“Yeah. So?”
“Got something for you. Personal.” He opened his courier case. For a moment everyone was alert. You never know. But he brought out an oilskin packet wrapped to protect something against the end of the world. “Rains all the time up there,” he explained. He gave me the packet.
I weighed it. Not that heavy, oilskin aside. “Who’s it from?”
The old man shrugged.
“Where’d you get it?”
“From my cell captain.”
Of course. Darling has built with care, structuring her organization so that it is almost impossible for the Lady to break more than a fraction. The child is a genius.
Elmo accepted the rest, told Otto, “Take him down and find him a bunk. Get some rest, old-timer. The White Rose will question you later.”
An interesting afternoon upcoming, maybe, what with this guy and Corder both to report. I hefted the mystery packet, told Elmo, “I’ll go give this a look.” Who could have sent it? I knew no one outside the Plain. Well … but the Lady would not inject a letter into the underground. Would she?
Twinge of fear. It had been a while, but she had promised to keep in touch.
The talking menhir that had forewarned us about the messenger remained rooted beside the path. As I passed, it said, “There are strangers on the Plain, Croaker.”
I halted. “What? More of them?”
It reverted to character, would say no more.
Never will I comprehend those old stones. Hell, I still don’t understand why they are on our side. They hate all outsiders separately but equally. They and every one of the weird sentiences out here.
I slipped into my quarters, unstrung my bow, left it leaning against the earth wall. I settled at my worktable and opened the packet.
I did not recognize the hand. I found the ending was not signed. I began to read.
Story From Yesteryear
Croaker: The woman was bitching again. Bomanz massaged his temples. The throbbing did not slacken. He covered his eyes. “Saita, sayta, suta,” he murmured, his sibilants angry and ophidian.
He bit his tongue. One did not make a sending upon one’s wife. One endured with humbled dignity the consequences of youthful folly. Ah, but what temptation! What provocation!
Enough, fool! Study the damned chart.
Neither Jasmine nor the headache relented.
“Bloody hell!” He slapped the weights off the corners of the chart, rolled the thin silk around a wisp of glass rod. He slipped the rod inside the shaft of a fake antique spear. That shaft was shiny with handling. “Besand would spot it in a minute,” he grumbled.
He ground his teeth as his ulcer took a bite of gut. The closer the end drew, the greater was the danger. His nerves were shot. He was afraid he might crack at the last barrier, that cowardice would devour him and he would have lived in vain.
Thirty-seven years was a long time to live in the shadow of the headsman’s axe.
“Jasmine,” he muttered. “And call a sow Beauty.” He flung the door-hanging aside, shouted downstairs, “What is it now?”
It was what it always was. Nagging unconnected with the root of her dissatisfaction. An interruption of his studies as a payback for what she fancied was his having misspent their lives.
He could have become a man of consequence in Oar. He could have given her a great house overstuffed with fawning servants. He could have draped her in cloth-of-go Id. He could have fed her tumble-down fat with meat at every meal. Instead, he had chosen a scholar’s life, disguising his name and profession, dragging her to this bleak, haunted break in the Old Forest. He had given her nothing but squalor, icy winters, and indignities perpetrated by the Eternal Guard.
Bomanz stamped down the narrow, squeaky, treacherous stairway. He cursed the woman, spat on the floor, thrust silver into her desiccated paw, drove her away with a plea that supper, for once, be a decent meal. Indignity? he thought. I’ll tell you about indignity, you old crow. I’ll tell you what it’s like to live with a perpetual whiner, a hideous old bag of vapid, juvenile dreams. …
“Stop it, Bomanz,” he muttered. “She’s the mother of your son. Give her her due. She hasn’t betrayed you.” If nothing else, they still shared the hope represented by the map on silk. It was hard for her, waiting, unaware of his progress, knowing only that nearly four decades had yielded no tangible result.
The bell on the shop door tinkled. Bomanz clutched at his shopkeeper persona. He scuttled forward, a fat, bald little man with blue-veined hands folded before his chest. “Tokar.” He bowed slightly. “I didn’t expect you so soon.”
