The being on the
huge wooden throne in the heart of the fortress at the center of
the stone plain is a construct. Possibly he was created by the
gods, who fought their wars upon that plain. Or perhaps his
creators were the builders who constructed the plain—if they were
not gods themselves. Opinions vary. Stories abound. The demon
Shivetya himself is not disposed to be unstinting with the facts,
or is, at best, inconsistent in their distribution. He has shown
his latest chronicler several conflicting versions of ancient
events. Old Baladitya has abandoned all hope of establishing an
exact truth and, instead, seeks the deeper range of meaning
underpinning what the golem does reveal. Baladitya understands that
in addition to being foreign territory the past is, as history, a
hall of mirrors that reflect the needs of souls observing from the
present. Absolute fact serves the hungers of only a few
disconnected people. Symbol and faith serve the rest.
Baladitya’s Company career duplicates his prior life. He
writes things down. When he was a copyist at the Taglian Royal
Library he wrote things down. Now, nominally, he is a prisoner of
war. Chances are he has forgotten that. In reality he is freer
today to pursue his own interests than ever he was at the
library.
The old scholar lives and works around the demon’s feet.
Which has to be as close to personal heaven as a Gunni historian
can imagine. If the historian does not remain too determinedly
wedded to Gunni religious doctrine.
Shivetya’s motives for refusing categorical declarations
may stem from bitterness about his lot. By his own admission he has
met most of the gods face-to-face. His recollections concerning
them are even less flattering than those spicing most of Gunni
mythology, where few of the gods are extolled as role models.
Almost without exception the Gunni deities are cruel and selfish
and untouched by any celestial sense of rajadharma.
A tall black man stepped into the light cast by
Baladitya’s lamps. “Learned anything exciting today,
old-timer?” The copyist’s fuel expenses are prodigal.
He is indulged.
The old man did not respond. He is almost deaf. He exploits his
infirmity to its limits. Not even Blade insists that he share
routine camp chores any longer.
Blade asked again but the copyist’s nose remained close to
the page on which he was writing. His penmanship is swift and
precise. Blade cannot decipher the complicated ecclesiastical
alphabet, except for some of those characters it shares with the
only slightly simpler common script. Blade looked up into the
golem’s eye. That appeared to be about the size of a
roc’s egg. The adjective “baleful” fit it well.
Not even naive old Baladitya has ever proposed that the demon be
delivered from the restraint guaranteed by the daggers nailing its
limbs to the throne. Neither has the demon ever encouraged anyone
to release it. It has endured for thousands of years. It has the
patience of stone.
Blade tried another approach. “I’ve had a runner
come from the Abode of Ravens.” He prefers the native name
for the Company’s base. It is so much more dramatic than
Outpost or Bridgehead and Blade is a dramatic man fond of dramatic
gestures. “The Captain says she expects to acquire the needed
shadowgate knowledge shortly. Something is about to break loose in
Khang Phi. She wants me to get cracking getting more treasure
brought up. She wants you to finish finding everything out.
She’ll be moving soon.”
The copyist grunted. “He’s easily bored, you
know.”
“What?” Blade was startled, then angry. The old man
had not heard a word.
“Our host.” The old man did not lift his eyes from
the page. It would take them too long to readjust.
“He’s easily bored.” Baladitya cared nothing
about the Company’s plans. Baladitya was in paradise.
“You’d think we’d be a change that would
distract him.”
“He’s been distracted by mortals a thousand times
before. He’s still here. None of those people are, except
those remembered in stone.” The plain itself, though older
and vastly slower than Shivetya, might have a mind of its own.
Stone remembers. And stone weeps. “Their very empires have
been forgotten. How much chance is there that this time will be
different?”
Baladitya sounded a little empty. Not unreasonable, Blade
thought, considering the fact that he looked into the time abyss
represented by the demon all the time. Talk about vanity and
chasing after wind!
“Yet he’s helping us. More or less.”
“Only because he believes we’re the last mayflies
he’ll see. Excepting the Children of Night when they raise up
their Dark Mother. He’s convinced that we’re his last
chance to escape.”
“And all we got to do to get his help is skrag the nasty
Goddess, then put his ass away for the long night.” The
demon’s gaze seemed to drill right through him.
