The passages of
the Great General held us up long enough that we could not leave
the road unremarked until after the rains began falling hard enough
to conceal our movements from everyone except someone extremely
close by. We left the road unnoticed then. Our travel formation
collapsed into a miserable pack. Only Narayan Singh showed real
eagerness to get to the grove. And he did not hurry. Not often long
on empathy, I found myself pitying Iqbal’s children.
Swan pointed out, “It’d be to Singh’s
advantage to get us there just after night falls.”
“Darkness always comes.”
“Uhn?”
“A Deceiver aphorism. Darkness is their time. And darkness
always comes.”
“You don’t seem particularly bothered.” He was
hard to hear. The rainfall was that heavy.
“I’m bothered, buddy. I’ve been here before.
It isn’t what you’d call a good place.” I could
not state that fact with sufficient emphasis. The Grove of Doom was
the heart of darkness, a spawning ground for all hopelessness and
despair. It gnawed at your soul. Unless you were a believer,
apparently. It never seemed to trouble those for whom it was a holy
place.
“Places are natural, Sleepy. People are good and
evil.”
“You’ll change your mind after you get
there.”
“I got a sneaking suspicion I’m gonna drown first.
Do we got to be out in this?”
“You find a roof, I’ll be glad to get under
it.” Big thunder had begun fencing with swords of lightning.
There would be hail before long. I wished I had a better hat. Maybe
one of those huge woven-bamboo things Nyueng Bao farmers wear in
the rice paddies.
I could just make out Riverwalker and the Radisha. I followed
them hoping they were following someone they could see. I hoped we
did not have anyone get disoriented and lost. Not tonight. I hoped
the guys from Semchi were where they were supposed to be.
Iqbal appeared in the gloom as the hail began to fall. He bent
over to try to ease the sting of the missiles. I did the same. It
did not help much.
Iqbal shouted, “Left, down the hill. There’s a stand
of little evergreens. Better than nothing at all.”
Swan and I dashed that way. The hailstones kept getting bigger
and more numerous as the thunder got louder and the lightning
closer. But the air was cooling down.
There is a bright side to everything.
I slipped, fell, rolled, found the trees the hard way, by
sliding in amongst them. Uncle Doj and Gota, River and the Radisha
were in there already. Iqbal was an optimist. I would not have
called those darned things trees. They were bushes suffering from
overweening ambition. Not a one was ten feet tall and you had to
get down on your belly in the damp and needles to enjoy their
shelter. But their branches did break the fall of the hailstones,
which rattled and roared through the foliage. I started to ask
about the animals but then heard the goats bleating.
I felt a little guilty. I do not like animals much. I had been
shirking my share of their caretaking.
Hailstones dribbled down through the branches and rolled in from
outside. Swan picked up a huge example, brushed it off, showed it
to me, grinned and popped it into his mouth.
“This is the life,” I said. “When you’re
with the Black Company, every day is a paradise on
earth.”
Swan said, “This would be a superb recruiting
tool.”
As those things always do, the storm went away. We crawled out
and counted heads and discovered that not even Narayan Singh had
gone missing. The living saint of the Stranglers did not want to
leave us behind. That book really was important to him.
The rain dwindled to a drizzle. We clambered out of the muck,
many communing bluntly with their preferred gods while we formed
up. We did not spread out much now, except for Uncle Doj, who
managed to disappear into a landscape with almost no cover.
Over the next hour we ran into several landmarks I recognized
from Croaker’s and Murgen’s Annals. I kept an eye out
for Slink and his companions. I did not see them. I hoped that was
a good omen rather than a bad.
The later it got, the more peachy it seemed to Narayan Singh. I
was afraid he would curse us all by betraying a genuine smile. I
considered mentioning his children’s names just to let him
know he was weighing on my mind.
My divination skills were flawless. It was dusk when we reached
the grove. We were all miserable. The baby would not stop crying. I
was developing a blister from walking in wet boots. With the
possible exception of Narayan, not a soul amongst us remained
mission-oriented. Everybody just wanted to drop somewhere while
somebody else got a fire going so we could dry out and get
something to eat.
Narayan insisted that we press on to the Deceiver temple in the
heart of the grove. “It’ll be dry there,” he
promised.
His proposal aroused no enthusiasm. Though we were barely inside
its boundary, the smell of the Grove surrounded us. It was not a
pleasant odor. I wondered how much worse it was back in the heyday
of the Deceivers, when they murdered people there often and in some
numbers.
