The Many Deaths of the Black Company

  It was half an hour before I could look for details without having my eyeballs hurt. Just as well. It took that long for my protective outfit to heal and relax sufficiently to allow me off the wall.

  Those outfits are made smart. They take just long enough recovering to keep you from doing something stupid.

  I mounted my post and moved forward, knowing, as I went, that my protection would not survive another blast soon.

  At first I could find nothing. Later, after the light faded some more, I began to discover bits of what might once have been tooth or bone embedded in various surfaces. Of flesh, be it Goblin’s or the Goddess’s, there was no sign.

  In fact, I doubted that any of the tooth and bone fragments could have belonged to any mere mortal. The explosion had been that violent. More violent, even, than those that had destroyed the Voroshk Shadowgate, that had initiated the collapse of the Palace.

  Kina’s destruction had somehow added vast energy to the explosion.

  My post was not behaving quite right. It stuttered and was slow to respond. It must have gotten rattled around some even though I had done my best to protect it.

  Once the light faded round where the Goddess had lain I saw what looked like a long black snake lying in the rubble of Kina’s rock bed. It was the only nonwhite thing in the place, other than me.

  I approached carefully. For all I knew that was the bone of darkness that had snuggled next to Kina’s heart. And I was prepared to believe that anything I saw or experienced in this place would be illusion.

  Kina was the Mother of Deceit.

  One of the great powers of the Deceivers was their ability to leave you doubting everything and trusting no one.

  The black thing was no snake. It was the deformed remains of One-Eye’s spear. It had come through the violence with surprisingly little damage. It was just twisted and bent a little, and lightly charred on its surface. The metal inlays had been only slightly distorted by intense heat.

  Man, he must have put some artful protective spells onto that thing.

  I gathered the spear, went and made sure that I was securely attached to my post, then gave it the command to take me back to base point.

  137

  Taglios: The Melancholy Wife

  We wobbled down out of the sky like a family of mangy buzzards. My Voroshk clothing still had not healed completely. The girls were more tattered than I. The blast had caught them climbing the stairwell. They had bruises over most of their bodies.

  The real miracle was how well all the posts had come through, though none remained unscathed.

  The Grove of Doom rose to meet us, welcoming us like a mother greeting lost children.

  Bizarre thoughts and images kept worming into my mind now. They worried me. They made me doubt that Kina was actually gone, not just in hiding.

  Jokingly, Shukrat told me what I ought to be worried about was Kina’s father and husband wanting to get even. I did not laugh. To me it seemed like a worthy concern.

  The Grove of Doom was empty. Of humanity. But some birds had moved in already and there were a few small animals in the underbrush now.

  There was no sense of grim foreboding about the place anymore.

  “We did it,” I sighed. “Finally. For real. No more Kina to torment the worlds.”

  Not having spent their lives under the threat of the Year of the Skulls, the girls were less excited.

  The white crow settled on a nearby branch, divested itself of a dirty feather. “Are you sure?” The beast was having lots of fun tickling my fears. She and I seemed to be headed for a long and unpleasant relationship—unless I kept my promise to Shivetya.

  I said, “If there was any place in this world where Kina’s survival would manifest itself, that would be here. This place has been almost a part of her since her cult began. And that might have been here. I don’t think she could disengage herself from the Grove even if she wanted to.”

  “Then let’s get going,” Shukrat said.

  Arkana sneered, “She can’t wait to get her hands on Tobo again.” She was not being mean-spirited. And Shukrat’s counterfire included a mention of Aridatha Singh and Arkana’s terminal timidity. Which did turn Arkana serious.

  “Hey, Pop. What do you think Kina being gone will mean to the Daughter of Night?” Walking on eggshells. But worried by the glances she had seen Singh lay upon the girl, not entirely believing that every man reacted like that. “Is she going to turn normal?”

  Shukrat showed a sudden interest, too.

  “I don’t know, baby doll. I worry, though. She’s been connected to Kina from the second she was conceived. Seems like to her it would be about like you or me having our liver ripped out.”

  I was more worried about my wife. Her losing her connection to Kina would devastate her. Everything she was, in her own heart, was tied up in her being the terrible sorceress. Without Kina to leech from she would be just another middle-aged woman gone dumpy and grey.

  * * *

  The weather had been problematic all the way up from the Shadowgate. We had had to skirt rain storms and thunderheads again and again. That had cost us more than a day.

  Now, only twenty miles out, there was no evading the weather. Except by going up way high, where it was icy cold and almost impossible to breathe, then zigging back and forth between seething mountains of cloud while being tossed and taunted by turbulence. Shukrat and Arkana were dead set against getting caught aloft in a thunderstorm. Arkana told me, “Think what might happen if you got hit by lightning.”

  I did not think long. There was no one I wanted to see badly enough to have my post blow up between my legs. I headed for the ground. We holed up in a Gunni farming village where the locals treated us with the same cautious respect they would have shown a trio of nagas, the evil serpent people Gunni myth has living deep underground but surfacing to plague humanity on numerous occasions, always a couple, three villages away.

