“It’s me. Really. Alive and in a mood to kick some ass. But that’s not what I’ve got on my mind right now. Where’s Lady?”
Poor boy. Blade gave him the bad news. His paramour had left more than a week ago, headed north. They missed each other on the road.
Swan and Mather were impressed by the presence of the Prince, their supposed boss. Why was he out running around, anyway? I noticed Croaker had a hard stare for Sindhu, who had stayed behind when Lady left.
The Old Man snapped, “Quit making love to that damned thing, Murgen. I need to catch up. I’m way out of touch. Will somebody take this damned butt-cruncher?”
A soldier grabbed his mount’s reins.
“Let’s get out of the sun.”
“I want to hear your story,” I said. “While it’s fresh.”
“Going to put it into the Annals? You been keeping them up?”
“I tried. Only I had to leave them in the city.” I did not like that, either. One-Eye could promise the moon about taking care of them but would he deliver?
“I’ll look forward to reading the Book of Murgen. If it’s any good you’ve got the job for life.”
Swan said something about Lady planning to write a book of her own when she got time. Croaker flung a stone at a crow. It was the first of those birds I had spotted since the albino in the night. Maybe he brought it with him. I sketched some of what had been happening in Dejagore.
“Guess it hasn’t been fun for anybody. Seems Mogaba is the main problem. Better get right after him. How many people are still over there?”
“My guess is him and the Nar have a thousand to fifteen hundred men. I don’t know how many people I have. Some come out every night but since I got elected prisoner here I can’t keep track. Goblin and One-Eye and most of the Company are still over there.” I hoped Uncle Doj and Thai Dei were using this distraction to get To Tan and Sahra and themselves on the road.
“Why would they stay?”
“They don’t want to leave. They say they want to wait till Lady gets all her powers back. They say something is out here waiting for them.”
“Powers back?”
“It’s happening,” Blade said.
“Hunh. So what are they afraid of, Murgen?”
“Shapeshifter’s apprentice. That bitch from Juniper. She almost got One-Eye once already once...” How come I believed the little rat now but had not when he had told me?
I had a momentary vision of One-Eye puffing through the night with fanged death closing in. It was as solid as actual memory.
“I remember her. She was a real piece of work. Marron Shed should have taken care of her when he had the chance.”
“Evidently she wants to get even with us for doing Shifter. She may be locked into the forvalaka shape, too. Which would really piss anybody off, I guess. But if you was to ask my personal opinion I think she’s only an excuse. They want to stay where they are because otherwise they might have to leave something behind.”
“Like what?”
I shrugged. “They’re Goblin and One-Eye. They’ve had months to pilfer and profiteer.”
“Tell me about Mogaba.”
Now we got down to the grim stuff.
Before the discussion ended even nasty Sindhu condemned the Nar.
“I’ll put an end to that. You want to take a message to Mogaba?”
I looked over my shoulder. He could not be asking the guy behind me. There was nobody there. “You shitting me? Not unless it’s an order. And maybe not then. Mogaba wants my head. Not to mention my heart and liver for breakfast. Crazy as he is right now he might go after me with you standing right behind me.”
“I’ll get somebody else.”
“Good idea.”
“I’ll go,” Swan volunteered. Then him and Mather got into an argument about that. Evidently Swan had something to prove to himself and Cordy did not believe he needed to bother.
83
My status in camp changed sharply. Suddenly I never was a prisoner, never had been unfree to do whatever served the common good.
Only problem was, my tent was cold. All I had left of Sahra and the Nyueng Bao was the jade amulet Sahra had taken from Hong Tray before we had carried the children out of the killing place.
“You done yet?” Croaker demanded, finding me seated in front of my tent, working on the standard.
I showed him what I was doing. “Good enough?”
“Perfect. You ready?”
“Ready as I’ll ever get.” I touched the jade amulet.
“She pretty special?”
“Very special.”
“I want to hear all about her people.”
“Someday.”
We walked through the hills and down to the shore. A sizable boat was out on the lake already. Blade’s soldiers had transported it overland after having failed to work it along the canal from the nearest river to the lake. Croaker and I took up position on a prominent hummock. I displayed the standard. They would be able to see that from the city even if they did not recognize me and the Old Man.
Mogaba wanted to know where the standard was? He could see for himself, now.
While the boat crossed over and returned Croaker and I speculated as to what made both Mogaba and Lady want to be in charge so badly.
“Looks like Swan is getting results. Can you see what’s going on?”
“Looks like somebody black getting into the boat.”
That somebody turned out to be Sindawe. I told the Old Man, “This guy was always as right with us as having Mogaba for a boss would allow. Ochiba and Isi and some of the others weren’t too bad, either. But they wouldn’t disobey orders.”
Sindawe stepped ashore. Croaker saluted him. He responded uncertainly, looked to me for a clue. I shrugged. He was on his own. I had no idea where this was headed.
Sindawe made sure he was face to face with the real Captain. Once he was satisfied, he suggested, “Let us step out of sight and talk.”
