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 t
he 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.