Sahra summoned me
as soon as we arrived, not to chastise me for letting Tobo take
stupid risks but to observe as she launched her next move. It might
be time Tobo walked into something that would scare some sense into
him. Life underground is unforgiving. It seldom gives you more than
one chance. Tobo had to understand that in his heart.
After Sahra grilled me about events outside, she made sure
Goblin and One-Eye were acquainted with her displeasure, too. Tobo
was not there to defend himself.
Goblin and One-Eye were not cowed. No forty-something slip of a
lass could overawe those two antiques. Besides, they put Tobo up to
half his mischief.
Sahra said, “I’ll raise Murgen now.” She
seemed unsure about that. She had not consulted Murgen much
recently. We all wondered why. She and Murgen were a genuine
romantic love match straight out of legend, with all the
appurtenances seen in the timeless stories, including gods defied,
parents disappointed, desperate separations and reunions, intrigues
by enemies and so forth. It remained only for one of them to go
down into the realm of the dead to rescue the other. And Murgen was
tucked away in a nice cold underground hell right now, courtesy of
the mad sorceress Soulcatcher. He and all the Captured lived on, in
stasis, beneath the plain of glittering stone, in a place and
situation known to us only because Sahra could conjure
Murgen’s spirit.
Could the problem be the stasis? Sahra got a day older every
day. Murgen did not. Had she begun to fear she would be older than
his mother before we freed the Captured?
Sadly, after years of study, I realize that most history may
really pivot on personal considerations like that, not on the
pursuit of ideals dark or shining.
Long ago Murgen learned to leave his flesh while he slept. He
retained some of that ability but, sadly, it was diminished by the
supernatural constraints of his captivity. He could do nothing
outside the cavern of the ancients without being summoned forth by
Sahra—or, conceivably, chillingly, by any other necromancer who
knew how to reach him.
Murgen’s ghost was the ultimate spy. Outside our circle
none but Soulcatcher could detect his presence. Murgen informed us
of our enemies’ every plot—those that we suspected strongly
enough to ask Sahra to investigate. The process was cumbersome and
limited but still, Murgen constituted our most potent weapon. We
could not survive without him.
And Sahra was ever more reluctant to call him up.
God knows, it is hard to keep believing. Many of our brothers
have lost their faith and have drifted away, vanishing into the
chaos of the empire. Some may be rejuvenated once we have had a
flashy success or two.
The years have been painful for Sahra. They cost her three
children, an agony no loving parent should have to bear. She lost
their father as well but suffered little by that deprivation. No
one who remembered the man spoke well of him. She suffered with the
rest of us during the siege of Jaicur.
Maybe Sahra—and the entire Nyueng Bao people—had angered
Ghanghesha. Or maybe the god with the several elephant heads just
enjoyed a cruel prank at the expense of his worshipers. Certainly
Kina got a chuckle out of pulling lethal practical jokes on her
devotees.
Goblin and One-Eye were not usually present when Sahra raised
Murgen. She did not need their help. Her powers were narrow but
strong, and those two could be a distraction even when they tried
to behave.
Those antiques being there told me something unusual was afoot.
And old they are, almost beyond reckoning. Their skills sustain
them. One-Eye, if the Annals do not lie, is on the downhill side of
two hundred. His youthful sidekick lags less than a century
behind.
Neither is a big man. Which is being generous. Both are shorter
than me. And never were taller, even long before they became
dried-up old relics. Which was probably when they were about
fifteen. I cannot imagine One-Eye ever having been anything but
old. He must have been born old. And wearing the ugliest, filthiest
black hat that ever existed.
Maybe One-Eye goes on forever because of the curse of that hat.
Maybe the hat uses him as its steed and depends on him for its
survival.
That crusty, stinking glob of felt rag will hit the nearest fire
before One-Eye’s corpse finishes bouncing. Everyone hates
it.
Goblin, in particular, loathes that hat. He mentions it whenever
he and One-Eye get into a squabble, which is about as often as they
see one another.
