74

I managed to overtake Tobo before he sped through the crossroads’ circle. “We’re stopping here,” I told him, hanging onto his shoulder.

He looked at me like he was trying to remember who I was.

“Back up to the circle.”

“All right. You don’t have to be so pushy.”

“Good. The real you is back. Yes. I do. No one else seems to be able to restrain you.” As we stepped into the circle, I told him, “There should be a . . . yes. Right here.” There was a hole in the roadway surface, four inches deep and as big around as my wrist. “Put the handle of the pickax in that.”

“Why?”

“If the shadows can get inside the protected areas, that’s the direction they’ll come from. Come on. Do it. We’ve got a ton of work to do if we’re going to set up a safe camp.” There were too many of us to get everyone inside the circle. That meant some would have to overnight on the road, not a practice encouraged by Murgen.

I wanted only the calmest personalities back there. Murgen guaranteed that every night on the plain would be some kind of adventure.

Suvrin found me trying to get Iqbal and his family moved toward the heart of the circle. The animals were hobbled there. And I had a feeling that the plain really did not like being trampled upon by things with such hard feet. “What is it, Suvrin?”

“Master Santaraksita would like to see you at your earliest convenience.” He grinned like he was having a wonderful time.

“Suvrin, have you been getting into the ganja or something?”

“I’m just happy. I missed the Protector’s state visit. Therefore I’m all right until sometime that’s still far off yet. I’m on the greatest adventure of my life, going places no one of my generation would have thought possible even a few weeks ago. It won’t last. It just plain won’t last. The way my luck runs. But I’m for damned sure having fun now. Except my feet hurt.”

“Welcome to the Black Company. Get used to it. Bunions should be our seal, not a fire breathing skull. Did anyone learn anything useful today?”

“My guess would be that Master Santaraksita might have come up with something. Else why would he bother to send me to find you?”

“You got bold and sarky fast once you got up here.”

“I’ve always thought I’m more likable when I’m not afraid.”

I glanced around. I wondered if stupid ought not to be in there somewhere, too. “Show me where the old boy is.”

Suvrin had the chatters. Bad, for him. “He’s a wonder, isn’t he?”

“Santaraksita? I don’t know about that. He’s something. Keep an eye out that you don’t accidentally find his hand fishing around in your pants.”

Suvrin had made camp for himself and the older men right at the edge of the circle, on its eastern side. Santaraksita had to have picked the spot. It was directly opposite the nearest standing stone. The librarian was seated Gunni-style, crosslegged, as near the edge as he dared get, staring at the pillar. “Is that you, Dorabee? Come sit with me.”

I overcame a burst of impatience, settled. I was out of shape for that. The Company continued its northern habits—using chairs and stools and whatnot—even though we now had only two Old Crew souls left. Such is inertia. “What are we looking for, Master?” It was obvious he was watching the standing stone.

“Let’s see if you’re as bright as I believe you are.”

There was a challenge I could not ignore. I stared at the column and waited for truth to declare itself.

A group of the characters on the pillar brightened momentarily. That had nothing to do with the light of the setting sun, which had begun creeping in under the edge of the clouds. That was painting everything bloody. After a while I told Santaraksita, “It seems to be illuminating groups of characters according to some pattern.”

“Mainly in reading order, I think.”

“Down? And to the left?”

“Reading downward in columns isn’t uncommon in the temple literature of antiquity. Some inks dried quite slowly. If you wrote in horizontal lines, you sometimes smeared your earlier work. Writing downward in columns right to left suggests to me left-handedness. Possibly those who placed the stellae were mostly left-handed.”

It struck me that writing whatever way was convenient for you personally could lead to a lot of confusion. I said so.

“Absolutely, Dorabee. Deciphering classical writing is always a challenge. Particularly if the ancient copyists had time on their hands and were inclined to play pranks. I’ve seen manuscripts put together so that they could be read both horizontally and vertically and each way tells a different story. Definitely the work of someone who had no worries about his next meal. Today’s formal rules have been around for only a few generations. They were agreed upon simply so we could read one another’s work. And they still haven’t penetrated the lay population to any depth.”

Most of that I knew already. But he needed his moments of pedantry to feel complete. They cost me nothing. “And what do we have here?”

“I’m not sure. My eyes aren’t sharp enough to pick up everything. But the characters on the stone closely resemble those in your oldest book and I’ve been able to discern a few simple words.” He showed me what he had written down. It was not enough to make sense of anything.

“Mostly I think we’re looking at names. Possibly arranged in a holy scripture sort of way. Maybe a roll-call-of-the-ancestors kind of thing.”

“It is immortality of a sort.”

“Perhaps. Certainly you can find similarly conceived monuments in almost every older city. Iron was a popular material for those who considered themselves truly rich and historically significant. Generally, though, they were erected to celebrate individuals, notably kings and conquerers, who wanted following generations to know all about them.”

“And every one of those I’ve ever seen was a complete puzzle to the people living around it now. Thus, a feeble immortality of a sort.”

“And there’s the point. We’ll all achieve our immortality in the next world, however we may conceive that, but we all want to be remembered in this one. I suppose so that when the newly dead arrive in heaven, they’ll already know who we are. And, yes, even though I am a devout, practicing Gunni, I’m very cynical about what humanity brings to the religious experience.”

“I’m always intrigued by your thinking, Master Santaraksita, but in today’s circumstances I just don’t have time to sit around musing on humanity’s innumerable foibles. Nor even those of God. Or the gods, if you prefer.”

Santaraksita chuckled. “Do you find it amusing to see our roles thus reversed?” A few months in the real world had done wonders for his attitude. He accepted his situation and tried to learn from it. I considered accusing him of being a Bhodi fellow traveler.

“I fear I’m much less of a thinker than you like to believe, Master. I’ve never had time for it. I’m probably really more of a parrot than anything.”

“And I suspect that surviving in your trade eventually leaves everyone more philosophical than you want to admit, Dorabee.”

“Or more brutal. None of these men were ever sterling subjects.”

Santaraksita shrugged. “You remain a wonder, whether or not you wish to be one.” He made a gesture to indicate the standing stone. “Well, there you have it. It may say something. Or it may just be remembering the otherwise unheralded whose ashes nourished weeds. Or it may even be trying to communicate, since some of the characters seem to have changed.” His tone became one of intense interest as he completed his last sentence. “Dorabee, the inscription doesn’t remain constant. I must have a closer look at one of those stellae.”

“Don’t even think about it. You’d probably be dead before you got to it. And would get the rest of us dead, too.”

He pouted.

“This’s the dangerous part of the adventure,” I told him. “This’s the part that leaves us no room for innovation or deviation or expressing our personalities. You’ve seen Sindawe. No better or stronger man ever lived. That was nothing he deserved. Whenever you feel creative, you just go look on that travois. Then take another look. Gah! It smells like the inside of a stable here already. A little breeze wouldn’t hurt.” As long as it blew away from me.

The animals were all crowded together and surrounded so they could not do something stupid like wander out of the protective circle. And herbivores tend to generate vast quantities of by-product.

“All right. All right. I don’t make a habit of doing what’s stupid, Dorabee.” He grinned.

“Really? What about how you got here?”

“Maybe it’s a hobby.” He could laugh at himself. “There’s stupid and stupid. None of those boulders is going to make my pebble turn into a standing stone.”

“I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or an insult. Just keep an eye on the rock and let me know if it says anything interesting.” It occurred to me to wonder if these pillars were related to the pillars the Company had found in the place called the Plain of Fear, long before my time. Those stones had even walked and talked—unless the Captain exaggerated even worse than I thought. “Whoa! Look there. Right along the edge of the road. That’s a shadow, being sneaky. It’s already dark enough for them to start moving around.”

It was time I started moving around, making sure everyone remained calm. The shadows could not reach us if no one did anything stupid. But they might try to provoke a panic, the way hunters will try to scare up game.

75

Despite the numbers and the animals and my own pessimism, nothing went wrong. Goblin and I made repeated rounds of the circle and the tailback running north up the protected road. We found everyone in a mood to be cooperative. I suppose that had something to do with the shadows clinging to the surface of our invisible protection and oozing around like evil leeches. Nothing focuses the attention like the proximity of a bad death.

“There are other ways in and out of this circle besides the one we came in and the one we’re going to use tomorrow,” I told Goblin. “How come we can’t see them?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s magic. Maybe you ought to ask One-Eye.”

“Why him?”

“You’ve been around long enough that you should’ve discovered the truth. He knows everything. Just ask. He’ll tell you.” Evidently he was less worried about his friend. He was back to picking on One-Eye.

“You know, you’re right. I haven’t had much chance to talk to him but I did notice that he’s going all-out to be a pain. Why don’t we go wake him up, tell him he’s in charge, and get ourselves some shut-eye?” Which is what we did, with slight modifications, after we made sure there was a watch rotation for every potential entry into the circle, whether it could be seen or not. With help from Gota and Uncle Doj, One-Eye was still capable of contributing a little something to his own protection. Not that he was willing to admit that.

I believe Goblin went off and whispered something to Tobo, too, after we went our respective ways.

I had just gotten comfortable on my nice rock bed when Sahra invited herself over for a chat. I really was tired and uncharitable. When I sensed her presence, I just wanted her to go away. And she did not stay long.

She said, “Murgen wanted to talk to you but I told him you were exhausted and needed to rest. He wanted me to warn you that your dreams may be particularly vivid and probably confusing. He said just don’t go anywhere and don’t panic. I have to go tell Goblin and One-Eye and Uncle and some others and have them spread the word to everyone else. Rest easy.” She patted my hand, letting me know we were still friends. I grunted and closed my eyes.

Murgen was right. Night on the glittering plain was another adventure entirely. The landmarks were similar but seemed to be ghosts of their daytime selves. And the sky was not to be trusted.

The plain itself was still all shades of grey but now with some sort of implied illumination that left all the angles and edges clearly defined. Once when I glanced upward I saw a full moon and the sky crowded with stars, then only moments later, the overcast was back and there was nothing to be seen at all. The characters inscribed on the standing stones all seemed busy, which was not something Murgen had noted during his own visit. I watched for a moment, recognizing individual characters but no words. Nevertheless, I had an epiphany I would have to pass on to Master Santaraksita in the morning. The inscriptions on the pillars did begin at the upper right and read downward. For the first column. The second column read from the bottom upward. Then the third read back down. And so on.

I became more interested in the things moving amongst the pillars, though. There were some big shadows out there, things with a presence potent enough to terrify and scatter the little shadows radiating hunger as they crawled over the surface of our protection. The big ones would not come closer. They had about them an air of infinite, wicked patience that left me convinced they would be out there waiting if it took a thousand years for one of us to screw up and open a gap in our protection.

In dream, all roads leading into the circle were equally well-defined. Each was a glimmering ruler stroke running off to glowing domes in the distance. Of all those roads and domes, though, only those on our north-south trace seemed to be fully alive. Either the road knew what we wanted to do or it knew what it wanted us to do.

In an instant I was amazed, bewildered, terrified, exultant, having realized that in order to see what I was seeing, I would have to be at least a dozen feet above my normal height of eye. Which meant that I had to go outside my skin, the way Murgen did, and while I had wished for the ability a thousand times and the view was engrossing, the risks were none I cared to face when the opportunity was real. I sped a prayer heavenward. God needs to be reminded. I was totally, ecstatically, happy being Sleepy, without one shred of mystical talent. Really. If it was necessary that somebody in my gang do this sort of thing, Goblin or One-Eye or Uncle Doj or almost anyone else could have the magic, sparing only Tobo, despite him being the prophesied future of the Company. Tobo was still a little too short on self-discipline to be handed any more capabilities.

The presence of the small shadows was kind of like that of a flock of pigeons. They were not silent on that ghost-world level but they did not try to communicate unless with one another. It took me only moments to shut them out.

The skies above were more troublesome. Each time I lifted my gaze I saw that some dramatic change had occurred. Sometimes there was an impenetrable overcast, sometimes a wild starfield and a full moon. Once there were fewer stars and an extra moon. Once a distinct constellation hung right over the road south. It conformed exactly to Murgen’s description of a constellation called the Noose. Hitherto I had always suspected the Noose to have been a fabrication on Mother Gota’s part.

Then, just beyond the golden pickax, I spied a strapping trio of the uglies Murgen had reported meeting in that very spot his first night on the glittering plain. Were they yakshas? Rakshasas? I tried to shoehorn them into Gunni or even Kina’s mythology but just could not make them fit. There would be plenty of room, though, I did not doubt. The Gunni are more flexible in matters of doctrine than are we Vehdna. We are taught that intolerance is our gift of faith. Gunni flexibility is just one more reason they will all suffer the eternal fires. The idolaters.

God is Great. God is Merciful. In Forgiveness He is Like the Earth. But He can become a tad mean-spirited with unbelievers.

I tried desperately to recall Murgen’s report of his encounter with these dream creatures. Nothing came forward despite the fact that I had been the one who had written it all down. I could not for certain recall if his night visitors had been identical to these. These were humanoid and human-size but definitely lacking human features. Possibly they wore masks in the guise of beasts. Judging from their frenetic gestures, they wanted me to follow them somewhere. I seemed to recall something similar having happened during Murgen’s episode. He had refused. So did I, although I did drift toward them and did attempt to engage them in conversation.

I did not, of course, have a knack for generating sound without a body or tools. And they did not speak any language I knew, so the whole business was an exercise in futility.

They became extremely frustrated. They seemed to think that I was playing games. They finally stamped away, obviously possessed by a big anger.

