The Many Deaths of the Black Company

  “Continue.”

  Iqbal squealed, “He grew them. These nasty lumps developed all over him, like big-ass boils, only when they popped, out came these things.”

  Under more normal circumstances that idea and the images it engendered would have seemed repulsive. I grunted, took another wonderful mouthful, pictured the creation process, caught myself in the midst of a fit of giggles. I regained control, though that took an effort. “So it finally decided to communicate?”

  “Sort of. When we left, it was trying to manage some kind of dialog with Doj. It didn’t seem to be working all that well, though.”

  Swan sighed. “I haven’t felt this relaxed and positive since Cordy and I used to go fishing when we were kids. This’s the way we felt lying beside the creek in the shade, never really caring if we got a bite while we shared our daydreams or just watched clouds scoot overhead.”

  Even the recollection of his friend’s fate did not break his mood entirely.

  I understood what he was trying to communicate even though I had had no special friend with whom to share the rare, golden moments of childhood. I had had no childhood. I felt really good myself. I said, “This whatever-it-is is great stuff. River. You seen any side effects yet?”

  “It’s damned near impossible to stop yourself if you get the giggles.”

  “I’ll try not to get started. Wow! I feel like I could whip twice my weight in wolves right now. Why don’t we get going?”

  Nobody took the opportunity to mention that me whipping twice my weight in wolves might entail me fighting only the back half of one of the monsters. Iqbal and Runmust continued to giggle over some shared joke of long ago.

  “Boys,” I said, pointing. “That way. Don’t touch anything. Keep going. We’re going to go back upstairs.”

  Dang me, I kept getting silly ideas. And every one of them made me want to start laughing. Riverwalker told me, “We found out that if we sing it helps us keep our minds on business.” A big grin spread across his face. He began humming one of the filthier marching songs. It concerned the business that seems to be on the minds of most men most of the time.

  I hummed along and got everybody started moving.

  Foul-smelling smoke from roasted books filled the cavern. It seemed even stronger in the stairwell. Some of it drifted downward.

  Kina was not yet aware, I was sure. She would have done something if she had known. But she would not remain ignorant forever.

  I hoped we could get ourselves well on the road before she recovered enough to assimulate the truth. Her dreams were deadly enough.

  94

  I settled my behind onto the rise in the floor near the entrance to the stairwell. I sat there dully wondering why the excavation had been started way out here on the periphery. I did not concern myself about it much, though. I ate again. “This stuff could get addictive.” And not because it made me feel happy and silly but because it took away aches and pains and every inclination to sleep. I could sit there knowing my body was at its physical limits without having to endure all the suffering associated with that state. And my mind remained particularly alert and useful because I was not preoccupied with the miseries plaguing my flesh.

  Swan grunted his agreement. He did not seem to have been rendered as cheerful as the rest of us. Although, come to think of it, I was not doing much whistling or singing myself.

  My mood improved after I had eaten again, though.

  In one of his more lucid moments Riverwalker suggested, “We shouldn’t waste any more time than we have to, Sleepy. The rest should all be gone by now but they went away hoping that you and the standard would catch up.”

  “If Tobo hasn’t already told them, I’ve got some bad news about that.”

  “The boy said nothing about the standard. He may not have had a chance. Everybody was so shocked about Goblin and so worried about how to keep One-Eye from finding out.…”

  “Goblin drove the Lance into Kina’s body. It’s still there. You know me. I’m completely hooked by the Company mystique. I believe that besides the Annals, the standard is the most important symbol we have. It goes all the way back to Khatovar. It ties the generations together. I’d understand if somebody wanted to go back after it. But that somebody isn’t going to be me. Not in this decade.”

  That good feeling was moving through me again. I rose. Swan helped me step up to the higher floor level. “Hello!”

  Riverwalker chuckled. “I wondered how long it would take you to notice.”

  The crack in the floor was almost gone.

