Wind chimes sang on cue, louder than ever. Everyone heard, not just the poor crazy Annalist. A lightning-bug flash in a corner turned into an expanding O ring of sparkle that reached a foot and a half in diameter. A dark-haired, to-die-for beautiful brunette teen looked out at us. She smiled a smile that lighted up the universe. She winked at me and pursed her lips in an air kiss that I would hear about forever. Then she faded without having said a word, leaving a tinkle, a hint of lilac, an impression that someone had watched from behind her, and a message clearly delivered to her favorite band of bad boys.
“Oh, my!” One-Eye blurted because the Lady had considered him directly and deliberately before flirting with me.
He had to improve his sense of discipline. And he would. For a while. But he was, is, and always will be, One-Eye. He cannot be anything else.
He bustled around Buzz with Goblin and the Third helping. I decided to step outside. I had been too long safe from clean air.
It was daytime out there, still not thirty hours since Zhorab whispered “Flies.” Snow no longer fell but the wind remained busy. It was warmer. The ground had begun to turn to mud. The world felt changed. Definitely not new but forever changed.
The Captain joined me. “I don’t know what’s happened but we have stumbled into a fresh new future.”
“It’s that line. When is the battlefield not a battlefield? We’ll win one big-time without lifting a blade if those two survive.”
“When.”
“Yes sir. When.”
“A handy friend, Two Dead. He’s almost Taken caliber but less subject to outside control. Buzzard Neck could be a useful badass, too.”
“We should seduce them.”
“We keep them alive, they’re ours. She is counting on us, Croaker. Stuff like this is going to keep happening. When is the enemy not an enemy? When it’s your friend patting your back with one hand while sticking a dagger between your ribs with the other.”
“I’d best get back in there and supervise.” It would not be impossible for One-Eye to precipitate a lethal mishap if there was something he thought needed hiding.
“Yes. No doubt One-Eye already thinks he sees some clever way to turn himself a profit.” The Old Man clasped my left shoulder, touching me directly for only the third or fourth time in all the years we have known one another. “You played your part well. Go win us a brace of new magicians.”
Yes. So. No direct confession, but … He had been part of a scheme with roots in the Tower. Somehow. Maybe he was the one romancing the crone.
“I’m on it, boss.”
10
Once Upon a Time: Stormy Night
The necromancer worked every day till he collapsed. Then he would sleep for a few hours, often in his workroom, after which he would get back to work, inevitably to be disappointed again.
Nothing he tried took him over the final hurdle. Death had its talons into Laissa and would not to turn loose. It could only be held at bay, but not permanently. And, every time he beat it back, he became more attached to the girl, and more determined to become her salvation.
The man who dragged a corpse out of a canal would have been appalled by the entanglement of the man who had lived with her for two months. She was now family. She was close to becoming a lover, not in a carnal sense. Though maybe someday …
The mission he had set himself, conquest of the ultimate, had become much more than an experiment.
He did not understand. But he had no idea who his Laissa had been.
It was part of what she was, bred in the bone. Anyone exposed for any extended time could not help but love her.
* * *
A stormy night. The thunder frightened Laissa. Each furious crash wrung another whimper from the child. She needed comforting. The necromancer sealed his workroom, settled into his one comfortable stuffed chair, held her in his lap while the gods contended for dominion of the night. Out back the horses and hogs raised their voices in protest. Laissa clung closer, shaking. For the first time since she had come to his house the necromancer became aware of her as a woman. So she, in her position, should not help but be aware that he was aroused—though she seemed not to recognize what that meant.
He wrestled ferocious temptation, knowing full well that he could get away with whatever he chose to do. She knew no better.
The mastiffs howled in counterpoint to the hogs and horses. The necromancer started. The dogs never howled. They never barked. He had thought that they could not. No other storm ever inspired them to complain. Then, in midsong, they did go silent.
Distracted, the girl never reacted to the necromancer’s arousal in any fashion.
