Some of the Voroshk already recognized the magnitude of the disaster still unfolding. Black fluttering shapes scattered like roaches suddenly exposed to the light. Flying posts took to the air, streaked northward so violently that bits of black cloth ripped off and fluttered down like dark autumn leaves.
The three elders held their positions. They stared our way. I wondered what was happening inside their heads. Almost certainly not any recognition of the fact that the disaster was a direct result of the magnitude of Voroshk arrogance. I have never met one of their kind who would admit any fallibility whatsoever.
I was sure there would be some grand squabbles over where to fix the blame during the time they had left. Human nature at work.
“What are you thinking?” Lady asked.
I realized that I was no longer moving, that I was just watching the Voroshk watch me. “Just looking around inside me, trying to figure out why this doesn’t bother me the way it would have years ago. Why I recognize the pain more easily now but am not touched by it nearly so much.”
“You know what One-Eye used to say about you? You think too much. He was right. You don’t have any more obligation to him. Let’s go back to our own world, see about spanking our little girl and getting my baby sister straightened up.” Her voice changed severely as her thoughts turned. “One thing I demand. Still. Narayan Singh. I want him. He’s mine.”
I winced inside my helmet. Poor Narayan. I said, “I still have one thing to do here.”
“What?” she snapped.
“After those three leave. I have to get Tobo’s friends back.”
She grunted and resumed walking. She had to make sure the road across the plain could be closed behind us, so that we would not become victims of the explosion, too.
32
The Shadowlands: The Protector of All the Taglias
Soulcatcher’s survival instincts had been honed to a razor’s edge by centuries of adventures among peoples who considered her continued good health a liability. She sensed a change in the world long before she had any idea what that change might be, good or ill or indifferent, and ages before she dared hazard a guess as to its cause.
At first it was just that sense. Then, gradually, it became the pressure of a thousand eyes. But she could discover nothing. Her crows could find nothing either, other than the occasional, unpredictable, flickering glimpse of their quarry, the two Deceivers. That was ancient news.
Soulcatcher abandoned the hunt immediately. It would not be difficult to get close to the Deceivers again.
She learned nothing more before nightfall—except that her crows were extremely unsettled, getting more and more nervous, less and less tractable and increasingly inclined to jump at shadows. They could not make clear the nature of their malaise because they did not understand it themselves.
That began to grow clearer as the twilight gathered. Messengers interrupted Soulcatcher’s meditations to inform her that several of the murder had fallen prey to a sudden illness. “Show me.”
She made no effort to disguise herself as she followed her birds to the nearest feathered corpse. She picked it up, rolled it carefully in her gloved hands.
It was obvious what had killed the crow. Not illness but a killer shadow. No cadaver looked like one did after a shadow finished with it. But that could not be. It was still light out. Her tame shadows were all in hiding and there were no rogue shadows around anymore. Nor would wild shadows have wasted themselves on a crow when there was human game in the vicinity. She should have heard Narayan Singh and that wretched niece of hers screaming long before any crow.… There had been no sound from the bird whatsoever. Nor had there been from any of a half dozen others the murder knew to be gone. The survivors had plenty to say. Including stating plainly that they were not about to stray away from her protection.
“How can I fight this if I don’t know what it is? If you won’t find out for me?”
The crows would not be bullied or cajoled. They were geniuses for birds. Which meant they were just bright enough to have noticed that every one of the dead had been completely alone when evil had befallen them.
Soulcatcher cursed them, then calmed herself and convinced the most valiant birds that they had to, therefore, do their scouting in threes and fours until darkness closed in completely. At that point she would have bats and owls and her own shadows available to take over.
Darkness came. As the Deceivers correctly observe, the darkness always comes.
With nightfall came a silent but horribly vicious warfare with Soulcatcher poised at the eye of the storm.
Initially she had to hold on desperately against unknown assailants until her own shadows could bring in enough swift reinforcements. Then, spending shadows profligately, she took the offensive. And when dawn came, and she was almost without supernatural allies because of the cost of the struggle, she gave way to exhaustion, having gained a knowledge of a portion of the truth.
They were back. The Black Company were, with new formations, new allies, new sorceries, and still without a dram of mercy in their hearts. These were not the Company she had known in younger years but they were the spiritual children of the cold killers of the olden days. No matter what you tried, it seemed, you could kill only men. The ideal lived on.
Ha! An end to the boredom of empire stood at hand.
Bravado and pretense did not lessen the inexplicable fear. They had fled onto the plain. And now they were back. That had to mean much more. She needed to interrogate shadows who had existed on the glittering stone during those silent years. When there was time. Before she did anything else she had to do what she always did so well: survive.
She was out here hundreds of miles from any support. She was besieged by things that would not yield to her will or sorcery and which she could detect, it seemed, only through her own shadows or when one of them attacked her directly. They were as fierce as shadows but strange. They were more otherworldly than her spirit slaves and seemed possessed of a higher order of intelligence.
Each one she extinguished personally infected her with both a vast sorrow and with the certainty that she was battling only the most feeble of their kind. Always there was a powerful presentiment of demons or demigods to come.