“Nothing to it. Piece of cake, as Goblin used to say. Though
the saying doesn’t make any literal sense.” Blade
lifted his fingers to his eyebrow in a salute to the demon. Whose
eyes seemed to be smouldering now.
“God killing. That should be perfect work for
you.”
Blade was unsure if Baladitya had spoken or Shivetya had entered
his mind. He did not like what the observation implied. It echoed
too closely Sleepy’s thinking, which is why his posh job in
Khang Phi is gone and he has charge of operations on the plain,
having abandoned banquets and down mattresses for iron rations and
a bed of cold and silent stone shared only with unhappy, withered
dreams, a crazy scholar, miscellaneous thieves and a house-sized
lunatic demon half as old as time.
All his adult life Blade has been driven by a hatred for
religion. He has an especial abhorrence for its retailers.
Considering his current whereabouts and present occupation it seems
likely that he should have restrained his impulse to share his
opinions.
Blade could have sworn that, for an instant, a smile played
across the demon’s features.
Blade chose not to comment.
He is a man of few words. He believes there is little point to
speech. He believes the golem eavesdrops on his thoughts. Unless it
has become so bored with ephemerals that it no longer pays
attention.
That hint of amusement again. Blade’s speculation is not
valid. He should know better. Shivetya is interested in every
breath every brother of the Black Company takes. Shivetya has
anointed these men as the death-givers.
“You need anything?” Blade asked the old man,
resting a hand on his shoulder briefly. “Before I head down
below?” The contact is entirely contrived. But Baladitya
cares nothing about the touch, genuine or not.
Baladitya lifted his pen from his right hand with his left,
flexed his fingers. “I suppose I should eat something. I
can’t recall when last I put fuel on the fire.”
“I’ll see that you get something.” The
something was sure to be rice and spice and golem manna. If there
was anything Blade regretted about his life, it was having lived
most of it in a part of the world where a majority of the
population include a vegetarian diet within their religion and
those who do not mainly eat fish or chicken. Blade is ready to
start at whichever end of a spit-roast pig and not stop until he
reaches the other.
Blade’s command, the thieves, the Company pathfinders,
includes twenty-six of the outfit’s brightest and most
trusted youngsters, all Children of the Dead. They need to be both
smart and trustworthy because Sleepy wants to exploit the treasures
in the caverns beneath the plain and because they really have to
understand that the plain itself will not forgive them if they do
the wrong thing. Shivetya has extended his favor. Shivetya sees
everything and knows everything inside the gates of his universe.
Shivetya is the soul of the plain. No one comes or goes without
Shivetya’s countenance, or at least his indifference. And in
the unlikely event that Shivetya remained indifferent to an
unauthorized theft, there was nowhere for a thief to run but back
to the shadowgate opening on the Land of Unknown Shadows. That was
the only shadowgate under control and functioning properly. That
was the only shadowgate not certain to kill the thief.
It was a long stroll across the great circle surrounding the
crude throne. That floor is anything but crude. It is an exact
one-eightieth scale representation of the plain outside, less the
memorial pillars that were added in a later age by men who failed
to possess even mythologized recollections of the builders.
Hundreds of manhours have gone into clearing the accumulated dirt
and dust off its surface so Shivetya can more clearly discern every
detail of his kingdom. Shivetya’s throne rests upon a raised
wheel one-eightieth the size of this.
Decades ago, Soulcatcher’s tampering triggered an
earthquake that battered the fortress and split its floor into a
vast crevasse. Outside the plain the disaster destroyed cities and
killed thousands. Today the only memorial of what had been a gap in
the floor a dozen yards wide and thousands of feet deep is a red
stripe meandering past the throne. It dwindles every day. As does
Shivetya, the mechanism ruling the plain heals itself.
The great circular model of the plain rises half a yard above
the rest of the floor, which exists at the level of the plain
outside.
Blade dropped off the edge of the wheel. He strode to a hole in
the floor, the head of stairs leading down. They descend for miles,
through caverns natural and created. The sleeping Goddess Kina lies
at the deepest level, patiently awaiting the Year of the Skulls and
the beginning of the Khadi Cycle, the destruction of the world. The
wounded Goddess Kina.
