, the Shadowmasters and the Ten Who Were Taken all rolled into one and she’d still have to have somebody else help her get loose.”
“All right. Then we’ll wait for the screams.”
There were no screams. Not then or ever.
Murgen looked hard. He could find no sign. Kina was dreaming strongly, protecting her own. Goblin remained adamant that they had to be close by, that there was no way the Daughter of Night had shed her connection to her cage.
I told Swan, “Then you gather up some men and drag that cage up to the Shadowgate. We’ll make her follow us.”
The warning horn sounded again. Soulcatcher had crossed the summit. She was on our side of the Dandha Presh. There were hints of light in the east.
It was time to leave.
A brutal argument was under way aboard Soulcatcher’s carpet as she approached her destination, skimming the rocks, the sun’s blinding fires behind her. Part of her wanted to forget about assuming a disguise and infiltrating the enemy. That part wanted to arrive as a killing storm, destroying everything and everyone that was not Soulcatcher. But by doing that she would expose herself to the counterefforts of people who had shown themselves very resourceful in the past. Innovation was one of the more irksome traditions of the Black Company.
She grounded the carpet and stepped off, concealed it using a minor spell. Then she crept toward the Company encampment, a few yards at a time, until she found a good hiding place where she could undertake the illusion creations and modest shapechanges that would render her unrecognizable. That work required total concentration.
Back in the brush, not far from where she had set down, Uncle Doj crept forward and after having used his small wizard’s skills to make sure there were no booby traps, demolished Soulcatcher’s flying carpet in a straightforward, no-nonsense manner using a hatchet. He might be old and a step slower, but he was still very quick and very sneaky. He was almost all the way back to the Shadowgate when Soulcatcher appeared, looking the epitome of scruffy young manhood.
A white crow, balanced precariously in a bit of rain-hungry brush, observed her passage. When she could no longer glance back and see anything damning, the bird flapped into the place where she had changed and started going through the clothing and whatnot she had left behind. The bird kept making noises like it was talking to itself.
Soulcatcher entered the encampment where she had expected to find the remnants of the Black Company. It was empty. But up ahead she saw a long column already beyond the Shadowgate. One man with a sword across his back had not passed through the gate yet but he was moving swiftly, and a number of people were waiting for him just on the other side.
They did have the Key! And they had used the damned thing! She should have gotten here faster! She should have attacked! Dammit, everyone knew subtlety was no good with these people. Hey! They had to have known that she was coming. There was no other explanation for this. They had known she was coming and they knew where she was now and . . .
The first fireball was so accurately directed that it would have taken her head off if she had not been getting down already. In another moment the damned things were streaking in from several different sources. They set brush afire and shattered rocks. She got down on her stomach and crawled. Before she worried about her dignity, she had to get away from the focal point of the fire. Unfortunately, her efforts did not seem to matter. The assassins seemed to know exactly where she was and her disguise did not fool them for an instant.
As a swarm of fireballs closed in, she flung herself into a deep hole that had been a cesspit not that long ago. No matter. Right now shelter was priceless. Now the snipers could not get her without coming out of hiding and coming to her.
She took advantage of the respite to engineer, prepare and launch a counterattack. That involved a lot of color and fire and boiling, oily explosions, none of which did much harm because her surviving attackers had fled through the Shadowgate as soon as she went into the pit.
She climbed out. Nothing happened. She glared up the hill. So. Even the snipers were beyond the Shadowgate now. Nearly a dozen people were standing around there, waiting to see what she would do. She calmed herself. She could not let them goad her into doing something stupid. The Shadowgate was in extremely delicate shape. One angry, thoughtless move on her part might damage it beyond repair.
She conquered the rage that threatened to conquer her. She was ancient in her wickedness. Time was an intimate ally. She knew how to abide.
She limped uphill, urging her anger to bleed off in movement, with an ease no normal being could manage.
The slope immediately below the Shadowgate was covered with swaths and patches of colored chalk. A carefully marked safe path passed through. Soulcatcher did not yield to temptation and try to follow it. There was a chance that they had forgotten that she had gone this way before. Or perhaps they refused to believe she could recall that in those days the safe path had entered the Shadowgate eight feet farther west, just beyond that rusty, twisted iron cage lying on its side as though it was exhausted and dying. She waved a finger. “Naughty, naughty.”