One-Eye is small and black and wrinkled. Goblin is small and
white and wrinkled. He has a face like a dried toad’s.
One-Eye mentions that whenever they get into a squabble, which
is about as often as there is an audience but nobody to get between
them.
They strain to be on their best behavior around Sahra, though.
The woman has a gift. She brings out the best in people. Except her
mother. Though the Troll is much worse away from her daughter.
Lucky us, we do not see Ky Gota much. Her joints hurt her too
bad. Tobo helps care for her, our cynical exploitation of his
special immunity from her vitriol. She dotes on the boy—even if his
father was foreign slime.
Sahra told me, “These two claim they’ve found a more
effective way to materialize Murgen. So you can communicate
directly.” Usually Sahra had to talk for Murgen after she
raised him up. I do not have a psychic ear.
I said, “If you bring him across strong enough so the rest
of us can see and hear him, then Tobo ought to be here, too.
He’s suddenly got a lot of questions about his
father.”
Sahra peered at me oddly. I was saying something but she did not
get what I meant.
“Boy ought to know his old man,” One-Eye rasped. He
stared at Goblin, waiting to be contradicted by a man who did not
know his. That was their custom. Pick a fight and never mind trivia
like facts or common sense. The debate about whether or not they
were worth the trouble they caused went back for generations.
This time Goblin abstained. He would make his rebuttal when
Sahra was not around to embarrass him with an appeal to reason.
Sahra nodded to One-Eye. “But first we have to see if your
scheme really works.”
One-Eye began to puff up. Somebody dared suggest that his
sorcery needed field-testing? Come on! Forget the record! This
time—
I told him, “Don’t start.”
Time had caught up with One-Eye. His memory was no longer
reliable. And lately he tended to nod off in the middle of things.
Or to forget what had gotten him exercised when he roared off on a
rant. Sometimes he ended up contradicting himself.
He was a shadow of the dried-up old relic he was when first I
met him, though he got around under his own power still. But
halfway through any journey, he was likely to forget where he was
bound. Occasionally that was good, him being One-Eye, but mostly it
was a pain. Tobo usually got the job of keeping him headed in the
right direction when it mattered. One-Eye doted on the kid,
too.
The little wizard’s increasing fragility did make it
easier to keep him inside, away from the temptations of the city.
One moment of indiscretion could kill us all. And One-Eye never
quite caught on to what it meant to be discreet.
Goblin chuckled as One-Eye subsided. I suggested, “Could
you two concentrate on what you’re supposed to be
doing?” I was haunted by the dread that one day One-Eye would
doze off in the midst of a deadly spell and leave us all up to our
ears in demons or bloodsucking insects distraught about having been
plucked from some swamp a thousand miles away. “This is
important.”
“It’s always important,” Goblin grumbled.
“Even when it’s just ‘Goblin, give me a hand
here, I’m too lazy to polish the silver myself,’ they
make it sound like the world’s about to end. Always
important? Hmmph!”
“I see you’re in a good mood
tonight.”
“Gralk!”
One-Eye heaved himself out of his chair. Leaning on his cane,
muttering unflattering remarks about me, he shuffled over to Sahra.
He had forgotten I was female. He was less unpleasant when he
remembered, though I expect no special treatment because of that
unhappy chance of birth. One-Eye became dangerous in a whole new
way the day he adopted that cane. He used it to swat people. Or to
trip them. He was always falling asleep between here and there but
you never knew for sure if his nap was the real thing. That cane
might dart out to tangle your legs if he was pretending.
The dread we all shared was that One-Eye would not last much
longer. Without him, our chances to continue avoiding detection
would plummet. Goblin would try hard but he was just one small-time
wizard. Our situation offered work for more than two in their
prime.
“Start, woman,” One-Eye rasped. “Goblin, you
worthless sack of beetle snot, would you get that stuff over here?
I don’t want to hang around here all night.”