Shadows stirred along the nearby wall. Blade froze. Who? No way
that could be his people. Or, what?
Fear speared through Blade. Shadows in motion often presaged
cruel, screaming death. Had those things found a way into the
fortress? Their merciless feasting was not a horror he cared to
witness ever again. And in particular he did not want to be the
main course.
“The Nef,” Blade told himself as three humanoid
shapes emerged from the darkness. He recognized them despite never
having seen them before. Hardly anyone did, outside of dreams. Or
maybe nightmares. The Nef were incredibly ugly. Though they might
have been wearing masks. The several descriptions available did not
agree except as to ugliness. He counted them off. “The
Washane. The Washene. The Washone.” Names Shivetya had given
Sleepy years ago. What did they mean? Did they mean anything at
all? “How did they get in here?” The answer might be
critical. Killer shadows might exploit the same opening.
As the Nef always did, they tried to communicate something. In
the past their efforts inevitably failed. But this time their
appeal seemed obvious. They did not want Blade to go down those
stairs.
Sleepy, Master Santaraksita, and others who have been in contact
with Shivetya believe that the Nef are artificial reproductions of
the beings who created the plain. Shivetya brought them into
existence because he longed for a connection with something
approximating those whose artifice had wrought the great engine and
its pathways between the worlds, because he was lonely.
Shivetya has lost his will to live. If he should perish,
whatever he has created himself will go with him. The Nef are not
yet prepared to embrace oblivion, despite the endless horror and
tedium existence upon the plain imposes.
Blade spread his hands at his sides in a gesture of
helplessness. “You guys need to polish your communication
skills.” Not a sound came from the Nef but their growing
frustration became palpable. Which had been a constant from the
first time anyone had dreamt of them.
Blade stared. He did try to understand. He considered the
ironies of the Black Company’s adventure across the
glittering plain. He was an atheist himself. His journey had
brought him face-to-face with a complete ecology of supernatural
entities. And Tobo and Sleepy, whom he considered reliable
witnesses otherwise, claimed actually to have seen the grim Goddess
Kina who, myth suggested, lay imprisoned a mile beneath his
feet.
Sleepy, of course, faced her crises of faith. A devout
Vehdna monotheist, she never, ever encountered any worldly
sustenance for her beliefs. Though supportive evidence is thin, the
Gunni religion only creaks badly under the burden of the knowledge
we have unearthed. The Gunni are polytheists accustomed to having
their gods assume countless aspects and avatars, shapes and
disguises. So much so that, in some myths, those gods seem to be
murdering or cuckolding themselves. The Gunni have the flexibility
to look at every discovery, as Master Santaraksita has, and declare
new information to be just another way of proclaiming the same old
divine truths.
God is god, whatever his name. Blade has seen those sentiments
inlaid in the wall tiles in several places in Khang Phi.
Whenever anyone strays far from Shivetya, a ball of earthy brown
glow tags along. It hovers above and behind one shoulder or
another. The ball does not shed much light but in what otherwise
would be utter darkness they are sufficient. They are the
golem’s doing. Shivetya has powers he has forgotten how to
use. He might be a small god himself if he was not nailed to his
ancient throne.
Blade descended nearly a thousand steps before he encountered
anyone headed upward. This soldier carried a heavy pack.
“Sergeant Vanh.”
The soldier grunted. Already he was winded. No one made more
than one trip a day. Blade gave Vanh the bad news because he might
not run into him again for days. “Had a message from the
Captain. We have to step it up. She’s almost ready to
move.”
Vanh mumbled the sorts of things soldiers always do. He
continued his climb. Blade wondered how Sleepy planned to haul off
the mountain of treasure already accumulated up top. It was, for
sure, enough to finance a pretty good war.
Another thousand steps downward, repeating his message several
times. He left the stair at the level everyone called the Cave of
the Ancients because of the old men interred there. Blade always
stopped to visit his friend Cordy Mather. It was a ritual of respect.
Cordy was dead. Most of the others confined in the cave remained
alive, enmeshed in stasis spells. Somehow, during the long
Captivity, Mather had shed the spells confining him. And success
had cost him his life. He had not been able to find his way
out.
