What Tobo had
found were the remains of the Nar, Sindawe, who had been one of
our best officers in the old days and, possibly, the villain
Mogaba’s brother. Certainly those two had been as close as
brothers until the siege of Jaicur, when Mogaba chose to usurp
command of the Company. “Clear away from him, people,”
I growled. “Give the experts room to take a look.” The
experts being Goblin, who dropped to his knees and scooted around
the corpse slowly, moving his head up and down, murmuring some sort
of cantrips, touching absolutely nothing until he was certain there
was no danger. I dropped to one knee myself.
“He got a lot farther than I would’ve
expected,” Goblin said.
“He was tougher than rawhide. Was it shadows?” The
body had that look.
“Yes.” Goblin pushed gently. The corpse rolled
slightly. “Nothing left here. He’s a dried-out
mummy.”
A voice from behind me said, “Search him, you retard. He
might’ve been carrying a message.”
I glanced back. One-Eye stood behind me, leaning on an ugly
black cane. The effort had him shivering. Or maybe that was just
the cold air. He had been riding one of the donkeys, tied into
place so he would not fall if he dozed off, which he did a lot
these days.
I suggested, “Move him over to the side of the road. We
need to keep this crowd moving. We have about eight more miles to
go before we stop for the night.” I pulled that eight out of
the air but it was a fact that we needed to keep moving. We were
better prepared for this evolution than our predecessors had been
but our resources remained limited. “Swan, when a mule with a
tent comes along, cut it out of line.”
“Uhm?”
“We need to make a travois. To bring the body.”
Every face within earshot went blank.
“We’re still the Black Company. We still don’t
leave our own behind.” Which was never strictly true but you
do have to serve an ideal the best you can, lest it become debased.
A law as ancient as coinage itself says bad money will drive out
good. The same is true of principles, ethics and rules of conduct.
If you always do the easier thing, then you cannot possibly remain
steadfast when it becomes necessary to take a difficult stand. You
must do what you know to be right. And you do know. Ninety-nine
times out of a hundred you do know and you are just making excuses
because the right thing is so hard, or just inconvenient.
“Here’s his badge,” Goblin said, producing a
beautifully crafted silver skull in which the one ruby eye seemed
to glow with an inner life. Sindawe had made that himself. It was
an exquisite piece from talented hands. “You want to take
it?”
’That was the custom, gradually developed since the
adoption of the badges under Soulcatcher’s suzerainty back
when the Captain was just a young tagalong with a quill pen. The
badges of the fallen were passed down to interested newcomers, who
were expected to learn their lineage and thus keep the names
alive. It is immortality of a sort.
I jumped. Sahra made a startled noise. I recalled that something
similar had happened to Murgen last time. Although in that case,
only he had sensed it. I thought. Maybe I ought to consult him. An
entire squad of soldiers had been assigned to tend and transport
the mist projector as delicately as was humanly possible. Even Tobo
was under orders to match his pace to that manageable by the crew
moving our most valuable resource.
Tobo had not done a good job of conforming.
Carts creaked past. Pack animals shied away from
Sindawe’s remains but never so far they risked straying from
the safety of the road. I had begun to suspect that they could
sense the danger better than I could because I had to rely entirely
upon intellect for my own salvation. Only the black stallion seemed
unmoved by Sindawe’s fate.
The white crow seemed very much interested in the corpse. I had
the feeling Sindawe was someone it knew and mourned. Ridiculous, of
course. Unless that was Murgen inside there, as someone had
suggested, trapped outside his own time.
Master Santaraksita came along, leading a donkey. Baladitya the
copyist bestrode the beast. He studied a book as he rode,
completely out of touch with his surroundings. Perhaps that was
because he could not see them. Or he did not believe in the world
outside his books. He had the lead rope of another donkey tied to
his wrist. That poor beast staggered under a load consisting mostly
of books and the tools of the librarian’s trade. Among the
books were some of the Annals, on loan, including those that I had
salvaged from the library.
