The Lieutenant said, “Elmo found it. He came up with some kind of records that are in UchiTelle or TelleKurre, one of those old-time Domination languages, only on modern paper. We don’t have anybody who reads that stuff anymore, unless you remember how.”
“Me? TelleKurre, a little. I managed Limper’s rescript. But it’s been years since I tried anything really technical. If Raven was still with us…”
“There’s a name that ain’t come up for a while.”
I grunted. “I’ll look at the stuff, maybe dig out some sense. I won’t guarantee anything, though. I have real trouble with the grammar.”
I am pretty good with languages. A fast learner. On the spoken side. There are only a handful of TelleKurre speakers still living.
I continued, “Or we could find some way to pass everything on to the Tower. The Lady could read it, easy.” TelleKurre would be her milk tongue.
The Lieutenant eyeballed me momentarily, like he wondered if he ought to accuse me of shirking, then said, “They don’t look like something that would have anything to do with a project like this.”
I sighed.
Sergeant Nwynn asked, “Might I make a suggestion, sirs?”
The Old Man said, “Certainly. Go right ahead.”
“The big thing bothering you is that the girls have an unconscious connection that might cause trouble later. But I’m wondering if somebody who knows what she’s doing, like the Taken, couldn’t winkle out all the girls that we don’t already have by tracing the connections between them.”
I said, “That’s good thinking. I think.” And immediately began to worry about how Mischievous Rain would handle falling into the mind field here when she finally came back.
The Lieutenant asked, “If she could do that wouldn’t she have done it before?”
Candy said, “She left before we knew that there were any more like her but the girls from Honnoh.”
I gave Nwynn a thumbs-up. “That’s right. She only suspected that there might be another one at the temple here. Somebody she remembered from her own time there.”
Candy glared at my chart. “There could be a hundred of them. And maybe that ain’t only because the Resurrectionists wanted to make sure they got them a Port of Shadows. Like a frog laying a million eggs. One of them is bound to work out. Uh … Sorry. Got off track. What I’m wondering is, was there some plan for them to get clustered up together sometime so they would start feeding off each other and get totally insane scary?”
That notion did nothing to cheer anyone up.
Were we seeding our own destruction by being too damned successful? It could happen. But I could not believe that to be a deliberate ploy. The Rebel was tough and stubborn and patient but he was never that chess-master clever. A scheme like that would require a foundation of too many improbable events.
One thing that we had not yet managed was the capture of someone from far enough inside the Resurrectionist cult to reveal their true strategy. Our informants, although becoming more numerous, still had nothing to report on that score, either.
I said, “I’ll pass all this along as soon as we’re done here.” Which remark gained me narrow looks from guys who were sick of me whining about getting no news from the Tower.
The meeting ended when the Old Man had heard enough. “You stay,” he told me. “And leave your charts after I turn you loose. I want to study them.”
Had he seen something that had eluded me?
The room cleared. The Captain asked, “Are we getting too focused on the girls, Croaker?”
“Sir?”
“They’re all we talk about lately.”
“The patrols haven’t found anything else interesting, have they?”
“No. Nothing. Right now it looks like any Rebel who hasn’t quit has fled into the deep woods, mainly the primal forest north of Rhymes.”
Rebels who tried to disappear into the populace had no luck staying hidden. Said populace’s sympathies had gone face-about since last summer. The Company’s good behavior (relatively speaking), its signal battlefield successes, and the unusual fairness it imposed along with order and stability, contrasted fiercely with the situation that obtained where the Rebel sat atop the food chain—so we took pains to proclaim. Order was what regular people wanted. Order and security were necessary before prosperity could take hold. The political crap, the who is going to be in charge, did not matter to most folks.
The Company might be the bad guys in theory but daily life for regular people was way safer than it had been before we arrived.
Markeg Zhorab was an excellent example of a local caught in a perilous bight. His situation had become far sweeter with us in control. But every Aloen faced an iron truth: The Black Company would not remain here forever.
Maybe we could train the Zhorabs to look out for themselves. Markeg himself had scars to show that once upon a time he had worked in a trade less gentle than barkeeping. If we gave the Rebel holdouts a few more good thumps, honest folks might be able to … Only …
“Do we have any idea what Whisper is up to?” I had heard no news, not even any meaty rumors. The marshal of all the empire’s eastern forces appeared to have no plans at all for the summer—nor, for that matter, did she seem to have a plan for pursuing her grudge against the Company.
“None. I think she’ll be as careful as she can now that Colonel Chodroze is our guy and has gone to the Tower.”
And Mischievous Rain would have taken to the Tower knowledge about everything going on out here in the wild, wild east.
That did not worry me. We were in high favor.
What did concern me was the pernicious absence of communications from the Tower. We were getting no instructions. And Mischievous Rain should want to know how her kids were doing. And the Lady should want to know more about the how and why and potential of the pool of Tides Elba girls … Unless she was just laying back, doing the trapdoor-spider thing, awaiting her moment.
Might be. Could be. The woman has a patient streak, and while she does lose a battle here and there she never loses a war. Never in all the years since she had clawed her way out of the Barrowland.