Most of the old men in the cave meant nothing to Blade or the
Company. Only Shivetya knew who they were or why they had been
interred. Certainly they had irked someone armed with the power to
confine them. Several corpses, though, had been Company brothers
when still alive. Several others had been captives before
Soulcatcher buried the Company. Death had found them because,
evidently, Cordy Mather had tried to wake them up. Touching the
Captured without sorcerous precautions inevitably caused the death
of the touched.
Blade resisted the urge to kick the sorcerer Longshadow. That
madman was a commodity of incalculable worth in the Land of Unknown
Shadows. The Company had grown strong and wealthy because of him.
It continued to prosper. “How you doing, Shadowmaster? Looks
like you’ll be here a while yet.” Blade assumed the
sorcerer could not hear him. He could not recall having heard
anything when he was under the enchantment himself. He could not
recall having been aware in any way, though Murgen said there were
times when it looked like the Captured were aware of their
surroundings. “They haven’t pushed the bidding high
enough yet. I hate to admit it but you really are a popular guy. In
your own special way.” Not a generous or forgiving or even
empathetic man, Blade stood with hands on hips staring down at
Longshadow. The sorcerer looked like a skeleton barely covered by
diseased skin. His face was locked into a scream. Blade told him,
“They still say, ‘All Evil Dies There an Endless
Death.’ Especially when they’re talking about
you.”
Not far from Longshadow is the Company’s other insane
sorcerer prisoner, the Howler. This one presents a greater
temptation. Blade saw no value whatsoever to keeping Howler alive.
The little shit has a history of treachery that goes way, way back
and a character unlikely to change because of this confinement. He
survived a similar Captivity before. That one endured for
centuries.
Tobo did not need to learn any of the Howler’s evil crap.
And Tobo’s education was the only excuse Blade had heard for
letting the little ragbag live.
Blade paid his deepest respects to Mather. Cordy was a good
friend for a long time. Blade owes Cordy his life. He wished the
evil fortune had befallen him. Cordy wanted to live. Blade believes
he is proceeding on inertia.
Blade continued his descent into the earth, past the treasure
caverns that were being looted to finance the Company’s
homegoing, it was hoped on a spectacularly memorable scale.
Blade is not much given to emotional vapors or seizures of fear.
He has a cool enough head to have survived for years as a Company
agent inside Longshadow’s camp. But as he moved deeper into
the earth he began to twitch and sweat. His pace slackened. He
passed the last known cavern. Nothing lay below that but the
ultimate enemy, the Mother of Night herself. She was the enemy who
would still be waiting once all the other, lesser adversaries had
been brushed aside or extinguished.
To Kina, the Black Company is an annoying buzz in the ear, a
mosquito that has gotten away with taking a sip or two of blood and
has not had the good sense to get the hell away.
Blade slowed again. The light following him kept weakening.
Where once he could see clearly twenty steps ahead now he could see
only ten, the farther four seeming to be behind the face of a
thickening black fog. Here the darkness seemed almost alive. Here
the darkness felt as though it was under much greater pressure, the
way water seemed to exert more as you swam deeper beneath its
surface.
Blade found it harder to breathe. He forced himself to do so,
deeply and rapidly, then went on, against the insistence of
instinct. A silver chalice took form in the fog, just five steps
below. It stood about a foot tall, a simple tall cup made of noble
metal. Blade had placed it there. It marked the lowest step he had
yet been able to reach.
Now each step downward seemed to take place against the
resistance of liquid tar. Each step brought the darkness crushing
in harder. The light from behind was too weak to reach even one
step beyond the chalice.
Blade makes this effort frequently. He accounts it exercise for
his will and courage. Each descent he manages to make it as far as
the chalice mostly by being angry that he cannot push past it.
This time he tried something different. He threw a handful of
coins collected from one of the treasure caves. His arm had no
strength but gravity had not lost its power nor had sound been
devoured by the darkness. The coins tinkled away down the
stairwell. But not for long. After a moment it sounded like they
were rolling around on a floor. Then they were silent. Then a tiny
little voice from far, far away cried, “Help.”