Santaraksita pulled out of line. “This is so absolutely
exciting, Dorabee. Having adventures at my age. Being pursued
through ancient, eldritch, living artifacts by terrible sorcerers
and unearthly powers. It’s like stepping into the pages of
the old Vedas.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying it so much. This man
used to be one of our brothers. His adventure caught up with him
about fourteen years ago.”
“And he’s still in one piece?”
“Nothing lives on the plain unless it has the
plain’s countenance. Even including the flies and carrion
eaters you’d expect to find around a corpse
anywhere.”
“But there are crows here.” He indicated birds
circling at a distance. I had not noticed them because they were
making no sounds and there were only a few of them in the air. As
many as a dozen more perched atop the stone columns. The nearest of
those were now just a few hundred yards ahead.
“They’re not here to feast,” I said.
“They’re the Protector’s eyes. They run to her
and repeat whatever we do. If they touch down after dark,
they’ll end up just as dead as Sindawe did. Hey, Swan. Right
now, up and down the column, pass the word. Nobody does anything to
bother those crows. It might break holes in the protection the road
gives against the shadows.”
“You’re determined to put me on Catcher’s shit
list, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“She doesn’t know I’m not dead, does she?
Those crows are going to put the finger on me.”
I laughed. “Soulcatcher’s displeasure
shouldn’t worry you right now. She can’t get to
you.”
“You never know.” He went off to tell everybody I
wanted those watchcrows treated like favored pets.
“A strange and intriguing man,” Santaraksita
observed.
“Strange, anyway. But he’s a foreigner.”
“We’re all foreigners here, Dorabee.”
That was true. Very true. I could close my eyes and still be
overwhelmed by the strangeness of the plain. In fact, I felt that
more strongly when I was not looking at it. When my eyes were
closed it seemed as aware of me as I was aware of it.
Once we got Sindawe loaded I continued walking beside Master
Santaraksita. The librarian was every bit as excited as he claimed.
Everything was a wonder to him. Except the weather. “Is it
always this cold here, Dorabee?”
“It’s not even winter yet.” He knew about snow
only by repute. Ice he knew as something that fell from the sky
during the ferocious storms of the rainy season. “It could
get a lot colder. I don’t know. Swan says he don’t
recall it being this chilly the last time he was up here but that
was at a different time of year and the circumstances of the
incursion were different.” I was willing to bet that seldom
in its history had the plain ever experienced the crying of a
colicky baby or the barking of a dog. One of the children had
sneaked the dog along and now it was too late to change
anyone’s mind.
“How long will we be up here?”
“Ah. The question nobody’s had the nerve to ask.
You’re more familiar with the early Annals than I am anymore.
You’ve had months and months to study them while I
haven’t had time to keep my own up to date. What did they
tell you about the plain?”
“Nothing.”
“Not who built it? Not why? By implication Kina is
involved somehow. So are the Free Companies of Khatovar and the
golem demon Shivetya. At least we think the thing in the fortress
up ahead is the demon who’s supposed to stand guard over
Kina’s resting place. Not very effectively, apparently,
because the ancient king Rhaydreynak drove the Deceivers of his
time into the same caverns where Soulcatcher trapped the Captured.
And we know that the Books of the Dead are down there somewhere. We
know that Uncle Doj says—without offering any convincing evidence—the Nyueng Bao are the descendants of another Free Company, but we
also know that Uncle and Mother Gota sometimes mention things that
aren’t part of the usual lore.”
“Dorabee?”
Santaraksita I found wore that expression he always put on when
I surprised him. I grinned, told him, “I rehearse all this
every day, twenty times a day. I just don’t usually do it out
loud. I believe I was hoping you would add something to the mix. Is
there anything? By direct experience we know that it takes three
days to get to the fortress. I assume that stronghold is located at
the heart of the plain. We know there’s a network of
protected roads and circles where those roads intersect. Where
roads exist there must be someplace to go. To me that says there
must be at least one more Shadowgate somewhere.” I looked up.
“You think?”
“You bet our survival on the possibility that
there’s another way off the plain?”
“Yep. We didn’t have anywhere left to run back
there.”
There was that look again.