The necromancer paid the mastiffs no heed. Neither did he note a whiff of sorcery that tainted the rowdy night for an instant after the howling stopped. He did not, however, overlook the monstrous blast of light and thunder without any lag that rocked his house to its foundations. Something crashed in his workroom. Laissa clutched him so tight that it hurt. The wicked thoughts deserted him. This was his child. This was his daughter. He rocked her and crooned a poorly recalled fragment of childhood lullaby.
The storm moved on. Laissa did not. The necromancer thought he ought to go to his workroom to check for damage. He ought to check on the livestock, too. But this moment was so pleasant … He realized that Laissa was warm. Not full life warm but more warm than ever he had felt her before.
They fell asleep there, snuggled together, as the great storm ambled on.
11
Long Ago and Far Away: Oblivion Fall
The Howler’s carpet rocked and staggered in the gust front of a truly savage storm. He raced the wind, dropped lower. A scraggly stick of an arm extended to point out the clearing where, now months ago, he had spotted a coach standing unattended on the night that Dorotea had vanished.
Tonight’s adventure was based on evidence no better than that and some wishful thinking.
This was the only lead developed since that night—and, probably, was not any lead at all. The Senjak girls were grasping at straws.
Howler orbited the clearing a hundred yards outside its bounds, saw nothing of obvious interest, though two massive dogs did come from somewhere to stand watching the carpet, their teeth bared. Howler had to use second sight to see them. They did the same right back. Howler said, “There might be sorcery here, Bathdek.”
“No might be about it. I smell it. It’s a dark, dark magic.”
The gust front caught up. Thunder and lightning galloped in close behind. Howler grounded his carpet under the canopy of a massive oak. From there he and Bathdek studied the setting, in particular the gap in the palisade surrounding the ramshackle house. Bathdek whined because the second sight became so damned painful when lightning flashed.
The mastiffs stood two yards behind the gap, teeth bared, focused on the carpet riders, indifferent to the rain, which brought a few hailstones along.
At ground level the sorceries saturating the hilltop were more obvious than they were from above. The warding spells were so finely wrought, so well woven together, that even an adept of the Ten failed to sense them until too late to deal with them without becoming catastrophically unsubtle.
Somebody was determined to be well protected while attracting no attention from casual passersby.
That somebody would be a rogue sorcerer of remarkable skill and talent, of that sort that the Dominator was determined to enslave or exterminate because they might someday challenge his mastery. This would be a bold one, too, to have remained so near Dusk.
Howler dragged his carpet into better shelter under an immense chestnut tree. The ground there would stay dry a long while. He sort of folded himself into a small package, like a spider wrapping itself in its legs, sleepily announced, “I will wait here.” Balled up like that he could not get much breath behind his screams.
Bathdek approached the palisade. The air raged around her, hurling leaves and twigs, yanking at her clothes like an impatient lover. Continued study s
howed her that any attempt to breach the barrier spells would trigger alarms.
The silent mastiffs watched her from behind the gap, daring her to mount an invasion.
The rain arrived, one drop, two drops, deliver me a hundred and a deluge. Bathdek hated the sudden cold wet but it did present an opportunity.
She carried a potent suite of ready spells impressed on what looked like fortune-telling cards. She selected one, caressed it, kissed it, whispered secrets to it. When the moment seemed ripe she flicked it through the palisade.
Lightning and thunder arrived together, violently. Bathdek staggered backward twenty feet, fell on her bottom in the wet, finding herself almost entirely deaf. She must be all right, though. Uncle Howler never uncurled. He would have if she was in any real danger.
She was a Senjak sister, just sixteen but already able to manipulate anything with a penis with no deliberate thought.
She got her feet under her and stumbled forward. The protective spells were gone. A dozen feet of palisade to either hand had vanished as well. A few shattered stakes still smoldered.