The being on the
huge wooden throne in the heart of the fortress at the center of
the stone plain is a construct. Possibly he was created by the
gods, who fought their wars upon that plain. Or perhaps his
creators were the builders who constructed the plain—if they were
not gods themselves. Opinions vary. Stories abound. The demon
Shivetya himself is not disposed to be unstinting with the facts,
or is, at best, inconsistent in their distribution. He has shown
his latest chronicler several conflicting versions of ancient
events. Old Baladitya has abandoned all hope of establishing an
exact truth and, instead, seeks the deeper range of meaning
underpinning what the golem does reveal. Baladitya understands that
in addition to being foreign territory the past is, as history, a
hall of mirrors that reflect the needs of souls observing from the
present. Absolute fact serves the hungers of only a few
disconnected people. Symbol and faith serve the rest.
Baladitya’s Company career duplicates his prior life. He
writes things down. When he was a copyist at the Taglian Royal
Library he wrote things down. Now, nominally, he is a prisoner of
war. Chances are he has forgotten that. In reality he is freer
today to pursue his own interests than ever he was at the
library.
The old scholar lives and works around the demon’s feet.
Which has to be as close to personal heaven as a Gunni historian
can imagine. If the historian does not remain too determinedly
wedded to Gunni religious doctrine.
Shivetya’s motives for refusing categorical declarations
may stem from bitterness about his lot. By his own admission he has
met most of the gods face-to-face. His recollections concerning
them are even less flattering than those spicing most of Gunni
mythology, where few of the gods are extolled as role models.
Almost without exception the Gunni deities are cruel and selfish
and untouched by any celestial sense of rajadharma.
A tall black man stepped into the light cast by
Baladitya’s lamps. “Learned anything exciting today,
old-timer?” The copyist’s fuel expenses are prodigal.
He is indulged.
The old man did not respond. He is almost deaf. He exploits his
infirmity to its limits. Not even Blade insists that he share
routine camp chores any longer.
Blade asked again but the copyist’s nose remained close to
the page on which he was writing. His penmanship is swift and
precise. Blade cannot decipher the complicated ecclesiastical
alphabet, except for some of those characters it shares with the
only slightly simpler common script. Blade looked up into the
golem’s eye. That appeared to be about the size of a
roc’s egg. The adjective “baleful” fit it well.
Not even naive old Baladitya has ever proposed that the demon be
delivered from the restraint guaranteed by the daggers nailing its
limbs to the throne. Neither has the demon ever encouraged anyone
to release it. It has endured for thousands of years. It has the
patience of stone.
Blade tried another approach. “I’ve had a runner
come from the Abode of Ravens.” He prefers the native name
for the Company’s base. It is so much more dramatic than
Outpost or Bridgehead and Blade is a dramatic man fond of dramatic
gestures. “The Captain says she expects to acquire the needed
shadowgate knowledge shortly. Something is about to break loose in
Khang Phi. She wants me to get cracking getting more treasure
brought up. She wants you to finish finding everything out.
She’ll be moving soon.”
The copyist grunted. “He’s easily bored, you
know.”
“What?” Blade was startled, then angry. The old man
had not heard a word.
“Our host.” The old man did not lift his eyes from
the page. It would take them too long to readjust.
“He’s easily bored.” Baladitya cared nothing
about the Company’s plans. Baladitya was in paradise.
“You’d think we’d be a change that would
distract him.”
“He’s been distracted by mortals a thousand times
before. He’s still here. None of those people are, except
those remembered in stone.” The plain itself, though older
and vastly slower than Shivetya, might have a mind of its own.
Stone remembers. And stone weeps. “Their very empires have
been forgotten. How much chance is there that this time will be
different?”
Baladitya sounded a little empty. Not unreasonable, Blade
thought, considering the fact that he looked into the time abyss
represented by the demon all the time. Talk about vanity and
chasing after wind!
“Yet he’s helping us. More or less.”
“Only because he believes we’re the last mayflies
he’ll see. Excepting the Children of Night when they raise up
their Dark Mother. He’s convinced that we’re his last
chance to escape.”
“And all we got to do to get his help is skrag the nasty
Goddess, then put his ass away for the long night.” The
demon’s gaze seemed to drill right through him.
