The Protector belched again. The growing heartburn seared her insides.
She jumped on the larger carpet. It creaked under her weight. She ordered it to head downriver. Fast.
A few miles out, four hundred feet above the rooftops, streaking faster than a racing pigeon, sabotaged frame members under the carpet began to snap. Once the first went, the stress became too much for the others. The carpet disintegrated in seconds.
A burst of light flared, bright enough to be seen by half the city. The last thing Soulcatcher saw, as she arced toward the surface of the river, was a huge circle of characters declaring “Water Sleeps.”
Just before the flash leaped through his window, a bemused Mogaba discovered a folded, sealed letter on his spartan cot. Belching, glad he had eaten no more of that spicy food, he broke the wax and read “My brother unforgiven.” Then the unexpected lightning grabbed his attention. He read the slogan in the sky, too. All the labor he had invested in learning to read over the past few years was to be rewarded thus?
What now? If the Protector was gone? Pretend she was in hiding, too, and make the deceit a double veil?
He belched again, settled down on his cot. He did not feel well at all. That was a baffling new feeling for him. He never got sick.
58
A chatty youngster of native stock and a more than customarily ambitious disposition interviewed us at the military control point we encountered at the southern end of the pass. He was not yet old enough to be pompously officious but he would get there. Personally, he seemed more interested in foreign news than in contraband or wanted men. “What’s going on up north?” he wanted to know. “We’ve seen a lot of refugees lately.” He examined our meager possessions without ever looking inside anything.
Gota and Doj rattled at one another in Nyueng Bao and pretended not to understand the young man’s accented Taglian. I shrugged and responded in Jaicuri at first, which is close enough to Taglian for the two peoples to understand one another most of the time, but here it only frustrated the young official. I had no desire to stand around gossiping with a functionary. “I do not know about others. We have had nothing but decades of misfortune and suffering. We heard there were opportunities down here so we abandoned the Land of Our Sorrows and came.”
The official assumed I meant a particular country, as I had hoped, rather than recognizing that the Land of Our Sorrows was the Vehdna way of describing where a convert lived before he became acquainted with God.
“You say there are many others doing the same as us?” I tried to sound troubled.
“Recently, yes. Which is why I feared something might be afoot.”
He feared for the stability of the empire to which he had attached himself. I could not resist a prank. “There were rumors that the Black Company had surfaced in Taglios and was warring with the Protector. But there are always crazy stories about the Black Company. They never mean anything. And they had nothing to do with our decision.”
The young man became more unhappy. He passed us through without further interest. I did not bother commending him but he was the only official we had encountered since leaving Taglios who was making a serious effort to perform his duties. And he was doing it only in hopes of getting ahead.
I never had to bring out the richly complex legend I have invented for our foursome, in which Swan was my second husband, Gota the mother of my deceased first spouse and Doj her cousin, all of us survivors of the wars. The story would have played in any region where there had been any extended fighting. Splatchcobbled family survival teams were not at all uncommon.
I complained, “I worked on weaving us a history all the way down here and I never got to use it. Not once. Nobody’s doing their job.”
Doj smiled and winked and vanished into the broken ground beside the road, off to reclaim the weapons we had hidden before approaching the checkpoint.
“Somebody should do something about that,” Swan declared. “Next vice-regal subofficer I see, I’ll march right up and give him a piece of my mind. We all pay taxes. We have a right to expect more effort from our officials.”
Gota woke up long enough to call Swan an idiot in Taglian and Nyueng Bao. She told him he ought to shut up before even the God of Fools renounced him. Then she closed her eyes and resumed snoring. Gota had begun to concern me. She had shown less life every day for the past few months. Doj seemed to think she believed she no longer had anything to live for.
Maybe Sahra could get her going again. We should be joining up with the others before long. Maybe Sahra could get her excited about rescuing Thai Dei and the Captured.
I was troubled about consequences. All these years I had striven toward the undertaking we would launch before long, and now, for the first time, I had begun to wonder what success might really mean. Those people buried out there never were paragons of sanity and righteousness. They had had almost two decades to ferment in their own juices. They were unlikely to entertain much brotherly love toward the rest of the world.
And then there was the guardian demon Shivetya and, somewhere, the enchanted and enchained thing worshipped by Narayan Singh and the Daughter of Night. Not to mention the mysteries and dangers of the plain itself. And all the perils we did not yet know.
Only Swan had any experience of that. He had nothing positive to report. Nor had Murgen at any time over the years, though his experiences had been dramatically different from Swan’s. Murgen had experienced the glittering plain in two worlds at once. Swan seemed to have experienced the version in our world in sharper focus. Even after so many years he could describe particular landmarks in exquisite detail.
“How come you never talked about this before?”
“I never hid it, Sleepy. But there just don’t seem to be much percentage in volunteering anything in this world. If I admit anything I know about that place, next thing I’ll know is, good old Willow Swan is elected to go back up there as the guide for a gang of invaders guaranteed to irritate the shit out of whatever spirits haunt the place. Am I right? Or am I right?”
“You aren’t as stupid as you let on. I thought you didn’t see any spirits.”
