He could not treat himself to the pleasure of a kill. The sorcerers were necessary to the execution of the plan—and would not live long afterward, anyway.
These wicked Company men were clever. They would have copies of the rescript cached somewhere. The suborned wizards would deal with those, once the original was safe. He would spell them orders through the spider fangs, which would kill them later. But he had to have the original document. No way could it be brushed off as a forgery. That damning insult to the Lady was in his own hand.
The spark ahead stirred as though sensing his presence. There it was. Under the Annalist’s table. A barrel, on its side, rocking. Two more barrels stood close by, upright.
One-Eye, then. The key to everything. Why was he not at the battle?
They had put their best wizard into a barrel? That was insane. Maybe the answer was in the Annalist’s notes. Or would be soon. Meantime, this had to be done fast. It was a long flight back to his station. He had to get there before he was missed.
He shifted the nearest upright barrel. It was not empty but its contents did not weigh much. He would dump them, replace them with the Annalist’s papers, and sort everything out later. He could be headed west in moments.
* * *
Otto and Hagop, shielded against sleep spells by the Third, slipped up to the Limper’s flying carpet. Otto lifted a corner. The frame was almost weightless. Hagop slipped under. By the light of a glow weaker than the moonlight he attached a round wooden container four inches in diameter and two feet long. He pulled a string on one end, then got out of there. Both men headed for town, trotting to catch up with the Third and others who had not gone out to meet Cannon Shear.
* * *
The barrel under the table rocked. The man inside wanted to make it roll. It would go nowhere because two other barrels blocked it. Limper whispered, “I’ll have you out in a minute.” Not meaning a word. Tools for seating and unseating a barrelhead lay on the Annalist’s table. “But first…”
Limper popped the head out of the nearest upright barrel. It was filled with gray papier-mâché globs. Those should dump easily.
A thud. A flash. A bang. The barrel hopped a foot off the floor, came down hard and fell over. Limper caught the slightest whiff of the initiating spell.
There was another one! There, in the dark! Overlooked because of the smell of the man in the barrel! Ambush!
The wasps and hornets came awake, freed from the sleep spell.
* * *
“They tore him a new asshole,” Silent signed. “Tore him a whole new set. Even bundled up the way he always is. But he kept on stuffing that barrel, screaming worse than the Howler ever did. The hornets stayed with him till he was a hundred feet up.”
There was a lot of laughter. The Captain had pulled a good one. He began laying the groundwork right after the Limper’s last visit, when he caught the little shit messing with my pens and inks and guessed right what that was all about.
Still, some things had not gone the way he hoped.
“He opened the barrel! I cannot believe he did that. I thought the bugs would have to get after him through the fill hole, fighting each other all the way.”
I looked over at One-Eye. He was not happy, not least because somebody had washed his clothes while he was confined, but also because he now stank like pickle instead of like a moron a year overdue for a bath.
I went to get the Captain’s story. “Why so glum, sir?”
“I miscalculated. Understating it big-time. Whisper didn’t do what I expected. I know she must have been in on it. I thought the Lieutenant would herd his Rebels into the force she meant to sneak in behind us.”
No such force ever materialized. Ambushing the second Rebel column only scattered panicky amateurs.
“She isn’t stupid, Captain. She went down with the Limper once. She’ll never let that happen again.”
He shrugged. “Whatever, it was a good few days’ work.”
“Consider the bright side. I haven’t seen a new case of the purple in three days.”
* * *
To get back to his duty station the Limper had to overfly the deadly strangeness called the Plain of Fear. As always, giant flying things came up to contest the passage of an outsider. He ducked, darted, and maneuvered. Safe passage was no problem for one of the Taken. They had their sorcery when maneuver was not enough.
All that jerky motion caused the contents of the tube under Limper’s carpet to slosh and mix. An especially violent jig finally shook a jammed trigger loose.
The explosion shredded the fore half of the carpet. The Limper was in a shrieking steep climb at the time, twenty-three hundred feet high. He arced one way. A barrel followed. Bits of carpet and frame, aflame and otherwise, scattered and began to flutter down.
The Taken called on his sorcery, then cursed all the way to the ground.
The damned Black Company had done him wrong again. They had smelled him coming, somehow. Maybe Whisper had betrayed him. Whatever, they most certainly still owned the damning rescript that, till the explosion, he had thought that he had recovered.
He was not going to be able to cover this up. He had a long walk ahead, through the worst the Plain of Fear had to offer. He was going to be late for work.
7
Once Upon a Time: All Objectivity Fled
The girl was again as gloriously beautiful as she must have been before she died, but something was missing. All had not gone according to plan. She remembered nothing. She did retain rudimentary language skills but spoke seldom and then only slowly. She showed no curiosity and little inclination to learn. She recalled only the most rudimentary elements of self-care.
The necromancer did not have to handle her as though she was an infant but, in essence, she was a blank slate personality-wise.
He told her that her name was Laissa. She was his daughter. He chose that name because he had loved a Laissa when he was younger and if they had had a child that child would be about the age of this girl. He told her that her mother had died of childbed fever, which was nearly true in his askew mind. The Laissa that he had loved had died about the time that this one would have been born. He had tried to save her once the rage subsided but by then it had been too late.
