The Silver Spike

  I grinned because I had a gut feeling that’s exactly what Raven had in mind.

  Poor sucker. There just wasn’t nothing left for him to win. But he wasn’t the kind to accept that even if she told him to his face, point-blank.

  I wanted to sneak in one or two about Silent, too, but I didn’t get a chance. The military headquarters got spotted and the windwhale dropped down and moved up to it, anchored itself in place by dropping tentacles to grab rocks and trees. Its presence overhead was disconcerting to those in the camp.

  I like that word, disconcerting. I got it from Bomanz.

  Such a sly way to say they were having shit hemorrhages down there.

  There was a big hoorah, all kinds of whoop and holler and carrying on, when a bunch of Plain critters ganged up on the scar-faced stone and threw it over the side, almost into the lap of the command staff down there.

  Them old boys were pretty shook. I wondered how much more excited they would get if they knew the White Rose her own self was right over their heads. But they wasn’t going to try nothing, no matter what they knew. Who’d want to duke it out with four pissed-off windwhales, which is what they would get if they wasn’t polite.

  Scarstone popped back up. He talked. Silent translated for Darling. I didn’t hear anything. The Torque boys had let me know I was supposed to stay back, so I stayed back. Darling made a bunch of signs that I guess the stone could see somehow. It went away. After a while it came back.

  After four rounds of that it didn’t go away anymore. But the windwhale stayed where it was, so I guessed a deal had been struck.

  I went to try to talk it over with Raven. But he was in about as foul as mood as I ever saw, and anyway he had pegged me for some kind of traitor, so I gave it up and went off to shoot the shit with the Torques and the talking buzzard and a couple other Plain creatures that wasn’t too shy.

  Darling goes after something she usually gets what she wants. This time she got it just before noon next day.

  A hoorah broke out downstairs. Darling sent Scarface to check it out. It came back and reported. She got up and walked over to Raven, who watched her like she was the hangman coming. She signed at him. He got up and followed her, again with the eagerness of a man headed for the gallows.

  I knew him well enough to see the signs. He was putting himself into a role. I tagged along wondering what it would be. Most everybody else moved closer, too.

  Two young people around twenty came puffing up over the side of the windwhale.

  So the impossible was possible, the improbable a sure thing. Unless the army down there figured they could placate Darling with a couple of ringers.

  The boy looked like Raven twenty years younger. Same dark hair and coloration, same determined face not yet hardened into grimness.

  I was only a step behind when Raven got his first look at them. He cursed softly, muttered, “She looks like her mother.”

  It was plain they had not been told they were here for a family reunion. They were just puzzled and scared. Mostly scared. And more so as the mob closed in around them. They did not recognize Raven.

  They did recognize Darling. And that scared them even more.

  Everybody waited for somebody else to say something.

  Raven whispered, “Do something, Case.” Desperately. “I’m lost.”

  “Me? Hell, I don’t even speak the lingo that good.”

  “Case, help me out. Try to get this moving. I don’t know what to do.”

  All right. I thought of a couple of suggestions for him, but I was never a guy who kicked crippled dogs. I went to work in my feeble Jewel Cities dialect. “You have no idea why you were brought here, do you?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Relax. You ain’t in no danger. We just want to ask about your ancestors. Especially your parents.”

  The boy rattled something.

  “You’ll have to talk slower, please.”

  The girl said, “He said out parents are dead. We’ve been on our own since we were children.”

  Raven winced. I figured the voice must be like that of his wife, too.

  Silent translated for Darling, who really gave them the eye. Seeing they was Raven’s kids, I didn’t figure it was so amazing they pulled through.

  “What do you know about your parents?”

  The girl took on the answering chores. Maybe she thought her brother was too excitable. “Very little.” She told me pretty much what I had been able to find out for myself when we were headed south. She did know that her mother had not been a nice person. “We’ve managed to live her down. Last year we won a judgment that took some of our father’s properties from her family and returned them to us. We expect to win more such judgments.”

  That was something, anyway. The girl had conjured up no special regard for the woman who had brought her into the world.

  The boy said, “I don’t remember my mother at all. After our births I think she had as little to do with us as she could. I remember nurses. She probably got what she deserved.”

  “And your father?”

  “I have vague memories of a very distant man who wasn’t home much but who did visit when he was. Probably out of obligation and for appearance’ sake.”

  “Do you have any special feeling about him now?”

  “Why should we?” the girl asked. “We never really knew him, and he’s been dead for fifteen years.”

  I faced Darling, signed, “Is there any point going on?”

  She signed, “Yes. Not for their sake. For his.”

  I asked Raven, “You got anything to put in?”

  No. He didn’t. I could see him thinking maybe he was going to slide out of this after all.

  It wasn’t going to be that easy. Darling had me tell them that their father had not died, that he had been harried into exile by their mother’s confederates. She had me hit the high spots of their years together.

  They had had time to get over being scared. Now they were getting suspicious. The boy demanded, “What the hell is going on? How come these questions about our old man? He’s history. We don’t care. If he was to walk up right now and introduce himself I’d say so what. He’d be just another guy.”