Willow Swan—damn his treacherous, should-be-dead bones!—and the Nyueng Bao family stared back impassively. The pale-faced little wizard Goblin smirked, obviously remembering whose fault it was that she could no longer walk normally. And the ugly little woman smiled evilly. She said, “I wasn’t trying to suck you in, Sweet Stuff. I did suck you in.” She lifted a hand and raised a middle finger in a sign obviously learned from a northerner. “Water sleeps, Protector.”
What the hell did that mean?
No human being can jump as high as Soulcatcher did. Nevertheless, she managed to get her heels ten feet off the ground a gnat’s breath before the fireball ripped through the air where she had stood. I should have kept my big darned mouth shut. Gloating will do you in every time. How many stories and sagas are there where the hero survives because his captor insists on wasting time bragging and gloating before the execution? Add another one to the roll, where Company Annalist Sleepy does the incredibly dumb deed and leaves the target not quite relaxed enough.
Of course, she was fast. Epically fast. Poor old Khusavir Pete only got off two more fireballs before Soulcatcher got to him where we had left him chained.
It did not play out the way I hoped, only the way I expected. Now Khusavir Pete would have a hard time repaying any debt he still owed us.
I caught a glimpse of motion, the white crow plunging like a striking hawk. It pulled out and glided away. I murmured to myself, “Sister, sister.” I was beginning to read the messages.
“Come here, Tobo.” He was carrying the Key. He was supposed to be up at the head of the column but had hung back so he could watch the fireworks. He was the only one of us who did not have the sense to be frightened. Because he was not up where he belonged, all progress had come to a halt above us. He wore a hangdog look as he approached. He expected to be chastised. And he would be, later. “Hold up the Key.”
“But won’t that—”
“The Company isn’t a debating club, Tobo. Show her the Key. Today.”
He hoisted the Key overhead angrily. The morning sunlight blazed off the golden pick.
Soulcatcher did not show much excitement. But I had not meant the demonstration for her benefit, really. I wanted Narayan Singh to know what he had let slip through his fingers.
It was the Key, of course, but it was also some ancient and holy relic of Kina’s Strangler cult. In their glory days every Deceiver company priest had carried a replica. I muttered, “You win some, you lose some, Narayan. In the excitement you got the girl back. But I’ve got this. And I can carry it. You’ve got the Daughter of Night and you can take her anywhere you want to. If you can carry her and her cage.” Goblin and One-Eye had crafted a masterpiece of wicked sorcery. She could not even escape by destroying the cage. Whatever happened to it would happen to her.
I was not pleased about having to leave the cage behind but the Shadowgate had been decidedly stubborn in resisting its passage. That could have been overcome by sheer muscle power but I had not been able to get enough men onto it fast enough to force it through before the fireballs started flying.
Good luck, Baby Darkness, dragging all that iron around whilst you pursue your wickedness.
I hoped Singh had left the Book of the Dead hidden on the other side of the Dandha Presh so it would be a long time before the girl and it embraced one another. Long enough for me to get where I wanted to go and accomplish what I wanted to accomplish.
“That’s good, Tobo. Now get back up front and get this mob moving. Swan. Tell me about the camping circles. And give me your best guess about how soon we’re likely to run into trouble because of breaks in the protection of the road.”
“I don’t remember them ever being more than a few hours apart. And although we used them as camping places, I think that they were actually crossroads. That’s easier to tell at night.” Ominously, he added, “You’ll see. Everything is different at night.”
I did not like the sound of that.
I was still in the rear guard and only halfway to the crest when Soulcatcher found out what had happened to her flying carpet. The sound of her anger reached us despite the dampening effect of whatever barrier stood between us and the rest of the world. The earth shivered at the same time.
Uncle Doj was not far away, standing at the edge of the road, watching for evidence of his success. I said, “She seems displeased with the prospect of having to walk home.” My friend the horse stood behind me, looking over my shoulder. It made a sound that could have passed for a snicker if it had not been a horse making it.
Doj indulged in a rare smile. He was thoroughly pleased with himself.
Willow Swan asked me, “What did you do now?”
“Not me. Doj. He totally obliterated her means of transport. She’s on her own two hooves, now. She’s a hundred miles from her only friend. And Goblin’s already fixed up one of her feet so she can’t run or dance.”
“What you’re telling me, then, is that you’ve created another Limper.”