The Old Man made a small gesture that told me I should let them talk in complete privacy. They walked around behind the hummock and sat on a rock. They talked for a long time, voices never rising. Sindawe finally rose and walked back to the boat like a man borne down by an incredibly heavy burden.
“What’s the story?” I asked Croaker. “He looks like he suddenly added twenty years on top of the wear and tear of the siege.”
“Years of the heart, Murgen. Feeling morally compelled to betray somebody who has been your best friend since childhood will do that to you.”
“What?”
He would say nothing more. “We’re going over there. I’m going to meet Mogaba nose to nose.”
I thought of a pile of arguments against. I did not bother. He would not listen. “Not me.” I shuddered. My spine was shivering to that chill they say happens when somebody walks over your grave.
Croaker looked at me hard. I drove the butt of the standard into the earth, vigorously, meaning, “Here I stand.” He grunted, turned and went down to the boat. The creature Sindhu snaked out of nowhere and joined the party. I wondered how much of Sindawe’s and Croaker’s conversation he had overheard. Not a word, probably. The Old Man would have used the Jewel Cities dialect.
Once the boat was well out onto the water I sat down beside the standard, clung to the pole and tried to figure out what made it impossible for me to go back over there.
84
I had suffered no big seizures for a while. I was not on guard anymore. This one began insidiously, like just losing focus and drifting into a lazy daydream. I stared at Dejagore but no longer really saw it, thought of the women who had entered my life and the ancient one who had left it. Already I missed Sahra and so-serious To Tan.
A white crow landed on the crossbar of the standard, cawed down at me. I paid no attention.
I stood at the edge of a shimmering wheatfield. A twisted, broken black stump rose thirty yards from me, in the field’s center. Bickering crows surrounded it. The fairy tow
ers of Overlook gleamed in the distance, days’ walk away. I recognized them for what they were without understanding how I could know.
Suddenly the crows rose up and wheeled around, flew that direction in an uncrowlike flock. One white crow stayed behind, circling.
The stump shimmered darkly. A glamor faded away.
A woman stood there. She looked very much like Lady but was even more beautiful. She seemed to look right through me. Or at and into me. She smiled wickedly, playfully, seductively, perhaps insanely. In a moment the albino bird settled onto her shoulder.
“You are impossible.”
Her smile shattered into shards of laughter.
Unless I was completely, inescapably mad there was only one person this could be. And she died long before I ever joined the Company.
Soulcatcher.
Croaker was there when she went down.
Soulcatcher.
That would explain a lot. That would illuminate a hundred mysteries. But how could that be?
A huge black beast that looked something like an ebony tiger padded past me, from behind, went and settled on its haunches near the woman. There was nothing servile in its manner.
I was frightened. If Soulcatcher was alive and in this end of the world and inclined to meddle she could become the greatest terror around. She was more powerful than Longshadow, Howler or Lady. But, unless she had changed since the old days, she preferred to use her talents in small ways, for spite or her own amusement.
She winked at me. Then she spun around and just seemed to disappear, leaving more laughter rippling in the air behind her. Her laughter became the mirth of the white crow.
The forvalaka became bored with the show, went off into the distance. And I faded.
85
A crow cawed overhead. A hand shook my shoulder, not gently. “Are you all right, sir? Is there a problem?”
“What?” I was seated on a stone step, clinging to the edge of a massive wooden door. An albino crow paced back and forth on the door’s top edge. The man who held my shoulder tried to shoo the bird with his free hand and some pithy curses. He was huge and hairy.
It was the middle of the night. What light there was came from a lantern the man had set upon the cobblestones. It set eyes glowing across the street, at a low level. For an instant I thought I saw something huge and catlike slipping past.
The man was one of the Shadar patrolmen the Liberator had employed to roam the streets after dark, maintaining order and keeping a watch for outsiders of dubious provenance.
Laughter came from the darkness across the way. The patrolman was not doing a good job. I was supposed to be one of the good guys here. She was one of the dubious strangers.
I was in Taglios!
I smelled smoke. The lantern?
No. The odor came from the stairwell behind me.
I recalled dropping a lamp. Recalled a confused cacophony of wheres and whens. “I’m all right. Just had a dizzy spell.”
Laughter from across the street.
The Shadar glanced back but otherwise seemed indifferent. He did not want to believe my story. He wanted to find something wrong right here right now. He did not like foreigners. And us northerners were all madmen and drunks. But, unfortunately, we were also very much in favor with the Palace.
I got up. I had to get moving. My mind was clearing. The truth was coming back. I had a desperate need to get to the old familiar entrance to the Palace because I had to get to my apartment in a hurry.
The moon suddenly splashed its light down into the street. It had to be past midnight. I saw the woman watching from across the way. I started to say something to the Shadar but a sharp whistle came from the distance, in the direction the monster had seemed to be moving. Another patrolman needed assistance. He said, “Take care, foreigner.” He jogged away.
I ran too, not pausing to take the elementary step of closing the sally door.
I reached my customary entrance. Something was wrong. Cordy Mather’s Guards should have been on duty there.
I was unarmed except for a belt knife. I drew it, pretending I was a fierce commando. There was no way Mather’s gang would leave an entrance uncovered. You could not bribe those guys to screw up.
