The little dervish
in brown wool seemed completely lost inside himself. He was busy
talking to himself, paying no attention to the surrounding world.
Most likely he was quoting to himself from the sacred texts of the
Vehdna, as understood by his peculiar splinter sect. Though tired
and irritable, the Greys did not challenge him immediately. They
had been taught to honor all holy men, not just those already
secure within the Shadar truths. Any devoted stalker after wisdom
would find his path leading him to enlightenment eventually.
Tolerance of such seekers was common to all Taglians. The
welfare of the soul and the spirit were of grave concern to most.
The Gunni, indeed, considered the seeking of enlightenment to be
one of the four key stages of an ideally lived life. Once a man
successfully raised up and provided for his children, he should put
all things material, all ambition and pleasure, aside. He should go
into a forest to live as a hermit or become a mendicant seeker or
in some other way should live out his final years looking for the
truth and purifying his soul. Many of the greatest names in Taglian
and southern history are those of kings and rich men who chose just
such a path.
But human nature being human
nature . . .
The Greys did not, however, let
the dervish follow his quest into Chor Bagan. A sergeant
intercepted him. His associates surrounded the holy man. The
sergeant said, “Father, you cannot go in that direction. This
street has been closed to traffic by order of Minister Swan.”
Even dead, Swan had to take the blame for Soulcatcher’s
policies.
The dervish apparently failed to notice the Greys till he
actually collided with the sergeant. “Huh?”
The younger Greys laughed. Men enjoy seeing their prejudices
confirmed. The sergeant repeated his message. He added, “You
must turn right or left. We’re rooting out the evils
infesting what lies straight ahead.” He possessed a touch of
wit.
The dervish looked first right, then left. He shivered, then
announced, “All evil is the result of metaphysical
error,” in a raspy little voice and started along the street
to the right. It was a very strange street. It was almost empty of
humanity. In Taglios that was something seldom seen.
A moment later the Shadar sergeant squealed in surprise and
pain. He began slapping his side.
“What’s the
matter?” another Grey asked.
“Something bit
me . . . ” He squealed again, which
indicated that he was in a great deal of agony, for Shadar were proud
of their ability to endure pain without outcry or even
flinching.
Two of the sergeant’s men tried to lift his shirt while a
third clung to his arm in an effort to keep him immobile. He
shrieked again.
Smoke began to boil out of his side.
The Greys were so startled they backed away. The sergeant went
down. He went into convulsions. Smoke continued to boil up. It
assumed a form none of the Greys wanted to see.
“Niassi!”
The demon Niassi began to whisper secrets no Shadar wanted to
hear.
Grinning to himself, Goblin slipped into Chor Bagan. He
disappeared long before anyone wondered if there might not be a
connection between the sergeant’s discomfort and the veyedeen
dervish.
Greys arrived from all directions. Officers barked and cursed
and drove them back to their stations before the denizens of Chor
Bagan seized the opportunity to escape. Obviously this was a
distraction meant to give their prey the chance to run.
A crowd had begun to gather, too. Among them was a Nyueng Bao
boy who picked his moment, cut a purse and fled past the Greys, one
of whom recalled him from the evening when one of their own got
stoned. Discipline began to collapse.
The Grey officers tried. And managed rather well, considering.
Only a few people escaped Chor Bagan. And a half-dozen slipped
inside, among them a skinny little old man in the all-enveloping
yellow of a leper.
One-Eye was not pleased. He was sure strategy had had nothing to
do with it being him who had to assume the yellow. Goblin was up to
something wicked.
The six raiders approached the target tenement from front and
rear, in loose teams of three. One-Eye was around front. People
cleared off fast when they saw the yellow. Lepers were held in
absolute terror.
None of the men wanted to carry out a raid in broad daylight. It
was not the Company way. But darkness was denied us till
Soulcatcher pulled her shadows back off the streets. And the
consensus of the Annalists and wizards was that it was less likely
that the Daughter of Night could summon Kina’s help during
daylight. Daytime also offered a better chance of taking her by
surprise.
Each team paused to make sure every man still wore his yarn
bracelet before they stormed into the tenement. Each wizard set
loose an array of previously prepared low-grade confusion spells
that buzzed through the ramshackle structure like a swarm of
drunken mosquitoes. The attackers passed inside, stepping over and
around frightened, shivering families who, till now, had considered
themselves wildly fortunate to have a roof over their heads, even
if that meant renting floor space in a hallway. Both teams posted a
man who would make sure no one went outside. Another two men met at
the foot of the rickety stair. They would prevent movement up or
down. Goblin and One-Eye met at the cellar entrance and shared a
few complaints about being desperately undermanned, then a few
exaggerated courtesies as each offered the other the opportunity to
go down into the enemy’s den first.