  We did not steal any of their babies or maidens, nor their sacred cattle, nor even their sheep. I found it interesting that they were sufficiently flexible religiously to raise sheep for sale to folks like the Vehdna, who were going to gobble them right down.

  The lightning quit stomping around soon after midnight. We left our hosts with coin enough to have them blessing our names. Which we never mentioned.

  * * *

  There was no lightning now but there was a steady, light rain. The Voroshk apparel helped, but only some. I was cold and miserable and my pet crow, now riding right in front of me in order to get under a fold of my cloak, was so far gone in the miseries that it no longer bothered to complain.

  The Company barracks seemed both unnaturally quiet and abnormally alert. Armed sentries appeared everywhere. “Looks like Suvrin’s worried about an attack.”

  “Something must have happened.”

  I hovered. “You girls sense anything?”

  “Something definitely isn’t right,” Arkana said. “I don’t know what.”

  “We’d better find out.” Gone less than two weeks and everything had gone to hell?

  * * *

  Survin explained. I controlled myself and did not run off to see Lady before I got the whole story. Suvrin told me, “General Singh has Tobo in a cell that’s isolated so the Unknown Shadows can’t reach him for instructions. Singh won’t let anyone visit Tobo. We do know the kid is hurt, though.”

  “Obviously. Or he wouldn’t put up with this. He tried something stupid?”

  “Oh, yes. And I don’t have the horses to get him out of it.”

  “Now you do. If you want to bother. What about Lady?”

  “We don’t know what happened. Nobody was there. And I’ve had no reports recently. Last I heard, she was conscious but sullen and unresponsive. And the girl is worse. Your effort was successful?”

  “Pretty much. Which probably explains Lady and Booboo.” I did not expand. “It feels creepy around here.”

  “Gets more that way every night. Tobo’s friends
aren’t happy. And they get unhappier by the hour. But Aridatha isn’t intimidated.”

  “We’ll see if we can’t change that. After I see my wife.” Or the person who used to be my wife.

  I took Arkana with me. Just in case. “Don’t say anything. Just stay in the background and cover me,” I told her.

  There was a guard outside my quarters but he was not there to keep anyone in. Probably not to keep anyone out, either. He was an early-warning marker for Suvrin. He and I exchanged nods. He broke Arkana’s heart by failing to notice that she was an attractive young woman. I guess that was supposed to be obvious despite the Voroshk outfit.

  * * *

  Lady sat at a small table. She stared into nothingness. At some time she had been playing a solitaire-type card game but had lost interest long ago. The lamp beside her was almost drained of oil. Black smoke boiled off it because its wick needed trimming.

  Wherever she was looking, it was plain she saw nothing but despair.

  She had lost all interest in maintaining her appearance.

  I laid my good hand on her right shoulder. “Darling. I’m back.”

  She did not respond right away. Once she did recognize my voice she pulled away. “You did it,” she said, more thinking out loud than actually speaking to me. “You did something to Kina.” Only in the “you” was there any human emotion.

  I glanced back at Arkana, to see if she was paying attention. This would be a critical moment. “I killed her. Just the way we contracted to do.” If there was any fragment of the Goddess in her now, that ought to provoke a reaction.

  It did but not the physical attempt at revenge I would have preferred. Almost.

  She just started crying.

  I did not remind her that she had known this day was coming. Instead, I asked, “How is Booboo? How is she taking it?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her.”

  “What? Before I left we couldn’t get you away from her long enough to eat.”

  The dam broke. The tears started. She became a woman I had not seen before, busted open like an overly ripe fruit. “I tried to kill her.”

  “What?” She had spoken very softly.

  “I tried to kill her, Croaker! I tried to murder my own daughter! I tried, with all my will and strength, to put a dagger in her heart! And I would’ve done it if something hadn’t knocked me out.”

  “I know you. So I know there was a reason other than you just thought it might be fun. What was it?”

  She babbled. Years of holding everything together gave way. The floods swept all before them.

  The timing matched my assault on Kina. Lady’s violent reaction to Booboo could have been caused by fear leaking through from the Goddess. Booboo’s own behavior would have been shaped the same way.

  Lady sobbed for a long time. I held her. I feared for her. She had fallen so far. And I had been ballast almost every foot of the way down.

  All my fault? Or just the spark and romance of youth’s summer turning to the bleak seasons of despair of old age?

  Arkana was a good daughter. She stood by patiently throughout the emotional storm. She remained there for me without intruding on my wife’s black hours. After we left I thanked her profoundly.

  “You think she’ll be able to pull herself back together?” Arkana asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know how to make her want to. If she did, I wouldn’t have any worries. She’s got an iron will when she wants to direct it. Right now I’m just going to try to keep on loving her and hoping something happens to sting her with a spark of hope.”

  “I don’t know if I could stand being completely powerless, either. I might kill myself.”

  “Nine hundred ninety-nine people out of a thousand live their whole lives without having a millionth of your power. And they get by.”

  “Only because they’re completely ignorant of what they’re missing. Nobody mourns losing what they never had in the first place.”