  I went and looked. It seemed to be as deep as ever but now was nowhere more than a foot wide. “How did it heal so fast?” I assumed our presence had been a catalyst. Glancing around the crack toward the demon’s throne, I noticed Doj and Tobo hurrying our way. Shivetya’s eyes were open. He was watching. “I thought you said everybody had left.”

  “The earthquake did it.” River ignored the presence of Doj and Tobo.

  Swan said, “It’s the latest thing in home repairs. Go down there and stab that thing again, maybe the plain will heal up completely.”

  “Might get the clockwork running again,” Doj said, having overheard our conversation as he arrived.

  “Clockwork?”

  Doj did a little hop. “This floor is a huge circle. It’s a one-eightieth-scale representation of the plain as a whole, with a complete travel chart inlaid. It rides on stone rollers and was capable of turning before the Thousand Voices got curious and broke it.”

  “Interesting. I take it your chat with the demon proceeded informatively.”

  Doj grunted assent. “But slowly. That was the big problem. Just figuring out that communication has to be managed very slowly. I think that would carry over physically, too. That if he decided to stand up—if he could—it might take hours. But as the Steadfast Guardian, he never had to move fast. He controlled the whole plain from here, using the charts in the floors and the clockwork mechanisms.”

  Never had I seen Doj so straightforward and animated. The knowledge bug must have bitten him, along with its kissing cousin that makes the newly illuminated want to share with everyone. And that was not like Doj at all. Nor like any other Nyueng Bao of my experience. Only Mother Gota and Tobo ever chattered—and between them they revealed less than Uncle Doj on a particularly reticent day.

  Doj continued, “He says his original reason for being created was to manage the machinery that saw that travelers got where they wanted to go. Over time there were battles upon the plain, wars between the worlds, this fortress was built around him, and at every stage he was saddled with additional duties. Sleepy, the creature is half as old as time itself. He actually witnessed the battle between Kina and the demons when the Lords of Light fought the Lords of Darkness. It was the first great war between the worlds, it did take place here on the plain, and none of the myths have got it close to right.”

  That was interesting and I said so. But I refused to allow the past’s allure to seduce me right now.

  “I must confess a grand temptation to create a permanent camp here,” Doj enthused. “It will take lifetimes to recover and record everything. He’s seen so much! He remembers the Children of the Dead, Sleepy. To him the passing of the Nyueng Bao De Duang happened just yesterday. We need only to keep him convinced that we should have his help.”

  I looked questions at each of my companions. Riverwalker finally volunteered, “He’s got to have been stuffing himself with the demon food.” Meaning he thought Doj was out of character a few leagues, too. “Several others also went through big changes when they overindulged.”

  “That much I understood already. Tobo. Have you undergone a complete character shift, too?” He had not said a word. That was remarkable. He had an opinion about everything.

  “He scared the crap out of me, Sleepy.”

  “He? Who?”

  “The demon. The monster. Shivetya. He looked inside my head. He talked to me there. I think he did it to my father, too. Fo
r years and years, maybe. In the Annals? When Dad thought Kina or the Protector were manipulating him? I’m betting that lots of times it was really Shivetya.”

  “That could be. That really could be.”

  The world is infested with superhuman things that toy with the destinies of individuals and nations. Gunni priests have been claiming that for a hundred generations. The gods were banging elbows with each other, stirring the cauldron. But none of those gods were my God, the True God, the Almighty, Who seemed to have elected to elevate Himself above the fray.

  I needed the solace of my kind of priest. And there were none nearer than five hundred miles.

  “How many stories are there about this place?” I asked Doj. “And how many of them are true?”

  “I suspect we haven’t yet heard one out of ten,” the old swordmaster replied. He grinned. He was enjoying himself. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them are true. Can you sense it? This fortress, this plain, they’re many things at the same time. Until recently I believed it had to be the Land of Unknown Shadows. As your Captain believed that it had to be Khatovar. But it’s only a pathway to other places. And Shivetya, the Steadfast Guardian, is many things, too. Including, I think, infinitely weary of being everything that he’s had to be.”