Goblin finally accepted on the basis of superior youth,
quickness and alleged intelligence. He launched a couple of
luminary floating stars into the pit, where the darkness was
blacker than Kina’s heart.
“Here!” Goblin said. “Ha! We’ve
got—”
Something like a flaming tiger burst out of nowhere. It leaped
at Goblin. A shadow drifted in from the side. It flicked something
long and thin that looped around the little wizard’s
neck.
One-Eye’s cane came down on Narayan’s wrist hard
enough to crack bone. The living saint of the Stranglers lost his
rumel, which flew across the cellar.
One-Eye’s off hand tossed something over Goblin’s
head, toward the source of the tiger. A ghostly light floated up
like a wisp of luminescent swamp gas. It moved suddenly, enveloping
a young woman. She began to slap at herself, trying to wipe it
off.
Goblin did something quick, while she was distracted. She
collapsed. “Goddamn! Goddamn! It worked. I’m a genius.
Admit it. I’m a fucking genius.”
“Who’s a genius? Who came up with the
plan?”
“Plan? What plan? Success is in the details, runt. Who
came up with the details? Any damned fool could’ve said
let’s go catch them two.”
Both men tied limbs as they nattered.
One-Eye said, “Plan the details on this. We got to get out
of here with these people. Through all the Greys in the
world.”
“Already covered. They’ve got so much trouble they
won’t have time to worry about any damned lepers.” He
started trying to get a yellow outfit over the head of the Daughter
of Night. “Remind me to warn them back at the shop that this
one can put together an illusion or two.”
“I know that’s the way its supposed to go.”
One-Eye began dragging Narayan Singh into another yellow outfit. In
a moment Goblin would trade his brown for yellow, too. Upstairs,
the four Company brothers, all of Shadar origin, were turning
themselves into Greys. “I’m saying it ain’t got a
prayer of working.”
“That because I planned it?”
“Absolutely. You’re beginning to catch on. Welcome
to reality.”
“It goes to shit in our hands, you can blame it on Sleepy,
not me. It was her idea.”
“We got to do something about that girl. She thinks too
damned much. Will you quit farting around? Them goddamn Greys out
there are going to have time to go home for lunch.”
“Don’t hit him so hard. You want him to walk out of
here under his own power.”
“You talking to me? What the hell you doing
with . . . get your hand out of there, you old
pervert.”
“I’m putting a control amulet over her heart, you
dried-up old turd. So she won’t embarrass us before we get
her home.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure you are. But why don’t I look on the
bright side? At least you’re interested in girls again. She
built as nice as her mother?”
“Better.”
“Watch your mouth. The place might be haunted. And I got a
suspicion maybe some of those ghosts can talk to each other, no
matter what Murgen claims.” One-Eye began to bully the groggy
Narayan Singh up the steps.
“I do believe this is going to work,” One-Eye
crowed. The combination of Greys and lepers seemed the perfect
device for exiting the Thieves’ Garden—particularly now that
the real Greys were running around distracted.
“I don’t want to break your heart, old-timer,”
Goblin said. “But I think we done been fished.” He was
looking over his shoulder.
One-Eye looked back.
“Shit!”
A small flying carpet dropped toward them, accompanied by crows
making no sounds at all. Soulcatcher. And her very stance suggested
mischievous glee.
She threw something.
“Spread out!” Goblin barked. “Don’t let
those two get away.” He faced the descending carpet, heart in
this throat. If it came to a direct face-off, he was going to get
splattered like a stomped egg. He extended a gloved hand, caught
the falling black globule, whipped his arm in a circle and launched
the missile back into the sky.
Soulcatcher shrieked, outraged. The people of Taglios did not
have that kind of nerve. She drove the carpet to one side, avoiding
the black globe. And well she moved when she did.
Her luck had served her yet again. A screaming fireball ripped
right through the space she had vacated, the same kind of fireball
that had eaten all those holes in the Palace wall and had set the
bodies of so many men burning like bad fat candles. She continued
to dive. Two more fireballs barely missed her. She put a tenement
between herself and the sharpshooters. She was extremely angry but
did not let rage cloud her thinking.