* * *
Once more I received no feedback after I spent an hour trying to make sure that Mischievous Rain and the Lady were fully informed of the latest.
Feeling like a flea on an insignificant mongrel of a frontier outpost, I gave up hope of having any meaning in anything that happened after my speculative reports about the Tides Elba girls. And when my attitude turned hopeless Beloved Shin, Blessed Baku, and Ankou were all inclined to agree.
The kids seemed immersed in a funk of their own. Shin would not discuss it. Firefly wanted to ignore it, too, but was not as stubborn. She was afraid that her mother had abandoned her. I am sure that Shin felt the same way. And there Dad was, ignorant but inclined to make excuses for a woman who was not present for her children.
The situation was getting insane.
Firefly snuggled in with me every night, now. And once when I wakened in the middle of the night I heard Shin whimpering.
What the hell? I could not imagine even the Lady’s will overwhelming Mischievous Rain’s concern for her children.
I was a man whose mundane life left him with an imagination entirely inadequate to his present circumstances.
19
Once Upon a Time: A Deeper Shade of Horror
The sisters Ardath and Sylith lived in constant terror. The Senjaks all did. The Dominator knew about Dorotea. The men responsible had paid. Gods, had they paid. None dared accuse the Dominator of lacking imagination when it came to discovering new ways to inflict pain. Others had paid as well, many of them innocent, all to assuage His rage. But that rage stormed on unabated. He wanted to know what had become of Credence. Although the Howler had been entirely forthcoming the Dominator was not convinced that the Senjaks were not up to something underhanded. Despite the evidence out there, where remnants of what had entangled the Howler had come close to doing the
same to Him.
The physical evidence suggested the long-term residence of a true master sorcerer, a necromancer, whose sole interest in the rest of the world had been that it should leave him alone. But the Dominator judged the world by His own lights. A man with such skills, with such talent, with such power, must surely mean to use it to subdue the world and bend it to his will. Any such man must have been plotting against Him.
Nothing to suggest anything like that had been found. There were a couple of dead mastiffs, some unhappy livestock behind on their feed, and a coach that might have been the one the guards on the Jade Gate had seen the night that Dorotea disappeared. Inside the house there was only ragged furniture and, in a sizable room in back, a workshop that boasted most everything that a necromancer would need to pursue his craft.
The Dominator Himself had examined the place thoroughly. He had found nothing to alarm Him further. But still He had declared the site off-limits to everyone else, reasoning that He might have missed something that could be turned against Him.
The Senjaks were disappointed. Ardath and Sylith alike were convinced that, if Credence was still alive, she would have left some sign. And then there was the question of what the necromancer had done with Dorotea’s remains.
There was no longer any doubt that Dorotea had been dead when those morons had sent her down the waste chute.
A burial ground had been discovered in the woods behind the necromancer’s house. The remains of a dozen girls had been exhumed, suggesting that Dorotea was not the first discard fished from the waste canal—unless the necromancer had been using live girls in his experiments.
What the graves suggested about the mind of the necromancer appalled even the denizens of Grendirft.
None of the exhumed corpses belonged to Dorotea. None were fresh enough to have been her or Credence, so the necromancer must have taken them with him when he fled.
The fact that some mysterious nonentity had stolen a Taken’s carpet rattled the Dominator Himself and terrified nine of the Ten. A man would have to be insanely powerful if he could unattach and then control something as personal as a flying carpet.
The Howler told no one about the card deck that Credence had carried. Anyone with the ability to create one of those would inflame the Dominator’s paranoia more than the inferno that it was already.
The Senjak clan stayed within calling distance of one another. If He turned they might have a fighting chance, working together.
* * *
The summoning home of the Taken from the frontier hot points offered the enemies of the Domination an invitation that they could not refuse. Conflagrations blazed up everywhere, out there and in the towns and cities. For the towns and cities the price of rebellion was absolute. The mad god was in no mood for fine distinctions. He knew that however thorough He was there would be survivors who could breed up a fresh crop of subjects. He had time to wait. Centuries, if need be.
He had slight grasp of the economic consequences of widespread destruction. But He did not care. He would see only that His will was being defied.
But not every city revolted. Not even a majority did. In most the urge faded quickly. Lords, in the east, was among those cities where the insurrection was barely a feeble poot that dispersed almost instantly.
* * *
Well after there was any chance that the information might be timely enough to be useful Domination agents in Lords reported that someone had been there purchasing unusual items and materials. He had been willing to pay generously, without haggling, for what he wanted. He had not tolerated normal human mischief. Several would-be villains had suffered grievously. Then he had disappeared without a trace, leaving behind only the most vague of descriptions.
That all could mean something, or it could mean nothing. Odds were, the latter was the case. But it might mean that the necromancer had gone east, far to the east, intent on reestablishing himself outside the Domination.
Nothing else surfacing, the Dominator ordered the Ten to march their armies eastward, and damned be the Plain of Fear if it became defiant. The campaign was to begin immediately after they exterminated the lands and cities and peoples now in revolt.
The clearing of the Old Forest could wait a generation.
This mysterious necromancer would not remain outside the Domination forever. The Domination would find him.