He was old enough to remember that nemesis of the Company. I could not contradict him. I did lose my smile. I had read those Annals often because they had been recorded by the Captain himself when he was young. “Nah, I don’t think so. Soulcatcher doesn’t have the concentrated venom and nearly divine malice that possessed the Limper. She doesn’t get obsessed the way he did. She’s more chaos walking while he was malevolence incarnate.”
I showed Swan my crossed fingers. “I’d better dash up front and pretend that I know what I’m doing. Tobo?”
“He went ahead without you,” Doj said. “You upset him.”
I noted that the column had resumed moving, which meant that Tobo was on the plain already, carrying the Key like a protective talisman.
I needed to give a lot of thought to the fact that that artifact, evidently considered a holy of holies by the Stranglers, may actually have been brought off the plain into my world by the ancestors of the Nyueng Bao. I had to spend some thought on what the Key might mean to the last informed priest of the Nyueng Bao.
Something beside the road caught my attention just before I reached the crest and got my first close look at the glittering plain. It was a small frog, mostly black but with stripes and whorls of dark green upon its back. It had eyes the color of fresh blood. It clung to a slightly tilted slab of grey-black rock. It wanted to go somewhere, anywhere, but its right hind leg was injured and when it tried to jump, it just sort of spun around in place. “Where the heck did that come from? There isn’t supposed to be anything alive up here.” I had been looking forward to having the clouds of flies that followed the animals get thinned out when they buzzed out beyond the safe zones and encountered killer shadows.
Swan said, “It won’t be alive for long. The white crow dropped it. I think it was bringing it along for a snack.” He pointed.
At the white crow. Bolder than ever, the bird had made itself at home on the back of my friend the mystic stallion. The horse seemed content with the situation. Perhaps even a little smug when it looked at me.
“I just remembered,” Swan said. “For what it’s worth. Last time we came up here Croaker made everybody who belonged to the Company touch their badges and amulets to the black stripe that runs down the middle of the road. Right after he touched the stripe with the lancehead on the standard. Maybe none of that amounts to anything. But I’m a superstitious kind of guy and I’d be more comfortable—”
“You’re right. So be quiet. I recently reread everything Murgen had to say about his trip and he thought it might be a good idea, too. Tobo! Hold up!” I did not believe the boy would actually hear me over the clatter generated by the column but did expect that people would pass the word. I looked at the hapless frog once more and marveled that the crow was smart enough to let it go. Then I hastened to overtake our fledgling wizard.
The column stopped. Tobo had gotten my message. He had chosen not to ignore it. Maybe he had caught something from the white crow.
His mother and grandmother both were right there with him where he waited, making sure he did sensible things. He was exasperated by the delay. He was already far ahead of everyone but Sahra and Gota . . .
Ah! As I recalled, Murgen had had the same trouble with the Lance of Passion.
My first glimpse of the plain awed me. Its immensity was indescribable. It was as flat as a table forever. It was grey on grey on grey, with the road just barely darker. There was no doubt whatsoever that this was all one vast artifact.
“Hang on, Tobo. Don’t go any farther,” I called. “We almost forgot something. You need to take the Key and touch it to the black stripe that runs down the middle of the road.”
“What black stripe?”
Swan said, “It doesn’t show up nearly as well this time. But it’s there if you look.”
It was. I found it. “Come back this way. You can see it back here.”
Tobo backtracked reluctantly. Maybe I should have Gota carry the Key. She could not move fast enough to outrun the rest of us.
I stared on, beyond Tobo, feeling a faint touch of that passion to hurry myself. I was getting close to my brothers now . . . Dark-grey clouds were beginning to gather down there. Murgen had mentioned a nearly permanent overcast that, nevertheless, did not always seem to have been around during his nights. I could make out no hint of the ruined fortress that was supposed to be a few days ahead of us. I did see plenty of the standing stones that were one of the outstanding features of the plain.
“I see it!” Tobo shouted, pointing downward. The little idiot swung the pickax, burying the point in the road surface.
The earth shuddered.
This was no devastating quake like those some of us recalled from years ago, when half the Shadowlands had been laid waste. It was just strong enough to be sensed and set tongues wagging and animals protesting.
The morning sun must have touched the plain oddly, somehow, because all the standing stones began to sparkle. People oohed and aahed. I said, “I guess this is why they call it glittering stone.”
Swan demurred. “I don’t think so. But I could be wrong. Don’t forget what I said about the Company badges.”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
Tobo pried the pick out of the road’s surface. The earth shifted again, as gently as before. When I joined him he was staring downward, baffled. “It healed itself, Sleepy.”