What she could not comprehend was why all this frightened her so. There was nothing here more deadly or threatening or bizarre than a thousand perils she had faced before. Nothing here matched the sheer dark menace of the Dominator in his time.
There were infrequent moments when she still longed for those dark and ancient times. The Dominator had taken her and all her sisters, had made one of them his wife and another his lover.…
He had been a strong, hard, cruel man, the Dominator. His empire had been one of cruelty and steel. And Soulcatcher had revelled in its pomp and dark glory. And would never forgive her rival, her last surviving sister, for having brought all that to an end. Blame the death of the Dominator on the White Rose if you wanted. Soulcatcher knew the truth. The Dominator never would have gone down if his whining virgin of a wife had not helped his destruction along.
And who had fought and conspired so hard after their resurrection to keep the Dominator in the ground? His loving wife, that was who!
She would be back. She would be out there somewhere, wherever the Black Company had been hiding. She was not here yet but she would be soon. Having been buried alive again would be no impediment to the inevitable, that grim moment when they would settle their differences face-to-face.
Soulcatcher could will herself blind in some quarters, despite centuries of cynical experience. She would not see that fortune could be just as erratic and insane as she was.
Soulcatcher’s powers of recuperation were tremendous. After a few hours of rest she rose and started walking northward, her stride long and confident. Tonight she would gather an army of her own shadows around her. Never again would she be as threatened as she had been the night before.
So she told herself.
By late
afternoon her confidence was as high as ever it had been and fragments of her mind were already peeping past today’s crisis to scout out what might be done to sculpt the future.
Soulcatcher had long been intimate with the knowledge that horrible things could and did happen to her but always she had enjoyed the certainty that she would come through everything alive.
33
Khatovar: Leave-taking
“Looks clean,” Swan said. Murgen and Thai Dei grunted agreement. I nodded to the Nyueng Bao. What he had to say meant something here. His eyes were still as sharp as those of a lad of fifteen. I was damned near blind in one and could not see out the other.
“Doj? What do you think? Did they run away? Or did they sneak back just in case we sneaked back?” Element of surprise no longer my ally, I did not want to run into the Voroshk again. Especially not those old men. They would be bitter and in a mood to drag me down to hell with them.
“They went away. They went back to prepare for the onslaught. They know horror and despair are headed their way but they also know they’re strong enough to weather it if they remain calm and work hard.”
I suspect I gaped. “How do you figure all that?”
“It’s just a matter of mental exercise. Take what we know about them, about sorcerers as a whole, and about human beings in general, and the rest follows. They’ve been through this before, in a smaller way. They’ll have worked out what to do if it happened again. All this empty country, from here to the other side of their Dandha Presh, will serve the same function as the cleared ground surrounding a fortress expecting to be besieged.”
“You’ve convinced me. Let’s just hope they’re not so ready that they figure out how to come looking for us after they wrap up their pest problem.” As badly as the Shadowgate and nearby barrier had been damaged I doubted the Voroshk would have much energy to spare for generations.
Swan said, “He had me for a minute, too, but here comes the argument that proves what I always knew: Uncle Doj is full of shit.”
A half dozen billowing black forms had emerged from the vegetation down the slope. They were walking very slowly, two by two, hands extended away from their sides, their flying posts tagging along behind at waist height.
I said, “I don’t know what the fuck is going on but I want Goblin and Doj ready for anything. Murgen, you and Thai Dei spread out so we can hit them from in front and both sides with fireballs.” Me and my pals had three live poles, literally all our band had left. Lady said there were just six usable fireballs between the three. She hoped.
One for each of the Voroshk.
Swan said, “You sure we really need to round up those spooks? Life would be a lot easier.…”
“Right here. Right now. But what happens back home when we’ve got Soulcatcher coming at us and we yell for Tobo to let loose the Black Hounds and there ain’t no Black Hounds? And the rest of the Unknown Shadows say, ‘Fuck that shit! I ain’t getting skragged for these guys who wouldn’t even try to bring the Hounds out of Khatovar.’”
Swan growled. Goblin sneered, “A little passion, Captain? I thought you’d lost it all.”
“When I want shit out of you, runt, I’ll kick it out. What did he just say?” The Voroshk had stopped coming toward us. One had spoken. And, O wonder, his words sounded like something I ought to understand. “Say that again, buddy.”
The sorcerer got the idea. He repeated himself, loudly and slowly, the way you do with the hard of hearing, the dim of wit and foreigners.
“What is that noise?” I asked. “I know there were words in there that I should recognize.”
“Remember Juniper?” Goblin said. “It sounds like he’s trying to speak what they spoke there.”
“Makes sense. Bowalk came from Juniper. So listen close.” Goblin had served in Juniper, too. A long time ago. I have a knack for languages. Could I get enough of this one back fast enough to do us any good? We did not have many hours of daylight left.
Something began to get past the fact that the Voroshk had a horrible accent and his grammer was atrocious. He butchered tenses and inverted his verbs and subjects.