I found the sentries in the guard room. They had been strangled.
No need to question the prisoner further, now. But who was the target? The Old Man? Almost certainly. The Radisha? Probably. And anyone else important that they could get.
I fought panic, managed to keep from baring off blindly. Thai Dei and Uncle Doj were up there, anyway.
I stripped the shirt off one dead guard, wrapped my throat. That should afford some protection against a Strangler’s scarf. Then I bounded upstairs like a mountain goat who was long out of practice. I reached my own floor so winded I had to lean against the stairwell wall and strain to keep from puking. My legs were jelly.
Alarms banged everywhere now. It was happening as I stood there. I got some wind back, left the stairwell for the corridor and tripped over a dead man.
He was filthy and undernourished. A blade had laid him open from left shoulder to right hip. His right hand lay ten feet away. It still clutched a black rumel. There was blood everywhere. Some still seeped from the corpse.
I stared at the scarf. The dead man had murdered many times. Now Kina had betrayed him.
Such treachery is one of the goddess’s more endearing qualities.
Only Ash Wand could cut that clean and deep.
Another corpse lay near my apartment door. A third lay in the doorway itself, holding the door open.
All the blood was fresh. The corpses still bled. As yet few flies were in evidence.
Knowing I did not want to do so I entered my quarters ready to sink bare teeth into anything that moved.
I smelled something.
I spun and stabbed as someone skinny and brown and unwashed flew at me, hit me, threw me backwards. A black rumel spun around my neck but failed its function because of the shirt wrapping.
I hurtled backward into my worktable. There was a sharp pain in the back of my head. Inside I screamed, “Not again!”
Darkness closed down.
Pain awakened me. My arm was on fire.
My crash into the table had overturned a lamp. My papers, my Annals, were burning. I was burning. I leaped up shrieking, beating my arm, and when I had that extinguished I began jumping around trying to save the papers, I saw nothing else and thought of nothing else. This was my life, going up in smoke. And beyond the smoke there was only the house of pain, only the bleak seasons.
Way, way over there, like down a long, cruel tunnel, I saw Uncle Doj kneeling beside Thai Dei. Between them and me lay three dead men. The floor was invisible beneath their blood. Two of the dead showed Ash Wand’s characteristic precision cuts. The other had fallen to a cross cut that betrayed a hint of raggedness. The swordsman had been in the grip of an uncontrolled rage.
Uncle Doj held Thai Dei’s head against his chest. Thai Dei’s left arm hung as though broken. His right surrounded To Tan on his lap. The five-year-old’s head was tilted at a bizarre angle. Thai Dei’s face was pale. His mind was not in this world.
Uncle Doj rose, came toward me, stared into my eyes, shook his head, then stepped close and wrapped powerful arms around me. “They were too many and too fast.”
I collapsed.
This was the present. This was today. This was the new hell where I did not want to be.
... fragments...
... just blackened fragments, crumbling between my fingers.
Browned page corners that reveal half a dozen words in a crabbed hand, their context no longer known.
All that remains of two volumes of Annals. A thousand hours of labor. Four years of history. Gone forever.
Uncle Doj wants something. He is going to make me drink some strange Nyueng Bao philtre.
Fragments...
... all around, fragments of my work, my life, my love and my pain, scattered in this
bleak season...
Darkness. And in the darkness, shards of time.
Hey there! Welcome to the city of the dead...
86
The apartment was overrun with guards. What was going on? I was confused. Another fainting spell?
Smoke. Blood. The present. The hard present that breathed pain like a dragon breathes fire.
I became aware of the Captain’s presence. He came from the back of the apartment shaking his head. He eyed Uncle Doj curiously.
Cordy Mather blew in looking like a man encountering the worst horror show of a long and unhappy lifetime. He went straight to the Old Man. I heard only “... dead men all over the place.”
I could not catch Croaker’s response.
“... were after you?”
Croaker shrugged.
“You just moved out last...”
A Guard rushed in. He whispered to Mather. Mather barked, “Listen up! We’ve still got some live ones out there. Be careful.” He and the Old Man moved a little closer. “They’re lost in the labyrinth. We’ll need One-Eye to find them all.”
“The excitement never ends, does it?” Croaker sounded really tired.
To no one special Uncle Doj announced, “They have only just begun to pay.” His Taglian was excellent considering he had been unable to speak a word the day before.
Mother Gota came from the back, bent and moving slowly. Typically of Nyueng Bao women dealing with disaster she had brewed tea. This was quite possibly the worst day of her life. It would be a good pot.
The Captain gave Uncle Doj another searching look, then knelt beside me. “What happened here, Murgen?”
“I’m not sure. I walked in in the middle of it. Stabbed a guy. That one. Got thrown across a table. Tripped and fell through a hole in time. Maybe. Woke up on fire.” I still had charred pages around me. My arm hurt like hell. “There were dead people all over. I lost it. Next thing I knew it was now.”
Croaker caught Mather’s eye. He used a rocking motion of his right hand to indicate Uncle Doj.
Cordy Mather asked Uncle for his story. He spoke perfect Nyueng Bao.