The first time Case appeared he rode the edge of panic. Me doing
a kindly uncle act did not soothe him. The Lady doing her bit
almost kicked him over the edge into hysteria. Having Tracker
lurking around in natural form was no help either.
One-Eye, of all people, calmed him down. Got him onto the
subject of Raven and how Raven was doing, and that did the job.
I had my own near case of hysteria. Hours after we put down,
before I even got set up for it, the Lady brought Whisper and
Limper to double-check our translations.
Whisper was supposed to see if any papers were missing. Limper
was supposed to plumb his memory of olden times for connections we
may have missed. He, it seems, was much into the social whirl of
the early Domination.
Amazing. I could not imagine that hunk of hatred and human
wreckage ever having been anything but nastiness personified.
I got Goblin to keep an eyeball on those two while I broke away
to look in on Raven. Everyone else had given him a look-see
already.
She was there, leaning against a wall, gnawing a fingernail, not
looking anything like the great bitch who had tormented the world
for lo! so many years. Like I said before, I hate it when they go
human. And she was human and then some. Flat-assed scared.
“How is he?” I asked, and when I saw her mood:
“What’s the matter?”
“He’s unchanged. They’ve taken good care of
him. Nothing is the matter that a few miracles won’t
cure.”
I dared raise a questioning eyebrow.
“All the exits are closed. Croaker. I’m headed down
a tunnel. My choices grow ever more narrow, and each is worse than
the other.”
I settled on the chair Case used while watching over Raven,
began playing doctor. Needlessly, but I liked to see for myself.
Half-distracted, I said, “I expect it’s lonely, being
queen of the world.”
Slight gasp. “You grow too bold.”
Didn’t I? “I’m sorry. Thinking out loud. An
unhealthy habit known to be the cause of bruises and major
hemorrhaging. He does look sound. You think Limper or Whisper will
help?”
“No. But every angle has to be tried.”
“What about Bomanz?”
“Bomanz?”
I looked at her. She seemed honestly puzzled. “The wizard
who sprung you.”
“Oh. What about him? What could a dead man contribute? I
disposed of my necromancer . . . You know
something I don’t?”
Not bloody likely. She had had me under the Eye.
Nevertheless . . .
I debated for half a minute, not wanting to give up what might
be a whisker of advantage. Then: “I had it from Goblin and
One-Eye that he’s perfectly healthy. That he’s caught
in the Barrowland. Like Raven, only body and all.”
“How could that be?”
Was it possible she had overlooked this while interrogating me?
I guess if you do not ask the right questions, you will not get the
right answers.
I reflected on all we had done together. I had sketched
Raven’s reports for her, but she had not read those letters.
In fact . . . The originals, from which Raven
drew his story, were in my quarters. Goblin and One-Eye lugged them
all the way to the Plain only to see them hauled right back. Nobody
had plumbed them because they repeated a story already
told . . .
“Sit,” I said, rising. “Back in two
shakes.”
Goblin fish-eyed me when I breezed in. “Be a few minutes
more. Something came up.” I scrounged up the case in which
Raven’s documents had traveled. Only the original Bomanz
manuscript resided there now. I fluttered back out, ignored by the
Taken.
Nice feeling, I’ll tell you, being beneath their notice.
Too bad it was just because they were fighting for their existence.
Like the rest of us.
“Here. This is the original manuscript. I went over it
once, lightly, to check Raven’s translation. It looked good
to me, though he did dramatize and invent dialog. But the facts and
characterizations are pure Bomanz.”
She read with incredible swiftness. “Get Raven’s
version.”
Out and back, under Goblin’s scowl and growl at my
departing back: “How long is a few minutes these days.
Croaker?”
She went through those swiftly, too. And looked thoughtful when
she finished.
“Well?” I asked.
“There may be something here. Actually, something
that’s not here. Two questions. Who wrote this in the first
place? And where is the stone in Oar that the son
mentioned?”
“I assume Bomanz did most of the original and his wife
finished it.”
“Wouldn’t he have used first person?”
“Not necessarily. It’s possible the literary
conventions of the time forbade it. Raven often chided me for
interjecting too much of myself into the Annals. He came of a
different tradition.”
“We’ll accept that as a hypothesis. Next question.
What became of the wife?”
“She came of a family from Oar. I would expect her to go
back.”
“When she was known as the wife of the man responsible for
loosing me?”
“Was she? Bomanz was an assumed name.”
She brushed my objection aside. “Whisper acquired those
documents in Lords. As a lot. Nothing connects Bomanz with them
except his story. My feeling is that they were accumulated at a
later date. But his papers. What were they doing between the time
they left here and the time Whisper found them? Have some ancillary
items been lost? It’s time we consulted Whisper.”
We, however, included me out.
Whatever, a fire was ignited. Before long, Taken were roaring
off to faraway places. Within two days Benefice delivered the stone
mentioned by Bomanz’s son. It proved useless. Some Guards
appropriated it and used it for a doorstep to their barracks.
I caught occasional hints of a search progressing from Oar south
along the route Jasmine had taken after fleeing from the
Barrowland, widowed and shamed. Hard to find tracks that old, but
the Taken have remarkable skills.
Another search progressed from Lords.
I had the dubious pleasure of hanging around with the Limper
while he pointed out all the mistakes we made transliterating
UchiTelle and KurreTelle names. Seems not only were spellings not
uniform in those days, but neither were alphabets. And some of the
folks mentioned were not of UchiTelle or KurreTelle stock, but
outsiders who had adapted their names to local usage. Limper busied
himself doing things backwards.
One afternoon Silent gave me the high sign. He had been spying
over the Limper’s shoulder, off and on, with more devotion
than I.
He had found a pattern.