  She had me there.

  The full meaning of Lady’s melancholy would be denied me forever because I was never able to experience life as she had at the opposite extreme. Whereas she knew my way of life very well indeed.

  And that might be contributing to her despair as well.

  138

  Taglios: The Lost Child

  Booboo was worse than Lady. She was lost inside herself. She had real guards watching her. They told me she had not done anything but stare into infinity since she recovered consciousness. Not once had they felt any urge to serve her or ravish her.

  One guard was a Shadar who had followed Sleepy since the Kiaulune wars. He told me, “Suruvhija Singh and her children are taking care of her.”

  I felt a slight twinge. Iqbal Singh’s widow. Favored by Sleepy. But I had been unaware that the family had survived the fighting south of Taglios. I had been too centered on my own preoccupations to look after the welfare of Company dependents.

  The Daughter of Night was clean and well-groomed and had been dressed carefully. She sat in a rocking chair, which was an unusual piece of furniture in these parts. She was aware of nothing outside the boundaries of her mind. She drooled on her pretty white sari, which was only a shade paler than her near-albino skin. Someone had placed a rag where it would catch the drool.

  Speaking of albinos. The white crow had managed to arrive before me. But it was being very careful not to piss me off these days.

  It had overheard enough, here and there, to suspect that I might have a great deal of influence on its future.

  Shivetya had given us an unbelievable amount of help in return for our promise to end his stewardship of the glittering plain. I meant to keep that promise. I try to keep all of the Company’s promises. Keeping our promises is what separates us from people like the Radisha, who try to screw us rather than keep their word when that seems inconvenient.

  I circled Booboo twice. She gave no sign she was aware of me. I knelt in front of her. Her eyes were open. Her pupils were tiny. Her eyes did not track when I moved a finger back and forth in front of them.

  I backed off and considered options. Finally, I led Arkana into the hallway, told her what I wanted to try and how she could help.

  We rejoined Booboo and the bird. Neither appeared to have moved a muscle.

  Arkana and I separated, each moving slowly, as though hoping to drift around behind Booboo without being noticed. Once there we just waited. And waited.

  It is hard to be patient when you are Arkana’s age. Eventually she began to fidget. Which caused the occasional faint whisper of motion, after which she would even stop breathing for a while.

  After a time so long even I began to get restless I signalled Arkana forward. Doing her absolute best to remain totally silent she dropped to her knees beside Booboo’s right rocker, out of sight behind the girl’s right ear but with her face so close Booboo might be able to feel the warmth of her presence. I did the same on the left. Neither of us moved till my knees were about to kill me. We tried to avoid breathing on the girl.

  I nodded.

  Arkana whispered, “Sosa, sosa,” so softly that I could not hear her. So softly that even someone who did hear the words whispered directly into her ear would not be able to make them out.

  I have no idea why she chose to say that. I leaned closer so the warmth of my presence would be a hint more obvious. I nodded.

  “Sosa, sosa.” No louder than before.

  The skin on Booboo’s neck twitched.

  I smiled at Arkana, winked.

  Treachery will out.

  “Sosa, sosa.”

  Slowly, the girl began to turn her head toward Arkana, the child within unable to restrain her curiosity.

  It was not that she had been faking. Just that nothing obvious was going to sneak past her palisade of despair.

  I got up and drifted so she would not discover me without making a special effort.

  Arkana gave me a look which asked how I had known that Booboo could be reached. I shr
ugged. Just intuition, I guessed. A conviction that her curiosity could be wakened if it was teased with sufficient subtlety.

  But what now? How to hold her attention forcefully enough to keep her from running away again?

  Soon the girl was seeing and hearing us perfectly well. But still she did not respond. Still she would not answer questions.

  She had no will to live. And I could see why. At no time had there ever been anything in her life but Kina and the struggle to release the Goddess. Never had there been anything but the quest to bring on the Year of the Skulls.

  Suruvhija appeared. I had not known her in the days when she and her husband joined the Company. She might have been a beauty, then, but I doubted it. She was not now. And none of her children made you want to jump in and hug them. But they were good people, if sad.

  “You got her to wake up!” Suruvhija said. “That’s great.”

  “Now we need to keep her that way. Any ideas?”

  “Why?”

  We all turned to the girl.

  I asked, “What?”

  “Why do you trouble me? Release me. I have no reason to live. There is no future. There will be no salvation and no resurrection now. There will be no age of wondrous rebirth.”

  She was wide awake now, but bleak, depressed. I dropped to my knees in front of her, took her hands in an effort to keep her engaged with the world outside her head.

  “What does that mean? What you just said.”

  She seemed puzzled by the question. I spent a few minutes demonstrating my ignorance of her faith. I hoped a chance to explain might animate her.

  I have not yet encountered a true believer who could resist an opportunity to expostulate upon his particular truth. Booboo was no exception, though she was a slow starter.

  I did not interrupt until near the end. Until that point she did not mention anything I had not heard before, somewhere, in some version. “Excuse me,” I said. “I think I missed something. The Year of the Skulls isn’t the end of the world?”