“Murgen, I don’t know where you are. But you’re going to have to spend some time clueing me in here.”

The ugly people were gone. No skin off my nose. Now maybe I could get some sleep. Some real sleep, without all these too-real dreams and awful, improbable skies.

It started to rain, which told me which sky was the true sky and paramount above the me that lay twitching fitfully as the cold drops began to make themselves felt. There was no way to get in out of it. There was no way to erect tents or other shelters on the plain. In fact, the matter of weather had not arisen during our planning sessions. I do not know why, though it seems that there is always something big that you overlook, something to which every planner on the team turns a blind eye. Then, when the breakdown or failure comes, you cannot figure out how you overlooked the obvious.

Somehow we must have concluded that there was no weather on the plain. Maybe because Murgen’s Annals did not recall any. But somebody should have noticed that the Captured made this journey at a different time of year. Somebody should have realized that that was sure to have some impact. Somebody probably named me.

It had been cool already when the rain began to fall. It grew chillier fast. Crabbily, I got up and helped cover stuff to protect it, helped get out means for recovering some of the water, then confiscated a piece of tenting and another blanket, rolled up and went back to sleep, ignoring the rain. It was only a persistent drizzle and when you are exhausted, nothing but sleep matters much.

76

I found Murgen waiting when I got home to dreamland.

“You seem surprised. I told you I’d see you on the plain.”

“You did. But I don’t need it to be right now. Right now I need to sleep.”

“You are. You’ll wake up as refreshed as if you hadn’t dreamed at all.”

“I don’t want to be drifting around loose from my body, either.”

“Then don’t.”

“I can control it?”

“You can. Just decide not to do it. It’s pretty basic. Most people manage it instinctively. Ask around tomorrow. See how many of these people even recall being loose from their flesh.”

“It’s something everybody does?”

“Up here. It’s something everybody can do. If they want. Most don’t want it so emphatically that they don’t even recognize that the opportunity is there. Which doesn’t matter. It’s not why I’m here.”

“It matters a bunch to me. That stuff is scary. I’m just a simple low-class city brat—”

“Cancel the old whine-and-toe shuffle, Sleepy. You’re wasting time. I probably know as much about you as you know about yourself. There’re things you need to know.”

“I’m listening.”

“Till now you’ve dealt with the plain well enough by letting the Annals guide you. Stick with the rules you’ve already made and you won’t have any trouble. Don’t dawdle. You didn’t bring enough water—even if you slaughter your animals as you go, the way you planned. There’s ice here that you can melt but if you waste time getting here, you’ll end up having to kill more animals than you want. And take good care of them while they’re still alive. Don’t let them get so thirsty they start charging around looking for water and go busting through your protection. That’ll heal itself but it does take time. The shadows won’t give you time.”

“Then we’re safe from the break that killed Sindawe and some of the others?”

“Yes. You’ll find Bucket tomorrow. I warn you now so you’ll have time to prepare yourself.”

I was prepared already. I had been prepared for a long time. Actually seeing Bucket dead would be difficult but I would get past it. “Tell me what I should do now that I’m here.”

“You’re doing it. Just don’t do it slowly.”

“Should I split the group? Send a strike force forward?”

“That wouldn’t be wise. You wouldn’t be able to manage whichever group you weren’t with. And that’ll be the one where somebody screws up and gets us all killed.”

“You, too?”

“There’s nobody else who can get me out if you fail. There isn’t even anyone else out there who knows that we’re alive.”

“The Daughter of Night and Narayan Singh know. Probably.” They had overheard enough to figure it out, certainly.

“Which means Soulcatcher does too, now. But you know, I don’t really see those people developing an interest in raising the dead. Not to mention that now the Shadowgate can only be opened from this side. This is the last cast of the dice, Sleepy. And it’s for everything.”

I did not remind Murgen that Narayan Singh and his ward had a very strong interest in resurrecting someone who was practically his grave-mate. He was right about the Shadowgate, assuming there were no more Keys outside. “How did I know you were going to say something like that?”

He gave me the smile that probably won Sahra’s heart.

I told him, “You should go see Sahra.”

“I already have. That’s why I was so late getting around to you.”

“What can I say? Oh. I saw those creatures . . . the . . . ” I did not know what they were called, so I tried to describe them.

“The Washane, the Washene and the Washone, collectively referred to as the Nef. They’re dreamwalkers, too.”

“Too?”

“I’m a dreamwalker. You can see me but only with your mind’s eye. In some way that you remember me. The Nef are out here all the time. They may be trapped, or they may no longer have bodies to go back to. I’ve never been able to tell. They want to communicate so badly because they want something badly but don’t seem capable of learning how. They’re from one of the other worlds. If they no longer have bodies they may even be skinwalkers, so be very careful around them.”

“The . . . duh . . . what are you blathering about?”

“Oh. We haven’t talked about any of that yet, have we?”

“Any of what?”

“I really thought you’d figure most of it out by reading between the lines. The Companies had to come from somewhere and it would be hard to scratch out a living on a tabletop of bare stone. So they must have come from somewhere else. Somewhere very else, since the plain isn’t so big you can’t walk around it and discover that there’s nowhere for armies to come from. The land just gets colder and more inhospitable.”

“I’m real thick, boss. You should’ve drawn me some pictures.”

“I wasn’t keen on having anyone outside know. I didn’t want anybody getting scared to come get me.”

“You’re my brother.”

He ignored me. “I haven’t slept here, so I have a lot of time on my hands. I’ve used some of it exploring. There are sixteen Shadowgates, Sleepy. And fifteen of them open onto places that aren’t our world. Or did at one time. Most of them are dead now and in my state, I can’t see what used to be on the other side without actually going out there. And I don’t have the eggs to do that, because I like my own world just fine and I don’t want to take a chance of getting trapped any farther away from it than I already am.

“Only four of the gates are still alive. And the one to our world is so badly hurt that it probably won’t last many generations more.”

I was lost. Completely. I was prepared for none of this. And yet he was right when he hinted that there were bells I should have heard ringing. “What does all that have to do with Kina? It isn’t in her legend anywhere. In fact, what does it even have to do with us? It’s not in our legend anywhere.”

“Yes it is, Sleepy. The truth is just so old that time has totally distorted it. Examine Gunni mythology. There’s a lot there about other planes, other realms of reality, different heavens and whatnot. Those stories go way back before the coming of the Free Companies, a thousand years or more. Near as I’ve been able to find out, when the first Free Company came off the plain, almost six hundred years ago, that event marked the first time our Shadowgate had been used in at least eight centuries. That’s a lot of time for truth to mutate.”

“Whoa. Whoa. You’re starting to imply things I can’t quite get my mind around.”

“You’d better open it up and spread it out wide, Sleepy, because there’s a whole lot more. And I doubt I’ve discovered even a tenth of it.”

I have a dark, cynical, untrusting side that at times even doubts the motives of my closest friends. “Why is it that none of this ever got mentioned until now? This isn’t fresh news to you, is it?”

“No. It isn’t. But I told you, I want out of here. Badly. I chose not to pass on any information that might handicap you.”

“Handicap me? What the heck are you talking about?”

“Kina and the Captured aren’t the only things sleeping up here. There’re also a lot of truths that would shake the foundations of our world. Truths I have no trouble imagining wholesale slaughters and holy wars arising to suppress. Truths I have no trouble seeing getting my family and the Company obliterated, they’re so threatening.”

“I’m trying to open my mind but I’m having trouble. I feel like I’m about to plunge into an abyss.”

“Just hang on. I’ve been out here forever and I still have trouble with it. I think the way to start is, I should outline the history of the plain.”

“Yes. Why don’t you do that? That might be interesting.”

“You still have that edge on your tongue, don’t you? Maybe Swan is right and what you really need is a good . . . all right. All right. Listen closely. The plain was created so far back in antiquity that nobody on any of the worlds has any idea who built it, how, or why, though you have to believe that it was meant to be a pathway between the worlds.”

“Why the shadows and standing stones and—”

“I can’t tell you anything if I’m not the one doing the talking.”

“Sorry.”

“In the beginning there was the plain. Just the plain, with its network of roads that have to be walked a certain way to get to other worlds. For example, every traveler has to enter the great circle at the center of the plain before he can leave the plain again. Back then there were no shadows, no Shadowgates, no standing stones, no great fortress inside the great circle, no caverns beneath the stone, no sleeping gods, no Captured, no Books of the Dead. There was nothing but the plain. The crossroads of worlds. Or possibly of time. One rogue school of thought insists the gates all open into the same world but at times which are separated by tens of thousands of years.

“At some time still in unimaginable antiquity, human nature asserted itself and would-be conquerers began to charge back and forth across the plain. During a period of exhaustion the wise men of a dozen worlds combined to make the first modifications to the plain. They built a fortress in the great circle and garrisoned it with a race of created immortal guardians whose task it would be to prevent armies from passing from world to world.

“Then we pass to the edge of proto-history, the age now recalled poorly as it is distorted in Gunni myth.

“Those driven to conquer will try to do so, whatever the obstacles. Kina apparently started out as your run-of-the-mill, dark-lord type that arises every few centuries, as Lady’s first husband was, only she was another in a line and association of many such, some of whom are now recalled as gods because of the impact they had on their times. The whole cabal decided to beef Kina up until she could overcome the ‘demons’ on the plain. In the process she did become what, for want of a better descriptive, we would have to call a god. And she behaved every bit as badly as her associates should have expected, with results more or less like those recalled in the mythology. Once Kina was asleep, her associates opened the maze of caverns under the plain and buried her way down deep somewhere. Then they created Shivetya, the Steadfast Guardian, to keep watch. Or they conscripted a surviving demon of the same name and strengthened him and bound him to do the job, if you prefer a less common version of the story. Then, apparently too exhausted to recover their greatness, they faded away. So Kina came out on top even if she ended up imprisoned.”

“Why didn’t they just kill her? That’s something I’ve never understood about these squabbles amongst the gods. There’s only one version of the Kina myth where her enemies do anything but just tuck her in. And in that one, even after she’s all chopped up and scattered around, they leave the pieces alive and trying to get back together.”

“My guess would be she had some kind of deadman spell that entwined the fates of the other gods with her own. Those people wouldn’t have trusted one another for a second. All of them would have had some protective mechanism like Longshadow used when he tied his fate into the well-being of the Shadowgate.”

“But the Shadowgate doesn’t depend on his health anymore. Not as long as he stays inside.”

“I was just posing an example, Sleepy. Let’s stick to the history of the plain. What followed Kina’s downfall isn’t documented at all, but more conquerers came and went and further efforts were made to dissuade them while keeping the plain open for commerce. The gates and Keys were created. One world gathered its sorcerers and had them steal the souls of millions of prisoners of war, creating the shadows and endowing them with a bitter hatred of everything living. They meant to close down the plain entirely. Which naturally led some other race to create the shields that protect the circles and roads. Nobody knows for sure how or when the standing stones began to appear but they’re the most recent addition to the plain, probably put out by the precursors of the multiple-worlds’ religious movement that produced the Free Companies. I understand that the stones aren’t quarried, they’re created things. They’re immune to the shadows and indifferent to the protective shields but they’re attuned to the various Keys carried away during the Free Companies’ age.”

“It’s too much to grasp. It’ll take a long time to digest. Kina is real, though?”

“Absolutely. Buried right down here under me somewhere. I’ve never been tempted to go look for her. I wouldn’t want to accidentally cut her loose. I don’t know how I could manage that but I definitely don’t want to find out the hard way.”

“What about Rhaydreynak and the Books of the Dead? Where do they fit?” Rhaydreynak’s war on the cult of Kina antedated the appearance of the Free Companies by several centuries supposedly, yet there were scary similarities suggesting shared origins.

“The rise of the Free Companies is actually one of the least well known despite its being closest in time. There were many Companies over several hundred years. They came from several different worlds and went off into several more, representing almost as many different sects of Kina worshippers. Most seem to have been sent out to explore, not conquer or to serve as mercenaries or even to bring on the Year of the Skulls. What their true mission seems to have been was to determine which world should be awarded the honor of being sacrificed in order to bring on the Year of the Skulls.”

“Then a bunch of worlds decided to gang up on ours?”

“Kina spanned many worlds. Her deviltry was almost universal, apparently.”

“And we lost the toss and got to bury her in ours?”

“You’re not in our world anymore, Sleepy. This’s the in-between. Where you are depends on what gate you walk out. And these days you have only one choice. Its Shadowgate lies straight ahead, on the far side of the plain. It’s as if the plain itself is closing down the alternate ways.”

“I don’t get it. Why would it do that? And how?”

“Sometimes its seems like the plain itself is alive, Sleepy. Or at least that it can think.”

“Is it where we came from? Is it where the Captain spent most of his life trying to go?”

“No. The Company can’t go back to Khatovar. Croaker will never reach the promised land. That Shadowgate is dead. The world where you’re headed is very much like our own. To other worlds it’s known by a name that translates into Taglian somewhat vaguely as The Land of Unknown Shadows.”

Without thinking I responded, “All Evil Dies There an Endless Death.”

“What?” Startled. “Yes. How did you know? They were the people who committed the murders that produced the shadows.”

“I heard it somewhere. From a Nyueng Bao.”

“Yes. Nyueng Bao De Duang. In current Nyueng Bao usage that means something like ‘The Chosen Children’ colloquially and nothing whatsoever that’s sensible literally. In the days when their forebears were sent out from The Land of Unknown Shadows it meant, roughly, ‘the Children of the Dead.’“

“You’ve been busy,” I observed.