“Not the way Murgen claimed he saw them but that don’t mean I didn’t feel them creeping around. You’ll find out. You try to sleep at night when you feel hungry shadows calling you from a few feet away. It’s like being inside a zoo with all the predators in the world slavering just the other side of the bars. Bars that you can’t see and can’t even feel and so have no way of knowing if they’re trustworthy. And all this jabber ain’t doing my nerves any good at all, neither, Sleepy.”
“We may never have to go up there, Swan — if the Key we’ve got is a fake or isn’t any good anymore. Then there won’t be anything we can do but maybe set up your brewery and pretend we never heard of the Protector or the Radisha or the Black Company.”
“Be still, my heart. You know goddamn well that thing’s going to be the true Key. Your god, my gods, somebody’s gods have got a boner for Willow Swan and they’re gonna keep making sure that whatever happens, it’s gonna be the worst possible thing and it’s gonna happen to me. I oughta run out on you now. I oughta turn you in to the nearest royal official. Only that would let Soulcatcher know that I’m still alive. Then she’d get real nasty, asking me why I didn’t turn you in three, four months ago.”
“Not to mention you’d probably get yourself dead long before you could unearth an official who cared enough to listen to you.”
“There’s that, too.”
Doj came back with the weapons. We passed them around, resumed traveling. Swan continued eloquently describing himself as the firstborn son of Misfortune.
He went through these spells of high drama.
A half mile down the road we encountered a small peasants’ market. A few old folks and youngsters who could not contribute much on the farm waited to take advantage of travelers still shaking from the miseries of the mountains. Fresh foods in season were their hot sellers but they retailed
gossip at no charge as long as you contributed a few snippets of your own. They found doings beyond the Dandha Presh particularly intriguing.
I asked a young girl, who looked like she could be the little sister of the customs official back up the road, “Do you remember many of the people who came through here? My father was supposed to have come down ahead of us, to find us a place to settle.” I proceeded to describe Narayan Singh in detail.
The child was a lighthearted thing, without a care or concern. Chances were she did not recall what she had eaten for breakfast. She did not remember Narayan but went off to find someone who might.
“Where was she when I was young enough to get married?” Swan grumbled. “She’ll be pretty when she’s older and she doesn’t have a brain in her head to complicate things.”
“Buy her. Bring her along. Raise her up right.”
“I’m not as pretty as I used to be.”
I tried to think of someone who was. Not even Sahra qualified.
I waited. Swan muttered. Doj and Gota wandered around, Uncle swapping tales and Mother examining the wares for sale. Except for the produce, those were feeble. She did acquire a scrawny chicken. The one positive of our travel team was that there were no Gunni or Shadar to complicate mealtime. Only Gota, who kept trying to do the cooking. Maybe I could murder the chicken in her sleep and get it roasted before she woke up.
The girl brought a very old man. He was no help, either. He seemed interested only in telling me what he thought I wanted to hear. But it did seem possible that Narayan had come through the pass some time before we had.
I hoped Murgen was on the job and had alerted the others to the possibilities.
Doj and Gota headed on down the road before I finished with the locals, surprised that my command of the language was adequate to the task. Evidently Gota was tired of riding. The donkey certainly could use the break.
“Is that a pet?” the small girl asked.
“It’s a donkey,” I said, really astonished that I had been having so little trouble communicating. They had donkeys down here, did they not?
“I know that. I meant the bird.”
“Huh! Well.” The white crow was perched on the donkey’s pack. It winked. It laughed. It said, “Sister, sister,” and flapped into the air, then glided on down the mountain.
Swan said, “I was just thinking I found an up side to this trip. It’s not raining down here.”
“Maybe I’ll see if they’ll let me have the child. In exchange for your strong back.”
“We’re getting a little too domestic here, Goodwife... Sleepy? Didn’t you ever have a real name?”
“Anyanyadir, the Lost Princess of Jaicur. But even now my wicked stepmother has discovered that I still live and has summoned the princes of the rakshasas to bargain with them for my murder. Hey! I’m kidding. I’m Sleepy. And you’ve known me practically since I started being Sleepy, off and on. So just let it be.”
59
Once we cleared the mountains, it was no long journey to the site of Kiaulune. Incredible destruction had been wrought there during the Shadowmaster wars, then during the Kiaulune wars between the Radisha and those who chose to keep faith with the Black Company. A pity most of the wreckage had been cleared away even before Soulcatcher decided she could declare victory and go north to claim her new place as Protector of All the Taglias. The Radisha should have seen it at its worst, to understand what she had wrought by betraying her contract with the Company. But the worst now existed only in the memories of survivors. The once-clamorous valley now boasted a sizable town and a checkerboard of new farms peopled by a mixture of natives, former prisoners of war and deserters from every conceivable faction. Peace had broken out and was being enthusiastically exploited on the presumption that it could not possibly last.
