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.
“This’s getting out of hand!” Goblin yelled. “If it gets any heavier, we’re up Shit Creek.”
He was right. If this snowfall turned into a blizzard, we were going to have no other worries. If it worsened much, we were going to die out here and make Soulcatcher the happiest girl in the world.
She probably was anyway, now that she had had time to reflect on the fact that there was no one left able to dispute her in any whim she cared to indulge. Water sleeps? So what. Those days were over.
Not while I was still standing, they were not.
Swan joined me for breakfast. “How’s my wife this morning?”
“Frigid.” Darn! Open mouth, insert boot with manure veneer.
Swan grinned. “I’ve known that for years. Isn’t this something? There’s more than an inch already.”
“It’s something, all right. Unfortunately, I don’t encourage myself to use the kind of language needed to describe it. Most of these people have never seen snow. Watch out for somebody to do something stupid. In fact, you might stick close to the Radisha. I don’t want her getting hurt because somebody doesn’t use his head.”
“All right. Did you dream last night?”
“Of course I did. I got to meet Kina right up close, too.”
“I saw lights on the road to the east of us.”
That got my attention. “Really?”
“In my dream. They were just witchlights. Maybe the plain’s own memories, or something. There wasn’t anything there when I went to look.”
“Getting bold in your old age, are you?”
“It just sort of happened. I wouldn’t have done it if I’d thought about it.”
“Did I snore again last night?”
“You solidified your grasp on the all-time women’s championship. You’re ready to compete at the next level.”
“Must have something to do with the dreaming.”
Sahra drifted up. She looked grim. She did not like what was happening even a little, the snow or the way we had to cope with it. But she bit her tongue. She understood that it was now too late to be a fussy mom. Like it or not, her boy was carrying us all right now.
One-Eye limped along using a staff somebody had made for him from one of the smaller bamboo weapons. I did not know if it was still armed. Very likely so, he being One-Eye. He told me, “I’m not going to last at this, Little Girl. But I’ll go as long as I can.”
“Show Tobo what to do and let him take over as soon as he’s got it. Let Gota carry the pickax and you get up on the horse. Advise from there.”
The old man just nodded instead of finding some reason to argue, betraying his true weakness. Goblin scowled at me, though, assuming he was going to get a large ration of unsolicited counsel. But he shrugged off the temptation to debate.
“Tobo. Hold up. You really understand what we have to do today?”
’ “I’ve got it, Sleepy.”
“Then give your grandmother the Key. Where is that horse buddy of mine? Get up here, you. Carry One-Eye.” I noted that the white crow had left the beast’s back. In fact, the bird was nowhere to be seen. “Up you go, old man.”
“Who you calling old, Little Girl?” One-Eye drew himself up as tall as he got.
“You, so old you’ve gotten shorter than me. Get your tail up there. I really want to get there today.” I offered Goblin a hard look, just in case he got a notion to try poking sticks in the spokes. He just looked back blankly. Or maybe blandly.
Spoiled brat, me. I got my way. The ruined fortress loomed out of weakly falling snow around what felt like noon. Once Tobo got the hang of discovering the boundaries well enough to keep up with Goblin, the band began moving at a pace limited only by Mother Gota’s capacities. And she seemed taken by a sudden urge to hasten toward whatever destiny awaited whoever arrived with the Key.
My natural pessimism went almost entirely unrewarded. Had Iqbal’s boys not discovered the wonders of snowballs, I would have had nothing to complain about at all. Even then I would have been entertained had not a few wild volleys of missiles not strayed my way.
We arrived at the chasm Murgen had mentioned, a tear in the face of the plain rent by powers almost unimaginable. The earthquake responsible had been felt as far away as Taglios. It had flattened whole cities this side of the Dandha Presh. I wondered if it had wrought as much destruction in the other worlds connected to the plain.
I also wondered if the quake had been natural in origin. Had it been caused by some premature effort of Kina’s to rise and shine?
“Swan! Willow Swan! Get up here.”
Mother Gota had halted at the lip of the chasm simply because there was no way for her to go forward. The rest of the mob crowded up behind the leaders because, naturally, everyone wanted to see. I snapped, “Make a hole, people! Make a hole. Let the man get up here.” I stared at the wrecked fortress. Shattered was too strong a description but its state of disrepair went way beyond neglect, too. I supposed if the original golem garrison were still around, it would be in perfect condition and right now the whole crew would be outside dusting off the snow patches attached to every little roughness of the stone.