“Hardly, considering how long I’ve been trapped here. Try it for a decade, Sleepy. You won’t have to put up with any of the distractions you complain about when you aren’t getting everything you want to do done.”

“No kidding? Seems to me I’m all of a sudden having to work even while I’m sleeping.”

“Not for long. Whoever has control of that mist-making thing is trying to get me to answer him. Why don’t you sneak around there and smash that sucker so I don’t have to get dragged into it every time somebody wants my view on how to crack a walnut or whatever else the crisis of the moment happens to be.”

“Not hardly, former boss. I’m carrying a whole bag of nuts myself.”

“You would—” Murgen departed as though yanked away.

I could have sworn I heard the laughter of an eavesdropping white crow.

77

How come you’re so crabby?” Willow Swan demanded when I snapped at him for no good reason. “Rag time again already?”

I blushed. Me, after twenty years among the crudest men on two hooves. “No, jerk. I didn’t sleep very well last night.”

“What?”

It exploded out of him like the shriek of a stomped rat.

“I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Oh, yeah. Not our sweet little Sleepy. Guys, anybody, Ro, River, whoever, you want to step up and remind us about the Roar in the Rain last night?”

Riverwalker told me, “Boss, your snoring made more noise than a tiger in heat. We had people get up and move back up the road toward home to get away from the racket. There were people wanted to strangle you or at least put your head in a sack. I bet if anybody else knew what the hell we were doing and where we were going, you’d be on that travois with General Sindawe.”

“But I’m such a sweet, delicate flower. I couldn’t possibly snore.” I had been accused of the crime before but only jokingly, never with such passion.

River snorted. “Swan decided not to marry you.”

“I’m stricken. I’ll see if One-Eye doesn’t have a cure.”

“A cure? The man can’t even take care of himself.”

I scrounged up something to eat. It was barely worth the effort and definitely not filling. We would be on short rations for a long time. Before I finished what morning preparations were possible for me, the forward elements were already moving. The general mood was more relaxed. We had survived the night. And yesterday we had shoved it to the Protector real good.

The relaxation ended when we found Bucket’s remains.

Big Bucket, real name Cato Dahlia, once a thief, once an officer of the Black Company, was almost a father to me. He never said and I never asked but I suspect he knew I was female all along. He was very unpleasant to some of my male relatives, way back when.

You did not want to be the object when Bucket got angry.

I managed not to break down. I had had a long time to get used to the idea that he was gone, though there was always some small, irrational hope that Murgen was wrong, that death had overlooked him and he was buried with the Captured.

The men put Bucket on the travois with Sindawe without having to be told.

I tagged along and became entranced by one of those unaccountably irrelevant trains of thought that often take shape at such times.

We had left a truly nasty mess where we had spent the night, particularly in the line of animal waste. Likely the Captured had done the same during their passage along this same road. However, other than the odd corpse, there was no sign that they had passed through. There were no dung piles now, no gnawed, discarded bones, no vegetable waste, no ashes from charcoal braziers, nothing. Only human bodies lasted and they became thoroughly desiccated.

I would have to take it up with Murgen. Meantime, it was a mental exercise that would keep me from dwelling upon Bucket.

We trudged on southward. The rain came and went, never more than a drizzle, though sometimes the wind brought it stinging in from a sharp angle. I shivered a lot and worried about it getting cold enough to sleet or snow. No other evil found us. Eventually I spied the vague silhouette of our initial destination, that mysterious central fortress.

The wind began to blow steadily.

Some of the men complained about the cold. Some complained about the wet. Quite a few complained about the menu, and a handful insisted on complaining about all the complaining, I sensed few positive feelings concerning what we were doing.

I felt very much alone, almost abandoned, the whole day long despite well-meant efforts from Swan, Sahra and quite a few others. Only Uncle Doj did not bother because even at this late date he remained piqued because I would not enlist as his apprentice. He continued his emotional machinations. Several times I caught myself retreating into my away place and had to remind me that I did not need to go there now. None of those people could hurt me anymore. Not if I did not let them. I controlled their reality. They survived only in my memory . . . 

Even that is immortality of a sort.

We Vehdna believe in ghosts. And we believe in evil. I wondered if the Gunni might not be onto something after all. For them the pain inspired by the departure of loved ones is less personal and far more fatalistic and is accepted as a necessary stage of life that does not end with this one transformation.

If the Gunni, by some bizarre and remote practical joke of the divine, happen to be in possession of a more accurate theology, I must have been a bad, bad girl in a previous life. I sure hope I had fun . . . Forgive me, O Lord of the Hours, Who Art Merciful and Compassionate. I have sinned in my heart. Thou Art God. There Can Be No Other.

78

There were flakes of snow in the air whenever the wind took to loafing. Then each time it found renewed ambition it hurled tiny flecks of ice that stung my face and hands. Though it sounded fearful, the level of grumbling never reached suggestions of mutiny. Willow Swan trotted up and down the column gossiping and dropping reminders that we had nowhere to go but straight ahead. The weather did not hamper him at all. He seemed to find it invigorating. He kept telling everyone how wonderful it would be once we got some real snow, say, four or five feet. The world would look better then, yes sir! He guaranteed it. He grew up in stuff like that and it made a real man out of you.

With equal frequency I overheard some advice—the fulfillment of which was physically impossible for anyone not some select variety of worm—as often the people cried out, offering up impassioned pleas to One-Eye, Goblin, even Tobo, to fill Swan’s mouth with quick-setting mortar.

“Are you having fun?” I asked him.

“Oh, yeah. And they’re not blaming you for anything, either.”

His boyish grin told me he was not being some kind of unwanted hero. He was playing games with me, too.

All northerners seemed to have that capacity for play. Even the Captain and Lady, sometimes, had shown signs with one another. And One-Eye and Goblin . . . the little black wizard’s stroke may have been a godsend. I could not imagine those two missing an opportunity for screwing up as grand as this one was if they were both in excellent health.

When I suggested something of the sort to Swan he failed to understand. Once I explained, he observed, “You’re missing the point, Sleepy. Unless they’re extremely drunk, those two won’t do anything dangerous to anybody but themselves. I’m on the outside and I recognized that twenty years ago. How could you miss it?”

“You’re right. And I do know that. I’m just looking for things to go wrong. I get gloomy when I try to prepare myself for the worst. How come you’re so cheerful?”

“Right up ahead. Another day. Two, maximum. I get to say hi to my old buddies, Cordy and Blade.”

I looked at him askance. Could he be the only one of us more excited than frightened by the possibilities inherent in releasing the Captured? Only one of those people had not spent the past fifteen years trapped inside his own mind. And I was not convinced that Murgen was not working overtime to maintain a false facade of sanity. The others . . . I did not doubt that quite a few would come forth stark, raving mad. Nor did the rest.

Nowhere was that fear more evident than in the Radisha.

“Tadjik,” had remained almost invisible since she had rejoined us this side of the Dandha Presh. Though Riverwalker and Runmust stayed close, she needed no watching and made few demands. She stayed to herself, cloaked in brooding. The farther we moved from Taglios, the nearer we approached her brother, the more withdrawn she became. On the road, after the Grove of Doom, we had become almost sisterly. But the pendulum had been swinging the other way ever since Jaicur and we had not exchanged a hundred words a week this side of the mountains. That did not please me. I enjoyed her company, conversation and slashing wit.

Even Master Santaraksita had had no luck drawing her out lately, though she had developed an affection for his scholarly drollery. Between them, the pair could gut and flense a fool’s argument faster than a master butcher ever cleaned a chicken.

I mentioned the problem to Willow Swan.

“I’ll bet it’s not her brother that’s bothering her. He wouldn’t be the biggest thing, anyway. I’d guess she’s down about not being able to go back. Ever since she realized we’re probably on a one-wayer here, she’s been in a black depression.”

“Uhm?”

“It’s Rajadharma. That’s not just a handy propaganda slogan for her, Sleepy. She takes being the ruler of Taglios seriously. You got her strolling on down here, month after month, seeing what the Protector did in her name. You have to understand that she’s going to be upset about the way she let herself get used. And then she has to face the fact that she’ll probably never get a chance to do anything about it. She’s not that hard to understand.”

But he had been close to her for thirty years. “We’re going back.”

“Oh, sure. And on the one chance in a zillion that we really do, who’s going to have an army waiting? Can you say Soulcatcher?”

“Sure. And I can also say she’ll forget us in six months. She’ll find a more interesting game to play.”

“And can you say ‘Water sleeps?’ So can Soulcatcher, Sleepy. You don’t know her. Nobody does—except maybe Lady, a little. But I got closer than most for a while. Not exactly by choice, but there I was. I tried to pay attention, for what good it would do me. She isn’t entirely inhuman and she isn’t as vain and heedless as she might want the world to think. Bottom line, you need to keep one critical fact firmly in mind when you’re thinking about Soulcatcher. And that is that she’s still alive in a world where her deadliest enemy was the Lady of the Tower. Remembering that in her time Lady made the Shadowmasters look like unschooled bullies.”

“You’re really wound today, aren’t you?”

“Just stating the facts.”

“Here’s one of your own right back. Water sleeps. The woman who used to be the Lady of the Tower will be back on her feet in another few days.”

“You’d better ask Murgen if he thinks she’ll want to bother getting up. I’ll bet you it’s not this cold where she’s at.” The breeze on the plain had begun to gnaw both deeply and relentlessly.

I did not disagree even though he knew the truth. He might not remember but he must have helped Soulcatcher move the Captured into the ice caverns where they lay imprisoned.

A murder of crows appeared from the north, fighting the wind. They had very little to say to one another. They circled a few times, then fought for altitude and rode the breeze toward Mama. They would not have much to report.

We began to find more bodies, sometimes in twos and threes. A fair number of the Captured had not been caught at all. I recalled Murgen’s report that almost half the party made a break for the world after Soulcatcher got loose. Here they were. I did not remember most of them. They were Taglian or Jaicuri rather than Old Crew, mostly, which meant they had enlisted while I was up north on Murgen’s behalf.

We came upon Suyen Dinh Duc, Bucket’s Nyueng Bao bodyguard. Duc’s body had been prepared neatly for ceremonial farewells. That Bucket had paused in the midst of terror to honor one of the quietest and most unobtrusive of the Nyueng Bao companions spoke volumes about the character of my adopted father—and that of Duc. Bucket had refused to accept protection. He did not want a bodyguard. And Suyen Dinh Duc had refused to go away. He had felt called by a power far superior to Bucket’s will. I believe they became friends when nobody was looking.

I began to shed the tears that had not come when we had found Bucket himself.

Willow Swan and Suvrin tried to comfort me. Both were uneasy with the effort, not quite knowing if hugging would be acceptable. It sure would have been but I did not know how to let them know without saying it. That would have embarrassed me too much.

Sahra provided the comfort as the Nyueng Bao gathered to honor one of their own.

Swan woofed. The white crow had landed on his left shoulder and pecked at his ear. It studied the dead man with one eye and the rest of us with the other.

Uncle Doj observed, “Your friend was supremely confident that someone would come this way again, Annalist. He left Duc in the attitude called ‘In Respect of Patient Repose,’ which we do when a proper funeral has to be delayed. Neither gods nor devils disturb the dead while they lie so disposed.”

I sniffled. “Water sleeps, Uncle. Bucket believed. He knew we’d come.”

Bucket’s belief had been stronger than mine. Mine barely survived the Kiaulune wars. Without Sahra’s relentless desire to resurrect Murgen I would not have come through the times of despair. I would not have become strong enough to endure when Sahra’s own time of doubt came upon her.

Now we were here, with nowhere to go but forward. I dried my eyes. “We don’t have time to stand around talking. Our resources are painfully finite. Let’s load him up—”

Doj interrupted. “We would prefer to leave him as he is, where he is, till we can send him off with the appropriate ceremonies.”

“And those would be—”

“What?”

“I haven’t seen many dead Nyueng Bao since the siege of Jaicur. You people do a good job of dancing around death. But I have seen a few of your tribe dead and there wasn’t any obviously necessary funeral ritual. Some got burned on the ghats as though they were Gunni. I saw one man buried in the ground, as if he were Vehdna. I’ve even seen a corpse rubbed with bad smelling unguents, then wrapped like a mummy and hung head-down from a high tree branch.”

Doj said, “Each funeral would have been appropriate to the person and situation, I’m sure. What’s done with the flesh isn’t critical. The ceremonies are intended to ease the soul’s transition to its new state. They’re absolutely essential. If they’re not observed, the dead man’s spirit may be compelled to wander the earth indefinitely.”

“As ghosts? Or dreamwalkers?”

Doj seemed startled. “Uh? Ghosts? A restless spirit that wants to finish tasks interrupted by death. They can’t, so they just keep going.”

Although Vehdna ghosts are wicked spirits cursed to wander by God Himself, I had no trouble following Doj’s notion. “Then we’ll leave him here. You want to stand beside him? To make sure he stays safe from traffic?” Bucket had placed Duc at the edge of the road so he would not be disturbed by the terrified fugitives back then.

“How did he die?” Swan asked. Then he squawked. The white crow had nipped his ear again.

Everybody turned to stare at Swan. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“Look, if a shadow got Duc and somebody tried to lay him out proper, that layer-outer would be here dead as a wedge, too. Right? So he must’ve died some other way, before—” A dim lamp seemed to come alive inside his head.

“Catcher did it!” the crow said. It was crow caw but the words were clear. “Haw! Haw! Catcher did it!”

The Nyueng Bao began to press in on Swan.