The transition from the old Kiaulune, once called Shadowcatch, and the new, simply called the New Town, saw one thing remain unchanged. Over there on the far slope of the valley, miles and miles away, beyond the crumbled, brush-strewn ruins of once-mighty Overlook, where the land quickly changed from rich green to almost barren brown, was the dreaded thing called the Shadowgate. It did not stand out but I felt its call. I told my companions, “We have to be careful not to get in a hurry now. Haste could be deadly.”
The Shadowgate was not just the only way we could get up onto the plain to go free the Captured, it was also the only portal through which the shadows imprisoned up there could escape and begin treating the whole world the way their cousins had the destitute of Taglios. And that gate was in tender shape. The Shadowmasters had injured and weakened it badly when gaining access to the shadows they enslaved.
“We’re in complete agreement on that,” Uncle Doj replied. “All the lore emphasizes the need for caution.”
There had been some disagreement between us lately. He had resumed his romance with the idea of the Company Annalist becoming his understudy in the peculiar role he played among the Nyueng Bao. The Company Annalist who had no great interest in the job but Doj was one of those people who just have grave difficulties getting their minds around the concept “No!”
“That’s new,” I said, indicating a small structure a quarter mile below the Shadowgate, beside the road. “And I don’t like its looks.” It was hard to tell from so far but the structure looked like a small fortification built of stone salvaged from the rubble of Overlook.
Doj grunted. “A potential complication.”
Swan observed, “We keep standing around looking like spies, somebody’s going to get unpleasant with us.”
A point not without substance, although those in charge seemed awfully lax. It was obvious that trouble had not visited in a while. Quite probably not since the Black Company left. “Somebody — probably named me, because I’m the only one here who looks like what she says she is — will have to go scout around.” The original plan had been for everybody to camp in the barrens not far downhill from where that new structure now stood.
I was troubled. Someone should have been watching for us to come out of the mountains. I hoped that was just Sahra’s oversight. She had been married to the Company for an age but never did learn to think like a soldier. If nobody offered good advice, or she chose to ignore the advice she was given because, like many civilians, she could not grasp why all the little horsepuckey things have to be done, she might not have thought it important to watch for us.
I prayed it was as simple as that.
Nobody demanded that I give them the role of scout. Poor me. More sore feet while the rest of them loafed around in the shade of young pines.
The white crow materialized minutes after I turned the knee of a hill and the others were out of sight. It swooped at me and squawked. It swooped at me again. I tried to swat it like it was some huge, really annoying bug. It laughed and came back, now squawking what sounded like words.
I got it. Finally. The bird wanted me to follow it. “Lead on, fell harbinger, never forgetting that I’m not Gunni and therefore hobbled by no holy ban against eating meat.” I had enjoyed, if that is the proper word, crow stew several times during the lowest lows of my military career.
The crow had only my interests at heart. It led me straight to a large tent village on a hillside overlooking the near outskirts of the New Town. Our people had to be only some of the refugees housed there but Sahra’s hand was obvious everywhere. The layout was neat and orderly and clean. Exactly as the Captain’s rules insisted, though those are honored mainly in the breech when he is not around.
I suffered an immediate conflict. Charge ahead to see everyone I had missed for months? Or run back and collect my traveling companions? Once I started gabbing, it might be hours before —
My choice got made for me. Tobo spotted me.
My first warning was a shout. “Sleepy!” A mass of churning arms and legs charged in from the left and collected me in a totally unexpected hug.
I wriggled loose. “You’ve grown.” A lot. He was taller than me now. And hi
s voice had deepened. “You won’t be able to be Shiki anymore. The great men of Taglios will be brokenhearted.”
“Goblin says it’s time I start breaking the girls’ hearts, anyway.” There was not much doubt that he would have the power to do that. He was going to be a handsome man who had no lack of confidence.
Uncharacteristically, I slipped an arm around his waist and walked down toward where other familiar faces had begun to appear. “How was your journey?”
“Mostly kind of fun, except when they made me study, which was about all the time. Sri Surendranath is worse than Goblin but he says I could be a scholar. So Mother always backs them up whenever anybody wants to make me study. But we got to see a lot of neat things. There was this temple in Praiphurbed that was completely covered with carvings of people doing it all different ways — oh, I’m sorry.” He reddened.
Tobo had a mental image of me as a sort of chaste nun. And most of my adult life would not contradict that view. But I am not against interpersonal adventures, I am just not interested myself. Probably because, Swan insists, I have not yet run into the man whose animal presence completely overwhelms my intellectual reluctance. Swan being a leading authority in his own mind.
He keeps volunteering. Who knows? Maybe someday I will become curious enough to experiment, just to find out if I can be touched without running away to my place to hide.
Now the others were wishing me welcome with a sincerity that set another place inside me, a small, warm place, all aglow. My comrades. My brothers. All kinds of rattle and chatter inundated me. Now we were going to do something. Now we were going to get somewhere. Now we were going to kick some ass if we had to. Sleepy was here to figure it all out and tell everybody where and when to stick the knife.
“God knows all the secrets and all the jokes,” I said, “and I wish He’d share the secret of the joke that explains why He created such a scruffy bunch of hired killers.” I used a little finger to get rid of a tear before anybody realized that it was not raining. “You guys look pretty fat for having been on the road so long.”