The mastiffs sprawled in blasted death, one broken open and spilled, the other burned to the bone and steaming. Newly sprouted vegetable and herb patches to either hand had suffered badly, too.
The rain recovered its earlier vigor.
Bathdek figured she looked a disaster herself. She would make use of that. She stumbled to the house, tried the latch. The door opened. She stepped inside. A savage gust slammed her in the back, drove her forward while throwing sheets of water in behind her. “Help me,” she whimpered as she went down.
The place was dimly lighted by two spirit lamps. It smelled of putrefaction and chemicals. Bathdek gagged as she tried to push herself off the filthy floor. She added to the filth as feet in tattered slippers approached.
She let herself collapse. She moaned, “Help…” She rolled onto her left side.
The man was nondescript, not worth a second glance in public. He wore a plain, threadbare brown robe. His expression betrayed both confusion and fear. His mouth moved but either no sound came out or her hearing had not yet begun to recover.
The man gave up trying to communicate. He went to the open door, leaned into the weather. A volley of hail bounced in past him. Gripping the doorframes with either hand he leaned out farther, peered around, still mightily confused. Apparently he saw nothing that troubled him more than he already was.
Bathdek made another effort to prize herself off the floor. She discovered that she truly did not have the strength.
She thought about just sliding into sleep, to buy sympathy, but that would leave her at the mercy of a complete unknown. She could not withstand a physical search. But for those cards she could be some stupid girl who had gotten lost in the woods just in time to get beaten up by a furious storm.
The man must be a master sorcerer. He could not help but recognize the nature of her deck, though the level of sorcery required for their creation and manipulation would be well beyond him.
The sorcerer closed the door thoughtfully, latched and barred it. There would be no more surprise intrusions. Bathdek felt some leakage as he deployed previously prepared spells to reinforce his privacy. Those were robust but Uncle Howler would be able to break past them—if he was able to see past them and recognize that she needed rescuing.
The sorcerer stood with his back to the door, shoulders slumped. He frowned unhappily. He was looking her way but did not appear to be looking at her.
He was trying to decide what to do.
Bathdek whimpered. That was not all drama.
She became aware of dirty bare feet a yard away. A girl’s feet. A girl who dropped down onto her hams and stared at Bathdek as though she had seen nothing of the like before. She was dirty all over. She wore rags that might have been the sorcerer’s castoffs. She was quite pretty, for all that. A bath and a smile would leave her striking.
Bathdek croaked, “Dor … Dor.” She tried to reach out.
She had found her missing sister. Or maybe her missing sister’s ghost. Or fetch. Something that was Dorotea’s body in peasant filth and rags that might not have Dorotea inside.
She should hide the fact that she knew Dorotea.
Dorotea seemed entirely astounded by the discovery that there were people in this world other than herself and the man with whom she lived.
Bathdek had lost every ounce of the confident drive that had brought her out here. Partly that was because she realized that there was something badly wrong happening now. She should not be this weak. She should be able to jump up and deal with the renegade sorcerer, then hustle Dorotea off to Howler and the carpet. Worse, she ought to be able, in the ugliest circumstances, to touch her great-uncle with a plea for help.
She could do none of those things.
The sorcerer reached a decision. He came toward her, saying something. Dorotea, with hair longer than before and tangled, looked slightly disappointed. She rose and shuffled away.
The sorcerer pulled a rickety stool over, settled, stared at Bathdek, clearly troubled but more composed than he had been just minutes earlier. He spoke, probably asking a question. Bathdek had just enough strength to brush her ear and shake her head.
She was beginning to be afraid. She had jumped without knowing where she was going to land, which was in an epic tangle of subtle sorcery, spells camouflaged by or as other spells, spells that were only there to misdirect … The totality had to be the creation of a mad genius driven by paranoia, an artist who had had countless lonely years to perfect his treacheous protections.