“Catcher did it,” I reminded them. “Probably with a booby-trap spell. By the time Duc reached this point, she would’ve been ten miles ahead of anybody on foot. She was mounted, remember. From what I remember about Duc, he probably saw the trap as Bucket tripped it and jumped in the way.”

Gota pointed out, “The Protector could not have left a booby trap to kill Duc if she had not been released.” Her Taglian was the best I had ever heard it. The anger in her eyes said she wanted no mistake to be made.

Sahra whispered, “Suyen Dinh Duc was a second cousin to my father.”

I said, “We’ve been through this before, people. We can’t exonerate Willow Swan but we can forgive him if we recall the circumstances he faced. Do any of you really think you can get the best of the Protector, face-to-face? No hands? But some of you think so in your heart.” Few Nyueng Bao lacked for arrogant self-confidence. “Here’s your challenge. Run back and prove it. The Shadowgate will let you out. Soulcatcher is on foot. She’s crippled. You can catch up fast. Can you ask for any more?” I paused. “What? No takers? Then lay off Swan.”

The white crow cawed mockingly.

I saw a few thoughtful, sheepish faces but Gota’s was not one of them. Gota had never been wrong in her life except that one time when she had thought she might be wrong.

Swan let it roll off. As he had done for years. He had learned from the strictest instructress. He did suggest, “You said we need to keep rolling, Sleepy. Although I guess we meat-eaters can start on the vegetarians after their stories run out.”

“Carry the Key, Tobo. Thank you, Sahra.”

Sahra turned away. “Mother, stay with Tobo. Don’t let him walk any faster than you do.”

Ky Gota grumbled something under her breath and turned away from us. She followed Tobo. Her rolling waddle could be deceptive when she was in a hurry. She overhauled the boy, grabbed hold of his shirt. Off they went, the old woman’s mouth going steadily. No gambler by nature, still I would have bet that she was fuming about what foul mortals the rest of us be.

I observed, “Ky Gota appears to have found herself.”

Not one of the Nyueng Bao found any reason to celebrate that eventuation.

A mile later we came across the only animal remains that we would ever find from the earlier expedition. They were piled in a heap, bones and shredded dry flesh so intertangled there was no telling how many beasts there had been or why they had gathered together, in life or in death. The whole grim mess appeared to have been subsiding into the surface of the plain slowly. Given another decade, it would be gone.

79

The ugly dreamwalkers returned after dark. They were more energetic in their efforts tonight. The rain returned, too. It was more energetic and was accompanied by thunder and lightning that made sleeping difficult. As did the cold rainwater, all of which seemed determined to collect inside the circle where we were camped. The stone did not appear to slope but water sure behaved as though it did. The animals drank their fill. Likewise, the human members of the band. Runmust and Riverwalker directed everyone to fill waterbags and top off canteens. And as soon as someone raised his voice to bless our good fortune, the first snowflakes began to fall.

What sleep I did manage was not pleasant. A full-blown tumult was underway in the ghostworld and it spilled over into my dreams. Then Iqbal’s daughter decided this would be a wonderful time to cry all night. Which got the dog started howling. Or maybe that happened the other way around.

Shadows swarmed over the face of our protection. They were more interested in us than they had been in the interlopers of Murgen’s time. He told me so himself.

The shadows remembered ages past. I was able to eavesdrop on their dreams.

On their nightmares. All they remembered were horrors from a time when men resembling Nyueng Bao tortured them to death in wholesale lots while sorcerers great and small spanked the demented souls until, when they were released eventually, they were so filled with hatred of every living thing that even a creature as slight as a roach was subject to instant attack, with great ferocity. Some shadows, already evilly predatory by nature, became so wicked they even attacked and devoured other shadows.

There had been millions so victimized. And the only virtue in their creators was that they manufactured the horrors from invaders who arrived in countless waves from a world where an insane sorcerer king had elevated himself to near godhood, then had set out to take full mastery of all the sixteen worlds.

Uncounted tens of thousands of corpses littered the glittering plain before the shadows stemmed that tide. Scores of the monsters escaped into neighboring worlds. They spread terror and havoc until the gates could be modified to prevent their passage. For centuries no traffic crossed the plain. Then came another age of halfhearted commerce, once some genius devised the protection now shielding the roads and circles.

The shadows saw everything. They remembered everything. They saw and remembered the missionaries of Kina, who had fled my own world at the pinnacle of Rhaydreynak’s fury. In every world they reached, the goddess’s dark song fell upon a few eager ears, even amongst the children of those who had created the shadows.

Commerce on a plain so constrained and dangerous perforce remained light. It took determined people to hazard the crossing. Traffic peaked when the world we recalled as Khatovar launched a flurry of expeditions to other worlds to determine which would be best suited to host the cosmic ceremony called the Year of the Skulls.

Followers of Kina from other worlds joined that quest. Companies marched and countermarched. They argued and squabbled. They accomplished very little. Eventually a consensus took shape. The sacrifice ought to be the world that had treated the Children of Kina so abominably in the first place. Rhaydreynak’s descendants should reap what he had sown.

The companies sent out were not swarms of fanatics. The plain was dangerous. Few men wanted to cross it. Most of the soldiers were conscripts, or minor criminals under the rule of a few dedicated priests. They were not expected to return. It became the custom for the conscripts’ families to hold a wake for their Bone Warriors or Stone Soldiers before they departed—even though the priests always promised they would be back in a matter of months.

The few who did return usually came back so drained and changed, so bitter and hard, they came to be known as Soldiers of Darkness.

Kina’s religion was never popular anywhere it took root. Always a minority cult, it lost what power it did have as generations passed and the early fervor faded into the inevitable, tedious rule of functionaries. One world after another abandoned Kina and turned away from the plain. Dark Ages took shape everywhere. One gate after another failed and was not restored. Those that did not fail fell into disuse. The worlds were old, worn, tired, desperately in need of renewal. The ancestors of the Nyueng Bao may have been the last large party to travel from one world to another. They seemed to have been Kina worshippers fleeing persecution at a time when the rest of their people had become insanely xenophobic and determined to expunge all alien influences. The ancestors of the Nyueng Bao, the Children of the Dead, had vowed to return to their Land of Unknown Shadows in blazing triumph. But, of course, because they were safe on the far side of the plain, their descendants soon forgot who and what they were. Only a handful of priests remembered, not entirely correctly.

A voice that did not speak aloud tickled my consciousness. Sister, sister, it said. I saw nothing, felt only that featherweight touch. But it was enough to spin my soul sideways and toss it into another place where, when I caught my spiritual breath, the stench of decay filled my nostrils. A sea of bones surrounded me. Unknown tides stirred its surface.

There was something wrong with my eyes. My vision was warped and doubled. I raised a hand to rub them . . . and saw white feathers.

No! Impossible! I could not be following Murgen’s path. I could not be losing my moorings in time. I would not stand for it! I willed myself—

Caw! Not from my beak.

A black shape popped into sight in front of me, wings spread, slowing. Talons reached toward me.

I spun, hurled myself off the dead branch where I had been perched. And was sorry instantly.

I found myself just yards from a face five feet tall. It boasted more fangs than a shark does teeth. It was darker than midnight. The odor of its breath was the stench of decaying flesh.

The triumphant grin on those wicked ebony lips faded as I evaded the swat of a gigantic, clawed hand. I, Sleepy, was in a trousers-soiling panic but something else was inside the bird with me. And it was having fun. Sister, sister, that was close. The bitch is getting sneakier. But she will never surprise me. She cannot. Nor will she understand that she cannot.

Who is “me?”

The exercise was over. I was in my body on the plain, in the rain, shuddering while my mind’s eye observed the capering dreamwalkers. I examined what I had experienced and concluded that I had been given a message, which was that Kina knew we were coming. The dreaming goddess had been pretending quiescence of recent decades. She knew patience intimately, by all its secret names. And I may have been given another message as well.

Kina still was the Mother of Deceit. Quite possibly nothing I had learned recently was entirely or even partially true if Kina had found a way to wander the shadowed reaches of my mind. I had no doubt that she could. She had managed to inform entire generations and regions with a hysterical fear of the Black Company before the advent of the Old Crew.

I swear I sensed her amusement over having quickened in me a deeper and more abiding distrust of everything around me.

80

Suvrin wakened me early. He sounded glum. I could not see his face in the darkness. “Trouble, Sleepy,” he whispered. And I have to give him credit. He was first to realize the implications of the fact that it was snowing. But then, he had seen more of the white stuff than any of us but Swan. And Willow had been away from it long enough to turn into an old man.

I wanted to moan and groan but that would have done no good and we needed to get a handle on the situation right away. “Good thinking,” I told him. “Thanks. Go around in that direction and wake up the sergeants. I’ll circle around to the left.” Despite my nightmares, I felt rested.

The snowfall in no way recognized the presence of the protection shielding our campsite. Which meant the boundaries were no longer obvious. I sensed a heightened killing lust amongst the shadows. They had seen this before. It would be snack time if anyone started running around nervously.

We had One-Eye and Goblin on our side. Tobo, too. They could winkle out the whereabouts of the boundaries.

But they needed a little light to do the job.

One by one I made sure everyone wakened and understood the gravity of the situation, especially the mothers. I made sure everyone understood that no one should move around until daylight.

Wonder of wonders, nobody did anything stupid. Once there was light enough, the wizards started drawing lines in the snow.

I arranged for teams to enforce the boundaries.

Everything went so well I was feeling smug before it turned time to go. Then I discovered that it was going to be a long day—which, of course, I should have known instinctively.

This next leg of the journey had taken the Captured only a few hours. It would take us far longer. The shattered fortress could not be discerned behind the falling snow. The old, old men would have to mark out every step before it could be taken, walking to either side of Tobo and the Key, keeping him centered on the road—but never getting ahead of him. Just in case.

A quarter mile along I was worrying about time already. We had too many mouths and too few supplies. Harsh rationing was in place. These people had to be gotten across the plain fast, excepting those of us who would bring out the Captured.

“This’s getting out of hand!” Goblin yelled. “If it gets any heavier, we’re up Shit Creek.”

He was right. If this snowfall turned into a blizzard, we were going to have no other worries. If it worsened much, we were going to die out here and make Soulcatcher the happiest girl in the world.

She probably was anyway, now that she had had time to reflect on the fact that there was no one left able to dispute her in any whim she cared to indulge. Water sleeps? So what. Those days were over.

Not while I was still standing, they were not.

Swan joined me for breakfast. “How’s my wife this morning?”

“Frigid.” Darn! Open mouth, insert boot with manure veneer.

Swan grinned. “I’ve known that for years. Isn’t this something? There’s more than an inch already.”

“It’s something, all right. Unfortunately, I don’t encourage myself to use the kind of language needed to describe it. Most of these people have never seen snow. Watch out for somebody to do something stupid. In fact, you might stick close to the Radisha. I don’t want her getting hurt because somebody doesn’t use his head.”

“All right. Did you dream last night?”

“Of course I did. I got to meet Kina right up close, too.”

“I saw lights on the road to the east of us.”

That got my attention. “Really?”

“In my dream. They were just witchlights. Maybe the plain’s own memories, or something. There wasn’t anything there when I went to look.”

“Getting bold in your old age, are you?”

“It just sort of happened. I wouldn’t have done it if I’d thought about it.”

“Did I snore again last night?”

“You solidified your grasp on the all-time women’s championship. You’re ready to compete at the next level.”

“Must have something to do with the dreaming.”

Sahra drifted up. She looked grim. She did not like what was happening even a little, the snow or the way we had to cope with it. But she bit her tongue. She understood that it was now too late to be a fussy mom. Like it or not, her boy was carrying us all right now.

One-Eye limped along using a staff somebody had made for him from one of the smaller bamboo weapons. I did not know if it was still armed. Very likely so, he being One-Eye. He told me, “I’m not going to last at this, Little Girl. But I’ll go as long as I can.”

“Show Tobo what to do and let him take over as soon as he’s got it. Let Gota carry the pickax and you get up on the horse. Advise from there.”

The old man just nodded instead of finding some reason to argue, betraying his true weakness. Goblin scowled at me, though, assuming he was going to get a large ration of unsolicited counsel. But he shrugged off the temptation to debate.

“Tobo. Hold up. You really understand what we have to do today?”

’“I’ve got it, Sleepy.”

“Then give your grandmother the Key. Where is that horse buddy of mine? Get up here, you. Carry One-Eye.” I noted that the white crow had left the beast’s back. In fact, the bird was nowhere to be seen. “Up you go, old man.”

“Who you calling old, Little Girl?” One-Eye drew himself up as tall as he got.

“You, so old you’ve gotten shorter than me. Get your tail up there. I really want to get there today.” I offered Goblin a hard look, just in case he got a notion to try poking sticks in the spokes. He just looked back blankly. Or maybe blandly.

Spoiled brat, me. I got my way. The ruined fortress loomed out of weakly falling snow around what felt like noon. Once Tobo got the hang of discovering the boundaries well enough to keep up with Goblin, the band began moving at a pace limited only by Mother Gota’s capacities. And she seemed taken by a sudden urge to hasten toward whatever destiny awaited whoever arrived with the Key.

My natural pessimism went almost entirely unrewarded. Had Iqbal’s boys not discovered the wonders of snowballs, I would have had nothing to complain about at all. Even then I would have been entertained had not a few wild volleys of missiles not strayed my way.

We arrived at the chasm Murgen had mentioned, a tear in the face of the plain rent by powers almost unimaginable. The earthquake responsible had been felt as far away as Taglios. It had flattened whole cities this side of the Dandha Presh. I wondered if it had wrought as much destruction in the other worlds connected to the plain.