This Laissa, according to the necromancer’s report, had suffered a prolonged and severe fever. She was just now beginning to recover. She should regain her memories eventually.
Laissa was not disturbed by her loss. She knew nothing so missed nothing. She was not even lonely. She just was.
She and the necromancer settled into a life together. She did small things to help around the house. He spent most all of his time in his workroom trying to discover the miscalculation that had cost the girl her mind.
He did not like to use superstitious terms but it could just be that her soul had gotten away before she could be reanimated.
He began slowly planning a second reanimation. It would not take long or require much new effort, but … Well, he would have to visit Dusk repeatedly before he could make a final action plan. The great evil in the Grateful Tower would not have stopped discarding corpses. It might be instructive to see if there was any change in the state of alert, too.
He could not shake a feeling that things had not gone quite perfectly when he collected Laissa.
He had no congress with the world. He spoke only with Laissa, who was not interested in conversation. Last time he spoke with anyone else was at the Jade Gate.
He needed to retrain himself to function in society.
But he dared not leave Laissa alone while he went to Dusk. She was not careful. She would harm herself somehow, although she was becoming more self-sufficient, slowly. Nor dared he take her with him. Her strangeness would flaunt itself. And some sorcerer surely would smell the necromancy animating her.
That would be the end of them both.
Six weeks after Laissa’s resurrection the necromancer made a cruel discovery: She was getting slower and weaker. He s
aw tiny signs that a less practiced eye would not recognize for months more.
Death was stealing her back, ever so slowly retaking that of which it had been cheated.
Death’s relentless bite would become ever more obvious, until even the blind would know it.
The necromancer immediately created a course of treatments, applied monthly, that would keep Laissa from sloughing off into oblivion. But those treatments were painful.
His project, his triumph, his girl, his daughter, would remain forever young, forever beautiful, but, sadly, would be forever dying, too.
Sorrow unmanned him. He had developed an affection for the girl, too strong for experimenter and experiment. He had conflated her emotionally with the Laissa who was no more. All objectivity had fled.
He knew. He saw himself caught in a cleft stick. He could sustain this Laissa while he tried to discover how to save her permanently. Or he could let her go and move on to a fresh, less flawed resurrection.
Emotion triumphed. He chose the beautiful girl.
8
Long Ago and Far Away: Sisters
Bathdek spent six days in a state nearly as awful as the Lord Chamberlain’s. The Dominator could call for her or Dorotea at any moment …
But, no, He was distracted thoroughly, in a continuous rage because of events in the Old Forest, where three veteran brigades had been exterminated to the last animal and camp follower by White Rose savages who remained stubbornly defiant in the face of assured destruction. The disappointment there was not a first. Fires burned on every frontier. The Dominator and the Ten could not be everywhere.
In His mad rage at this latest affront, the Dominator had ordered the Old Forest cleared to the last sapling, never mind that forest’s vastness. A clearing project of such magnitude would devour the full financial resources of the Domination for decades. The Dominator did not understand capital limitations. Nor any other limitations. He must crush, must destroy, must eradicate anyone who defied Him.
The self-anointed god of the Domination had lost all purchase upon reality.
The seventh morning after Dorotea vanished Bathdek received a response to her plea for an audience with her sister Sylith. The Senjak sisters were wary and jealous of one another, in the extreme.
Sylith’s quarters were opulent. The lord was generous. The Senjak family had helped make Him lord of the world. Their constancy guaranteed that He would remain the world’s master. One of the sisters was His virgin bride. Bathdek knew that she was not the one. She was sure that all of her sisters fulfilled the virginity requirement despite the gross usages to which He sometimes put them.
But wait! Might she be the wife without knowing it? She would not put the forging of such a secret union past her mother.
There had been no ceremony. No formal wedding. Everything had happened in secret, with quiet parental collusion. So, yes, the actual wife might not know that she was married.
Bathdek believed the wife must be Sylith or her eldest sister, Ardath. The wife could not be Dorotea. He would not refrain from using Dorotea to the fullest had He the legal right. Dorotea was the incarnation of His every physical fantasy. She might have been bred for the role.… But …
Hell would throw its gates wide were Dorotea the secret wife, murdered by ignorant lackeys.
Ardath. Scary Ardath. The eldest sister waited with Sylith. A painful surprise. Bathdek did not get along with Ardath.
Her sisters were so stunningly beautiful, she thought, although so wicked. Ardath was still only in the final season of her teens. She might even once have had a twin. Or Sylith might have. There were whispers. But Bathdek’s early memories were clear. She recalled no such older twin sister. True, there had been a brother born between her and Sylith but a fever had carried him off while she was still in diapers. She did not recall him at all.
They were ferociously powerful, the Senjak girls. Each owned a talent for sorcery outmatching that of most of the Ten Who Were Taken—many of whom also sprang from the Senjak clan.
Bathdek was not sufficiently self-aware to realize that she was as stunning as her sisters, in identical fashion. A glance might suggest that the three girls were identical triplets. Only Dorotea had been different, and that only in the color of her hair. Her body had been the same, less improvements yet to be wrought by time.