Swan grumbled, “You need to make up your mind, darling. You want me to look out for the Radisha or —”
“Never mind. I don’t have time. I’m cold and I’m cranky and I want to change that. Look at this crack. Is this the way it was before? Because even though it’s pretty impressive, it’s nowhere as huge as Murgen made me think it would be. Everybody but Iqbal’s baby can skip across this.”
Swan studied the gap in the plain.
Immediately evident to any eye was the fact that there were no sharp edges. The stone seemed to have softened and oozed like taffy.
“No. It wasn’t like this at all. It looks like it’s been healing, it’s not a quarter as wide as it was. I bet in another generation there won’t even be a scar.”
“So the plain can heal itself. But not so things that were added later.” I indicated the fortress. “Except for the spells protecting the roads.”
“Apparently.”
“Start moving across. Swan, stick with Tobo and Gota. Nobody else has any idea where to go from here. There you are,” I answered an impatient caw! from above. If I kind of squinted and looked sideways, I could make out the white crow perphed on the battlements, looking down.
Still muttering to himself, though somewhat good naturedly, Swan stepped across the crack, slipped, fell, skidded, got up exercising a string of out-of-shape northern expletives. Everyone else laughed.
I summoned Runmust and Riverwalker. “I want you two to figure out how to get the animals and carts across. Draft Suvrin if you want. He claims he’s had some minor experience in practical engineering. And keep reminding everyone that if they remain calm and cooperative, we’ll all get to sleep in a warm, dry place tonight.” Well, maybe dry. Warm was probably too much to expect.
Uncle Doj and Tobo helped Mother Gota across. Sahra followed. Several other Nyueng Bao followed her. That made an awful lot of Nyueng Bao concentrated in one place suddenly. My paranoia began to quiver and narrow its eyes suspiciously.
I said, “Goblin. One-Eye. Come along. Slink? Where are you? Come with us.” Slink I could count on to be quick and deadly and as morally reluctant as a spear when I pointed and said, “Kill!”
Uncle Doj did not fail to note the fact that even now I trusted him only incompletely. He seemed both irked and amused. He told me, “There isn’t anything for our people here, Annalist. This is all for Tobo’s benefit.”
“That’s good. That’s good. I wouldn’t want the future of the Company to be placed in the slightest risk.”
Doj frowned, disappointed by my sarcasm. “I have not won your heart yet, Stone Soldier?”
“How could you? You keep calling me na
mes and won’t even explain.”
“All will become clear. I fear.”
“Of course. Once we reach the Land of Unknown Shadows. Right? You’d better hope there aren’t any half-truths or outright cover-ups in your doctrine. ‘All Evil Dies There an Endless Death.’ It could still be true.”
Doj responded with a baleful look but it seemed neither angry nor calculating.
I said, “Swan. Show us the way.”
81
I think this’s as far as I can take you,” Swan told me. He spoke slowly, as though having trouble sorting out his thoughts. “I don’t get it. Stuff keeps going away. I know I was farther inside than this. I know all the things we did. But when I try to remember anything specific, I lose everything between the time I got to this point until sometime during the gallop back. Stuff comes to me all the time when I’m not trying. I do remember that. Maybe Catcher messed up my brain somehow.”
“There’s an all-time understatement,” Goblin muttered.
Swan ignored Goblin. He complained, “We were actually off the plain before I realized that we were the only ones who would be coming out.”
I was not sure I believed that but it did not matter now. I grunted, suggested, “How about you make a guess? Maybe your soul will remember what your brain can’t.”
“First you need to get some light in here.”
“What do I have wizards for?” I asked the gloom. “Certainly not anything useful or practical like providing a light. They wouldn’t need one. They can see in the dark.”
Goblin muttered something unflattering about the sort of woman who indulges in sarcasm. He told Swan, “Sit down and let me look at your head.”
“Let me!” Tobo enthused at the same time. “Let me try to make a light. I can do this one.” He did not wait for permission. Filaments of lemon and silver light crawled over his upraised hands, swift and eager. The darkness surrounding us retreated, I thought reluctantly.