I also wondered if the quake had been natural in origin. Had it been caused by some premature effort of Kina’s to rise and shine?

“Swan! Willow Swan! Get up here.”

Mother Gota had halted at the lip of the chasm simply because there was no way for her to go forward. The rest of the mob crowded up behind the leaders because, naturally, everyone wanted to see. I snapped, “Make a hole, people! Make a hole. Let the man get up here.” I stared at the wrecked fortress. Shattered was too strong a description but its state of disrepair went way beyond neglect, too. I supposed if the original golem garrison were still around, it would be in perfect condition and right now the whole crew would be outside dusting off the snow patches attached to every little roughness of the stone.

Swan grumbled, “You need to make up your mind, darling. You want me to look out for the Radisha or—”

“Never mind. I don’t have time. I’m cold and I’m cranky and I want to change that. Look at this crack. Is this the way it was before? Because even though it’s pretty impressive, it’s nowhere as huge as Murgen made me think it would be. Everybody but Iqbal’s baby can skip across this.”

Swan studied the gap in the plain.

Immediately evident to any eye was the fact that there were no sharp edges. The stone seemed to have softened and oozed like taffy.

“No. It wasn’t like this at all. It looks like it’s been healing, it’s not a quarter as wide as it was. I bet in another generation there won’t even be a scar.”

“So the plain can heal itself. But not so things that were added later.” I indicated the fortress. “Except for the spells protecting the roads.”

“Apparently.”

“Start moving across. Swan, stick with Tobo and Gota. Nobody else has any idea where to go from here. There you are,” I answered an impatient caw! from above. If I kind of squinted and looked sideways, I could make out the white crow perphed on the battlements, looking down.

Still muttering to himself, though somewhat good naturedly, Swan stepped across the crack, slipped, fell, skidded, got up exercising a string of out-of-shape northern expletives. Everyone else laughed.

I summoned Runmust and Riverwalker. “I want you two to figure out how to get the animals and carts across. Draft Suvrin if you want. He claims he’s had some minor experience in practical engineering. And keep reminding everyone that if they remain calm and cooperative, we’ll all get to sleep in a warm, dry place tonight.” Well, maybe dry. Warm was probably too much to expect.

Uncle Doj and Tobo helped Mother Gota across. Sahra followed. Several other Nyueng Bao followed her. That made an awful lot of Nyueng Bao concentrated in one place suddenly. My paranoia began to quiver and narrow its eyes suspiciously.

I said, “Goblin. One-Eye. Come along. Slink? Where are you? Come with us.” Slink I could count on to be quick and deadly and as morally reluctant as a spear when I pointed and said, “Kill!”

Uncle Doj did not fail to note the fact that even now I trusted him only incompletely. He seemed both irked and amused. He told me, “There isn’t anything for our people here, Annalist. This is all for Tobo’s benefit.”

“That’s good. That’s good. I wouldn’t want the future of the Company to be placed in the slightest risk.”

Doj frowned, disappointed by my sarcasm. “I have not won your heart yet, Stone Soldier?”

“How could you? You keep calling me names and won’t even explain.”

“All will become clear. I fear.”

“Of course. Once we reach the Land of Unknown Shadows. Right? You’d better hope there aren’t any half-truths or outright cover-ups in your doctrine. ‘All Evil Dies There an Endless Death.’ It could still be true.”

Doj responded with a baleful look but it seemed neither angry nor calculating.

I said, “Swan. Show us the way.”

81

I think this’s as far as I can take you,” Swan told me. He spoke slowly, as though having trouble sorting out his thoughts. “I don’t get it. Stuff keeps going away. I know I was farther inside than this. I know all the things we did. But when I try to remember anything specific, I lose everything between the time I got to this point until sometime during the gallop back. Stuff comes to me all the time when I’m not trying. I do remember that. Maybe Catcher messed up my brain somehow.”

“There’s an all-time understatement,” Goblin muttered.

Swan ignored Goblin. He complained, “We were actually off the plain before I realized that we were the only ones who would be coming out.”

I was not sure I believed that but it did not matter now. I grunted, suggested, “How about you make a guess? Maybe your soul will remember what your brain can’t.”

“First you need to get some light in here.”

“What do I have wizards for?” I asked the gloom. “Certainly not anything useful or practical like providing a light. They wouldn’t need one. They can see in the dark.”

Goblin muttered something unflattering about the sort of woman who indulges in sarcasm. He told Swan, “Sit down and let me look at your head.”

“Let me!” Tobo enthused at the same time. “Let me try to make a light. I can do this one.” He did not wait for permission. Filaments of lemon and silver light crawled over his upraised hands, swift and eager. The darkness surrounding us retreated, I thought reluctantly.

“Wow!” I said. “Look at him.”

“He has the strength and enthusiasm of youth,” One-Eye conceded. I glanced back. He was still astride the black stallion, wearing a smug look but obviously exhausted. The white crow was perched in front of him. It studied Tobo with one eye while considering our surroundings with the other. It seemed amused. Then One-Eye began to chuckle.

Tobo squealed in surprise. “Wait! Stop! Goblin! What’s happening?”

The worms of light were snaking up his arms. They would not respond to his insistence that they desist. He started slapping himself. One-Eye and Goblin began to laugh.

Meantime, the two of them had done something to Swan to clarify his mind. The man looked like he had just sucked down a tall, frosty mug of self-confident recollection.

Sahra saw nothing funny in Tobo’s situation. She screamed at the wizards to do something. She was almost incoherent. Which betrayed how much stress she inflicted upon herself.

Doj told her, “He isn’t in any danger, Sahra. He just let himself get distracted. It happens. It’s part of learning,” or words to that effect, several times, before Sahra calmed down and began to look defiant and sheepish at the same time.

Goblin told Tobo, “I’ll take it till you get your concentration back.” And in a moment there was light enough to see the walls of the huge chamber. Someone who is skilled at something always makes it look easy. The little bald wizard was no exception. He told One-Eye, “Help Swan keep his head clear.”

I thought the place looked like a nice change from sleeping out in the weather. I wished there was fuel we could burn to heat it.

“Whither now?” I asked Swan. For some time I had been silently regretting not having caught Murgen while I was dreaming so I could have gotten reliable directions.

The white crow squawked and launched itself, leaving One-Eye cursing because it had swatted him in the face with its wings.

I was starting to understand the beast. “Somebody see where it goes. One of you sorcerer geniuses want to send a light with it?” Tobo had received control of his light again and had it working in good form but it took all his attention to manage it. I hoped he outgrew this more-confidence-than-sense stage before he took a really big bite of disaster.

Uncle Doj trailed the crow at a dignified pace. I supposed I ought to contribute something more than executive decisions, so I followed him. A ball of leprous green light from behind overtook me and made a nest in my tangled hair. My scalp began to itch. I had a suspicion One-Eye might be sneering at my personal hygiene, which, I confess, sometimes became the victim of a negligent attitude. Sort of. “This’ll teach me to take my darn helmet off,” I grumbled. I refused to allow him to flash me his smug, toothless grin by not looking back.

I had not been wearing an actual helmet. God save me, that would have been cold. I had been wearing a leather helmet liner, which had kept my ears from getting frostbitten. Barely. Winter. It was one of those things the planning team had not foreseen.

I hurried past Doj, who was startled when he saw my hair. Then he grinned as big as ever I had seen him do. I tossed him a bloodthirsty scowl. Unfortunately, to do so I had to turn around far enough to see One-Eye and Goblin suddenly stop exchanging handslaps and snickers. Even Sahra turned slightly sideways to conceal her amusement. All right. So suddenly I am the clown princess of the Company, eh? We would see. Those two would . . . 

I realized that they had lured me into accepting their system of thought. Before long I would be setting traps so I could get even first.

The crow cawed. It was down on the cold stone floor. It danced back and forth, suddenly impatient. Its talons clicked softly. I dropped to my knees. It let me get almost within touching distance before it flopped farther into the darkness.

More light took life behind us as people and animals came inside, making the predictable racket. Every new arrival had to know what was going on.

The crow became a silhouette if I lowered my head and looked at it with my cheek against the floor.

I told Doj, “There’s light coming from somewhere. This must be where the Captured got into the inner fortress.” I got down on my belly. There was a definite gap in a wall of stone so dark it seemed unseeable even in the available light. I could not make out anything on the other side.

Doj got down and placed his own cheek on the floor. “Indeed.”

I called, “We need some more light over here. And maybe some tools. River. Runmust. Have those people start setting up some kind of camp. And see what you can do about shutting out the cold.” That would be difficult. There were several large gaps in the outside wall.

Goblin and One-Eye stopped grinning like fools and came forward dressed in their business faces. They kept Tobo right there with them, determined to teach him their trade quickly, hands-on.

With more light it was easier to see what the bird meant me to see, which had to be the crack Soulcatcher had sealed after working her wicked spells on the Captured. “There any spells or booby traps here?” I asked.

“The Little Girl’s a genius,” One-Eye grumbled. His speech had grown a little slurred. He needed rest badly. “The bird strutted through and didn’t go up in smoke. Right? That suggest anything?”

“No spells,” Goblin said. “Don’t mind him. He’s just cranky because him and Gota haven’t had no privacy for a week.”

“I’m gonna fit you out for all the privacy you’ll need for a couple of eons, Runt Man. I’m gonna plant your wrinkled old ass—”

“Enough! Let’s see if we can make the hole any bigger.”

The crow made impatient noises on the other side. It had to have some connection with the Captured even if it was not Murgen operating from some lost corner of time. Certainly I hoped it was not Murgen from the future. That would imply a less than successful effort on our part now.

I grumbled and snarled. I stamped back and forth while half a dozen men expanded the hole, every one of them grousing about the shortage of light. I did not contribute much as a human candle, either. Maybe the thing in my hair was Goblin and One-Eye offering commentary on how bright I was. Though I doubted that after only two hundred years they could yet have developed that much cleverness and subtlety.

A larger and larger crowd piled up behind me. “River,” I growled, “I said you should have these people do something useful. Tobo, get back from there. You want a boulder to fall on your head?”

A voice behind me suggested, “You ought to get more light on it so you can see if you need to do any shoring.”

I turned. “Slink?”

“There were miners in my family.”

“Then you’re as near an expert as we’ve got.”

One-Eye jabbed a thumb at Goblin. “The dwarf here has sapper experience. He helped undermine the walls at Tember.” His face split in an ugly grin.

Goblin squeaked, a definite clue that “Tember” was an episode he did not recall fondly. I did not remember any mention of a Tember in the Annals. Reason suggested that the referenced event must have taken place long before Croaker became Annalist, which he had done at an early age.

Two of Croaker’s more immediate predecessors, Miller Ladora and Kanwas Scar, had been so lax in their duties that little is known about their time—other than what their successors have reconstructed from oral tradition and the memories of survivors. It was during that era that Croaker, Otto and Hagop joined the band. Croaker says little about those days himself.

“Am I to take it, then, that I shouldn’t invest unlimited faith in Goblin’s engineering skills?”

One-Eye cawed like a crow. “As an engineer our bitty buddy makes a wonderful lumberjack. Things fall down wherever he goes.”

Goblin growled like a mastiff issuing a warning.

“See, this here skinny little bald-egg genius sold the Old Man the notion of sneaking into this burg Tember by tunneling under its walls. Deep down. Because the earth was soft. It’d be easy.” One-Eye snorted as he talked, his laughter barely under control. “And he was right. It was easy. When his tunnel caved in, the wall fell down. And the rest of us charged through the gap and sorted them Temberinos out.”

Goblin grumbled, “And about five days later somebody remembered the miners.”

“Somebody was just plain damned lucky he had a friend as good as me to dig him out. The Old Man just wanted to put up a gravestone.”

Goblin growled some more. “Not so. And the real truth is, the tunnel never would’ve collapsed if this two-legged, overripe dog turd hadn’t been playing one of his stupid games. You know, I almost forgot. I never did pay you back for that. You should’ve never brought it up, you human prune. Damn! You almost went and died on me before I got you paid off. I knew you were up to no good. You had that stroke on purpose, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did, you nitwit. Every chance I get, I try to die just so’s you can’t backstab me no more. You want to be that way? I saved your ass and you want to be that way? Ain’t no fool like an old fool. Bring it on, you hairless little toady frog. I maybe slowed down a step the last couple years but I’m still three steps faster and ten torches brighter than any lily-white—”

“Boys!” I snapped. “Children! We have work to do here.” They must have driven the whole Company crazy when they were young and had the energy to keep it up all the time. “As of this moment, all the slates are clean of anything that happened before I was born. Just open me a hole so I can go see what we have to do next.”

The two wizards did not stop growling and muttering and threatening and trying to sabotage one another in small ways but they did lend their claimed expertise to the effort to open the gap.

82

Once the opening had been expanded enough to use, there was a brief debate about who would use it first. The accord was universal: “Not me.” But when I squatted down to duckwalk forward into the shadows, in hopes I could get a look at what might eat me a few seconds before its jaws snapped shut, several gentlemen turned all noble and chivalrous. I suspect it was significant that two of them, Swan and Suvrin, were not Company brothers.

Goblin grumbled, “All right. All right. Now you’re making us look bad. All of you, get out of the way.” He bustled forward.

He did not have to duck.

I did, just slightly, as I followed him through.

I did not need anyone to be noble or chivalrous or to go in before me.