Suvrin, plodding along and listening in silence, had that look,
too.
I said, “Although I’ve been surrounded by Gunni all
my life, I’m still unfamiliar with the more obscure legendry.
And I know even less about that of the older, less well-known,
non-proselytizing cults. What do you know about The Land of Unknown
Shadows? It seems to be tied in with aphorisms like ‘All Evil
Dies There an Endless Death’ and ‘Calling the Heaven
and the Earth and the Day and the Night.’“
“The last one is easy, Dorabee. That’s an invocation
of the Supreme Being. You might also hear it as the formula
‘Calling the Earth and the Wind and the Sea and the
Sky,’ or even ‘Calling Yesterday and Today and Tonight
and Tomorrow.’You spout those off thoughtlessly because
they’re easy and you have to deliver a certain number of
prayers every day. I’m sure Vehdna who actually keep up with
their prayers take the same shortcuts.”
Twinges of guilt. My duties of faith had suffered abominably the
past six months. “Are you sure?”
“No. But it sure sounded good, didn’t it? Easy! You
asked about Gunni. I could be wrong in a different religious
context.”
“Of course. How about Bone Warrior, Stone Soldier, or
Soldier of Darkness?”
“Excuse me? Dorabee?”
“Never mind. Unless something related occurs to you.
I’d better trot up the line and get Tobo slowed down
again.”
As I passed the black stallion and white crow, the latter
chuckled and whispered that “Sister, sister“ phrase
again. The bird had heard the entire conversation. Chances were
that it was not Murgen, nor was it Soulcatcher’s creature,
but still, it was extremely interested in the doings of the Black
Company, to the point of trying to give warnings. It seemed quite
pleased that we were headed south and were unable to turn back.
Behind me, Master Santaraksita’s group paused. He and
Baladitya studied the face of the first stone column, where golden
characters still sparked occasionally. It is immortality of a sort.
What Tobo had
found were the remains of the Nar, Sindawe, who had been one of
our best officers in the old days and, possibly, the villain
Mogaba’s brother. Certainly those two had been as close as
brothers until the siege of Jaicur, when Mogaba chose to usurp
command of the Company. “Clear away from him, people,”
I growled. “Give the experts room to take a look.” The
experts being Goblin, who dropped to his knees and scooted around
the corpse slowly, moving his head up and down, murmuring some sort
of cantrips, touching absolutely nothing until he was certain there
was no danger. I dropped to one knee myself.
“He got a lot farther than I would’ve
expected,” Goblin said.
“He was tougher than rawhide. Was it shadows?” The
body had that look.
“Yes.” Goblin pushed gently. The corpse rolled
slightly. “Nothing left here. He’s a dried-out
mummy.”
A voice from behind me said, “Search him, you retard. He
might’ve been carrying a message.”
I glanced back. One-Eye stood behind me, leaning on an ugly
black cane. The effort had him shivering. Or maybe that was just
the cold air. He had been riding one of the donkeys, tied into
place so he would not fall if he dozed off, which he did a lot
these days.
I suggested, “Move him over to the side of the road. We
need to keep this crowd moving. We have about eight more miles to
go before we stop for the night.” I pulled that eight out of
the air but it was a fact that we needed to keep moving. We were
better prepared for this evolution than our predecessors had been
but our resources remained limited. “Swan, when a mule with a
tent comes along, cut it out of line.”
“Uhm?”
“We need to make a travois. To bring the body.”
Every face within earshot went blank.
“We’re still the Black Company. We still don’t
leave our own behind.” Which was never strictly true but you
do have to serve an ideal the best you can, lest it become debased.
A law as ancient as coinage itself says bad money will drive out
good. The same is true of principles, ethics and rules of conduct.
If you always do the easier thing, then you cannot possibly remain
steadfast when it becomes necessary to take a difficult stand. You
must do what you know to be right. And you do know. Ninety-nine
times out of a hundred you do know and you are just making excuses
because the right thing is so hard, or just inconvenient.