Above her, her crows began bursting like soundless fireworks.
Blood, flesh and feathers rained down.
In seconds she figured it out, conversing with herself in a
committee of voices.
They had not been hiding inside Chor Bagan after all. She could
not have caught anyone trying to slip away like this if they had
not come in to retrieve something they did not want found.
“They’re here in the city. But we haven’t found
them. We haven’t seen a trace or heard a rumor that they
didn’t want to reach our ears. Until now. That takes
wizardry. That bold little one. That was the toad man. Goblin.
Though the Great General of the Armies Mogaba assures us that he
saw the body himself. Who else is alive? Could the Great General
himself be less trustworthy than he would like us to
believe?”
That was not possible. Mogaba had no other friends. He was
committed in perpetuity.
Soulcatcher brought her carpet to earth, stepped off, folded its
light bamboo frame, rolled the carpet around that, surveyed the
street. They had come down this way. From up there. What could they
have wanted desperately enough to have exposed themselves so
thoroughly? Anything they thought that important would be something
she was bound to find very interesting herself.
It took just one whispered word of power to illuminate the
cellar. The squalor was appalling. Soulcatcher turned slowly. A man
and his daughter, apparently. An old man and a young woman, anyway.
One lamp. Discarded clothing. A few handfuls of rice. Some fish
meal. Why the writing instruments and ink? What was this? A book.
Somebody had just begun writing in it in an unfamiliar alphabet.
She caught a spot of black movement in the corner of her eye. She
whirled, crouching, fearing an attack by a rogue shadow. The
skildirsha maintained an especially potent hatred for those who
dared command them.
A rat fled, dropping the object of its curiosity. Soulcatcher
knelt, picked up a long strip of black silk with an antique silver
coin sewn into one corner. “Oh. I see.” She began to
laugh like a young girl catching on late to the meaning of an
off-color joke. She collected the book, surveyed the scene once
more before leaving. “Dedication sure doesn’t
pay.”
Once in the street again, she reassembled her carpet,
unconcerned about snipers. Those people would be long gone and far
away. They knew their business. But crows should be tracking
them.
She froze, staring upward but not really seeing the white crow
on the peak of the tenement roof. “How did they find out
where those two were?”
The little dervish
in brown wool seemed completely lost inside himself. He was busy
talking to himself, paying no attention to the surrounding world.
Most likely he was quoting to himself from the sacred texts of the
Vehdna, as understood by his peculiar splinter sect. Though tired
and irritable, the Greys did not challenge him immediately. They
had been taught to honor all holy men, not just those already
secure within the Shadar truths. Any devoted stalker after wisdom
would find his path leading him to enlightenment eventually.
Tolerance of such seekers was common to all Taglians. The
welfare of the soul and the spirit were of grave concern to most.
The Gunni, indeed, considered the seeking of enlightenment to be
one of the four key stages of an ideally lived life. Once a man
successfully raised up and provided for his children, he should put
all things material, all ambition and pleasure, aside. He should go
into a forest to live as a hermit or become a mendicant seeker or
in some other way should live out his final years looking for the
truth and purifying his soul. Many of the greatest names in Taglian
and southern history are those of kings and rich men who chose just
such a path.
But human nature being human
nature . . .
The Greys did not, however, let
the dervish follow his quest into Chor Bagan. A sergeant
intercepted him. His associates surrounded the holy man. The
sergeant said, “Father, you cannot go in that direction. This
street has been closed to traffic by order of Minister Swan.”
Even dead, Swan had to take the blame for Soulcatcher’s
policies.
The dervish apparently failed to notice the Greys till he
actually collided with the sergeant. “Huh?”
The younger Greys laughed. Men enjoy seeing their prejudices
confirmed. The sergeant repeated his message. He added, “You
must turn right or left. We’re rooting out the evils
infesting what lies straight ahead.” He possessed a touch of
wit.
The dervish looked first right, then left. He shivered, then
announced, “All evil is the result of metaphysical
error,” in a raspy little voice and started along the street
to the right. It was a very strange street. It was almost empty of
humanity. In Taglios that was something seldom seen.
A moment later the Shadar sergeant squealed in surprise and
pain. He began slapping his side.
“What’s the
matter?” another Grey asked.
“Something bit
me . . . ” He squealed again, which
indicated that he was in a great deal of agony, for Shadar were proud
of their ability to endure pain without outcry or even
flinching.