“There is no God but God,” I muttered. “His Works are Vast and Mysterious.” I was five steps inside and had just bumped into Goblin, who had stopped to stare as well. “I presume that’s the golem demon Shivetya.”

“Or his ugly little brother.”

Murgen had not kept me posted on the golem’s state. At last report it had been just a single earth tremor short of plunging into a bottomless abyss, still nailed to a huge wooden throne by means of a number of silver daggers. I observed, “It appears the plain has been healing itself in here, too.” I eased forward.

There was still a vertiginous abyss. I had to close my eyes momentarily while I regained my equilibrium. Shivetya remained poised over it but the gap clearly was narrower than Murgen had described. In closing, the surface had pushed the wooden throne upward somewhat. Shivetya was no longer in momentary peril of falling. It looked like a few decades would see him lying there with his nose pressed into healed stone, the overturned throne on top of him still.

Willow Swan invited himself to join me. He said, “That thing hasn’t moved since last time.”

I countered, “Thought you couldn’t remember anything.”

“Whatever the short farts did, it seems to be working. I recognize things when I see them.”

Goblin told Swan, “Considering what could still happen if Shivetya starts jumping around, holding still seems like a pretty good idea. Don’t you think?”

“Could you hold still for fifteen years?”

I said, “He’s held still a lot longer than that, Swan. He’s been nailed to that throne for hundreds of years. Or even thousands. He has to have been nailed down since before Deceivers fleeing Rhaydreynak came here on their way to other worlds and hid the Books of the Dead.” That observation got me some looks, particularly from Master Santaraksita. I had not yet shared the tales I had gleaned from Murgen. “Else he would’ve stomped them good at the time. They would’ve looked like the kind of thing he was put here to guard against. I think.”

“Who nailed him down?” Goblin asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Might be a handy piece of information. You’d want to keep an eye on a guy who could do that kind of thing.”

“I would,” Swan agreed. He grinned nervously.

“It’s listening,” I said. I moved along the edge of the abyss several steps, squatted. From there I could see the demon’s eyes. They were open a crack. I could also see that there were three of them instead of two, the third being in the center of the forehead above and between the other two. This point had not come up before, though it was the sort of thing you would expect of a Gunni-style demon.

The oversight became self-explanatory as soon as the demon sensed my scrutiny. The third eye closed and vanished.

I asked Swan, “That throne look like it’s solidly wedged?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Just wondering if we could move it without losing it down that crack.”

“I’m no engineer but it looks to me like you’d really have to work at it to dump it down there now. Obviously, it could go. One really stupid move . . . it’s a hell of a deep hole. But . . . ”

The curious kept piling up behind us. Their chatter was becoming annoying. Every single whisper turned into a gaggle of echoes that made the place seem more haunted than it was. “Everybody be quiet. I can’t hear myself think.” I must have sounded nastier than I intended. People shut up. And gawked. I asked, “Does anyone see a way to get that thing turned right side up and pushed back away from the gap?”

“How come you’d want to do that?” One-Eye asked. “Quit shoving, Junior.”

Suvrin asked, “Using equipment we have on hand?”

“Yes. And it would have to get done today. I want the majority of these people back on the road south at first light tomorrow.”

“That means using brute force. Right now. Some of us would have to get on the other side of the fissure and lift the top of the throne enough so people and animals on this side could get the leverage to pull it on up. Using ropes.”

Swan said, “You try to stand it up the way it is there, the bottom end will just slide off the edge. Then it’s a grand ride off to the entrails of the earth.”

“How come you’d want to do that?” One-Eye demanded again. I ignored him again.

I concentrated on the argument spreading outward from Suvrin and Swan. I let it run for several minutes. Then I announced, “Suvrin seems to be the only one here with a positive view. So he’s in charge. Suvrin, draft anybody you want. Help yourself to any resources you need. Sit Shivetya back up for me. You hear that, Steadfast Guardian? Gentlemen, if you have any ideas, feel free to share them with Mr. Suvrin.”

Suvrin said, “I can’t . . . ! don’t . . . ! shouldn’t . . . ! guess the first thing we’d better do is get a solid idea of how much weight we’re dealing with. And we’ll have to rig up some way to get across the gap. Mr. Swan, you handle that. Young Mr. Tobo, I understand you’re skilled at mathematics. Suppose you help me calculate how much mass we’re dealing with here?”

Tobo grinned and headed for the throne, not at all intimidated by the demon.

“One adjustment,” I said. “I need Swan with me. He’s been here before. Runmust, you and Iqbal figure out how to get across. Willow. Come with me.”

Out of earshot of the others, Swan asked, “What’s going on?”

“I didn’t want to remind anybody that the Company got this far once before. Somebody might recall a grudge against the man who made it impossible for our predecessors to go any farther.”

“Oh. Thanks. I guess.” He glanced at the clot of Nyueng Bao. Mother Gota continued to nurture her grudge. She had a son somewhere down under this stone.

“I may just have a strange perspective. I do believe all of us should accept responsibility for our actions but I’m not sure we ever understand why we do some things. Do you know why you cut Soulcatcher loose? I’d bet you’ve spent the odd minute here and there trying to figure that out.”

“You’d win. Except it’d be more like the odd year here and there. And I still can’t explain it. She did something to me, somehow. Just with her eyes. All the way across the plain. Probably manipulating my feelings about her sister. When the time came it seemed like the right thing to do. I never had a doubt until it was all over and we were on the run.”

“And she kept her word.”

He understood. “She gave me everything her eyes promised. Everything I could never have from the sister I really wanted. Whatever her failings, Soulcatcher keeps her word.”

“Sometimes we get what we want and find out that it wasn’t what we needed.”

“No shit. Story of my life, Sleepy.”

“Around fifty people came onto the plain. Two of you got away. Thirteen died on the road, trying. The rest are still out here somewhere. And you helped put them where they are. So I’m going to need you to show me. Are you still blind in the memory or have you started to remember?”

“Oh, those spells took. It’s coming back. But not necessarily organized the same way that it happened. So bear with me when I seem a little confused.”

“I understand.” I kept an eye on the others as we talked. Sahra seemed to be putting herself under a lot of unnecessary stress. Doj looked ferociously ready to seize the day should an opportunity pop up. Gota was nagging One-Eye about something while keeping one grim eye aimed Swan’s way. Goblin was trying to get the mist projector set up amidst a jostling crowd. I noted, “There seems to be more light than Murgen reported.”

“Tons more. And it’s warmer, too. If I was allowed a guess, mine would be that it has something to do with the healing that’s going on.”

I did feel overdressed for the indoor weather. It was not hot but it was warmer than the plain outside and there was no wind biting.

“Where are the Captured?”

“There was a stairway over there. We must have gone a mile down into the earth.”

“You carried thirty-five unconscious people down there and got back in time to get away from the evening shadows? Without killing yourself?”

“Catcher did most of it. She has a spell that makes things float through the air. We roped the people together and pulled them along like a string of sausages. She did the pulling, actually. I stayed on the uphill end. More or less. At first. Because the stair has some twists and turns. We had trouble getting them around the corners. But a lot less trouble than if we’d carried them one at a time.”

I nodded. I knew of other instances when Catcher had used the same sorcery. Seemed like a handy one to have. We could use it right here, right now, to hoist my future buddy Shivetya.

Curious. Once upon a time Murgen said that name meant “Deathless,” although more recently I had been given the meaning “Steadfast Guardian.” But I had been provided with whole new sets of creation myths and whatnot, too.

I fought off an urge to charge off and plunge down the stairway right then. I hustled back to talk it over with the others. Most of the crowd were preoccupied with an effort to get Shivetya’s throne turned right side up by the power of talking about it. Suvrin told me, “It’s a way to keep warm.” And a way to work off some tension, no doubt. I heard plenty of traditional-style grumbling questioning the intelligence of any leader who wanted to play around with something like that great ugly thing over there on that throne.

I gathered everyone interested. “Swan knows the way down to the caverns. His memory is getting better all the time.” Goblin and One-Eye preened. I gave them no chance to congratulate themselves publicly. “I’m going down there to scout. I want the rest of you to get camp set up. I want you to work out specifically how we’ll divide up tomorrow so the majority can scoot on across the plain to safety.” We had discussed this time and again how we could break up the party, leaving the minimum number of people with the maximum stores to bring out the Captured while the rest moved on to, it was hoped, a more congenial clime.

Doj’s position, so perfectly rational, was that we should ignore the Captured until we had crossed the plain, had gotten ourselves established in the Land of Unknown Shadows, and were capable of mounting a more thoroughly prepared and supplied expedition. But none of us knew what we would face at that end of this passage, and way too many of us were emotionally incapable of walking away from our brothers again now that we were this close.

I should have gotten more information out of Murgen while we still had some flexibility. Time was winnowing our options rapidly.

Sahra’s response to Uncle’s repeating his suggestion was blistering enough to melt lead. She might be reluctant to have her husband back but she was not going to delay any crisis.

Swan leaned over my shoulder and whispered, “If you hang around here waiting for all these people to agree on something, we’re going to get very old and very hungry before anything happens.”

The man had a point. A definite point.

83

I got my daily constitutional in before we reached the stairway. I began to appreciate just how vast the hall at the heart of that fortress was. My party dwindled into the distance. I observed, “This thing has got to be a mile across.”

“Almost exactly. It’s a few yards under, according to Soulcatcher. I don’t know why. I wish we had a torch. I saw patterns in the flooring last time I was here, when there wasn’t quite so much dust, but she wouldn’t let me waste time looking at them.”

There was a lot of dust. There had been none outside. The plain tolerated nothing alien except the corpses of invaders, evidently. Even here, we had yet to discover any sign of the animals or equipment that had accompanied the Captured south.

“How much farther?”

“Almost there. Watch for a drop-off.”

“A drop-off?”

“A step down. It’s only about eighteen inches but you could break a leg if it surprises you. I turned an ankle last time.”

We found the drop-off. I stopped to look back once I stepped down. All sorts of genius was being invested in the assignments I had given. Closer, Sahra and the Radisha and several others to whom I had not given specific assignments had decided to follow me. I said, “You’re right. It does look like there’re some kind of inlays. If we have time, maybe we can take a closer look.” I considered the edge of the stone. “This curves. And it’s polished.”

“That part of the floor is a circle. And it’s almost exactly one-eightieth of the diameter of the plain. According to Soulcatcher. The raised part where the demon’s throne used to sit is one-eightieth the size of this.”

“That’s probably got to mean something. It have anything to do with the Captured?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Then we’ll worry about it later.”

“The stairs start over here.”

They did indeed, right next to the wall. The crack in the floor had extended clear through that. The wall’s partial collapse had filled the gap there, then the material from the wall had been pushed back up as the fissure healed itself.

The stairs simply started. There was a rectangular hole in the floor. Steps went down, roughly paralleling the outer wall, away from the crack in the floor, which had healed almost completely. There was no handrail.

Twenty steps down we reached a landing eight feet by eight. The descending steps led off from our right. This flight appeared to go downward forever. Faint light crept up it, just strong enough so you could see where to put your feet.

Sahra and the Radisha had caught up close enough that I could hear them talking without being able to pick up specific words. Both women sounded frightened by the immediate future.

I could sympathize. I was nervous about achieving my life’s ambition myself. Just a little.

“You want to go first?” Swan asked. He lacked considerable enthusiasm, I thought.

“Are there booby traps or something?”

“No. She probably wanted to, just in case somebody passed this way someday, just for the sheer mean fun of it, but there wasn’t enough time. She piddled around so much, for so long, I didn’t really believe we’d ever get away. I’m sure we wouldn’t have if she hadn’t been who she was. She spun spells that chased the shadows away. She’d been in there before. And she’d practiced.”

“There it is!”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just remembering something.” Stupid me. All those years I wondered how Swan and Soulcatcher had found time to bury the Captured without getting gobbled up by shadows and I had overlooked the obvious, the fact that Soulcatcher was a major sorceress and already had some experience manipulating shadows. You can be screamingly blind to the obvious if you don’t realize that you have not opened up all the doors of your mind.

Forgive me, O Lord of the Hours. Be Merciful. Be Compassionate. I shall close the borders of my soul as soon as my brothers are free.

At this point Swan had no incentive to steer me into danger. I started downstairs.

The architects, engineers and stonemasons responsible had not been determined to achieve geometric perfection. Though this portion of the stairwell continued downward in a specific general direction, it tended to meander from side to side of a straight line. Nor were the steps of a uniform height. The builders had been thoughtful enough to provide landings every little way, though. I had a feeling those would seem to be miles apart once I started climbing up again.

“If we have to bring One-Eye down here, we’re going to have to carry him back up. He won’t survive the climb otherwise.”

“You might want to organize what you’re going to do before we go down there, then.”

“I can’t decide what has to be done until I see what I’m dealing with.”

“You might call up your genie in a bottle. Get him to tell you.”

“He’s never said much about the place where he’s at. Not since he’s been in there himself. It’s like he’s constrained against that. I dreamed about it a few times but I don’t know how accurate my dreams were.”

Swan groaned. “I really didn’t want to make this trek.”

“Will it be that bad?”

“Not going down. But heading the other way is likely to change your attitude.”

“I don’t know. I’m beginning to get a little winded just going in this direction.”

“Then slow down. A few minutes isn’t going to make a difference. Not after all these years.”

He was right. And wrong. There was no rush for the Captured. But for us, with our limited resources, time was destined to become critical.

Swan continued, “You need to slow down, Sleepy. Really. It’s going to get a little bit hairy in a minute.”

He was absolutely right. But he understated the case dramatically.