She could not summon her uncle. She could not warn him.…
The sorcerer considered her for a moment more, then nodded. He set his right palm on her forehead. His hand was hot. Oblivion claimed Bathdek. It fell so suddenly and gently that she was gone before she understood that there might be something to resist.
12
In Modern Times: Mischievous Rain
Gurdlief Speak wrapped up a folktale about the revenge of a village orphan sacrificed during hard times. He made her sympathetic, a victim instead of the usual evil revenant.
The kid could put a unique spin on any story.
Gurdlief was an orphan himself, though unacquainted with hardship. All Aloe served as his parents. His destined sacrifice was to become a celibate priest of Occupoa. At ten he found that fate unappealing already.
Orphans featured in many of the stories Gurdlief traded for access to the Company compound. The Captain reckoned him to be a spy. I figured he wanted to weasel his way in so nobody would squawk if he tagged along when the Company moved on. Which did not matter, really. Our secrets were few and inconsequential. And he did not eat much.
As we entered the compound, Gurdlief told me, “Once there was a girl called Lilac Shade. She was the prettiest girl in her village and really popular after she got old enough for boys to notice.”
I gave him a look askance. He was not that old himself, though boy-girl stuff was no mystery to Aloens. Local attitudes were quite relaxed.
Gurdlief skipped to keep up. I was in a hurry. I was running late. The crowd at my town clinic had held me up. Every kid within five leagues had a dripping nose. Gurdlief was no exception. The pestilence did not bother native adults. It made children and outsiders miserable but did not kill them. It just made you want to die. I had enjoyed my dose already.
A baker’s dozen of surly clients awaited me at the compound clinic. It included all of the usual malingerers.
It was a chilly, blustery day. Cotton wads scooted westward overhead. We had passed winter’s nadir but the locals insisted that the gods were only teasing us with empty promises of spring. I had mixed feelings. Better weather meant less shivering but also heralded the campaign season. I prefer sitting on my ass, doing garrison duty.
I was not alone in figuring that our Aloen holiday was nearing its end. Unease lurked everywhere. Ages had passed since last the Lady used us. The more she held us back the deeper
and stinkier the next pool of shit was likely to be.
Men drilled and exercised on the parade ground, hardly grumbling, inspired by self-interest. The Company might be on the move again, soon. There might be hazards to survive.
* * *
Gurdlief and I were approaching headquarters when we heard wind chimes, clear and sweet, from everywhere and nowhere, just barely this side of audibility. Rat-footed dread tramped my spine. I turned slowly but saw only pale-faced comrades also looking for the source of the sound.
The Lady?
Who else?
Damn, Croaker! How come you have to think about her? Thought alone might summon the attention of that horror.
Wind chimes tinkled again, louder.
A flying carpet drifted down, into the shade beside Admin. A woman stood atop that carpet, which was wildly colored and iridescent, like peacock feathers. The multihued fabric had been stretched onto a boxy wooden frame twelve feet long, eight feet wide, and one foot high. Bags, boxes, and trunks cluttered the carpet. The woman tinkled in the breeze. She tinkled when she moved. She tinkled when she breathed.
Gurdlief murmured, “One of the Taken.” Awed.
One of them. Yes. Absolutely. Had to be. Beyond any doubt. But which? I did not know this one, though I thought that I had seen them all.
“A new one.”
New. Of course. Astonishingly pretty, too, though I could hardly tear my attention away from her yukata, which was blacker than any worldly black, black with no surface, like the zenith on a cloudless night. It contained a million remote lights shining in a thousand pastel colors.
The chimes turned orchestral as she stepped down from the carpet. A gust tossed her hair in streamers as black as her clothing, but shining. Her hair included several intensely scarlet streaks. A silver and lapis lazuli butterfly clip sat at the root of the boldest red stripe. She was as slim as a maiden but her face suggested past strains beyond those of any maiden’s years.
So, truth absolute. She was Taken. She had gone to the Tower. She had come out of the Tower a bespoke servant of shadow.