Sahra had had a table set up for them. She used no props
herself. At a fixed time she would concentrate on Murgen. She
usually made contact quickly. At her time of the month, when her
sensitivity went down, she would sing in Nyueng Bao. Unlike some of
my Company brothers, I have a poor ear for languages. Nyueng Bao
mostly eludes me. Her songs seem to be lullabies. Unless the words
have double meanings. Which is entirely possible. Uncle Doj talks
in riddles all the time but insists he makes perfect sense if we
would just listen.
Uncle Doj is not around much. Thank God. He has his own
agenda—though even he does not seem clear on what that is anymore.
The world keeps changing on him, not in ways he likes.
Goblin brought a sack of objects without challenging
One-Eye’s foul manners. He deferred to One-Eye more lately,
if only for efficiency’s sake. He wasted no time making his
opinions known if work was not involved, though.
Even though they were cooperating, laying out their tools, they
began bickering about the placement of every instrument. I wanted
to paddle them like they were four-year-olds.
Sahra began singing. She had a beautiful voice. It should not
have been buried this way. Strictly speaking, she was not employing
necromancy. She was not laying an absolute compulsion on Murgen,
nor was she conjuring his shade—Murgen was still alive out there.
But his spirit could escape his tomb when summoned.
I wished the other Captured could be called up, too. Especially
the Captain. We needed inspiration.
A cloud of dust formed slowly between Goblin and One-Eye, who
stood on opposite sides of the table. No, it was not dust. Nor was
it smoke. I stuck a finger in, tasted. That was a fine, cool, water
mist. Goblin told Sahra, “We’re ready.”
She changed tone. She began to sound almost wheedling. I could
pick out even fewer words.
Murgen’s head materialized between the wizards, wavering
like a reflection on a rippling pond. I was startled, not by the
sorcery but by Murgen’s appearance. He looked just like I
remembered him, without one new line in his face. None of the rest
of us looked the same.
Sahra had begun to look something like her mother had back in
Jaicur. Not as heavy. Not with the strange, rolling waddle caused
by problems of the joints. But her beauty was going fast. In her,
that had been a wonder, stretching on way past the usual early,
swift-fading characteristic of Nyueng Bao women. She did not talk
about it but it preyed upon her. She had her vanity. And she
deserved it.
Time is the most wicked of all villains.
Murgen was not happy about being called up. I feared he suffered
the malaise afflicting Sahra. He spoke. And I had no trouble
hearing him, though his words were an ethereal whisper.
“I was dreaming. There is a
place . . . ” His irritation faded. Pale
horror replaced it. And I knew he had been dreaming in the place of
bones he described in his own Annals. “A white
crow . . . ” We had a problem indeed if
he preferred a drift through Kina’s dreamscapes to a glimpse
of life.
Sahra told him, “We’re ready to strike. The Radisha
ordered the Privy Council convened just a little while ago. See
what they’re doing. Make sure Swan is there.” Murgen
faded from the mist. Sahra looked sad. Goblin and One-Eye began
excoriating the Standardbearer for running away.
“I saw him,” I told them. “Perfectly. I heard
him, too. Exactly like I always imagined a ghost would
talk.”
Grinning, Goblin told me, “That’s because you hear
what you expect to hear. You weren’t really listening with
your ears, you know.”
One-Eye sneered. He never explained anything to anybody. Unless
maybe to Gota if she caught him sneaking back in in the middle of
the night. Then he would have a story as convoluted as the history
of the Company itself.
Sounding like a woman pretending not to be bitter, Sahra said,
“You can bring Tobo in. We know there won’t be any
explosions or fires, and you melted only two holes through the
tabletop.”
“A base canard!” One-Eye proclaimed. “That
happened only because Frogface here—”
Sahra ignored him.
“Tobo can record what Murgen has to say. So Sleepy can use it
later. It’s time for us to turn into other people. Send a
messenger if Murgen finds out anything dangerous.”
That was the plan. I was even less enthusiastic about it now. I
wanted to stay and talk to my old friend. But this thing was bigger
than a bull session. Bigger than finding out if Bucket was keeping
well.