  I signed to Darling, “You going to keep pushing it?” and asked Raven, in Forsberger, “You want to call his bluff?”

  Negatives all around. Bunch of wimps. So Raven was going to slide out. I told his kids, “Your father was very important in the life of the White Rose. He was a stand-in parent to her for years and she knew how it pained him to be in exile. She stopped here because she wanted to try to give back something of what she’d had and you couldn’t.”

  Neither Raven nor Darling liked me saying that.

  I think the girl figured it out about then. She got real carefully interested in Raven. But she didn’t say anything to her brother.

  I got Darling to agree this was enough and our guests ought to be turned loose. She wasn’t satisfied with the way things turned out. What the hell can you do with women? You can give them exactly what they ask for and they’ll cuss you because that ain’t what they really want.

  Just before the girl went over the side she turned and told me, “If my father was alive today he wouldn’t have to fear that he would be unwelcome in his daughter’s house.” Then she went.

  All right. There was an open door if ever I seen one.

  We took off the second the girl hit ground. Darling wanted to get far away before word she was there got to somebody who could do something about it. We lit out northeast, like we was headed for the Plain of Fear.

  XXXIX

  Every day more people came into Oar, and nobody left. A pigeon could not get out. Several had died trying.

  Some elements of the population were growing restless. There were more fights than usual. More people ended up on the labor gangs. The searches went on and on and on. There was not a building in Oar that had not been tossed at least twice, not a citizen who had not been rousted. There were rum
ors of big tension in high places. Brigadier Wildbrand did not think she owed Gossamer and Spidersilk anything and resented having her Nightstalkers used as bullies for their personal benefit. They were elite troops, not political gangsters.

  The nature of the people entering the city changed with time. Fewer were farmers or traders. More and more were dire characters with no obvious trade.

  The news about the silver spike was spreading.

  Smeds did not like it. It meant big trouble. How did Gossamer and Spidersilk expect to control all those witches and wizards, some of whom might be much more potent than they suspected? And the bullies they brought with them?

  Chaos threatened.

  Smeds understood the strategy. The twins meant to up the heat and pressure till the spike popped to the surface. If it came up in hands other than their own they were confident they could take it away.

  Could they?

  Every witch and wizard in town knew that, too. But they had come hunting anyway.

  Only Tully was pleased. He thought the situation perfect for the auction he wanted to run. “We got to get the word out,” he told the others, over supper.

  “Keep your voice down,” Fish said. “Anybody in here could be a spy. And we don’t get any word out. You heard of anybody offering to buy anything?”

  “No,” Tully admitted. “But that’s because —”

  “Because most of them know they can be outbid. You notice the twins aren’t offering anything. They figure they can get what they want by divine right, or something.”

  “Yeah, but —”

  “You have no grasp of the situation, Tully. Let me offer you a challenge. …”

  “I’m fed up with your shit, Fish.”

  “Indulge me in an experiment. If I’m wrong I’ll shout it from the rooftops. If I’m right, you win anyway.”

  “Yeah? Let’s hear it.”

  Sucked him up again, Smeds thought. His opinion of his cousin declined by the hour.

  “Here’s two coppers. Go find a kid somewhere away from here. One who don’t know you. Pay him to go to the Toad and Rose and tell the bullies there that the wizard Nathan is looking to hire a couple men to help him sneak out of the city tomorrow morning.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  Smeds said, “Gods, Tully, couldn’t you just once do something without arguing about it first?”

  Fish said, “The experiment will be more instructive if it simply unfolds, explaining itself as it goes.”

  “Why should I do that asshole Nathan any favors?”

  Smeds stood up. “I’ll do it. Otherwise we’ll be here till the middle of next week.”

  “I want Tully to do it. I want him to see that there can be a direct connection between his saying something and what happens in the real world.”

  “You’re putting me down again, ain’tcha?”

  “Tully,” Smeds said, “shut the fuck up or I’m going to brain you. Pick up the goddamned money, hit the goddamned street, find a kid, and pay him to deliver the goddamned message. Now.”

  Tully went. Smeds had gotten pretty intense.

  “He’s going to get us all killed,” Timmy said as soon as he was gone.

  “How’s your hand coming?” Smeds asked.

  “Real good. Don’t try to distract me, Smeds.”

  “Easy, Timmy,” Fish said. “I think there’s a chance this trick will get through to him.”

  “Want to bet?”

  “No.”

  Smeds would not have taken the bet either.

  The wizard Nathan and his four men had rented rooms just up the street from the Skull and Crossbones. The grays came there shortly before dawn. They found five dead men and two rooms torn to shreds. They sealed the area, searched it again, asked a lot of questions. Fish made sure they all got a good look at the mess. He asked Tully, “You starting to catch on?”

  “Who would do something like that, man? Why?”

  “Nathan was a wizard. If he was going to sneak, that meant he’d found the spike and wanted to make a run for it.”

  “But he wasn’t going to leave town.”

  “No. He wasn’t, Tully. But you said he was.”