Two of the sergeant’s men tried to lift his shirt while a
third clung to his arm in an effort to keep him immobile. He
shrieked again.
Smoke began to boil out of his side.
The Greys were so startled they backed away. The sergeant went
down. He went into convulsions. Smoke continued to boil up. It
assumed a form none of the Greys wanted to see.
“Niassi!”
The demon Niassi began to whisper secrets no Shadar wanted to
hear.
Grinning to himself, Goblin slipped into Chor Bagan. He
disappeared long before anyone wondered if there might not be a
connection between the sergeant’s discomfort and the veyedeen
dervish.
Greys arrived from all directions. Officers barked and cursed
and drove them back to their stations before the denizens of Chor
Bagan seized the opportunity to escape. Obviously this was a
distraction meant to give their prey the chance to run.
A crowd had begun to gather, too. Among them was a Nyueng Bao
boy who picked his moment, cut a purse and fled past the Greys, one
of whom recalled him from the evening when one of their own got
stoned. Discipline began to collapse.
The Grey officers tried. And managed rather well, considering.
Only a few people escaped Chor Bagan. And a half-dozen slipped
inside, among them a skinny little old man in the all-enveloping
yellow of a leper.
One-Eye was not pleased. He was sure strategy had had nothing to
do with it being him who had to assume the yellow. Goblin was up to
something wicked.
The six raiders approached the target tenement from front and
rear, in loose teams of three. One-Eye was around front. People
cleared off fast when they saw the yellow. Lepers were held in
absolute terror.
None of the men wanted to carry out a raid in broad daylight. It
was not the Company way. But darkness was denied us till
Soulcatcher pulled her shadows back off the streets. And the
consensus of the Annalists and wizards was that it was less likely
that the Daughter of Night could summon Kina’s help during
daylight. Daytime also offered a better chance of taking her by
surprise.
Each team paused to make sure every man still wore his yarn
bracelet before they stormed into the tenement. Each wizard set
loose an array of previously prepared low-grade confusion spells
that buzzed through the ramshackle structure like a swarm of
drunken mosquitoes. The attackers passed inside, stepping over and
around frightened, shivering families who, till now, had considered
themselves wildly fortunate to have a roof over their heads, even
if that meant renting floor space in a hallway. Both teams posted a
man who would make sure no one went outside. Another two men met at
the foot of the rickety stair. They would prevent movement up or
down. Goblin and One-Eye met at the cellar entrance and shared a
few complaints about being desperately undermanned, then a few
exaggerated courtesies as each offered the other the opportunity to
go down into the enemy’s den first.
Goblin finally accepted on the basis of superior youth,
quickness and alleged intelligence. He launched a couple of
luminary floating stars into the pit, where the darkness was
blacker than Kina’s heart.
“Here!” Goblin said. “Ha! We’ve
got—”
Something like a flaming tiger burst out of nowhere. It leaped
at Goblin. A shadow drifted in from the side. It flicked something
long and thin that looped around the little wizard’s
neck.
One-Eye’s cane came down on Narayan’s wrist hard
enough to crack bone. The living saint of the Stranglers lost his
rumel, which flew across the cellar.
One-Eye’s off hand tossed something over Goblin’s
head, toward the source of the tiger. A ghostly light floated up
like a wisp of luminescent swamp gas. It moved suddenly, enveloping
a young woman. She began to slap at herself, trying to wipe it
off.
Goblin did something quick, while she was distracted. She
collapsed. “Goddamn! Goddamn! It worked. I’m a genius.
Admit it. I’m a fucking genius.”
“Who’s a genius? Who came up with the
plan?”
“Plan? What plan? Success is in the details, runt. Who
came up with the details? Any damned fool could’ve said
let’s go catch them two.”
Both men tied limbs as they nattered.
One-Eye said, “Plan the details on this. We got to get out
of here with these people. Through all the Greys in the
world.”
“Already covered. They’ve got so much trouble they
won’t have time to worry about any damned lepers.” He
started trying to get a yellow outfit over the head of the Daughter
of Night. “Remind me to warn them back at the shop that this
one can put together an illusion or two.”
“I know that’s the way its supposed to go.”
One-Eye began dragging Narayan Singh into another yellow outfit. In
a moment Goblin would trade his brown for yellow, too. Upstairs,
the four Company brothers, all of Shadar origin, were turning
themselves into Greys. “I’m saying it ain’t got a
prayer of working.”
“That because I planned it?”