Sahra summoned me
as soon as we arrived, not to chastise me for letting Tobo take
stupid risks but to observe as she launched her next move. It might
be time Tobo walked into something that would scare some sense into
him. Life underground is unforgiving. It seldom gives you more than
one chance. Tobo had to understand that in his heart.
After Sahra grilled me about events outside, she made sure
Goblin and One-Eye were acquainted with her displeasure, too. Tobo
was not there to defend himself.
Goblin and One-Eye were not cowed. No forty-something slip of a
lass could overawe those two antiques. Besides, they put Tobo up to
half his mischief.
Sahra said, “I’ll raise Murgen now.” She
seemed unsure about that. She had not consulted Murgen much
recently. We all wondered why. She and Murgen were a genuine
romantic love match straight out of legend, with all the
appurtenances seen in the timeless stories, including gods defied,
parents disappointed, desperate separations and reunions, intrigues
by enemies and so forth. It remained only for one of them to go
down into the realm of the dead to rescue the other. And Murgen was
tucked away in a nice cold underground hell right now, courtesy of
the mad sorceress Soulcatcher. He and all the Captured lived on, in
stasis, beneath the plain of glittering stone, in a place and
situation known to us only because Sahra could conjure
Murgen’s spirit.
Could the problem be the stasis? Sahra got a day older every
day. Murgen did not. Had she begun to fear she would be older than
his mother before we freed the Captured?
Sadly, after years of study, I realize that most history may
really pivot on personal considerations like that, not on the
pursuit of ideals dark or shining.
Long ago Murgen learned to leave his flesh while he slept. He
retained some of that ability but, sadly, it was diminished by the
supernatural constraints of his captivity. He could do nothing
outside the cavern of the ancients without being summoned forth by
Sahra—or, conceivably, chillingly, by any other necromancer who
knew how to reach him.
Murgen’s ghost was the ultimate spy. Outside our circle
none but Soulcatcher could detect his presence. Murgen informed us
of our enemies’ every plot—those that we suspected strongly
enough to ask Sahra to investigate. The process was cumbersome and
limited but still, Murgen constituted our most potent weapon. We
could not survive without him.
And Sahra was ever more reluctant to call him up.
God knows, it is hard to keep believing. Many of our brothers
have lost their faith and have drifted away, vanishing into the
chaos of the empire. Some may be rejuvenated once we have had a
flashy success or two.
The years have been painful for Sahra. They cost her three
children, an agony no loving parent should have to bear. She lost
their father as well but suffered little by that deprivation. No
one who remembered the man spoke well of him. She suffered with the
rest of us during the siege of Jaicur.
Maybe Sahra—and the entire Nyueng Bao people—had angered
Ghanghesha. Or maybe the god with the several elephant heads just
enjoyed a cruel prank at the expense of his worshipers. Certainly
Kina got a chuckle out of pulling lethal practical jokes on her
devotees.
Goblin and One-Eye were not usually present when Sahra raised
Murgen. She did not need their help. Her powers were narrow but
strong, and those two could be a distraction even when they tried
to behave.
Those antiques being there told me something unusual was afoot.
And old they are, almost beyond reckoning. Their skills sustain
them. One-Eye, if the Annals do not lie, is on the downhill side of
two hundred. His youthful sidekick lags less than a century
behind.
Neither is a big man. Which is being generous. Both are shorter
than me. And never were taller, even long before they became
dried-up old relics. Which was probably when they were about
fifteen. I cannot imagine One-Eye ever having been anything but
old. He must have been born old. And wearing the ugliest, filthiest
black hat that ever existed.
Maybe One-Eye goes on forever because of the curse of that hat.
Maybe the hat uses him as its steed and depends on him for its
survival.
That crusty, stinking glob of felt rag will hit the nearest fire
before One-Eye’s corpse finishes bouncing. Everyone hates
it.
Goblin, in particular, loathes that hat. He mentions it whenever
he and One-Eye get into a squabble, which is about as often as they
see one another.