“Nothing to it. Piece of cake, as Goblin used to say. Though
the saying doesn’t make any literal sense.” Blade
lifted his fingers to his eyebrow in a salute to the demon. Whose
eyes seemed to be smouldering now.
“God killing. That should be perfect work for
you.”
Blade was unsure if Baladitya had spoken or Shivetya had entered
his mind. He did not like what the observation implied. It echoed
too closely Sleepy’s thinking, which is why his posh job in
Khang Phi is gone and he has charge of operations on the plain,
having abandoned banquets and down mattresses for iron rations and
a bed of cold and silent stone shared only with unhappy, withered
dreams, a crazy scholar, miscellaneous thieves and a house-sized
lunatic demon half as old as time.
All his adult life Blade has been driven by a hatred for
religion. He has an especial abhorrence for its retailers.
Considering his current whereabouts and present occupation it seems
likely that he should have restrained his impulse to share his
opinions.
Blade could have sworn that, for an instant, a smile played
across the demon’s features.
Blade chose not to comment.
He is a man of few words. He believes there is little point to
speech. He believes the golem eavesdrops on his thoughts. Unless it
has become so bored with ephemerals that it no longer pays
attention.
That hint of amusement again. Blade’s speculation is not
valid. He should know better. Shivetya is interested in every
breath every brother of the Black Company takes. Shivetya has
anointed these men as the death-givers.
“You need anything?” Blade asked the old man,
resting a hand on his shoulder briefly. “Before I head down
below?” The contact is entirely contrived. But Baladitya
cares nothing about the touch, genuine or not.
Baladitya lifted his pen from his right hand with his left,
flexed his fingers. “I suppose I should eat something. I
can’t recall when last I put fuel on the fire.”
“I’ll see that you get something.” The
something was sure to be rice and spice and golem manna. If there
was anything Blade regretted about his life, it was having lived
most of it in a part of the world where a majority of the
population include a vegetarian diet within their religion and
those who do not mainly eat fish or chicken. Blade is ready to
start at whichever end of a spit-roast pig and not stop until he
reaches the other.
Blade’s command, the thieves, the Company pathfinders,
includes twenty-six of the outfit’s brightest and most
trusted youngsters, all Children of the Dead. They need to be both
smart and trustworthy because Sleepy wants to exploit the treasures
in the caverns beneath the plain and because they really have to
understand that the plain itself will not forgive them if they do
the wrong thing. Shivetya has extended his favor. Shivetya sees
everything and knows everything inside the gates of his universe.
Shivetya is the soul of the plain. No one comes or goes without
Shivetya’s countenance, or at least his indifference. And in
the unlikely event that Shivetya remained indifferent to an
unauthorized theft, there was nowhere for a thief to run but back
to the shadowgate opening on the Land of Unknown Shadows. That was
the only shadowgate under control and functioning properly. That
was the only shadowgate not certain to kill the thief.
It was a long stroll across the great circle surrounding the
crude throne. That floor is anything but crude. It is an exact
one-eightieth scale representation of the plain outside, less the
memorial pillars that were added in a later age by men who failed
to possess even mythologized recollections of the builders.
Hundreds of manhours have gone into clearing the accumulated dirt
and dust off its surface so Shivetya can more clearly discern every
detail of his kingdom. Shivetya’s throne rests upon a raised
wheel one-eightieth the size of this.
Decades ago, Soulcatcher’s tampering triggered an
earthquake that battered the fortress and split its floor into a
vast crevasse. Outside the plain the disaster destroyed cities and
killed thousands. Today the only memorial of what had been a gap in
the floor a dozen yards wide and thousands of feet deep is a red
stripe meandering past the throne. It dwindles every day. As does
Shivetya, the mechanism ruling the plain heals itself.
The great circular model of the plain rises half a yard above
the rest of the floor, which exists at the level of the plain
outside.
Blade dropped off the edge of the wheel. He strode to a hole in
the floor, the head of stairs leading down. They descend for miles,
through caverns natural and created. The sleeping Goddess Kina lies
at the deepest level, patiently awaiting the Year of the Skulls and
the beginning of the Khadi Cycle, the destruction of the world. The
wounded Goddess Kina.