“Absolutely. You’re beginning to catch on. Welcome
to reality.”
“It goes to shit in our hands, you can blame it on Sleepy,
not me. It was her idea.”
“We got to do something about that girl. She thinks too
damned much. Will you quit farting around? Them goddamn Greys out
there are going to have time to go home for lunch.”
“Don’t hit him so hard. You want him to walk out of
here under his own power.”
“You talking to me? What the hell you doing
with . . . get your hand out of there, you old
pervert.”
“I’m putting a control amulet over her heart, you
dried-up old turd. So she won’t embarrass us before we get
her home.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure you are. But why don’t I look on the
bright side? At least you’re interested in girls again. She
built as nice as her mother?”
“Better.”
“Watch your mouth. The place might be haunted. And I got a
suspicion maybe some of those ghosts can talk to each other, no
matter what Murgen claims.” One-Eye began to bully the groggy
Narayan Singh up the steps.
“I do believe this is going to work,” One-Eye
crowed. The combination of Greys and lepers seemed the perfect
device for exiting the Thieves’ Garden—particularly now that
the real Greys were running around distracted.
“I don’t want to break your heart, old-timer,”
Goblin said. “But I think we done been fished.” He was
looking over his shoulder.
One-Eye looked back.
“Shit!”
A small flying carpet dropped toward them, accompanied by crows
making no sounds at all. Soulcatcher. And her very stance suggested
mischievous glee.
She threw something.
“Spread out!” Goblin barked. “Don’t let
those two get away.” He faced the descending carpet, heart in
this throat. If it came to a direct face-off, he was going to get
splattered like a stomped egg. He extended a gloved hand, caught
the falling black globule, whipped his arm in a circle and launched
the missile back into the sky.
Soulcatcher shrieked, outraged. The people of Taglios did not
have that kind of nerve. She drove the carpet to one side, avoiding
the black globe. And well she moved when she did.
Her luck had served her yet again. A screaming fireball ripped
right through the space she had vacated, the same kind of fireball
that had eaten all those holes in the Palace wall and had set the
bodies of so many men burning like bad fat candles. She continued
to dive. Two more fireballs barely missed her. She put a tenement
between herself and the sharpshooters. She was extremely angry but
did not let rage cloud her thinking.
Above her, her crows began bursting like soundless fireworks.
Blood, flesh and feathers rained down.
In seconds she figured it out, conversing with herself in a
committee of voices.
They had not been hiding inside Chor Bagan after all. She could
not have caught anyone trying to slip away like this if they had
not come in to retrieve something they did not want found.
“They’re here in the city. But we haven’t found
them. We haven’t seen a trace or heard a rumor that they
didn’t want to reach our ears. Until now. That takes
wizardry. That bold little one. That was the toad man. Goblin.
Though the Great General of the Armies Mogaba assures us that he
saw the body himself. Who else is alive? Could the Great General
himself be less trustworthy than he would like us to
believe?”
That was not possible. Mogaba had no other friends. He was
committed in perpetuity.
Soulcatcher brought her carpet to earth, stepped off, folded its
light bamboo frame, rolled the carpet around that, surveyed the
street. They had come down this way. From up there. What could they
have wanted desperately enough to have exposed themselves so
thoroughly? Anything they thought that important would be something
she was bound to find very interesting herself.
It took just one whispered word of power to illuminate the
cellar. The squalor was appalling. Soulcatcher turned slowly. A man
and his daughter, apparently. An old man and a young woman, anyway.
One lamp. Discarded clothing. A few handfuls of rice. Some fish
meal. Why the writing instruments and ink? What was this? A book.
Somebody had just begun writing in it in an unfamiliar alphabet.
She caught a spot of black movement in the corner of her eye. She
whirled, crouching, fearing an attack by a rogue shadow. The
skildirsha maintained an especially potent hatred for those who
dared command them.
A rat fled, dropping the object of its curiosity. Soulcatcher
knelt, picked up a long strip of black silk with an antique silver
coin sewn into one corner. “Oh. I see.” She began to
laugh like a young girl catching on late to the meaning of an
off-color joke. She collected the book, surveyed the scene once
more before leaving. “Dedication sure doesn’t
pay.”
Once in the street again, she reassembled her carpet,
unconcerned about snipers. Those people would be long gone and far
away. They knew their business. But crows should be tracking
them.
She froze, staring upward but not really seeing the white crow
on the peak of the tenement roof. “How did they find out
where those two were?”