“What?”
“When I hit it the pick went in sort of like the road was soft. And when I yanked it back out, the hole healed itself.”
Swan remarked, “The center stripe is getting easier to see.”
He was right. Maybe that was because of the brightening sunlight.
The ground trembled again. Behind me, voices changed tone, becoming frightened as well as awed. I glanced back.
A huge mushroom of dark rouge dust with black filigree highlights running through it boiled up from whence we had come. Its topmost surface seemed almost solid but as it rose and moved, the pieces of junk riding on it fell off.
Goblin burst into laughter so wicked it must have carried for miles. “Somebody got into my treasure trove. I hope she learned a really painful lesson.” I was close enough for him to add a whispered, “I wish it could be fatal but there’s not much chance of that.”
“Probably not.”
“I’ll settle for crippling her other leg.”
I said, “Sahra, there’s something I need you to do. You remember Murgen telling us how he kept getting ahead of everyone when he came up here? Tobo has been doing the same thing. Try to slow him down.”
Sahra sighed wearily. She nodded. “I’ll stop him.” She seemed apathetic, though.
“I don’t want him stopped, I just want him slowed down enough so everyone else can keep up. This could be important later.” I decided the two of us needed to have a long talk in private, the way we used to do before everything got so busy. It was obvious that she needed to get some things out where they could be lined up and swatted down and pushed away from her long enough for her heart to heal.
She did need healing. And for that she had no one to blame but herself. She did not want to accept the world as it was. She seemed worn out from fighting it. And in those ways she had begun to look very much like her mother.
I told her, “Put a leash on him if that’s what it takes.”
Tobo glowered at me. I ignored him. I made a brief speech suggesting anyone who carried a Black Company badge should press it to the road’s surface right where Tobo had wounded it. The public readings aloud I had been doing had included Murgen’s adventures on the plain. Nobody questioned my suggestion or refused to accept it. The column began moving again, slowly, as we found ways to bless, if only secondarily, the animals and those who did not have Company badges. I stayed in place and said something positive to everyone who passed by. I was amazed at the number of women and children and noncombatants in general who had managed to attach themselves to the band without me really noticing. The Captain would be appalled.
Uncle Doj was last to go by. That troubled me vaguely. A Nyueng Bao to the rear, more Nyueng Bao to the front, with the foremost a half-breed . . . But the whole Company was a miscegenation. There were only two men in this whole crowd who had belonged to the Company when it had arrived from the north. Goblin and One-Eye. One-Eye was almost spent and Goblin was doing his determined best, quietly, to pass on as many skills as he could to Tobo before the inevitable began to overhaul him as well.
I walked past the slow-moving file, intent on getting back up near the point so I could be among the first to see anything new. I did not see or feel any particular mission in anyone I passed. It seemed that a quiet despair informed everyone. These were not good signs. This meant the euphoria of our minor successes had collapsed. Most of these people realized that they had become refugees.
Swan told me, “We have an expression up north, ‘going from the frying pan into the fire.’ Seems like about what we’ve done here.”
“Really?”
“We got away from Soulcatcher. But now what?”
“Now we march on until we find our buried brothers. Then we break them out.”
“You’re not really as simple as you pretend, are you?”
“No, I’m not. But I do like to let people know that things aren’t always as difficult as they want to make them.” I glanced around to see who might overhear. “I have the same doubts everyone else has, Swan. My feet are on this path as much because I don’t know what else to do as they are out of high ideals. Sometimes I look at my life and it seems pretty pathetic. I’ve spent more than a decade conspiring and committing crimes so I can go dig up some old bones in order to find somebody who can tell me what to do.”
“Surrender to the Will of the Night.”
“What?”
“Sounds like something Narayan Singh would say, doesn’t it? In my great grandfather’s time it was the slogan of the Lady’s supporters. They believed that peace, prosperity and security would result inevitably if all power could be concentrated in the hands of the right strong-willed person. And it did turn out that way, more or less. In principalities that did ‘Surrender to the Will of the Night,’ particularly near the core of the empire, there were generations of peace and prosperity. Plague, pestilence and famine were uncommon. Warfare was a curiosity going on far, far away. Criminals were hunted down with a ferocity that overawed all but the completely crazy ones. But there was always bad trouble along the frontiers. The Lady’s minions, the Ten Who Were Taken, all wanted to build sub-empires of their own, which never lacked for external enemies. And they all had their own ancient feuds with one another. Hell, even peace and prosperity create enemies. If you’re doing all right, there’s always somebody who wants to take it away from you.”
