“We committed robbery,” Sleepy told me. “We went in there pretending we were going to appeal to the File of Nine yet one more time. We got them all twisted out of shape by naming some of their names, so they had nothing else on their minds while we stole the books containing the information we need to get home safely.”
“They still don’t know,” Tobo said. “They’re still looking the other way. But that won’t last. The doppelgangers I left behind will fall apart before long. Those things can’t keep their minds on business.”
“Quit jawing and ride, then,” Sleepy grumbled. I swear. The woman was Annalist for fifteen years. She ought to have a better appreciation of the Annalist’s needs.
The mist surrounded us and seemed to move with us, unnaturally dense. Tobo’s work, probably. Shapes moved out there but did not come too close. Until I looked back.
Khang Phi had vanished already. It might be a thousand miles away or might never have existed at all. Instead I saw things I would rather not, including several of the Black Hounds, big as ponies, with high, massive shoulders like those of hyenas. For an instant, as they began to lose color and focus, an even larger beast with a head like a leopard’s, but green, loomed out of the mist between them. Cat Sith. It, too, wobbled away from reality, like an exaggerated case of heat shimmer fading. The gleam of its exposed teeth was the last to go.
With Tobo’s help we evaporated into the landscape ourselves.
16
Wastelands:
Night’s Children
Narayan Singh released his grip on his rumel, the consecrated killing scarf of a Strangler. His hands had become two aching, arthritic claws. Tears filled his eyes. He was glad the darkness hid them from the girl. “I never took an animal before,” he whispered, drawing away from the cooling carcass of the dog.
The Daughter of Night did not respond. She had to concentrate hard to use her crude talents to misdirect the bats and owls searching for them. The hunt had been on for weeks. Scores of converts had been taken. The rest had scattered in time-honored fashion. They would come together again after the hunters lost interest. And the hunters did lose interest in them before long. But this time the Witch of Taglios seemed determined to collar the Daughter of Night and the living saint of the Deceivers.
The girl relaxed, sighed. “I think they’ve moved off to the south.” Her whisper contained no note of triumph.
&ldsquo; This should be the last dog.” Narayan felt no sense of accomplishment, either. He reached out, touched the girl lightly. She didn’t shake him off. “They’ve never used dogs before.” He was tired. Tired of running, tired of pain.
“What’s happened, Narayan? What’s changed? Why won’t my mother answer me? I did everything right. But I still can’t feel her out there.”
Maybe she was not there anymore, the heretical side of Narayan thought. “Maybe she can’t. She has enemies among the gods as well as among men. One of those may be...”
The girl’s hand covered his mouth. He held his breath. Some owls had hearing acute enough to catch his wheezing — should they catch the girl off guard.
The hand withdrew. “It’s turned away. How do we reach her, Narayan?”
“I wish I knew, child. I wish I knew. I’m worn out. I need someone to tell me what to do. When you were little I thought you’d be queen of the world by now. That we would’ve passed through the Year of the Skulls and Kina’s triumph and I would be enjoying the rewards of my persistent faith.”
“Don’t you start, too.”
“Start?”
“Wavering. Doubting. I need you to be my rock, Narayan. Always, when everything else turns to filth in my hands, there’s been the granite of Papa Narayan.” For once she seemed not to be manipulating him. They huddled, prisoners of despair. The night, once Kina’s own, now belonged to the Protector and her minions. Yet they were compelled to travel under cloak of darkness. By day they were too easily recognized, she with her pale, pale skin and he with his physical impairments. The reward for their capture was great and the country folk were always poor.
Their flight had led them southward, toward the uninhabited wastelands clinging to the northern foothills of the Dandha Presh. Peopled lands were far too dangerous right now. Every hand was against them there. Yet there was no promise the wastelands would be any friendlier. Out there it might be easier for the hunters to track them.
Narayan mused, “Perhaps we should go into exile until the Protector forgets us.” She would. Her passions were furiously intense but never lasted.