Tokar was a trader from Oar, a friend of Bomanz’s son Stancil. He had a bluff, honest, irreverent manner Bomanz deluded himself into seeing as the ghost of his own at a younger age.
“Didn’t plan to be back so soon, Bo. But antiques are the rage. It surpasses comprehension.”
“You want another lot? Already? You’ll clean me out” Unsaid, the silent complaint: Bomanz, this means replenishment work. Time lost from research.
“The Domination is hot this year. Stop pottering around, Bo. Make hay, and all that. Next year the market could be as dead as the Taken.”
“They’re not. … Maybe I’m getting too old, Tokar. I don’t enjoy the rows with Besand anymore. Hell. Ten years ago I went looking for him. A good squabble killed boredom. The digging grinds me down, too. I’m used up. I just want to sit on the stoop and watch life go by.” While he chattered, Bomanz set out his best antique swords, pieces of armor, soldiers’ amulets, and an almost perfectly preserved shield. A box of arrowheads with roses engraved. A pair of broad-bladed thrusting spears, ancient heads mounted on replica shafts.
“I can send you some men. Show them where to dig. I’ll pay you commission. You won’t have to do anything. That’s a damned fine axe, Bo. TelleKurre? I could sell a bargeload of TelleKurre weaponry.”
“UchiTelle, actually.” A twinge from his ulcer. “No. No helpers.” That was all he needed. A bunch of young hotshots hanging over his shoulder while he made his field calculations.
“Just a suggestion.”
“Sorry. Don’t mind me. Jasmine was on me this morning.”
Softly, Tokar asked, “Found anything connected with the Taken?”
With the ease of decades, Bomanz dissembled, feigning horror. “The Taken? Am I a fool? I wouldn’t touch it if I could get it past the Monitor.”
Tokar smiled conspiratorily. “Sure. We don’t want to offend the Eternal Guard. Nevertheless … there’s one man in Oar who would pay well for something that could be ascribed to one of the Taken. He’d sell his soul for something that belonged to the Lady. He’s in love with her.”
“She was known for that.” Bomanz avoided the younger man’s gaze. How much had Stance revealed? Was this one of Besand’s fishing expeditions? The older Bomanz became, the less he enjoyed the game. His nerves could not take this double life. He was tempted to confess just for the relief.
No, damnit! He had too much invested. Thirty-seven years. Digging and scratching every minute. Sneaking and pretending. The most abject poverty. No. He would not give up. Not now. Not when he was this close.
“In my way, I love her, too,” he admitted. “But I haven’t abandoned good sense. I’d scream for Besand if I found anything. So loud you’d hear me in Oar.”
“All right. Whatever you say.” Tokar grinned. “Enough suspense.” He produced a leather wallet. “Letters from Standi.”
Bomanz seized the wallet. “Haven’t heard from him since last time you were here.”
“Can I start loading, Bo?”
“Sure. Go ahead,” Absently, Bomanz took his current inventory list from a pigeonhole. “Mark off whatever you take.”
Tokar laughed gently. “All of it this time, Bo. Just quote me a price.”
“Everything? Half is junk.”
“I told you, the Domination is hot.”
“You saw Stance? How is he?” He was halfway through the first lett
er. His son had nothing substantial to relate. His missives were filled with daily trivia. Duty letters. Letters from a son to his parents, unable to span the timeless chasm.
“Sickeningly healthy. Bored with the university. Read on. There’s a surprise.”
Tokar was here,” Bomanz said. He grinned, danced from foot to foot. “That thief?” Jasmine scowled. “Did you remember to get paid?” Her fat, sagging face was set in perpetual disapproval. Generally her mouth was open in the same vein.
“He brought letters from Stance. Here.” He offered the packet. He could not contain himself. “Stance is coming home.”
“Home? He can’t. He has his position at the university.”
“He’s taking a sabbatical. He’s coming for the summer.”
“Why?”
“To see us. To help with the shop. To get away so he can finish a thesis.”
Jasmine grumbled. She did not read the letters. She had not forgiven her son for sharing his father’s interest in the Domination. “What he’s doing is coming here to help you poke around where you’re not supposed to poke, isn’t he?”