One-Eye is small and black and wrinkled. Goblin is small and
white and wrinkled. He has a face like a dried toad’s.
One-Eye mentions that whenever they get into a squabble, which
is about as often as there is an audience but nobody to get between
them.
They strain to be on their best behavior around Sahra, though.
The woman has a gift. She brings out the best in people. Except her
mother. Though the Troll is much worse away from her daughter.
Lucky us, we do not see Ky Gota much. Her joints hurt her too
bad. Tobo helps care for her, our cynical exploitation of his
special immunity from her vitriol. She dotes on the boy—even if his
father was foreign slime.
Sahra told me, “These two claim they’ve found a more
effective way to materialize Murgen. So you can communicate
directly.” Usually Sahra had to talk for Murgen after she
raised him up. I do not have a psychic ear.
I said, “If you bring him across strong enough so the rest
of us can see and hear him, then Tobo ought to be here, too.
He’s suddenly got a lot of questions about his
father.”
Sahra peered at me oddly. I was saying something but she did not
get what I meant.
“Boy ought to know his old man,” One-Eye rasped. He
stared at Goblin, waiting to be contradicted by a man who did not
know his. That was their custom. Pick a fight and never mind trivia
like facts or common sense. The debate about whether or not they
were worth the trouble they caused went back for generations.
This time Goblin abstained. He would make his rebuttal when
Sahra was not around to embarrass him with an appeal to reason.
Sahra nodded to One-Eye. “But first we have to see if your
scheme really works.”
One-Eye began to puff up. Somebody dared suggest that his
sorcery needed field-testing? Come on! Forget the record! This
time—
I told him, “Don’t start.”
Time had caught up with One-Eye. His memory was no longer
reliable. And lately he tended to nod off in the middle of things.
Or to forget what had gotten him exercised when he roared off on a
rant. Sometimes he ended up contradicting himself.
He was a shadow of the dried-up old relic he was when first I
met him, though he got around under his own power still. But
halfway through any journey, he was likely to forget where he was
bound. Occasionally that was good, him being One-Eye, but mostly it
was a pain. Tobo usually got the job of keeping him headed in the
right direction when it mattered. One-Eye doted on the kid,
too.
The little wizard’s increasing fragility did make it
easier to keep him inside, away from the temptations of the city.
One moment of indiscretion could kill us all. And One-Eye never
quite caught on to what it meant to be discreet.
Goblin chuckled as One-Eye subsided. I suggested, “Could
you two concentrate on what you’re supposed to be
doing?” I was haunted by the dread that one day One-Eye would
doze off in the midst of a deadly spell and leave us all up to our
ears in demons or bloodsucking insects distraught about having been
plucked from some swamp a thousand miles away. “This is
important.”
“It’s always important,” Goblin grumbled.
“Even when it’s just ‘Goblin, give me a hand
here, I’m too lazy to polish the silver myself,’ they
make it sound like the world’s about to end. Always
important? Hmmph!”
“I see you’re in a good mood
tonight.”
“Gralk!”
One-Eye heaved himself out of his chair. Leaning on his cane,
muttering unflattering remarks about me, he shuffled over to Sahra.
He had forgotten I was female. He was less unpleasant when he
remembered, though I expect no special treatment because of that
unhappy chance of birth. One-Eye became dangerous in a whole new
way the day he adopted that cane. He used it to swat people. Or to
trip them. He was always falling asleep between here and there but
you never knew for sure if his nap was the real thing. That cane
might dart out to tangle your legs if he was pretending.
The dread we all shared was that One-Eye would not last much
longer. Without him, our chances to continue avoiding detection
would plummet. Goblin would try hard but he was just one small-time
wizard. Our situation offered work for more than two in their
prime.
“Start, woman,” One-Eye rasped. “Goblin, you
worthless sack of beetle snot, would you get that stuff over here?
I don’t want to hang around here all night.”