The place possessed strong psychic character, an eerieness, a
creepiness. Gunni would blame that on Kina because this was one of
the places where a fragment of her dismembered body had fallen, or
something such. Despite the fact that Kina was also supposed to be
bound in enchanted sleep somewhere on or under or beyond the plain
of glittering stone. Gunni do not have ghosts. We Vehdna do. Nyueng
Bao do. For me, the grove was haunted by the souls of all the
victims who died there for Kina’s pleasure or glory or
whatever reason Stranglers kill.
Had I mentioned it, Narayan or one of the more devout Gunni
would have brought up the matter of rakshasas, those malignant
demons, those evil night-rangers jealous of men and gods alike.
Rakshasas might pretend to be the spirit of someone who had passed
on, merely as a tool for tormenting the living.
Uncle Doj said, “Like it or not, Narayan is right. We
should move into the best shelter available. We would be no less
safe there than here. And we would be free of this pestilential
drizzle.” The rain just would not go away.
I considered him. He was old and worn out and had less reason to
want to move on than any of us younger folks. He must have a reason
to want to go on. He must know something.
Doj always did. Getting him to share it was the big trick.
I was in charge. Time for an unpopular decision.
“We’ll go ahead.”
Grumble grumble grumble.
The temple projected a presence more powerful than that of the
Grove. I had no trouble locating it without being able to see it.
Walking close behind, Swan asked me, “How come you never tore
this place down when you were on top?”
I did not understand his question. Narayan, just ahead of me,
overheard it and did understand. “They tried. More than once.
We rebuilt it when no one was watching.” He launched a
rambling rant about how his goddess had watched over the builders.
It sounded like a recruiting speech. He kept it up until Runmust
swatted him with a bamboo pole.
It was one of those poles, too, though Narayan did not know. The
grove was a very dark place, perfect for an ambush by shadows.
Runmust was not going to go quietly.
I could not help wondering what evils Soulcatcher was up to now
that she had complete freedom to work her will upon Taglios.
I hoped the people who stayed behind completed their missions,
particularly those tasked to penetrate the Palace again. Jaul
Barundandi had to be recruited and brought in too deep to run
before his rage subsided sufficiently for reason to reassert
itself.
The passages of
the Great General held us up long enough that we could not leave
the road unremarked until after the rains began falling hard enough
to conceal our movements from everyone except someone extremely
close by. We left the road unnoticed then. Our travel formation
collapsed into a miserable pack. Only Narayan Singh showed real
eagerness to get to the grove. And he did not hurry. Not often long
on empathy, I found myself pitying Iqbal’s children.
Swan pointed out, “It’d be to Singh’s
advantage to get us there just after night falls.”
“Darkness always comes.”
“Uhn?”
“A Deceiver aphorism. Darkness is their time. And darkness
always comes.”
“You don’t seem particularly bothered.” He was
hard to hear. The rainfall was that heavy.
“I’m bothered, buddy. I’ve been here before.
It isn’t what you’d call a good place.” I could
not state that fact with sufficient emphasis. The Grove of Doom was
the heart of darkness, a spawning ground for all hopelessness and
despair. It gnawed at your soul. Unless you were a believer,
apparently. It never seemed to trouble those for whom it was a holy
place.
“Places are natural, Sleepy. People are good and
evil.”
“You’ll change your mind after you get
there.”
“I got a sneaking suspicion I’m gonna drown first.
Do we got to be out in this?”
“You find a roof, I’ll be glad to get under
it.” Big thunder had begun fencing with swords of lightning.
There would be hail before long. I wished I had a better hat. Maybe
one of those huge woven-bamboo things Nyueng Bao farmers wear in
the rice paddies.
I could just make out Riverwalker and the Radisha. I followed
them hoping they were following someone they could see. I hoped we
did not have anyone get disoriented and lost. Not tonight. I hoped
the guys from Semchi were where they were supposed to be.
Iqbal appeared in the gloom as the hail began to fall. He bent
over to try to ease the sting of the missiles. I did the same. It
did not help much.
Iqbal shouted, “Left, down the hill. There’s a stand
of little evergreens. Better than nothing at all.”
Swan and I dashed that way. The hailstones kept getting bigger
and more numerous as the thunder got louder and the lightning
closer. But the air was cooling down.
There is a bright side to everything.