Shadows stirred along the nearby wall. Blade froze. Who? No way
that could be his people. Or, what?
Fear speared through Blade. Shadows in motion often presaged
cruel, screaming death. Had those things found a way into the
fortress? Their merciless feasting was not a horror he cared to
witness ever again. And in particular he did not want to be the
main course.
“The Nef,” Blade told himself as three humanoid
shapes emerged from the darkness. He recognized them despite never
having seen them before. Hardly anyone did, outside of dreams. Or
maybe nightmares. The Nef were incredibly ugly. Though they might
have been wearing masks. The several descriptions available did not
agree except as to ugliness. He counted them off. “The
Washane. The Washene. The Washone.” Names Shivetya had given
Sleepy years ago. What did they mean? Did they mean anything at
all? “How did they get in here?” The answer might be
critical. Killer shadows might exploit the same opening.
As the Nef always did, they tried to communicate something. In
the past their efforts inevitably failed. But this time their
appeal seemed obvious. They did not want Blade to go down those
stairs.
Sleepy, Master Santaraksita, and others who have been in contact
with Shivetya believe that the Nef are artificial reproductions of
the beings who created the plain. Shivetya brought them into
existence because he longed for a connection with something
approximating those whose artifice had wrought the great engine and
its pathways between the worlds, because he was lonely.
Shivetya has lost his will to live. If he should perish,
whatever he has created himself will go with him. The Nef are not
yet prepared to embrace oblivion, despite the endless horror and
tedium existence upon the plain imposes.
Blade spread his hands at his sides in a gesture of
helplessness. “You guys need to polish your communication
skills.” Not a sound came from the Nef but their growing
frustration became palpable. Which had been a constant from the
first time anyone had dreamt of them.
Blade stared. He did try to understand. He considered the
ironies of the Black Company’s adventure across the
glittering plain. He was an atheist himself. His journey had
brought him face-to-face with a complete ecology of supernatural
entities. And Tobo and Sleepy, whom he considered reliable
witnesses otherwise, claimed actually to have seen the grim Goddess
Kina who, myth suggested, lay imprisoned a mile beneath his
feet.
Sleepy, of course, faced her crises of faith. A devout
Vehdna monotheist, she never, ever encountered any worldly
sustenance for her beliefs. Though supportive evidence is thin, the
Gunni religion only creaks badly under the burden of the knowledge
we have unearthed. The Gunni are polytheists accustomed to having
their gods assume countless aspects and avatars, shapes and
disguises. So much so that, in some myths, those gods seem to be
murdering or cuckolding themselves. The Gunni have the flexibility
to look at every discovery, as Master Santaraksita has, and declare
new information to be just another way of proclaiming the same old
divine truths.
God is god, whatever his name. Blade has seen those sentiments
inlaid in the wall tiles in several places in Khang Phi.
Whenever anyone strays far from Shivetya, a ball of earthy brown
glow tags along. It hovers above and behind one shoulder or
another. The ball does not shed much light but in what otherwise
would be utter darkness they are sufficient. They are the
golem’s doing. Shivetya has powers he has forgotten how to
use. He might be a small god himself if he was not nailed to his
ancient throne.
Blade descended nearly a thousand steps before he encountered
anyone headed upward. This soldier carried a heavy pack.
“Sergeant Vanh.”
The soldier grunted. Already he was winded. No one made more
than one trip a day. Blade gave Vanh the bad news because he might
not run into him again for days. “Had a message from the
Captain. We have to step it up. She’s almost ready to
move.”
Vanh mumbled the sorts of things soldiers always do. He
continued his climb. Blade wondered how Sleepy planned to haul off
the mountain of treasure already accumulated up top. It was, for
sure, enough to finance a pretty good war.
Another thousand steps downward, repeating his message several
times. He left the stair at the level everyone called the Cave of
the Ancients because of the old men interred there. Blade always
stopped to visit his friend Cordy Mather. It was a ritual of respect.
Cordy was dead. Most of the others confined in the cave remained
alive, enmeshed in stasis spells. Somehow, during the long
Captivity, Mather had shed the spells confining him. And success
had cost him his life. He had not been able to find his way
out.