The stairwell did a meander to the right. It caught up with the chasm caused by the earthquakes that had occurred during the reign of the Shadowmasters.

There was only half a stairway there. It hung in the face of a cliff. That left a whole lot of down on my right-hand side. And it was down that was entirely too well illuminated by a reddish orange light that may have come from the stone itself, since there seemed to be no other obvious source. Though I did have trouble opening my eyes wide enough to look. Wraithlike wisps of vapor wobbled upward from somewhere down below. The air seemed wanner. I asked, “We’re not heading into Hell itself, are we?” Some Vehdna believe al-Shiel is a place where wicked souls will burn for all eternity.

Swan understood. “Not your Hell. But I’d guess it’s Hell enough for them that’re trapped down there.”

I stopped on the remains of a landing. The steps narrowed to two feet just below me. By leaning out slightly I could see clearly that the stairwell had been constructed inside a larger bore at least twenty feet in diameter. The shaft had been filled with a stone darker than that through which it had been cut. Maybe the bore had needed to be that big so Kina could be dragged down below. I asked, “Can you imagine what an engineering project this must have been?”

“People with plenty of slaves aren’t daunted by big projects. What’s the matter?”

“I have a problem with heights. This next part is going to take a lot of prayer and some outside encouragement. I want you to go first. I want you to go slow. And I want you to stay where I can touch you. I believe in meeting my fears eyeball to eyeball but if it gets bad and I feel like I might freeze up, I want to be able to close my eyes and keep going.” I was astounded by how calm and reasonable my voice sounded.

“I understand. The real problem then is, who’s going to keep his eyes open for me? Whoa! Don’t panic, Sleepy. I was joking! I can handle it. Really.”

It was not the worst thing I ever dealt with. I never abandoned rational thought. But it was difficult. Even when Swan promised me that an unseen protective barrier existed on the abyssal side and demonstrated its presence, the animal inside me wanted to get the heck out of there and go someplace where the ground was flat and green, there was a sky overhead, and there might even be a few trees.

Swan assured me that I was missing one heck of a view, especially as we approached the lower end of the gap, where the light was brighter, revealing churning mists way below, mists that concealed the depths of the abyss. I kept my eyes closed until we were back into a closed cavern again.

I had started counting steps up top so I could get an idea of how deep we went but I lost count while I was pretending to be a fly crawling on a wall. I was too busy being terrified. But it did seem like we had traveled a long way horizontally as well as downward.

Almost immediately after I had that thought, the stair turned left, then left again. The orange red light faded away. The stair made a couple more quick turns into a total darkness, which aroused whole new species of terrors. But nothing bit me and nothing came to steal my soul.

Then there was light again, growing so subtly I was never really aware of first noticing it. It had a golden cast to it but was extremely cold. And as soon as I was aware of it, I knew we were approaching our destination.

The stairwell passed right through a natural cavern. At one time that had been sealed off but the quakes had toppled the responsible masonry walls. I asked, “We here?”

“Almost. Careful climbing over the stones. They aren’t very stable.”

“What’s that?”

“What?”

“That sound.”

We listened. After a while, Swan said, “I think it’s wind. Sometimes there was a breeze when we were down here before.”

“Wind? A mile underground?”

“Don’t ask me to explain it. It just is. You want to go first this time?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you would.”

84

Golden caverns where old men sat beside the way, frozen in time, immortal but unable to move an eyelid. Madmen they, some covered with fairy webs of ice as though a thousand winter spiders had spun threads of frozen water. Above, an enchanted forest of icicles grew downward from the cavern roof.

So Murgen described it once upon a time, decades ago. The description remained apt, though the light was not as golden as I expected and the delicate filigrees of ice were denser and more complex. The old men seated against the walls, caught up in the webs, were not the wide-eyed madmen of Murgen’s visions, though. They were dead. Or asleep. I did not see one open eye. Nor did I see one face I recognized.

“Willow. Who are these people?” The bitter wind continued to rush through the cavern, which was a dozen feet high and nearly as wide, with a relatively flat floor, side to side.

It sloped with the length of the cavern. It looked like ancient, frozen mud covered with a pelt of fine frost fur. Water had run through the cavern in some epoch before the coming of men.

“These ones? I don’t know. They were here when we came down.”

I leaned closer but was careful not to touch. “These caves are natural.”

“They have that look.”

“Then they’ve been down here all along. They were here before the plain was built.”

“Possibly. Probably.”

“And whoever buried Kina knew about them. So did the Deceivers chased here by Rhaydreynak. Hunh! This one is definitely deceased. Naturally mummified but definitely gone.” The corpse was all dried out. Bare bone showed at a folded knee and tattered elbow. “These others? Who knows? Maybe the right sorcery could get them up and running around like Iqbal’s kids.”

“Why would we get them up? We’re here to get the guys that me and Catcher buried. Right? They’re on up there.” He pointed upslope, where the light was even less golden, becoming almost an icy blue.

The light was not bright. Not nearly so much so as in the vision I had experienced. Maybe it was more a psychic witchlight than a physical one, more suited to the dreamwalker’s eye. I mused, “They might be able to tell us something interesting.”

“I’ll tell you something interesting,” Swan muttered to himself. In a normal voice, for my benefit, he said, “I don’t think so. At least I don’t think it would be anything any of us would want to hear. Catcher took extreme pains to avoid even touching them. Getting the captives past without disturbing them was the hardest work we did.”

I bent to examine another of the old men. He did not look like he belonged to any race I knew. “They must be from one of the other worlds.”

“Maybe. There’s a saying where I grew up: ‘Let sleeping’ dogs lie.’ Sounds like exquisitely appropriate advice. We don’t know why they were put down here.”

“I have no intention of releasing any deviltry but our own. These men here aren’t the same as those.”

“There were several different groups last time. I doubt that that’s changed. I got the feeling that they were dumped here at different times. See how much less ice there is around these guys? Makes me think it takes centuries to accumulate.”

“Ow!”

“What?”

“I banged my head on this damned rock icicle thing.”

“Hmm. I must’ve overlooked it somehow.”

“Get smart and I’ll punch you in the kneecap, Lofty. Does it feel like it’s colder in here than it ought to be?” It was not my imagination and not the icy wind, either.

“Always.” His grin had gone away. “It’s them. I think. Starting to realize somebody’s here. It keeps building up. It can get on your nerves if you pay any attention to it.”

I could feel the growth of whatever it was. Insanity becoming palpable, I suppose. That was the impression, anyway.

“How come we’re able to move around in here?” I asked. “Why aren’t we frozen?”

“We’d probably end up that way if we stayed long enough to fall asleep. These people all had to be unconscious when they were brought down here.”

“Really?” We were up where there was less ice. The frost on the floor still betrayed the tracks left by Soulcatcher and Willow Swan years ago. The old men here were different. They resembled Nyueng Bao, except for one, who had been tall, thin and extremely pale. “But they don’t stay asleep?” Several pairs of open eyes seemed to track me. I hoped it was my imagination, stimulated by the spookiness of the cave. I never actually saw any movement.

Footsteps.

I jumped hip-high to a short elephant before I realized that it had to be Sahra and the Radisha and whoever else had decided not to participate in all those exciting projects that were underway upstairs. “Go keep those people from stomping in here and messing everything up. I’ll get an idea of the layout and try to figure out what we’ll have to do.”

Swan scowled and growled and grunted, then minced carefully back down the slight slope toward the stairwell. He talked to himself all the way. And I did not blame him. Even I thought nothing ever went right for him.

I took a step in the direction the old footprints led. My boots went out from under me. I hit hard, then slid downhill until I caught up with Swan, who did a convincing job of acting amused after he stopped me. “You all right?”

“Bruised my side. Hurt my wrist.”

“I shoulda told you. That floor can be pretty slippery where there’s a lot of frost.”

“You’re lucky I don’t swear.”

“Uhm?”

“You forgot on purpose. You’re as bad as One-Eye or Goblin.”

“Did I just hear my name taken in vain?” One-Eye’s voice, punctuated by rasping panting more suitable to a lunger, came from the shadows down where the stair intercepted the cavern.

“God is Great, God is Good. God is the All-Knowing and All-Merciful. His Plan is Hidden but Just.” And save me from the Mystery of His Plan because all I ever get is the Misery of His Plan. “What is he doing down here?” I asked Swan. “I know. I’ll leave him behind. I know I’m definitely not going to carry him up out of here just so he doesn’t suffer another stroke from the effort. Hit him over the head when he isn’t looking.” I began moving deeper into the cave again. “I’m going to try this one more time.” Beneath my breath I continued my conversation with God. As usual, He did not trouble Himself to defend His Works to me. My fault for being a woman.

I nearly missed the transition from the ancient Nyueng Bao types to Company men because the first few modern bodies belonged to Nyueng Bao bodyguards. I halted only when I reached and recognized a Nyueng Bao bodyguard named Pham Quang. I studied him for a moment.

I backed up carefully.

When you looked for it, the boundary was evident. My brothers and their allies had several centuries’ less frost accumulation upon them. They had only just begun to develop the delicate webbings that encased the older bodies. That seemed awfully fast, actually, considering how long some of the others must have been buried. Possibly Soulcatcher had indulged in a little artistry during her visit.

Interspersed with my brothers were several bodies so ancient that they had become completely cocooned. I intuited them as bodies only because the chrysalises slumped just like the Captured did.

A thought. It might be worthwhile having One-Eye along after all. Down here Soulcatcher might have taken time to set a trap or two, just for the devil of it.

The Nar generals Isi and Ochiba sat against the cave wall opposite Pham Quang. Ochiba’s eyes were open. They did not move but did seem fixed on me. I hunkered down, got as close as I could without touching him.

Those brown pools were moist. There was no dust on their surfaces, nor any frost. They had opened quite recently.

A chill crawled down my spine. A very creepy feeling came over me. I felt like I was walking among the dead. In the far north, whence Swan came carrying travelers’ tales, some religions supposedly pictured Hell as a cold place. My imagination, running with the terror that my brothers’ situation sparked, had no trouble picturing this cave as a suburb of Hell.

I rose carefully and moved away from Ochiba. Now the cave floor was almost perfectly level. My brothers were not crowded together. The rest seemed to be scattered along the next several hundred feet, not all immediately visible because of a turn in the cave. A few old cocoon men were interspersed with them. “I see the Lance!” I announced. Which was wonderful. Now we could split into two parties and have both retain their capacity for accessing the plain.

My voice echoed like there was a chorus of me all talking at the same time. Hitherto, Swan and I had tried to speak softly. The echoes had been little more than ghostly whispers although extremely busy even at that level.

“Keep it down,” One-Eye said. “What are you doing, Little Girl? You don’t have any idea what you’re dealing with here.” He had gotten past Swan somehow and was headed my way. He was awfully damned spry for a two-hundred-year-old stroke victim. This business had him truly excited.

That left me suspicious. But I had no time to try reasoning out what angle the man might have.

I looked into another pair of eyes, these belonging to a long, bony, pallid man who had to be the sorcerer Longshadow. Longshadow was a prisoner of the Company. He had been brought along because neither Croaker nor Lady trusted anyone else to guard him and he could not be exterminated because the health of the Shadowgate, insofar as they had known, was dependent upon his continued well-being. And well that they had been so distrustful. It would be a much different and more terrible world if the Shadowmaster had been left behind to tinker at whatever wickedness took his fancy. Soulcatcher’s evil was capricious and unfocused. Longshadow’s malice and insanity were deep and abiding.

That insanity stared out of his eyes right then. On my mental checklist I made a tick that meant this one would stay right where he was. Others might have plans for him but they were not in charge. If we could work out how to strengthen our world’s Shadowgate, maybe we could even execute him.

I continued moving, working my silent triage, constantly bemused because there were so many faces that I did not recognize. A lot of men who had enlisted while I was away from the center of the action. “Oh, darn!”

“What?” One-Eye was only a few steps behind me, gaining ground fast. His voice seemed to rattle as it echoed.

“It’s Wheezer. The stasis didn’t take for him.”

One-Eye grunted, evidently indifferent. Old Wheezer came from the same tribe One-Eye did, although Wheezer was more than a century younger than the wizard. There had never been any affection between them. “He had a better run than he deserved.” Wheezer had been old and dying of consumption when he joined the Company during its passage southward, decades ago. And he had continued to survive despite his infirmities and despite all the trials the Company had endured.

“Here’re Candles and Cletus. They’re gone, too. And a couple of Nyueng Bao and two Shadar I don’t recognize. Something happened here. This makes seven dead men, all in a clump.”

“Don’t move, Little Girl. Don’t touch anything before I have a chance to look it over.”

I froze. It was time to acknowledge his expertise.

85

I haven’t found them yet!” I snapped at Sahra and the Radisha. “I don’t want to go any farther if One-Eye can’t assure me that I’m not going to kill somebody just by being here.” Against all advice, those two had pushed as far forward as I would let them go. I could understand that they wanted to see their husbands and brothers and boyfriends, but they ought to have sense enough to restrain themselves until we knew what we could and could not do without risking harm to those very husbands and brothers and boyfriends.

Sahra gave me a sharp, hurt look.

“Sorry,” I said, insincerely. “Come on. Think. You can see that the stasis down here didn’t work for everyone. Swan. How far up this tunnel do we have to go?” I could see a scatter of eight recumbent forms between myself and the curve, none of whom were immediately recognizable as the Captain, Lady, Murgen, Thai Dei, Cordy Mather or Blade. “From where we stand now, roughly eleven people still aren’t accounted for.”