The girl did not reply. She stared at the stars, possibly looking for a sign. Narayan’s proposition was impossible and they both knew it. They had been touched by the Goddess. They must do her work. They must fulfill their destinies, however unhappy the road. They must bring on the Year of the Skulls, however much suffering they must endure themselves. Paradise lay beyond the pale of affliction.
“Narayan. Look. The sky in the south.”
The old Deceiver raised his eyes. He saw what she meant immediately. One small patch of sky, due south, very low, rippled and shimmered. When that stopped for half a minute an alien constellation shone through.
“The Noose,” Singh whispered. “It isn’t possible.”
“What?”
“The constellation is called the Noose. We shouldn’t be able to see it.” Not from this world. Narayan knew of it only because he had been a prisoner of the Black Company at a time when the constellation had been the subject of intense discussion. It had some connection with the glittering plain. Beneath which Kina lay imprisoned. “Maybe that’s our sign.” He was ready to grasp any straw. He dragged his weary frame upright, tucked his crutch under his arm. “South it is, then. Where we can travel by day because there’ll be no one to spot us.”
The girl said, “I don’t want to travel anymore, Narayan.” But she got up, too. Travel was what they did, day after month after year, because only by remaining in motion could they evade the evils that would prevent them from fulfilling their holy destinies.
An owl called from somewhere far away. Narayan ignored it. He was, for the thousandth time, reflecting on the change of fortune that had befallen them so swiftly, after life had gone so well for several years. His whole life had been that way, one wild swing after another. If he could cling to the tatters of his faith, if he could persevere, soon enough fortune would smile on him again. He was the living saint. His tests and trials had to be measured accordingly.
But he was so tired. And he hurt so much.
He tried not to wonder why there was no sense whatsoever of Kina’s presence in the world anymore. He tried to concentrate his whole will upon covering the next painful hundred yards. With that victory in hand he could concentrate on conquering the hundred yards that followed.
17
The Land of Unknown Shadows:
The Abode of Ravens
It took Tobo ten days to teach himself everything he needed to become a master shadowgate tinkerer. Those ten days seemed much longer for some of us because the File of Nine, defying the express wishes of the Elders of Khang Phi and the lords of the Court of All Seasons, issued a bull declaring the Black Company to be the enemy of the Children of the Dead. It encouraged all warlords to gather their forces and march against us.
That trouble was slow developing. The warlords who were our neighbors knew too much about us to try anything. Those who were farther away were willing to wait until someone else moved first. Most never bothered to call in their troops. And, characteristic of Hsien’s politics, the stream of volunteers, of money and materials helping us become an ever greater threat to the Children of the Dead, never slackened.
Tobo finished work on the Hsien-end shadowgate fourteen days after our return from Khang Phi. Despite the war clouds, Sleepy was in no hurry. Sahra assured her that it would be months before anyone got started our way — if they ever did at all. She claimed the warlords could not possibly agree that quickly and move that fast. No need to hurry. Ha
ste causes mistakes. Mistakes come back to haunt you every time.
“You do a good job, you’re guaranteed gonna have to pay for it,” I told Suvrin. The young Shadowlander had just been informed of his latest honor: He was going to cross the glittering plain to scout and to repair our home shadowgate. Right after Tobo trained him. Tobo would not go himself because he did not want to be separated from his pets. Filled with low cunning, I asked, “How are your writing skills?”
He stared at me for several seconds, eyes big and brown and round in a big round, brown face. “No. I don’t think so. I like it in the Company. But I don’t plan to spend my life here. This is a learning experience. This is training. But I won’t become a lord of mercenaries.”
He surprised me, in several ways. I never heard anyone describe their Company time quite that way, though many do join up fully intending to desert just as soon as they are safely away from the trouble that had them on the run. Nor had I noticed, ever, anyone grasp so quickly what it could mean, in the long run, to be approached about becoming the apprentice Annalist.