Goblin and I compared notes as we proceeded. The little wizard had never spoken the language well but he had had no trouble understanding it.
“What’s going on?” Swan demanded. He was holding one of the bamboo poles. It was getting heavy.
“Sounds like they want us to take them with us. That they think the end of the world is coming and they don’t want to participate.”
Goblin nodded, agreeing. He added a caveat, “But I wouldn’t trust them for a second. I’d always assume they were sent to spy on us.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’d do that with just about anybody.”
Goblin ignored the jibe. “Make them strip. Bone naked. Doj and I can go over their clothes like we’re looking for nits.”
“All right. Only I’m taking Doj with me to help collect my snail shells.” I began telling the Voroshk what they had to do if they really wanted to go with us. They were not pleased. They wanted to argue. I did not argue even though I hoped to get my hands on a flying post or two so Lady and Tobo could study them. Damn, having a few of those sure would be handy.
I told the Voroshk, “If I don’t see naked bodies I’d better see the backs of people getting away. Anybody who isn’t doing one or the other by a count of fifty will die where he’s standing on his dignity.” The language came back to me quite well, though I did not really make my statement that clearly. The two Voroshk who were probably the brightest began disrobing almost immediately. They proved to be as pale and blond as the girls we had seen already, though red with embarrassment and shaking with fury. I watched carefully, not with much interest in their flesh. How much determination they put into something humiliating would give me a hint or two about their sincerity.
It was too much for one young woman. She got just far enough for her true sex to become evident before she found that she could not finish.
“Better run, girl,” I said. And she did. She hopped aboard her flying log and scooted.
Her desertion had a definite impact on one of the young men. He changed his mind even though he was already naked. I did not hurry him as he dressed.
That left four, three boys and a girl, all in their early to middle-teens.
I waved uphill, confident that by now Lady would be watching and could guess what I needed. She is clever that way. And shortly a couple of guys were headed downhill lugging bundles of odds and ends with which to dress our prisoners.
They did not yet quite understand their new status.
I brought them through the Shadowgate one at a time, watching carefully. I did not expect them to try anything but I am alive at my age because I make a habit of being ready for trouble when it seems most unlikely. I asked, “Anybody got any reason to think whoever goes out the gate is going to get into trouble?” To their further humiliation the Voroshk kids found themselves with their hands bound behind them as soon as they were dressed.
The fellow with the feeble command of Juniper’s lingo protested the indignity. “It’s only temporary,” I assured him. “Just while us few are on the outside.” I shifted to Taglian. “Murgen, Swan, Thai Dei, you keep these guys on a short leash.”
Bamboo poles lashed the air. Despite age and its attendant cynicism, those guys could put on a show of enthusiasm. Mainly faked. Swan promised me, “Anything happens to you, there won’t be anything left of them but grease stains and toenails.”
“You’re a good man, Swan. Doj, you go through first.” The elderly Nyueng Bao drew the sword Ash Wand and stepped through the damaged Shadowgate into Khatovar. He positioned himself. I said, “Your turn, Goblin.” By hand sign I told Murgen not to be shy about flinging a fireball at surprise targets outside.
What followed was anticlimactic. I took a sack around to all the places I remembered seeding earlier and collected snail shells. Those in which something had hidden itself had a distinct feel.
&nbs
p; My ravens returned while I was involved in the harvest. They reported the Voroshk feverishly preparing for nightfall. They believed our defectors were genuine. Terror and panic were spreading across the world as fast as Voroshk messengers could fly.
The birds made the recovery of our shadow companions much easier. They let me know which shells were a waste of time and where to find the ones I had forgotten. We were all back through the Shadowgate an hour before sunset.
Goblin was still examining the clothing removed from the Voroshk kids. The little wizard piped. “This is some truly amazing material, Croaker. I think it might be sensitive to the thoughts of whoever is wearing it.”
“Is it safe?”
“I think it’s completely inert as long as it isn’t in contact with whoever is keyed to wear it.”
“A little something more for Tobo to play with during all the spare time he’s going to have in the middle of a war. Bundle it up. Put it on a mule at the front of the column. We need to get going.” I shifted languages, told the unhappy youngsters, “I’m releasing you now. I’m going to bring you back out here, one at a time, so you can get your posts. You won’t be allowed to ride them. You’ll travel at the rear of our column.” I went on to tell them about the dangers of the plain while they were following instructions. Their fear of the shadows gave me a good chance to retain their attention. I tried to impress them that a screw-up on the plain would kill not just the fuck-up but the whole crew, so they should not expect my people to be gentle if their behavior was unacceptable.
I was the last of the Company to leave Khatovar’s soil. Before I departed I indulged in a little personal ceremony of farewell, or perhaps of exorcism.
The youngster capable of some communication wanted to know, “What is the meaning of what you just did?”
I tried to explain. He did not get it. In time I determined that he had never heard of the Free Companies of Khatovar. That he knew almost nothing of the history of his world before his ancestors had taken power. That, furthermore, he did not care.