Most of the old men in the cave meant nothing to Blade or the
Company. Only Shivetya knew who they were or why they had been
interred. Certainly they had irked someone armed with the power to
confine them. Several corpses, though, had been Company brothers
when still alive. Several others had been captives before
Soulcatcher buried the Company. Death had found them because,
evidently, Cordy Mather had tried to wake them up. Touching the
Captured without sorcerous precautions inevitably caused the death
of the touched.
Blade resisted the urge to kick the sorcerer Longshadow. That
madman was a commodity of incalculable worth in the Land of Unknown
Shadows. The Company had grown strong and wealthy because of him.
It continued to prosper. “How you doing, Shadowmaster? Looks
like you’ll be here a while yet.” Blade assumed the
sorcerer could not hear him. He could not recall having heard
anything when he was under the enchantment himself. He could not
recall having been aware in any way, though Murgen said there were
times when it looked like the Captured were aware of their
surroundings. “They haven’t pushed the bidding high
enough yet. I hate to admit it but you really are a popular guy. In
your own special way.” Not a generous or forgiving or even
empathetic man, Blade stood with hands on hips staring down at
Longshadow. The sorcerer looked like a skeleton barely covered by
diseased skin. His face was locked into a scream. Blade told him,
“They still say, ‘All Evil Dies There an Endless
Death.’ Especially when they’re talking about
you.”
Not far from Longshadow is the Company’s other insane
sorcerer prisoner, the Howler. This one presents a greater
temptation. Blade saw no value whatsoever to keeping Howler alive.
The little shit has a history of treachery that goes way, way back
and a character unlikely to change because of this confinement. He
survived a similar Captivity before. That one endured for
centuries.
Tobo did not need to learn any of the Howler’s evil crap.
And Tobo’s education was the only excuse Blade had heard for
letting the little ragbag live.
Blade paid his deepest respects to Mather. Cordy was a good
friend for a long time. Blade owes Cordy his life. He wished the
evil fortune had befallen him. Cordy wanted to live. Blade believes
he is proceeding on inertia.
Blade continued his descent into the earth, past the treasure
caverns that were being looted to finance the Company’s
homegoing, it was hoped on a spectacularly memorable scale.
Blade is not much given to emotional vapors or seizures of fear.
He has a cool enough head to have survived for years as a Company
agent inside Longshadow’s camp. But as he moved deeper into
the earth he began to twitch and sweat. His pace slackened. He
passed the last known cavern. Nothing lay below that but the
ultimate enemy, the Mother of Night herself. She was the enemy who
would still be waiting once all the other, lesser adversaries had
been brushed aside or extinguished.
To Kina, the Black Company is an annoying buzz in the ear, a
mosquito that has gotten away with taking a sip or two of blood and
has not had the good sense to get the hell away.
Blade slowed again. The light following him kept weakening.
Where once he could see clearly twenty steps ahead now he could see
only ten, the farther four seeming to be behind the face of a
thickening black fog. Here the darkness seemed almost alive. Here
the darkness felt as though it was under much greater pressure, the
way water seemed to exert more as you swam deeper beneath its
surface.
Blade found it harder to breathe. He forced himself to do so,
deeply and rapidly, then went on, against the insistence of
instinct. A silver chalice took form in the fog, just five steps
below. It stood about a foot tall, a simple tall cup made of noble
metal. Blade had placed it there. It marked the lowest step he had
yet been able to reach.
Now each step downward seemed to take place against the
resistance of liquid tar. Each step brought the darkness crushing
in harder. The light from behind was too weak to reach even one
step beyond the chalice.
Blade makes this effort frequently. He accounts it exercise for
his will and courage. Each descent he manages to make it as far as
the chalice mostly by being angry that he cannot push past it.
This time he tried something different. He threw a handful of
coins collected from one of the treasure caves. His arm had no
strength but gravity had not lost its power nor had sound been
devoured by the darkness. The coins tinkled away down the
stairwell. But not for long. After a moment it sounded like they
were rolling around on a floor. Then they were silent. Then a tiny
little voice from far, far away cried, “Help.”