  Tobo was so anxious to interject his own thoughts that he danced around like a little boy with a desperate need to pee. He announced, “Shivetya wants to die, Sleepy. But he can’t. Not as long as Kina is still alive. And she’s immortal.”

  “He’s got a problem then, doesn’t he?”

  Swan had an idea. “He could divide up that life span and offer it to us. I’d take him up on it. I could use another couple thousand years. After I get away from this kind of life.”

  I moved us closer to the demon as we talked. My natural pessimism and sourness evidently reasserted itself, though I never stopped feeling younger and happier and more energetic than I had for ages. I just stopped giggling with the rest of them. I asked, “Where’s your mother, Tobo?”

  His good humor waned momentarily. “She went with Granny Gota.”

  A glance at Doj made me suspect that there had been a sharp encounter between Sahra the mother and men willing to accept her son as one of them. This was Nyueng Bao stubbornness again, from two directions. On this one the Troll must have sided with her grandson and Doj.

  I changed the subject. “All right. You two claim you’ve been in Shivetya’s mind. Or maybe he’s been in yours. Whichever, tell me what he wants.” I did not believe the demon was being helpful out of the goodness of his ancient heart. He could not be. He was a demon, accursed of God whether he was a creature of light or of shadow. To a demon we adventurers had to be as brief and transient as individual honeybees would be to us—though, like the bees, we might be able to make ourselves obnoxious for a short while.

  Doj said, “He wants what anyone in his position would want. That seems obvious.”

  Tobo interjected, “He also wants loose, Sleepy. He’s been pinned that way for a long time. The plain keeps changing because he can’t get out to stop anybody.”

  “What’s he going to do if we pluck the daggers out of his limbs? Will he go on being our pal? Or will he start busting heads?”

  Doj and Tobo exchanged uncertain glances. So. They had not spent much time worrying about that.

  I said, “I see. Well, he may be the sweetest guy on God’s green earth but he stays right where he is for now. A few weeks or months more shouldn’t make much difference to him. How the heck did he manage to get himself nailed to his chair?”

  “Somebody tricked him,” Tobo said.

  Surprise, surprise. “You think so?”

  It seemed there was a lot more light now than there had been when I was headed in the other direction with Swan. Or maybe my eyes had adapted to the interior of the fortress. I could make out the designs in the floor clearly. All the features of the plain could be found there except for the standing stones with their glittering gold characters. And those might have been represented by certain shadowy discolorations I was unable to examine more closely. There were even tiny points that seemed to be moving, which almost certainly meant something if one knew how to read them.

  Shivetya’s throne rested atop a circular elevation positioned at the heart of an intermediate raised circle just over twenty yards across. Doj assured me that that was roughly one-eightieth the diameter of the biggest circle and that that was an eightieth of the diameter of the entire plain. The smaller circle, I noted, also boasted its representation of the plain—in much less obvious detail. Presumably, Shivetya could sit his throne and, turning, could see the whole of his kingdom. If he needed more information, he could step down to the next level, where everything was portrayed in a scale eighty times finer.

  The implications of the quality of the magical engineering involved in creating all this began to seep through. I was intimidated thoroughly. The builders must have been of godlike power. They had to have been as far beyond the greatest wizards known to me as those were beyond no-talents like me. I was sure that Lady and Longshadow, Soulcatcher and Howler, would have little more grasp of the forces and principles involved than I did.

  I stepped in front of Shivetya. The demon’s eyes remained open. I felt him touch me lightly, inside. For some reason my thoughts turned to mountainous highlands and places where the snow never melted. To old things, slow things. To silence and stone. My brain had no better way of interpreting the actuality of what Shivetya was.