“I never pictured you as a philosopher, Swan.”
“Oh, I’m a wonder after you get to know me.”
“I’m sure you are. What are you trying to tell me?”
“I don’t know. Killing time jacking my jaw. Making the trip go faster. Or maybe just reminding you that you shouldn’t get too distressed about the vagaries of human nature. I’ve been getting my roots ripped out and my life overturned and a boot in my butt propelling me into an unknown future, blindfolded, for so long now that I am getting philosophical about it. I enjoy the moment. In a different context I do Surrender to the Will of the Night.”
Despite my religious upbringing, I have never cherished a fatalistic approach to life. Surrender to the Will of the Night? Put my life in the hands of God? God is Great, God is Good, God is Merciful, there is no God but God. This we are taught. But the Bhodi philosophers may be right when they tell us that homage to the gods is best served when seconded by human endeavor.
“Going to get dark after a while,” Swan reminded me.
“That’s one of those things I’ve been trying to avoid thinking about,” I confessed. “But Narayan Singh was right. Darkness always comes.”
And when it did, we would find out just how wonderful a talisman our Key was.
“Have you noticed how the pillars keep on glittering even though the sky has started to look like it’s going to rain?”
“I have.” Murgen never mentioned this one phenomenon. I wondered if we had not done something never done before. “Did this happen last time you were up here?”
“No. There was a lot of glitter when we had direct sunlight but none that seemed like it was self-generated.”
“Uhm. And was it this cold?” It had been getting chillier all day.
“I recall a sort of highland chill. Nothing intolerable. Whoa. Sounds like party time.”
A whoop and holler had broken out at the head of the column. I could not determine a cause visually, being of the short persuasion. “What is it?”
“The kid’s stopped. Looks like he’s found something.”
What Tobo had found were the remains of the Nar, Sindawe, who had been one of our best officers in the old days and, possibly, the villain Mogaba’s brother. Certainly those two had been as close as brothers until the siege of Jaicur, when Mogaba chose to usurp command of the Company. “Clear away from him, people,” I growled. “Give the experts room to take a look.” The experts being Goblin, who dropped to his knees and scooted around the corpse slowly, moving his head up and down, murmuring some sort of cantrips, touching absolutely nothing until he was certain there was no danger. I dropped to one knee myself.
“He got a lot farther than I would’ve expected,” Goblin said.
“He was tougher than rawhide. Was it shadows?” The body had that look.
“Yes.” Goblin pushed gently. The corpse rolled slightly. “Nothing left here. He’s a dried-out mummy.”
A voice from behind me said, “Search him, you retard. He might’ve been carrying a message.”
I glanced back. One-Eye stood behind me, leaning on an ugly black cane. The effort had him shivering. Or maybe that was just the cold air. He had been riding one of the donkeys, tied into place so he would not fall if he dozed off, which he did a lot these days.
I suggested, “Move him over to the side of the road. We need to keep this crowd moving. We have about eight more miles to go before we stop for the night.” I pulled that eight out of the air but it was a fact that we needed to keep moving. We were better prepared for this evolution than our predecessors had been but our resources remained limited. “Swan, when a mule with a tent comes along, cut it out of line.”
“Uhm?”
“We need to make a travois. To bring the body.”
Every face within earshot went blank.
“We’re still the Black Company. We still don’t leave our own behind.” Which was never strictly true but you do have to serve an ideal the best you can, lest it become debased. A law as ancient as coinage itself says bad money will drive out good. The same is true of principles, ethics and rules of conduct. If you always do the easier thing, then you cannot possibly remain steadfast when it becomes necessary to take a difficult stand. You must do what you know to be right. And you do know. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred you do know and you are just making excuses because the right thing is so hard, or just inconvenient.
“Here’s his badge,” Goblin said, producing a beautifully crafted silver skull in which the one ruby eye seemed to glow with an inner life. Sindawe had made that himself. It was an exquisite piece from talented hands. “You want to take it?”
’That was the custom, gradually developed since the adoption of the badges under Soulcatcher’s suzerainty back when the Captain was just a young tagalong with a quill pen. The badges of the fallen were passed down to interested newcomers, who were expected to learn their lineage and thus keep the names alive.
It is immortality of a sort.