Bomanz darted furtive glances at the shop’s windows. His was an existence of justifiable paranoia. “It’s the Year of the Comet. The ghosts of the Taken will rise to mourn the passing of the Domination,”
This summer would mark the tenth return of the comet which had appeared at the hour of the Dominator’s fall. The Ten Who Were Taken would manifest strongly.
Bomanz had witnessed one passage the summer he had come to the Old Forest, long before Stancil’s birth. The Barrowland had been impressive with ghosts walking.
Excitement tightened his belly. Jasmine would not appreciate it, but this was the summer. End of the long quest. He lacked only one key. Find it and he could make contact, could begin drawing out instead of putting in.
Jasmine sneered. “Why did I get into this? My mother warned me.”
“It’s Stancil we’re talking about, woman. Our only.”
“Ah, Bo, don’t call me a cruel old lady. Of course I’ll welcome him. Don’t I cherish him, too?”
“Wouldn’t hurt to show it.” Bomanz examined the remnants of his inventory. “Nothing left but the worst junk. These old bones ache just thinking of the digging I’ll have to do.”
His bones ached, but his spirit was eager. Restocking was a plausible excuse for wandering the edges of the Barrowland.
“No time like now to start.”
“You trying to get me out of the house?”
“That wouldn’t hurt my feelings.”
Sighing, Bomanz surveyed his shop. A few pieces of time-rotted gear, broken weapons, a skull that could not be attributed because it lacked the triangular inset characteristic of Domination officers. Collectors were not interested in the bones of kerns or in those of followers of The White Rose.
Curious, he thought. Why are we so intrigued by evil? The White Rose was more heroic than the Dominator or Taken. She has been forgotten by everybody but the Monitor’s men. Any peasant can name half the Taken. The Barrowland, where evil lies restless, is guarded, and the grave of the White Rose is lost.
“Neither here nor there,” Bomanz grumbled. “Time to hit the field. Here. Here. Spade. Divining wand. Bags. … Maybe Tokar was right. Maybe I should get a helper. Brushes. Help carry that stuff around. Transit. Maps. Can’t forget those. What else? Claim ribbons. Of course. That wretched Men fu.”
He stuffed things into a pack and hung equipment all about himself. He gathered spade and rake and transit. “Jasmine. Jasmine! Open the damned door.”
She peeped through the curtains masking their living quarters. “Should’ve opened it first, dimwit.” She stalked across the shop. “One of these days, Bo, you’re going to get organized. Probably the day after my funeral.”
He stumbled down the street grumbling, “I’ll get organized the day you die. Damned well better believe. I want you in the ground before you change your mind.”
The Near Past: Corbie
The Barrowland lies far north of Charm, in the Old Forest so storied in the legends of the White Rose. Corbie came to the town there the summer after the Dominator failed to escape his grave through Juniper. He found the Lady’s minions in high morale. The grand evil in the Great Barrow was no longer to be feared. The dregs of the Rebel had been routed. The empire had no more enemies of consequence. The Great Comet, harbinger of all catastrophes, would not return for decades.
One lone focus of resistance remained, a child claimed to be the reincarnation of the White Rose. But she was a fugitive, running with the remnants of the traitorous Black Company. Nothing to fear there. The Lady’s overwhelming resources would swamp them.
Corbie came limping up the road from Oar, alone, a pack on his back, a staff gripped tightly. He claimed to be a disabled veteran of the Limper’s Forsberg campaigns. He wanted work. There was work aplenty for a man not too proud. The Eternal Guard were well-paid. Many hired drudgework taken off their duties.
At that time a regiment garrisoned the Barrowland. Countless civilians orbited its compound. Corbie vanished among those. When companies and battalions transferred out, he was an established part of the landscape.
He washed dishes, curried horses, cleaned stables, carried messages, mopped floors, peeled vegetables, assumed any burden for which he might earn a few coppers. He was a quiet, tall, dusky, brooding sort who made no special friends, but made no enemies either. Seldom did he socialize.