There was a hint of scandal surrounding Dorotea’s conception. Cautious whispers suggested that her mother might have shared an intimate moment with the Dominator, which could make a marriage to Dorotea really interesting.
The Senjak sisters were youthful versions of their mother. She, were she present, might have been taken for another sister, so skilled was she at defying the cruelties of time and childbearing.
Sylith asked, “This is about Dorotea, isn’t it?”
“It is.” That her sisters knew was no surprise. The Lord Chamberlain spied for everybody. She could only hope that terror would keep the man from reporting to Him.
Bathdek related everything she knew but not everything she guessed, then asked, “What should we do?”
Because Dorotea was their sister they were involved, up to their pretty ears, like it or not. The Dominator was especially paranoid lately, and not without reason. Chances were, He had more enemies than He imagined. He might think that the Senjaks had put together a scheme for slipping away. Any that escaped would take away a splinter of the power that made Him what He was. He would see them stealing what was His by divine right.
Sylith said, “Go on trying to trace Dorotea. We’ll make sure that you’re not summoned. His rage makes him easy to manipulate. The news from the frontiers will keep him angry. It’s never good.”
Bathdek envied the older girls their ability to remain calm and confident. She was not yet ready to try managing the madman.
Sylith added, “We’ll have to tell Him someday, but that should wait till He’s ferociously distracted by the latest far-off disaster. We should have every conceivably useful detail available when that day does come. We will have to build a special reality inside his mind.”
Bathdek nodded, jealous of her sisters again. They were often the real forces moving the Domination.
Sylith said, “Go now.”
Bathdek went, wondering why Ardath had not spoken. For Ardath life was a competition with Sylith: almost a mortal competition. She should have been second-guessing at least.
Did that mean that the situation was grimmer than she feared? That was hard to imagine. She was convinced already that she was sprinting down the road to Hell.
9
In Modern Times: Bone Candy
The campaign season was over. The weather stank. The Dark Horse was packed up elbow-to-asshole. There was not enough make-work to keep the troops busy. Markeg Zhorab’s wife and sister had to help serve. The wicked of mind hoped he would bring out his delectable daughter, Sora.
Otto checked his last card, cursed. A turn as dealer had not helped. His luck was still dreadful. “You’re damned grim for a guy that keeps winning, Croaker.”
“Bad nightmare last night. Still feeling it.”
Silent signed, “Same one?”
“Same flashback.” To when I was a prisoner in the Tower. Details fled when I woke up but the creepy dread stuck. “Third night in a row.”
Otto grinned. “Your honey must be missing you.” The old canard.
Silent signed, “Stop that.”
My turn. I pounced, down with eleven. Otto cursed. Silent shook his head, resigned. Corey, in One-Eye’s usual seat, pretended to wipe away tears. He asked, “When is the battlefield not a battlefield?”
“Huh?” Otto grunted. “That some dumbass riddle?” Surprise. Otto is bad with riddles. He solves puzzles with hammers and swords.
“One-Eye asked me that last time we talked.”
I looked around. Silent was the only wizard in the place. I asked, “Where are Goblin and One-Eye?”
Their apprentice, the Third, was missing too. He did not usually stray far from
the beer. Those two can drive anyone to drink.
* * *
Otto collected Silent’s deal like he feared the cards would bite. “Them two are gone together, that could be bad.”
Those two are always up to no good but not always together. The table fell into a deep disquiet. Corey muttered, “Definitely not good.” Silent nodded grimly.
Zhorab delivered an untimely pitcher, muttered, “Flies.” He hustled off, loath to leave his bar undefended.
I discarded a seven of spades. Corey snagged it, spread the five-six-seven-eight and dumped a red five. He would be down to an ace or deuce. Otto and Silent had spread threes and fours already. He would have played on those if he could. Nobody groused. Everybody suddenly had a whole lot of nothing to discuss. Cards and drinks had become totally fascinating.
Two Dead stepped into the big taproom. Long, lean, skeletal, he needed more legs and eyes to complete himself. He opened his coat. Flies came out to circle him.
Corey repeated, “When is the battlefield not a battlefield?”
It occurred to me that that could be more than one question depending on how you heard it.
* * *
Two Dead. Real name, Shoré Chodroze, wizard colonel from Eastern Army HQ with plenipotentiary powers. A blessing upon the Black Company bestowed by the Taken Whisper. He never volunteered anything about his real mission. He was said to be an unpredictably nasty sociopath. Our main wizards disappeared right after he turned up. He was Two Dead because when he rolled in with one oversize bodyguard, all bluster and self-regard, the Lieutenant had declared, “That man ain’t worth two dead flies.”
So Two Dead, in vile humor, arranged for flies to follow him around. Way more than two, and very much bitey alive.
Otto dealt. The rest of us shrank. Somebody was about to get unhappy.
I met Two Dead’s gaze, as always amazed that he owned two good eyes. The left side of his face featured a lightning bolt of bruise-colored scar tissue, forehead to chin, but his eye had survived. I suspected a glancing upward thrust from an infantry pole arm.