Sahra had had a table set up for them. She used no props
herself. At a fixed time she would concentrate on Murgen. She
usually made contact quickly. At her time of the month, when her
sensitivity went down, she would sing in Nyueng Bao. Unlike some of
my Company brothers, I have a poor ear for languages. Nyueng Bao
mostly eludes me. Her songs seem to be lullabies. Unless the words
have double meanings. Which is entirely possible. Uncle Doj talks
in riddles all the time but insists he makes perfect sense if we
would just listen.
Uncle Doj is not around much. Thank God. He has his own
agenda—though even he does not seem clear on what that is anymore.
The world keeps changing on him, not in ways he likes.
Goblin brought a sack of objects without challenging
One-Eye’s foul manners. He deferred to One-Eye more lately,
if only for efficiency’s sake. He wasted no time making his
opinions known if work was not involved, though.
Even though they were cooperating, laying out their tools, they
began bickering about the placement of every instrument. I wanted
to paddle them like they were four-year-olds.
Sahra began singing. She had a beautiful voice. It should not
have been buried this way. Strictly speaking, she was not employing
necromancy. She was not laying an absolute compulsion on Murgen,
nor was she conjuring his shade—Murgen was still alive out there.
But his spirit could escape his tomb when summoned.
I wished the other Captured could be called up, too. Especially
the Captain. We needed inspiration.
A cloud of dust formed slowly between Goblin and One-Eye, who
stood on opposite sides of the table. No, it was not dust. Nor was
it smoke. I stuck a finger in, tasted. That was a fine, cool, water
mist. Goblin told Sahra, “We’re ready.”
She changed tone. She began to sound almost wheedling. I could
pick out even fewer words.
Murgen’s head materialized between the wizards, wavering
like a reflection on a rippling pond. I was startled, not by the
sorcery but by Murgen’s appearance. He looked just like I
remembered him, without one new line in his face. None of the rest
of us looked the same.
Sahra had begun to look something like her mother had back in
Jaicur. Not as heavy. Not with the strange, rolling waddle caused
by problems of the joints. But her beauty was going fast. In her,
that had been a wonder, stretching on way past the usual early,
swift-fading characteristic of Nyueng Bao women. She did not talk
about it but it preyed upon her. She had her vanity. And she
deserved it.
Time is the most wicked of all villains.
Murgen was not happy about being called up. I feared he suffered
the malaise afflicting Sahra. He spoke. And I had no trouble
hearing him, though his words were an ethereal whisper.
“I was dreaming. There is a
place . . . ” His irritation faded. Pale
horror replaced it. And I knew he had been dreaming in the place of
bones he described in his own Annals. “A white
crow . . . ” We had a problem indeed if
he preferred a drift through Kina’s dreamscapes to a glimpse
of life.
Sahra told him, “We’re ready to strike. The Radisha
ordered the Privy Council convened just a little while ago. See
what they’re doing. Make sure Swan is there.” Murgen
faded from the mist. Sahra looked sad. Goblin and One-Eye began
excoriating the Standardbearer for running away.
“I saw him,” I told them. “Perfectly. I heard
him, too. Exactly like I always imagined a ghost would
talk.”
Grinning, Goblin told me, “That’s because you hear
what you expect to hear. You weren’t really listening with
your ears, you know.”
One-Eye sneered. He never explained anything to anybody. Unless
maybe to Gota if she caught him sneaking back in in the middle of
the night. Then he would have a story as convoluted as the history
of the Company itself.
Sounding like a woman pretending not to be bitter, Sahra said,
“You can bring Tobo in. We know there won’t be any
explosions or fires, and you melted only two holes through the
tabletop.”
“A base canard!” One-Eye proclaimed. “That
happened only because Frogface here—”
Sahra ignored him.
“Tobo can record what Murgen has to say. So Sleepy can use it
later. It’s time for us to turn into other people. Send a
messenger if Murgen finds out anything dangerous.”
That was the plan. I was even less enthusiastic about it now. I
wanted to stay and talk to my old friend. But this thing was bigger
than a bull session. Bigger than finding out if Bucket was keeping
well.