After a few months he asked for and received permission to occupy a ramshackle house long shunned because once it belonged to a sorcerer from Oar. As time and resources permitted, he restored the place. And like the sorcerer before him, he pursued the mission that had brought him north.
Ten, twelve, fourteen hours a day Corbie worked around town, then went home and worked some more. People wondered when he rested.
If there was anything that detracted from Corbie, it was that he refused to assume his role completely. Most scut boys had to endure a lot of personal abuse. Corbie would not accept it. Victimize him and his eyes went cold as winter steel. Only one man ever pressed Corbie once he got that look. Corbie beat him with ruthless, relentless efficiency.
No one suspected him of leading a double life. Outside his home he was Corbie the swamper, nothing more. He lived the role to his heart. When he was home, in the more public hours, he was Corbie the renovator, creating a new home from an old. Only in the wee hours, while all but the night patrol slept, did he become Corbie the man with a mission.
Corbie the renovator found a treasure in a wall of the wizard’s kitchen. He took it upstairs, where Corbie the driven came up from the deeps.
The scrap of paper bore a dozen words scribbled in a shaky hand. A cipher key.
That lean, dusky, long-unsmiling face shed its ice. Dark eyes sparkled, Fingers turned up a lamp. Corbie sat, and for an hour stared at nothing. Then, still smiling, he went downstairs and out into the night. He raised a hand in gentle greeting whenever he encountered the night patrol.
He was known now. No one challenged his right to limp about and watch the constellations wheel.
He went home when his nerves settled. There would be no sleep for him. He scattered papers, began to study, to decipher, to translate, to write a story-letter that would not reach its destination for years.
The Plain of Fear
One-Eye stopped by to tell me Darling was about to interview Corder and the messenger. “She’s looking peaked, Croaker. You been watching her?”
“I watch. I advise. She ignores. What can I do?”
“We got twenty-some years till the comet shows. No point her working herself to death, is there?”
“Tell her that. She just tells me this mess will be settled long before the comet comes around again. That it’s a race against time.”
She believes that. But the rest of us cannot catch her fire. Isolated in the Plain of Fear, cut off from the world, we find the struggle with the Lady sometimes slips in impo
rtance. The Plain itself too often preoccupies us.
I caught myself outdistancing One-Eye. This premature burial has not been good for him. Without his skills he has weakened physically. He is beginning to show his age. I let him catch up.
“You and Goblin enjoy your adventure?”
He could not choose between a smirk or a scowl,
“Got you again, eh?” Their battle has been on since the dawn. One-Eye starts each skirmish. Goblin usually finishes.
He grumbled something.
“What?”
“Yo!” someone shouted. “Everybody up top! Alert! Alert!”
One-Eye spat. “Twice in one day? What the hell?”
I knew what he meant. We have not had twenty alerts our whole two years out here. Now two in one day? Improbable.
I dashed back for my bow.
This time we went out with less clatter. Elmo had made his displeasure painfully apparent in a few private conversations.
Sunlight again. Like a blow. The entrance to the Hole faces westward. The sun was in our eyes when we emerged.
“You damned fool!” Elmo was yelling. “What the hell you doing?” A young soldier stood in the open, pointing. I let my gaze follow.
“Oh, damn,” I whispered. “Oh, double bloody damn.”
One-Eye saw it too. “Taken.”
The airborne dot drifted higher, circling our hideout, spiraling inward. It wobbled suddenly.
“Yeah. Taken. Whisper or Journey?”
“Good to see old friends,” Goblin said as he joined us.
We had not seen the Taken since reaching the Plain. Before that they had been in our hair constantly, having pursued us all the four years it had taken us to get here from Juniper.
They are the Lady’s satraps, her understudies in terror. Once there were ten. In the time of the Domination, the Lady and her husband enslaved the greatest of their contemporaries, making them their instruments: the Ten Who Were Taken. The Taken went into the ground with their masters when the White Rose defeated the Dominator four centuries ago. And they arose with the Lady, two turns of the comet back. And in fighting among themselves—for some remained loyal to the Dominator—most perished.