I jumped. Sahra made a startled noise. I recalled that something similar had happened to Murgen last time. Although in that case, only he had sensed it. I thought. Maybe I ought to consult him. An entire squad of soldiers had been assigned to tend and transport the mist projector as delicately as was humanly possible. Even Tobo was under orders to match his pace to that manageable by the crew moving our most valuable resource.
Tobo had not done a good job of conforming.
Carts creaked past. Pack animals shied away from Sindawe’s remains but never so far they risked straying from the safety of the road. I had begun to suspect that they could sense the danger better than I could because I had to rely entirely upon intellect for my own salvation. Only the black stallion seemed unmoved by Sindawe’s fate.
The white crow seemed very much interested in the corpse. I had the feeling Sindawe was someone it knew and mourned. Ridiculous, of course. Unless that was Murgen inside there, as someone had suggested, trapped outside his own time.
Master Santaraksita came along, leading a donkey. Baladitya the copyist bestrode the beast. He studied a book as he rode, completely out of touch with his surroundings. Perhaps that was because he could not see them. Or he did not believe in the world outside his books. He had the lead rope of another donkey tied to his wrist. That poor beast staggered under a load consisting mostly of books and the tools of the librarian’s trade. Among the books were some of the Annals, on loan, including those that I had salvaged from the library.
Santaraksita pulled out of line. “This is so absolutely exciting, Dorabee. Having adventures at my age. Being pursued through ancient, eldritch, living artifacts by terrible sorcerers and unearthly powers. It’s like stepping into the pages of the old Vedas.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying it so much. This man used to be one of our brothers. His adventure caught up with him about fourteen years ago.”
“And he’s still in one piece?”
“Nothing lives on the plain unless it has the plain’s countenance. Even including the flies and carrion eaters you’d expect to find around a corpse anywhere.”
“But there are crows here.” He indicated birds circling at a distance. I had not noticed them because they were making no sounds and there were only a few of them in the air. As many as a dozen more perched atop the stone columns. The nearest of those were now just a few hundred yards ahead.
“They’re not here to feast,” I said. “They’re the Protector’s eyes. They run to her and repeat whatever we do. If they touch down after dark, they’ll end up just as dead as Sindawe did. Hey, Swan. Right now, up and down the column, pass the word. Nobody does anything to bother those crows. It might break holes in the protection the road gives against the shadows.”
“You’re determined to put me on Catcher’s shit list, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“She doesn’t know I’m not dead, does she? Those crows are going to put the finger on me.”
I laughed. “Soulcatcher’s displeasure shouldn’t worry you right now. She can’t get to you.”
“You never know.” He went off to tell everybody I wanted those watchcrows treated like favored pets.
“A strange and intriguing man,” Santaraksita observed.
“Strange, anyway. But he’s a foreigner.”
“We’re all foreigners here, Dorabee.”
That was true. Very true. I could close my eyes and still be overwhelmed by the strangeness of the plain. In fact, I felt that more strongly when I was not looking at it. When my eyes were closed it seemed as aware of me as I was aware of it.
Once we got Sindawe loaded I continued walking beside Master Santaraksita. The librarian was every bit as excited as he claimed. Everything was a wonder to him. Except the weather. “Is it always this cold here, Dorabee?”
“It’s not even winter yet.” He knew about snow only by repute. Ice he knew as something that fell from the sky during the ferocious storms of the rainy season. “It could get a lot colder. I don’t know. Swan says he don’t recall it being this chilly the last time he was up here but that was at a different time of year and the circumstances of the incursion were different.” I was willing to bet that seldom in its history had the plain ever experienced the crying of a colicky baby or the barking of a dog. One of the children had sneaked the dog along and now it was too late to change anyone’s mind.
“How long will we be up here?”
“Ah. The question nobody’s had the nerve to ask. You’re more familiar with the early Annals than I am anymore. You’ve had months and months to study them while I haven’t had time to keep my own up to date. What did they tell you about the plain?”
“Nothing.”
“Not who built it? Not why? By implication Kina is involved somehow. So are the Free Companies of Khatovar and the golem demon Shivetya. At least we think the thing in the fortress up ahead is the demon who’s supposed to stand guard over Kina’s resting place. Not very effectively, apparently, because the ancient king Rhaydreynak drove the Deceivers of his time into the same caverns where Soulcatcher trapped the Captured. And we know that the Books of the Dead are down there somewhere. We know that Uncle Doj says—without offering any convincing evidence—the Nyueng Bao are the descendants of another Free Company, but we also know that Uncle and Mother Gota sometimes mention things that aren’t part of the usual lore.”