I slipped, fell, rolled, found the trees the hard way, by
sliding in amongst them. Uncle Doj and Gota, River and the Radisha
were in there already. Iqbal was an optimist. I would not have
called those darned things trees. They were bushes suffering from
overweening ambition. Not a one was ten feet tall and you had to
get down on your belly in the damp and needles to enjoy their
shelter. But their branches did break the fall of the hailstones,
which rattled and roared through the foliage. I started to ask
about the animals but then heard the goats bleating.
I felt a little guilty. I do not like animals much. I had been
shirking my share of their caretaking.
Hailstones dribbled down through the branches and rolled in from
outside. Swan picked up a huge example, brushed it off, showed it
to me, grinned and popped it into his mouth.
“This is the life,” I said. “When you’re
with the Black Company, every day is a paradise on
earth.”
Swan said, “This would be a superb recruiting
tool.”
As those things always do, the storm went away. We crawled out
and counted heads and discovered that not even Narayan Singh had
gone missing. The living saint of the Stranglers did not want to
leave us behind. That book really was important to him.
The rain dwindled to a drizzle. We clambered out of the muck,
many communing bluntly with their preferred gods while we formed
up. We did not spread out much now, except for Uncle Doj, who
managed to disappear into a landscape with almost no cover.
Over the next hour we ran into several landmarks I recognized
from Croaker’s and Murgen’s Annals. I kept an eye out
for Slink and his companions. I did not see them. I hoped that was
a good omen rather than a bad.
The later it got, the more peachy it seemed to Narayan Singh. I
was afraid he would curse us all by betraying a genuine smile. I
considered mentioning his children’s names just to let him
know he was weighing on my mind.
My divination skills were flawless. It was dusk when we reached
the grove. We were all miserable. The baby would not stop crying. I
was developing a blister from walking in wet boots. With the
possible exception of Narayan, not a soul amongst us remained
mission-oriented. Everybody just wanted to drop somewhere while
somebody else got a fire going so we could dry out and get
something to eat.
Narayan insisted that we press on to the Deceiver temple in the
heart of the grove. “It’ll be dry there,” he
promised.
His proposal aroused no enthusiasm. Though we were barely inside
its boundary, the smell of the Grove surrounded us. It was not a
pleasant odor. I wondered how much worse it was back in the heyday
of the Deceivers, when they murdered people there often and in some
numbers.
The place possessed strong psychic character, an eerieness, a
creepiness. Gunni would blame that on Kina because this was one of
the places where a fragment of her dismembered body had fallen, or
something such. Despite the fact that Kina was also supposed to be
bound in enchanted sleep somewhere on or under or beyond the plain
of glittering stone. Gunni do not have ghosts. We Vehdna do. Nyueng
Bao do. For me, the grove was haunted by the souls of all the
victims who died there for Kina’s pleasure or glory or
whatever reason Stranglers kill.
Had I mentioned it, Narayan or one of the more devout Gunni
would have brought up the matter of rakshasas, those malignant
demons, those evil night-rangers jealous of men and gods alike.
Rakshasas might pretend to be the spirit of someone who had passed
on, merely as a tool for tormenting the living.
Uncle Doj said, “Like it or not, Narayan is right. We
should move into the best shelter available. We would be no less
safe there than here. And we would be free of this pestilential
drizzle.” The rain just would not go away.
I considered him. He was old and worn out and had less reason to
want to move on than any of us younger folks. He must have a reason
to want to go on. He must know something.
Doj always did. Getting him to share it was the big trick.
I was in charge. Time for an unpopular decision.
“We’ll go ahead.”
Grumble grumble grumble.
The temple projected a presence more powerful than that of the
Grove. I had no trouble locating it without being able to see it.
Walking close behind, Swan asked me, “How come you never tore
this place down when you were on top?”
I did not understand his question. Narayan, just ahead of me,
overheard it and did understand. “They tried. More than once.
We rebuilt it when no one was watching.” He launched a
rambling rant about how his goddess had watched over the builders.
It sounded like a recruiting speech. He kept it up until Runmust
swatted him with a bamboo pole.
It was one of those poles, too, though Narayan did not know. The
grove was a very dark place, perfect for an ambush by shadows.
Runmust was not going to go quietly.
I could not help wondering what evils Soulcatcher was up to now
that she had complete freedom to work her will upon Taglios.
I hoped the people who stayed behind completed their missions,
particularly those tasked to penetrate the Palace again. Jaul
Barundandi had to be recruited and brought in too deep to run
before his rage subsided sufficiently for reason to reassert
itself.