In those days the
Black Company did not exist. This I know because there were laws
and decrees that told me so. But I did not feel entirely
insubstantial.
The Company standard, its Captain and Lieutenant, its
Standardbearer and all the men who had made the Company so
terrible, had passed on, having been buried alive at the heart of a
vast desert of stone. “Glittering stone,” they
whispered in the streets and alleys of Taglios, and “Gone to
Khatovar,” they proclaimed from on high, the mighty making
what they had been so determined to prevent for so long over into a
great triumph once the Radisha or Protector or somebody decided
that people ought to believe that the Company had fulfilled its
destiny.
Anyone old enough to remember the Company knew better. Only
fifty people had ventured out onto that plain of glittering stone.
Half of those people had not been Company. Only two of those fifty
had returned to lie about what had happened. And a third who had
come back to retail the truth had been killed in the Kiaulune wars,
far away from the capital. But the deceits of Soulcatcher and
Willow Swan fooled no one, then or now. People simply pretended to
believe them because that was safer.
They might have asked why Mogaba needed five years to conquer a
Company that had passed on, squandering thousands of young lives to
bring the Kiaulune domains under the Radisha’s rule and into
the realm of the Protector’s twisted truths. They might have
mentioned that people claiming to be Black Company had held out in
the fortress Overlook for years after that, until the Protector,
Soulcatcher, finally became so impatient with their intransigence
that she invested her own best sorceries in a two-year project that
reduced that huge fortress to white powder, white rubble and white
bones. They might have raised these points. But they remained
silent instead. They were afraid. With cause, they were afraid.
The Taglian empire under the Protectorate is an empire of
fear.
During the years of defiance, one unknown hero won
Soulcatcher’s eternal hatred by sabotaging the Shadowgate,
the sole gateway to the glittering plain. Soulcatcher was the most
powerful sorcerer alive. She might have become a Shadowmaster to
eclipse those monsters the Company had pulled down during its
earlier wars on Taglios’ behalf. But with the Shadowgate
sealed she could not conjure killer shadows more powerful than the
few score she had controlled when she worked her treachery on the
Company.
Oh, she could open the Shadowgate. One time. She did not know
how to close it again, though. Meaning everything inside would be
free to wriggle out and begin tormenting the world.
Meaning that for Soulcatcher, party to so few of the secrets,
the choice must be all or very little. The end of the world or
making do.
For the moment she is making do. And pursuing continuous
researches. She is the Protector. Fear of her steeps the empire.
There are no challenges to her terror. But even she knows this age
of dark concord cannot endure.
Water sleeps.
In their homes, in the shadowed alleyways, in the city’s
ten thousand temples, nervous whispers never cease. The Year of the
Skulls. The Year of the Skulls. It is an age when no gods die and
those that sleep keep stirring restlessly.
In their homes, in the shadowed alleyways or fields of grain or
in the sodden paddies, in the pastures and forests and tributary
cities, should a comet be seen in the sky or should an unseasonable
storm strew devastation or, particularly, if the earth should
shake, they murmur, “Water sleeps.” And they are
afraid.
In those days the
Black Company did not exist. This I know because there were laws
and decrees that told me so. But I did not feel entirely
insubstantial.
The Company standard, its Captain and Lieutenant, its
Standardbearer and all the men who had made the Company so
terrible, had passed on, having been buried alive at the heart of a
vast desert of stone. “Glittering stone,” they
whispered in the streets and alleys of Taglios, and “Gone to
Khatovar,” they proclaimed from on high, the mighty making
what they had been so determined to prevent for so long over into a
great triumph once the Radisha or Protector or somebody decided
that people ought to believe that the Company had fulfilled its
destiny.
Anyone old enough to remember the Company knew better. Only
fifty people had ventured out onto that plain of glittering stone.
Half of those people had not been Company. Only two of those fifty
had returned to lie about what had happened. And a third who had
come back to retail the truth had been killed in the Kiaulune wars,
far away from the capital. But the deceits of Soulcatcher and
Willow Swan fooled no one, then or now. People simply pretended to
believe them because that was safer.
They might have asked why Mogaba needed five years to conquer a
Company that had passed on, squandering thousands of young lives to
bring the Kiaulune domains under the Radisha’s rule and into
the realm of the Protector’s twisted truths. They might have
mentioned that people claiming to be Black Company had held out in
the fortress Overlook for years after that, until the Protector,
Soulcatcher, finally became so impatient with their intransigence
that she invested her own best sorceries in a two-year project that
reduced that huge fortress to white powder, white rubble and white
bones. They might have raised these points. But they remained
silent instead. They were afraid. With cause, they were afraid.
The Taglian empire under the Protectorate is an empire of
fear.
During the years of defiance, one unknown hero won
Soulcatcher’s eternal hatred by sabotaging the Shadowgate,
the sole gateway to the glittering plain. Soulcatcher was the most
powerful sorcerer alive. She might have become a Shadowmaster to
eclipse those monsters the Company had pulled down during its
earlier wars on Taglios’ behalf. But with the Shadowgate
sealed she could not conjure killer shadows more powerful than the
few score she had controlled when she worked her treachery on the
Company.
Oh, she could open the Shadowgate. One time. She did not know
how to close it again, though. Meaning everything inside would be
free to wriggle out and begin tormenting the world.
Meaning that for Soulcatcher, party to so few of the secrets,
the choice must be all or very little. The end of the world or
making do.
For the moment she is making do. And pursuing continuous
researches. She is the Protector. Fear of her steeps the empire.
There are no challenges to her terror. But even she knows this age
of dark concord cannot endure.
Water sleeps.
In their homes, in the shadowed alleyways, in the city’s
ten thousand temples, nervous whispers never cease. The Year of the
Skulls. The Year of the Skulls. It is an age when no gods die and
those that sleep keep stirring restlessly.
In their homes, in the shadowed alleyways or fields of grain or
in the sodden paddies, in the pastures and forests and tributary
cities, should a comet be seen in the sky or should an unseasonable
storm strew devastation or, particularly, if the earth should
shake, they murmur, “Water sleeps.” And they are
afraid.