“Dorabee?”
Santaraksita I found wore that expression he always put on when I surprised him. I grinned, told him, “I rehearse all this every day, twenty times a day. I just don’t usually do it out loud. I believe I was hoping you would add something to the mix. Is there anything? By direct experience we know that it takes three days to get to the fortress. I assume that stronghold is located at the heart of the plain. We know there’s a network of protected roads and circles where those roads intersect. Where roads exist there must be someplace to go. To me that says there must be at least one more Shadowgate somewhere.” I looked up. “You think?”
“You bet our survival on the possibility that there’s another way off the plain?”
“Yep. We didn’t have anywhere left to run back there.”
There was that look again.
Suvrin, plodding along and listening in silence, had that look, too.
I said, “Although I’ve been surrounded by Gunni all my life, I’m still unfamiliar with the more obscure legendry. And I know even less about that of the older, less well-known, non-proselytizing cults. What do you know about The Land of Unknown Shadows? It seems to be tied in with aphorisms like ‘All Evil Dies There an Endless Death’ and ‘Calling the Heaven and the Earth and the Day and the Night.’“
“The last one is easy, Dorabee. That’s an invocation of the Supreme Being. You might also hear it as the formula ‘Calling the Earth and the Wind and the Sea and the Sky,’ or even ‘Calling Yesterday and Today and Tonight and Tomorrow.’You spout those off thoughtlessly because they’re easy and you have to deliver a certain number of prayers every day. I’m sure Vehdna who actually keep up with their prayers take the same shortcuts.”
Twinges of guilt. My duties of faith had suffered abominably the past six months. “Are you sure?”
“No. But it sure sounded good, didn’t it? Easy! You asked about Gunni. I could be wrong in a different religious context.”
“Of course. How about Bone Warrior, Stone Soldier, or Soldier of Darkness?”
“Excuse me? Dorabee?”
“Never mind. Unless something related occurs to you. I’d better trot up the line and get Tobo slowed down again.”
As I passed the black stallion and white crow, the latter chuckled and whispered that “Sister, sister“ phrase again. The bird had heard the entire conversation. Chances were that it was not Murgen, nor was it Soulcatcher’s creature, but still, it was extremely interested in the doings of the Black Company, to the point of trying to give warnings. It seemed quite pleased that we were headed south and were unable to turn back.
Behind me, Master Santaraksita’s group paused. He and Baladitya studied the face of the first stone column, where golden characters still sparked occasionally.
It is immortality of a sort.
The people of the former Shadowlands clung to the best cover available while they watched Nemesis cross their country in a slow and angry progression toward the pass through the Dandha Presh. In more than one place Soulcatcher’s appearance gave rise to the rumor that Khadi had been reborne and was walking through the world again.
She always did love a good practical joke.
What the witnesses saw seemed to be the goddess in her most terrible aspect. She was naked except for a girdle of dried penises and a necklace of babies’ skulls. Her skin was a polished mahogany black. She was hairless everywhere. She had vampire fangs and an extra pair of arms. She seemed about ten feet tall. What she did not seem was happy. People stayed out of her way.
She was not alone. In her wake came an equally naked woman as white as Soulcatcher was dark. She was five and a half feet tall. Even covered with cuts and bruises and dirt, she was attractive. Her face was empty of all expression but her eyes burned with patient hatred. She wore only one item of ornamentation, a shoulder harness to which a cable ten feet long had been attached. That cable connected her to the rusty iron cage floating in the air behind her. The cage enclosed a skinny old man who had suffered several severe injuries, including a broken leg and some bad burns. The girl was compelled to tow the cage. She never spoke, even when the monster encouraged her with a switch. Possibly she had lost the faculty.
Narayan Singh had been the unfortunate who triggered Goblin’s booby trap, not its beloved intended.
The Deceiver shared the cage with a large bound book. He was too weak to keep it closed. Wind toyed with its pages. Once in a while the breeze showed its vicious side and yanked a page away from the book’s tired binding.
Sometimes delirious, Narayan thought he was in the hands of his goddess, either being punished for some forgotten transgression or transported to Paradise. And perhaps he was right. It did not occur to Soulcatcher to wonder what use she had for him alive. Not that she was taking any special trouble to keep him that way. Nor did the Daughter of Night seem particularly concerned about his fate.