“I don’t remember,” Swan grumped. Bass echoes chased one another around the cavern. They were worse with my higher pitched voice, though.

“Memory spell wearing off?”

“I don’t think so. This feels more like something I never knew. I’m still a whole lot confused about what went on down here.”

One big problem was that none of us really knew exactly how many Captured there were. Swan was the best witness because he had ridden with them, but he had not kept track, other than of key people. Murgen never had been any help because after he had become one of the Captured, he had apparently become unable to explore the immediate vicinity where he was confined.

“We need to get Murgen awake first thing. Nobody else will know all the names and faces.” It seemed probable that some of the people I did not recognize just were not part of the Company. “One-Eye. Figure out how to wake these people up. As soon as I find Murgen, I want to get him into talking condition. Can I go ahead?” Squabbling echoes reminded me to keep my voice down.

Crabbily, One-Eye responded, “Yes. Just don’t touch anybody. Or even anything that you don’t recognize. And stop trying to rush me.”

“Can you bring them out of stasis?”

“I don’t know yet, do I? I’ve been too damned busy answering dumb questions. Leave me alone long enough and I might figure it out, though.”

Tempers were getting short and manners were becoming frayed. I sighed, rubbed my forehead and temples because I had begun to develop a headache, listened to the sounds of more people descending the stair. “Willow, see if you can keep those fools out of here till One-Eye’s ready.” I looked ahead without eagerness. Not only did the cavern turn to the right, it steepened. The water-polished floor was covered with frost. The footing was going to be treacherous.

“Caw!”

The white crow was up there somewhere. It had been announcing itself repeatedly, sounding more impatient every time.

I moved forward carefully. When I reached the steeper floor, I knelt and brushed the frost away to improve the footing. I told Sahra and the Radisha, “If you have to follow me, you’d better be even more careful than I am.”

They insisted. They were careful. Not one of us slipped and went flailing back down the slope. “Here’s Longo and Sparkle,” I said. “And that wad definitely looks like the Howler.”

In fact, that wad definitely was that crippled little Master Sorcerer. He had been one of the Lady’s henchmen in the far north, then our enemy down here. He had become a prisoner of war along with his ally Longshadow, and Lady must have foreseen some use for him or she would not have kept him alive. But he was not likely to get released while I was in charge. In his way, he was crazier than Soulcatcher.

The crow chided me for taking so long.

The Howler was awake. His will was such that he could move his eyes, though nothing more was within his capacity. One glimpse of the madness within those dark orbs and I knew that this man could not be permitted to make it back to the world. “Be very careful around this one,” I said. “Or he’ll nail you as surely as Soulcatcher nailed Swan. One-Eye. Howler is awake. He can move his eyes.”

One-Eye repeated my warning, absentmindedly. “Don’t get too close to him.”

The crow began to nag. Its voice gave birth to a particularly annoying generation of echoes.

“Ah. Radisha. Here’s your brother. And he seems to be in pretty good shape. No! Don’t touch! That’s probably what contaminated the stasis spells protecting the dead men. You’ll just have to be patient, same as the rest of us.”

She made a sound like a low growl.

The icy cave ceiling above us made creaking sounds that added to the volleys of echoes.

I continued, “It’s hard. I know it’s hard. But right now patience is the best tool we have for getting them out of here safely.” Once I was sure she would restrain herself I resumed inching forward. The white crow cawed impatiently. Out loud I thought, “I do believe I’ll wring that thing’s neck.”

The Radisha reminded me, “You’ll build bad kharma. You might come back as a crow or parrot in your next life.”

“One of the beauties of being Vehdna is that you don’t have a next life to worry about. And God, the All-Powerful, the Merciful, has no love at all for crows. Except to use as plagues upon the unrighteous. Does anybody know if Master Santaraksita planned to come down here?” My organizational skills had vanished because of my own eagerness to reach the Captured. It occurred to me only now that the scholar’s knowledge might prove especially useful here if he could connect anything in this cave to known myth.

I got no answer. “I’ll send for him if I have to. Ah. Sahra, here’s your honey. Don’t touch!” I said that a little too loudly. The echoes got very boisterous. Several small icicles broke loose from the ceiling. They shattered with an almost metallic tinkle when they struck the floor.

The crow spoke, very distinctly, “Come here!”

And I, having finally figured it out, told it, “If your manners don’t improve dramatically, you might not get out of here at all.”

The bird was strutting back and forth nervously in front of Croaker and Lady. Soulcatcher had left those two snuggled up together, arranged so that the Captain had one arm around Lady’s waist while she held his other hand with both of hers in her lap. Additional delicate touches suggested that Soulcatcher’s wicked sense of play had peaked for this bit of still life.

If Catcher had left any booby traps at all, this was where they would be. “One-Eye. I need help.” Any traps that existed were beyond me.

Lady’s eyes were open. There was no dust on them. She was angry. And the white crow wanted to tell me all about it.

“Patience,” I counseled, close to becoming impatient myself. “Swan. One-Eye. Come on up here.” Swan arrived first despite coming from farther away. I asked, “You recall anything special she did with these two? Any little bit of sneakiness?”

“No. I wouldn’t worry about it. By the time she laid them out, she was worried about what might happen next. That’s the way she is. When she’s starting something, it’s her whole world and she has no doubts about any part of it. But the closer she comes to getting finished, the more trouble she has keeping her confidence up.”

“Nice to know that she’s human.” I did not mean a word of that. “One-Eye. Look for booby traps around here. And make up your mind. Tell me if you can bring these people back, darn it!” My headache had not gotten any better. But, thank the God of Mercies, it had grown no worse.

Another icicle fell.

“I know. I know. I heard you the first time you asked.” He grumbled something about wishing he knew a way to charm me up a better love life.

I stared past Croaker and Lady. The cavern went on. Pale light barely illuminated it. There was no gold in that at all now. A touch of silver, a touch of grey, a lot of blue ice. In fact, the sedimentary rock seemed to give way to actual ice now, ahead. “Willow. Did Catcher go up there when you were here?”

He checked where I was looking. “No. But she could have during an earlier visit.”

Someone had traveled in that direction recently, in cavern scales of time. There were still clear tracks in the frost. And I suspected that I would not enjoy the journey once I began to follow them. But I would do so. I had no choice. I had failed elsewhere by letting Narayan and the Daughter of Night get away. That Kina undoubtedly supplied them with a subtle boost did not sufficiently signify. I should have been better prepared. “One-Eye. Talk to me. Can you resurrect these people or not?”

“If you’d stop barking for five minutes I could probably figure that out.”

“Take your time, sweetness. It’ll take us a while to starve.” That ice up there must have been what Swan had meant when he mentioned ice on the plain.

“You’ve had all the fool-around time I’m willing to give you,” I told One-Eye. “Can you do it? Yes or no. Right now.”

“The shape I’m in, I need more rest.” His speech was slow and slurred and had taken on an odd rhythm that made following him difficult. He was right, of course. All of us needed rest. But we also needed to finish our business and get off the plain. Hunger was a reality already. It was not going to go away. I feared it might become a companion as intimate and dreaded as it had been during the siege of Jaicur.

I had decided, already, that I would adopt Uncle Doj’s suggested strategy. We would recover only a few people now. We would return for the others later. But that meant making cruel choices. Somebody would end up hating me no matter what I did. If I was really clever, I would find some good old-fashioned Goblinlike way of spreading the blame all around me. Those tagged to wait could not hate everybody.

And there went some good old-fashioned wishful thinking, Sleepy. We were talking about human beings. If there is any way to be contrary, unreasonable and obnoxious, human beings are sure to find and pursue it. With verve and enthusiasm at whatever might be the most inconvenient time.

86

Is anybody at all still up topside?” I demanded. I had settled down for a short nap when the timing had seemed appropriate and that had turned into a long nap that might have become a permanent nap had not so many people been around to keep me from drifting too far away. I dreamed while I was out, I knew that, but I remembered none of it. The smell of Kina remained strong in my nostrils, so I knew where I must have gone, though.

One-Eye was seated beside me, apparently assisting me with my snoring. A worried Goblin appeared, checking to make certain his best friend did not drift too far into sleep. Beyond me, Mother Gota had become engrossed in a protracted debate with the white crow. That must have been a classic dialog to disinterested listeners.

Goblin murmured, “From now on, don’t make any sudden movements, Sleepy. Always look around you. Always make sure that you’re not going to damage any of our friends.”

I heard Tobo talking rapidly, softly, in a businesslike voice. I could not distinguish his words. Somewhere Uncle Doj rattled away, too. “What’s happening?”

“We’ve started waking them up. It’s not as complicated as we feared it might be but it takes time and care, and the people we bring out aren’t going to be any use to us after they waken—if you had any plans along those lines. One-Eye worked it all out before he collapsed.” The little wizard sounded grimmer suddenly.

“Collapsed? One-Eye collapsed? Was it just exhaustion?” I hoped.

“I don’t know. I don’t want to know. Yet. For now, I’m just going to let him rest. Right down on the edge of the stasis. Or even into it if I think that’s necessary. Once his body regains its strength, I’ll bring him out and see how bad it really was.” He did not sound optimistic.

I said, “If we had to we could leave him here, in stasis, till we could give him proper treatment.” Which reminded me. “You’re not just getting everyone up, are you? There’s no way we can nurse and feed the whole crowd.” Surely the Captured would not be able to take care of themselves after fifteen years of just sitting around, stasis or not. They might even be as weak and unskilled as babies and have to learn everything all over again.

“No, Sleepy. We’re going to do five people. That’s all.”

“Uhm. Good. Hey! Where the heck did the standard go? It was right over there. I’m the Standardbearer. I have to keep track—”

“I had it moved over by the gap to the stair. So somebody going that way can take it upstairs. Will you quit fussing? That’s Sahra’s specialty.”

“Speaking of Sahra—Tobo! Where do you think you’re going?” While I was talking with Goblin, the boy had slipped past and headed up the cave.

“I was just gonna go see what’s up there.”

“No. You’re just gonna stay right here and help your uncle and Goblin take care of your father, the Captain and the Lieutenant.”

He gave me a black look. Despite everything, he still had those moments when he was just a boy. He put on a pouty face that made me grin.

Willow Swan came up behind me. “I’ve got a problem, Sleepy.”

“Which would be?”

“I can’t find Cordy. Cordy Mather. Not anywhere.”

From the corner of my eye I noted that the Radisha had overheard. She rose slowly from a squat in front of her brother, looked our way. She said nothing nor did anything otherwise that might betray an interest. It was not common knowledge that she and Mather had enjoyed an intimate relationship.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“You did bring him down here?”

“Absolutely.”

I grunted. There was one other absentee whose nonpresence I had been willing to ignore until some rational excuse for her disappearance arose. The shapeshifter Lisa Bowalk, unable to shed the guise of a black panther, had gone up onto the plain as a prisoner but was not now to be found among the dead above or the Captured down below.

Lisa Bowalk had been possessed of a towering hatred for the Company, and particularly for One-Eye because it was One-Eye’s fault that she had become trapped in the feline shape. I had to ask. “What about the panther, Willow? It’s not around here anywhere, either.”

“What panther? Oh. I remember. I don’t know.” He was looking around like he thought he might spot his old friend Mather hiding behind a stalagmite. “I remember we had to leave her upstairs because we couldn’t get her cage around the first turn in the stair. I mean, it would have gone if Catcher and I didn’t have anything else to mess with, but we couldn’t manage it and the rest of the string both. So Catcher decided to leave the cage up there for later. I don’t know what happened when later came. I don’t remember much of anything that happened after we came down here. Maybe One-Eye should give me another dose of that memory spell.” He tugged on and twisted the ends of his hair, girl-style, and stared down the slope. “I know I left Cordy right down there, just a little above Blade, where it seemed like the floor would be more comfortable.”

“Right down there” was the downhill edge of the clot of seven dead men. There had to be a connection. “Goblin, what’s the story? Are we going to wake these people up or not?” Me, ignoring everything he had said earlier.

Goblin responded with a sneer that turned into one of his big toad grins. “I’ve already got Murgen out.”

“But I wanted him down here where I could ask questions.”

“I mean I’ve got him out of stasis, bimbo-brain. He’s right over there. I’m working on the Captain and Lady now. Tobo and Doj have been doing prelims on Thai Dei and the Prahbrindrah Drah.”

Exactly according to my expectations. With the latter two men included entirely for political reasons. Neither was likely to contribute much to the Company’s glory or survival.

I moved down to where Murgen lay snoring. The echoing racket and the melting ice webs were the only changes I saw. I squatted. “Anybody think to bring blankets down?” I had not. I am what you would have to call disorganized when it comes to present-tense operations. It had not occurred to me to bring spare clothing or blankets or gear. But I sure can plan bloodshed and general mayhem real well.

There were treasure chambers down here somewhere, though. I had glimpsed several in my dreams. There might be something useful there—if we could find them.

My stomach growled. I was getting hungry. The rumble reminded me that it would not be long before our situation became desperate.

Murgen’s eyes opened. He tried to form an expression, a smile for Sahra, but the effort was too much for him. His gaze shifted to me. A whisper struggled through his lips. “The Books. Get . . . the Daughter . . . ” His eyes closed again.

It was true. The Captured were not going to jump up and dance tarantellas when they were liberated.

Murgen’s message was clear. The Books of the Dead were down here. Something had to be done before the Daughter of Night got another chance to begin copying them. And I had no doubt that she would manage that, despite Soulcatcher. She had Kina backing her up.

“I’ll take care of it.” I did not have a ghost of a notion how I would manage that, though.