The first time Case appeared he rode the edge of panic. Me doing
a kindly uncle act did not soothe him. The Lady doing her bit
almost kicked him over the edge into hysteria. Having Tracker
lurking around in natural form was no help either.
One-Eye, of all people, calmed him down. Got him onto the
subject of Raven and how Raven was doing, and that did the job.
I had my own near case of hysteria. Hours after we put down,
before I even got set up for it, the Lady brought Whisper and
Limper to double-check our translations.
Whisper was supposed to see if any papers were missing. Limper
was supposed to plumb his memory of olden times for connections we
may have missed. He, it seems, was much into the social whirl of
the early Domination.
Amazing. I could not imagine that hunk of hatred and human
wreckage ever having been anything but nastiness personified.
I got Goblin to keep an eyeball on those two while I broke away
to look in on Raven. Everyone else had given him a look-see
already.
She was there, leaning against a wall, gnawing a fingernail, not
looking anything like the great bitch who had tormented the world
for lo! so many years. Like I said before, I hate it when they go
human. And she was human and then some. Flat-assed scared.
“How is he?” I asked, and when I saw her mood:
“What’s the matter?”
“He’s unchanged. They’ve taken good care of
him. Nothing is the matter that a few miracles won’t
cure.”
I dared raise a questioning eyebrow.
“All the exits are closed. Croaker. I’m headed down
a tunnel. My choices grow ever more narrow, and each is worse than
the other.”
I settled on the chair Case used while watching over Raven,
began playing doctor. Needlessly, but I liked to see for myself.
Half-distracted, I said, “I expect it’s lonely, being
queen of the world.”
Slight gasp. “You grow too bold.”
Didn’t I? “I’m sorry. Thinking out loud. An
unhealthy habit known to be the cause of bruises and major
hemorrhaging. He does look sound. You think Limper or Whisper will
help?”
“No. But every angle has to be tried.”
“What about Bomanz?”
“Bomanz?”
I looked at her. She seemed honestly puzzled. “The wizard
who sprung you.”
“Oh. What about him? What could a dead man contribute? I
disposed of my necromancer . . . You know
something I don’t?”
Not bloody likely. She had had me under the Eye.
Nevertheless . . .
I debated for half a minute, not wanting to give up what might
be a whisker of advantage. Then: “I had it from Goblin and
One-Eye that he’s perfectly healthy. That he’s caught
in the Barrowland. Like Raven, only body and all.”
“How could that be?”
Was it possible she had overlooked this while interrogating me?
I guess if you do not ask the right questions, you will not get the
right answers.
I reflected on all we had done together. I had sketched
Raven’s reports for her, but she had not read those letters.
In fact . . . The originals, from which Raven
drew his story, were in my quarters. Goblin and One-Eye lugged them
all the way to the Plain only to see them hauled right back. Nobody
had plumbed them because they repeated a story already
told . . .
“Sit,” I said, rising. “Back in two
shakes.”
Goblin fish-eyed me when I breezed in. “Be a few minutes
more. Something came up.” I scrounged up the case in which
Raven’s documents had traveled. Only the original Bomanz
manuscript resided there now. I fluttered back out, ignored by the
Taken.
Nice feeling, I’ll tell you, being beneath their notice.
Too bad it was just because they were fighting for their existence.
Like the rest of us.
“Here. This is the original manuscript. I went over it
once, lightly, to check Raven’s translation. It looked good
to me, though he did dramatize and invent dialog. But the facts and
characterizations are pure Bomanz.”
She read with incredible swiftness. “Get Raven’s
version.”
Out and back, under Goblin’s scowl and growl at my
departing back: “How long is a few minutes these days.
Croaker?”
She went through those swiftly, too. And looked thoughtful when
she finished.
“Well?” I asked.
“There may be something here. Actually, something
that’s not here. Two questions. Who wrote this in the first
place? And where is the stone in Oar that the son
mentioned?”
“I assume Bomanz did most of the original and his wife
finished it.”
“Wouldn’t he have used first person?”
“Not necessarily. It’s possible the literary
conventions of the time forbade it. Raven often chided me for
interjecting too much of myself into the Annals. He came of a
different tradition.”
“We’ll accept that as a hypothesis. Next question.
What became of the wife?”
“She came of a family from Oar. I would expect her to go
back.”
“When she was known as the wife of the man responsible for
loosing me?”
“Was she? Bomanz was an assumed name.”
She brushed my objection aside. “Whisper acquired those
documents in Lords. As a lot. Nothing connects Bomanz with them
except his story. My feeling is that they were accumulated at a
later date. But his papers. What were they doing between the time
they left here and the time Whisper found them? Have some ancillary
items been lost? It’s time we consulted Whisper.”
We, however, included me out.
Whatever, a fire was ignited. Before long, Taken were roaring
off to faraway places. Within two days Benefice delivered the stone
mentioned by Bomanz’s son. It proved useless. Some Guards
appropriated it and used it for a doorstep to their barracks.
I caught occasional hints of a search progressing from Oar south
along the route Jasmine had taken after fleeing from the
Barrowland, widowed and shamed. Hard to find tracks that old, but
the Taken have remarkable skills.
Another search progressed from Lords.
I had the dubious pleasure of hanging around with the Limper
while he pointed out all the mistakes we made transliterating
UchiTelle and KurreTelle names. Seems not only were spellings not
uniform in those days, but neither were alphabets. And some of the
folks mentioned were not of UchiTelle or KurreTelle stock, but
outsiders who had adapted their names to local usage. Limper busied
himself doing things backwards.
One afternoon Silent gave me the high sign. He had been spying
over the Limper’s shoulder, off and on, with more devotion
than I.
He had found a pattern.