  Tully started to be Tully and argue, but he bit down on it and through for a moment before he said, “Oh.”

  “Next time you say something without thinking first or checking to see who’s listening, that could be us all carved up.”

  Smeds said, “You maybe went too far to make your point, Fish.”

  “Why?”

  “This ain’t over yet. Those soldiers didn’t find anything but a mess. They’re going to figure whoever made the mess got the spike.”

  “Yeah. And maybe everybody else will think so, too. Maybe even the guys who actually did it. The next few days ought to be interesting. And part of the ongoing lesson.”

  “What’re you blathering now?” Tully demanded.

  “That was a big gang in that place, eh? Five pro thugs and a sorcerer. Nobody would try to take them alone. I figure there was at least three guys did it. Probably more. Unless they’re a bunch that really trust each other they’re going to have trouble. Every one of them is going to know he didn’t get the spike, but he isn’t going to be sure about the others.”

  Tully said, “Oh,” again, and after a while, “This shit is getting scary. I never thought it would get this hairy.”

  “Your problem is you never thought,” Timmy muttered, but Tully did not hear him.

  Fish said, “It’s just starting, Tully. It’s going to get hairier. And if we want to come out of it with our skins on we’re going to have to be very damned careful. These aren’t nice or reasonable people. They aren’t going to be interested in dealing till they got no other choice.”

  It got hairier fast, as more, and more powerful, thauma-turgic treasure hunters poured into the city. Old feuds having nothing to do with the spike flared. The citizenry, pressed from all sides, responded by rioting on a small scale. The twins presided smugly, doing nothing to retard the escalating violence.

  Smeds spent a lot of time being sorry he had let Tully get him into this in the first place. Because of the other treasure they had brought home, the living was good, but not good enough, given that he had to watch his every word every minute and spent half his time looking over his shoulder to make sure disaster was not gaining on him.

  XL

  We were over the Forest of Cloud, south of Oar, east of Roses, west of Lords, hiding out from imperial eyes, too many of which had seen the windwhales cruising far from their proper range over the Plain of Fear. Darling wanted to let a little of the excitement die down before she moved on.

  She would not let the tree god hurry her, though he was in a minor frenzy. I did not understand exactly what was up yet, but neither did some of the others, so we were getting an education from old Bomanz, who was suddenly Darling’s number-one boy.

  “Since you were all there you’ll recall that in the course of the battle in the Barrowland the soul or essence, of the Dominator — the most evil being ever to walk this earth — was imprisoned in a silver spike, which was then driven into the trunk of a sapling sired by the tree god of the Plain of Fear.” He really did talk that way when he had an audience.

  “At the time it was believed that would effectively contain and constrain the residual evil of the man forever. The sapling was the scion of a god, invulnerable, unapproachable, and so long-lived as to be, in practical terms, immortal. As the sapling grew, its trunk would engulf the spike. In time the old evil would not persist in so much as memory.

  “However. We thought wrong.

  “A band of adventurers succeeded in stunning the sapling long enough to get in and prize the spike out. If we are to credit the sapling’s own testimony — and we must, for the nonce, because it is the only testimony we have — none of those men had the least familiarity with the art, and were remarkable only because they came up with an idea that, logically, should have originated with someone devoted to the
occult.”

  Damn him, he did talk like that when he had an audience. And he wouldn’t stop.

  “Gentlemen, the silver spike is loose in the world. It’s not the Dominator. He’s dead. But the undying black essence that drove him remains. And that could be used by an adept to summon, coerce, and shape powers even I cannot begin to imagine or fathom. That spike could become a conduit to the very heart of darkness, an opener of the way that would confer upon its possessor powers perhaps exceeding even those the Dominator possessed.

  “Our mission, our holy mission, given the White Rose by Old Father Tree himself, is to recover the silver spike and deliver it for safekeeping, at whatever cost to ourselves, before someone of power seizes upon it and shapes it to his own dark purpose and is, in this turn, shaped — perhaps into a shadow so deep there would be no chance ever for the world to win free.”

  That bit about “at whatever cost to ourselves” got a big hand. The talking buzzard pulled his head out from under his wing, cracked an eye, went to town heckling the old wizard. That finally distracted him from his windier fancies.

  “Buzzard, if you were fit to eat I’d be picking up kindling right now!” he shouted. Then he got back to business. “The tree god has reason to suspect that the spike is now in Oar. The White Rose, Silent, the Torques, and some of our smaller companions will drop into the city. With the help of the underground they will establish a secure base, then will take up the hunt. Raven, Case, and I, because of our considerable familiarity with the site, will go on to the Barrowland to see what can be learned there.”

  That started a bunch of bitching. Raven didn’t like being sent off someplace where Darling wasn’t. I didn’t think these guys had the right to draft me into their adventure I got pretty hot.

  Darling took me aside and calmed me down, then convinced me that even if I remained committed to the empire in my heart, helping her in this would not harm me. Maybe she was right when she said the evil she wanted to abort wouldn’t respect allegiances or philosophies. That it would divide the world into two kinds of people, its enemies and its slaves.