  I kept reminding myself that the demon antedated the oldest history of my world. And I sensed what Tobo had mentioned, Shivetya’s quiet, calm desire not to grow any older. He had a very Gunni sort of desire to find his way into a nirvana as an antidote to the infinite tedium and pain of being.

  I tried talking to the demon. I tried exchanging thoughts. That was a frightening experience even though I was filled with the confidence and good feeling that came from the gift food Shivetya had provided. I did not want to share my mind even with an immortal golem who could not possibly have any genuine comprehension of the things it contained or of why those troubled me so.

  * * *

  “Sleepy?”

  “Huh?” I jumped up. I felt good enough to do that. I felt as good as I should have back in my teens, had I never had a need to feel sorry for myself. The healing properties of the demon’s gift continued to work their magic.

  Swan said, “We all fell asleep. I don’t know for how long. I don’t even know how.”

  I looked at the demon. It had not moved. No surprise there. But the white crow was perched on its shoulder. As soon as it recognized that I was alert, it launched itself toward me. I threw up an arm. The bird settled on my wrist as though I were a falconer. In a voice almost too slow to follow, it said, “This will be my voice. It is trained and its mind is not cluttered with thoughts and beliefs that will get in the way.”

  Marvelous. I wondered what Lady would think. If Shivetya took over, she would be deaf and blind until we brought her back from her enchanted sleep.

  “This will be my voice now.”

  I understood the repetition to be a response to my flutter of unspoken curiosity.

  “I understand.”

  “I will aid you in your quest. In return, you will destroy the Drin, Kina. Then you will release me.”

  I understood that he meant for me to release him from life and obligation, not just from that throne.

  “I would if I had the power.”

  “You have the power. You have always had the power.”

  “What does that mean?” I recognized a cryptic, sorcerer-type pronouncement when I heard one.

  “You will understand when it is time to understand. Now it is time for you to depart, Stone Soldier. Go. Become Deathwalker.”

  “What the devil does that mean?” I squeaked. So did several of my companions, all of whom were awake now and most of whom were gobbling demon food while eavesdropping.

  The floor started moving
, at first almost imperceptibly. Quickly I noted that only the part immediately around the throne, that had healed itself completely, was involved. I now knew that all the damage, including the earthquake so violent it had been felt as far away as Taglios, had been initiated entirely by Soulcatcher during an ill-conceived experiment. She had discovered the “machinery” and in her willful, damn-the-consequences way, had begun tinkering just to see what would happen. I knew that as fully as if I had been there as an eyewitness, because an actual eyewitness had given me his memories.

  I knew everything Soulcatcher had done during her several visits to the fortress, in a time when Longshadow believed he was the total master of the Shadowgate and did not believe that others would dare approach it even if they did possess a workable key.

  I now knew many things as if I had lived them. Some were things I was not eager to know. A few concerned questions I had had for years, offering answers that I could share with Master Santaraksita. But mostly it was just stuff I was likely to find useful if I was going to become what Shivetya hoped I would.

  A startled bluebottle of speculation buzzed through my mind. I checked to see if I had an answer. But I had no memories of what might have become of the Key that would have been necessary if, indeed, Longshadow, as Maricha Manthara Dhumraksha, with his student Ashutosh Yaksha, had come to our world from the Land of Unknown Shadows.

  And for sure, I did not get any relief from my fear of heights.

  An instant after the floor stopped turning, the white crow launched itself upward. And darned if I did not launch myself right after it—though not through any wish of my own.

  My companions rose behind me. In their surprise and fright several dropped weapons and possessions and, probably, body contents. Only Tobo seemed to find unanticipated flight to be a positive experience.

  Runmust and Iqbal sealed their eyes and belched rapid prayers to their false vision of God. I spoke my mind to the God Who Is God, reminding Him to be merciful. Riverwalker addressed impassioned appeals to his heathen deities. Doj and Swan said nothing at all, Swan because he had fainted.