20
Once Upon a Time: An Absence of Pain
The necromancer stared. “How did you manage all that?” Kitten had run through the entire list he had left her.
She did not answer that. “Laissa is really sick, Papa. Did you get the stuff to fix her?”
“I did. Yes. Everything we’ll need. I just had to go farther to find it than I thought I would have to go.”
“Is that why you were gone so long?”
“That’s why.” Once again he eyed the structure atop the granite outcrop. There was no doubt. The girl had done the work and had done it right. “Kitten, I’m going to need your help fixing her. She doesn’t like these treatments. They hurt. I don’t like hurting her but they’re the only way that we can keep her going.”
Bathdek nodded. She heard the almost sane sorcerer talking, though still heavily tainted by Papa. It would seem that, rather than being more than a distinct personality unaware of others sharing the same mind, this man drifted back and forth across a spectrum. Only the nethermost ends were unaware of the opposite extremes. The man with whom she was speaking now would be the determined research necromancer with a touch of the devoted Papa of Laissa, willing to burn down the world to save his girl.
An aching small piece of Bathdek wished that she could stimulate Papa’s emotions to equal devotion.
She said, “Just tell me what to do, Papa.”
He smiled a cynical smile that betrayed the fact that he was almost completely the pragmatic necromancer now, fully engaged with the quotidian world. He replied, “I hope so, child. I hope so. Because I’m pretty sure that you hold the key to…”
Something happened. Something dramatic. He changed. He grabbed his head with both hands, fell to one knee, made whimpering sounds, began shaking like he was naked in the snow.
No! “Papa?” She remembered an uncle doing something similar when she was six. A massive stroke. He was gone within the hour despite everything that everyone tried.
Seconds of dread passed, then he said, “I’m sorry, Kitten. I have these attacks. Forget it for now. We need to work on your sister. It will be hard to bring her all the way back.”
He stopped talking. He froze, looked like a statue briefly, then resumed, “We have to bring her back. I don’t think I could go on if I lost another daughter.”
Bathdek had no idea what that meant. “So why are we standing around talking? Tell me what to do.”
The following hour was hectic.
Laissa was lethargic in the extreme but even so she whimpered and struggled and even mouthed a few words of protest once she understood what Kitten and Papa were going to do. She did not understand that they were trying to help her.
* * *
Laissa, Papa, and Kitten spent a long time just lazing. Relaxing. They had been stretched almost to the breaking point. Two of the three vowed never to let Laissa slide so far again.
One of the two told the other, “You know the secret of the Dominator’s conquest of death.” A declaration from the worldly necromancer.
Bathdek immediately found herself being Bathdek Senjak instead of Kitten. That frightened her. Could she actually forget who she was, the way that Dorotea had?
Maybe. But, more likely, she was just tired. Dragging Laissa back from the precipice, guaranteeing her months more life, had drained her. The challenge of the sorcerer might force her to reclaim her mental footing. “Papa?”
“The Dominator and the Ten, and their intimate circle, share the secret of eternal life.”
“Eternal? I really don’t think anything is eternal.”
“All right. Stipulated. Then
call it life that will go on forever until fatal misfortune intervenes.”
“Oh.” True. No way could you protect yourself from bad luck forever, nor from determined enemies, nor from disease. Nor even from seditious betrayal by your own body if it decided it was heart-attack, kidney-failure, or cancer time. “The Blessing, I have heard that called. Supposedly He uses the Blessing to keep His henchmen in line.”
“How old are you really, girl?” The necromancer’s smirk was nasty.
“Sixteen. My birthday came while you were away finding the stuff to fix Laissa.”
“Truly?” He seemed surprised. “You aren’t one of the Dominator’s toys, been around for a hundred years?” His tone grated.
“Really! He doesn’t have favorites. He uses them once and throws them away. And I’m too old to interest Him, anyway.”
That irked the sorcerer right back. It touched him in the tickle spot that remembered whence his favorite daughter had come.
Laissa chose that moment to whimper and mumble what sounded like, “No, Papa! Please!”
The necromancer surged to his feet, made a barking noise, then collapsed in a twitching tumble.
“Not again!”
But, yes, again, and this time more dramatically. Papa had his hands to his temples, trying to crush his skull. Was this something mental? Or was it the stroke that she had feared before?
“No! No! No!” Him dying or becoming permanently dysfunctional would be a death sentence for her and Laissa. “Papa?”
She fell to her knees beside him, felt his forehead, checked his pulse. His heart was fluttering, racing hard. Instead of the fever heat she expected, his forehead was damp and cool. “Clammy,” she thought the word was. “Papa! Talk to me, Papa! Tell me what’s wrong! Tell me what to do!”
There may have been a minor physical component but she decided that the event was psychosomatic. The necromancer remained unresponsive for less than ten minutes. Then he opened wild eyes briefly, saw her there, shedding genuine tears. He smiled hugely and husked, “You are a good girl, Kitten.” Then he lapsed into a normal sleep. His heartbeat settled into a healthy rhythm. He stopped shivering. His color improved. His temperature leveled off to where it ought to be.