A stint as Annalist could be a step toward becoming Captain someday.
I was teasing, mostly, but Sleepy did think a lot of Suvrin. The suggestion might not be a joke to her.
“Have fun on the other side. And be careful. You can’t be careful enough where Soulcatcher is involved.” I went on and on. His patient blank expression and glazed eyes told me he had heard it all before. I stopped. “And you’ll hear it all a hundred times more before you go. The Old Woman’ll probably write it all down in a scroll you’ll have to take along and read before breakfast every morning.”
Suvrin put on a feeble, insincere smile. “The Old Woman?”
“Thought I’d try it out. I have a feeling it isn’t going to work.”
“I think you can count on that.”
I didn’t expect to cross paths with Suvrin again this side of the plain. I was wrong. Only minutes after we parted it occurred to me that it might be useful if I sat in on the shadowgate training.
It occurred to me that I ought to ask the Captain’s permission. I was able to resist the temptation.
Lady decided it might be good if she extended her own education, too.
18
The Land of Unknown Shadows:
Due South
Campfires burned on the far slopes, opposite Outpost. Those pesky rock apes had emigrated. The flocks of crows were expanding. Choosers of the slain, I heard them called somewhere. The File of Nine had pulled a half-ass army together far faster than our bemused foreign minister had believed possible.
“At last,” I said to Murgen, as he and I shared a newly discovered jar of skullbuster. “To One-Eye.” The stuff just kept turning up. We were doing our best to make sure it did not fall into the hands of the soldiers. In their hands strong drink was likely to cause indiscipline. “Your old lady talked like it’d be next year before they tried anything. If they ever got anything going at all.”
The advent of unfriendly forces had been no surprise, of course. Not with Tobo handling intelligence.
“To One-Eye. She has been known to err, Captain.” He was starting to slur already. The boy could not hold his liquor. “Upon rare occasions.”
“Rare occasions.”
Murgen hoisted his cup in a salute. “To One-Eye.” Then he shook his head. “I do love that woman, Captain.”
“Uhm.” Oh-oh. I hoped we did not get maudlin here. But I understood his problem. She got old. We spent fifteen years in stasis, not aging a minute. A little payoff from the gods for doing us so dirty the rest of the time, maybe. But Sahra, who meant more to Murgen than life itself, who was the mother of his son, had not been one of the Captured.
Which had been lucky for us. Because she had dedicated herself to freeing Murgen. And eventually she succeeded. And freed me and my wife and most of the Captured as well. But Sahra had grown and had changed and had aged more than those fifteen years. And their son had grown up. And even now, four years after our resurrection, Murgen still had not adjusted completely.
“You can get by,” I told him. “Bless One-Eye. Put it all out of your mind. Exist in the now. Don’t worry about the then. That’s what I do.” In terms of experience my wife had been ancient centuries before I was born. “You did get to be the ghost that rode around with her and shared her life, even if you couldn’t touch her.” I live with ten thousand ghosts from my wife’s past, few of whom ever got discussed. She just did not want to talk about her olden days.
Murgen grunted, mumbled something about One-Eye. He was having trouble understanding me even though I was articulating with especial precision. He asked, “You never were much of a drinker, were you, Captain?”
“No. But I’ve always been a good soldier. I’ve always done what’s got to be done.”
“I gotcha.”
We were outside, of course, watching shooting stars and the constellations of fires that marked the enemy encampment. There seemed to be an awful lot of those fires. More than the reported numbers deserved. Some genius of a warlord was playing games.
“They’re not going to come,” Murgen said. “They’re just going to sit there. It’s all for the benefit of the Nine. It’s showmanship.”
I blessed One-Eye and took another drink, wondered if Murgen was repeating his wife’s assumption or his son’s. I cocked my head in favor of my left eye. My night vision is questionable even when I am sober.
Murgen said, “I don’t think you can imagine the level of fear over there right now. The boy does something to terrorize them every night. He hasn’t hurt a louse on one of their heads yet but they’re not stupid. They get the message.”
You got the Black Hounds strolling through your camp, eating out of your cookpots, or maybe pissing in them, and you have dozens of lesser night things pulling up tent pegs and starting fires and stealing your boots and treasures, you have troubles that will effect morale for sure. The soldiers will not believe the stories you tell to soothe them, however clever you think you are.
“The thing is, if the leadership decides there’ll be war, they’ll come.” I knew. I have been with the Company forever. I have seen men fight under incredibly bad conditions. And, admittedly, I have seen men lose heart when conditions seemed ideal. “To One-Eye. He was a big part of the glue that held us together.”
“One-Eye. You know the Fourth Battalion’s going up tonight?”
“Up?”
’To the plain. They’re probably moving out right now.”
“Suvrin can’t possibly have the shadowgate ready to go yet.”
Murgen shrugged. “I’m just saying what I heard. Sahra telling Tobo. She got it from Sleepy.”
Once again the Annalist had not been included in the planning and decision-making. The Annalist was irked. In a former life he had gained a lot of experience planning campaigns and managing large groups of fractious people. The Annalist can contribute still.
In a moment of clarity I understood why I was being left out. Because of the thing that killed One-Eye. Its punishment was unimportant to Sleepy. She did not want to waste time and resources on it. Particularly the time needed to argue with me and those who felt the way I do.
I mused. “Maybe I shouldn’t try to avenge One-Eye.”
Murgen didn’t mind an unexplained shift in topic. He was listening more closely to his own soul, anyway. He did say, “What’re you talking about? It’s got to be done.”
So he agreed with me. It occurred to me that he had known One-Eye longer than anyone else but me. I still thought of him as the new kid sometimes because he was almost the last man to join us while we were still in service to the Lady, in that other world so far away and so long ago that there were moments when I almost waxed nostalgic for those bad old days.
“Here’s one more to One-Eye. And I want to know when we’re going to start racking up some good old days.”
“They’re in there, Captain. Here and there. They just don’t stick out.”
r /> I remembered one or two. But that only got me started thinking about what might have been. About Booboo. And when I mix strong spirits with thoughts of my daughter the weather turns maudlin every time. And we see more and more of that weather as I get older.
“You got any idea what Sleepy’s strategy is?” I asked. She would have one. Scheming and planning is supposedly her long suit. Long enough for her to have outwitted the Radisha and my sister-in-law.
“Not a clue. I knew more about what was going on when I was a ghost.”
“You don’t go out of body anymore?”
“I’m cured. At least in this world.”
Not good, I feared. His loose attachment to his flesh had been the Company’s most potent weapon for years. What would we do if we could no longer see what was happening in places we were not at?
You do get spoiled fast.
Something chittered in the darkness. For a moment I thought it was mocking me. But then a huge fireball rolled up into the night across the valley. The unseen thing’s amusement was at the expense of the soldiers over there.
“This jar’s gone empty,” I grumbled, leaning back and shaking a last drop into the back of my mouth. “I’m going to go see if I can’t make another one turn up where we found this one.”
19
Glittering Stone:
Sneak Away
Doj nodded slightly as Lady and I rode past his place. When I glanced back a minute later he was in the street with several Nyueng Bao henchmen. He was wearing his sword, Ash Wand. Up ahead, Thai Dei, Murgen’s brother-in-law and bodyguard, strolled along the street. He was armed, too. If he was moving, Murgen would be, too.
I kept a wary watch behind. This had to be done before Sleepy caught on. Before she could issue orders forbidding it. I would not defy direct orders.
She and Sahra were down in the valley. Tran Huu Nhang had come out under a flag of truce. I had a feeling he would announce that the File of Nine had decided to accept reality. They would never admit it but their army had been defeated without stepping onto the field of battle. It was evaporating. The private soldiers were unwilling to endure the persistent attentions of the Unknown Shadows.