“Here’s his badge,” Goblin said, producing a
beautifully crafted silver skull in which the one ruby eye seemed
to glow with an inner life. Sindawe had made that himself. It was
an exquisite piece from talented hands. “You want to take
it?”
’That was the custom, gradually developed since the
adoption of the badges under Soulcatcher’s suzerainty back
when the Captain was just a young tagalong with a quill pen. The
badges of the fallen were passed down to interested newcomers, who
were expected to learn their lineage and thus keep the names
alive. It is immortality of a sort.
I jumped. Sahra made a startled noise. I recalled that something
similar had happened to Murgen last time. Although in that case,
only he had sensed it. I thought. Maybe I ought to consult him. An
entire squad of soldiers had been assigned to tend and transport
the mist projector as delicately as was humanly possible. Even Tobo
was under orders to match his pace to that manageable by the crew
moving our most valuable resource.
Tobo had not done a good job of conforming.
Carts creaked past. Pack animals shied away from
Sindawe’s remains but never so far they risked straying from
the safety of the road. I had begun to suspect that they could
sense the danger better than I could because I had to rely entirely
upon intellect for my own salvation. Only the black stallion seemed
unmoved by Sindawe’s fate.
The white crow seemed very much interested in the corpse. I had
the feeling Sindawe was someone it knew and mourned. Ridiculous, of
course. Unless that was Murgen inside there, as someone had
suggested, trapped outside his own time.
Master Santaraksita came along, leading a donkey. Baladitya the
copyist bestrode the beast. He studied a book as he rode,
completely out of touch with his surroundings. Perhaps that was
because he could not see them. Or he did not believe in the world
outside his books. He had the lead rope of another donkey tied to
his wrist. That poor beast staggered under a load consisting mostly
of books and the tools of the librarian’s trade. Among the
books were some of the Annals, on loan, including those that I had
salvaged from the library.
Santaraksita pulled out of line. “This is so absolutely
exciting, Dorabee. Having adventures at my age. Being pursued
through ancient, eldritch, living artifacts by terrible sorcerers
and unearthly powers. It’s like stepping into the pages of
the old Vedas.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying it so much. This man
used to be one of our brothers. His adventure caught up with him
about fourteen years ago.”
“And he’s still in one piece?”
“Nothing lives on the plain unless it has the
plain’s countenance. Even including the flies and carrion
eaters you’d expect to find around a corpse
anywhere.”
“But there are crows here.” He indicated birds
circling at a distance. I had not noticed them because they were
making no sounds and there were only a few of them in the air. As
many as a dozen more perched atop the stone columns. The nearest of
those were now just a few hundred yards ahead.
“They’re not here to feast,” I said.
“They’re the Protector’s eyes. They run to her
and repeat whatever we do. If they touch down after dark,
they’ll end up just as dead as Sindawe did. Hey, Swan. Right
now, up and down the column, pass the word. Nobody does anything to
bother those crows. It might break holes in the protection the road
gives against the shadows.”
“You’re determined to put me on Catcher’s shit
list, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“She doesn’t know I’m not dead, does she?
Those crows are going to put the finger on me.”
I laughed. “Soulcatcher’s displeasure
shouldn’t worry you right now. She can’t get to
you.”
“You never know.” He went off to tell everybody I
wanted those watchcrows treated like favored pets.
“A strange and intriguing man,” Santaraksita
observed.
“Strange, anyway. But he’s a foreigner.”
“We’re all foreigners here, Dorabee.”
That was true. Very true. I could close my eyes and still be
overwhelmed by the strangeness of the plain. In fact, I felt that
more strongly when I was not looking at it. When my eyes were
closed it seemed as aware of me as I was aware of it.
Once we got Sindawe loaded I continued walking beside Master
Santaraksita. The librarian was every bit as excited as he claimed.
Everything was a wonder to him. Except the weather. “Is it
always this cold here, Dorabee?”
“It’s not even winter yet.” He knew about snow
only by repute. Ice he knew as something that fell from the sky
during the ferocious storms of the rainy season. “It could
get a lot colder. I don’t know. Swan says he don’t
recall it being this chilly the last time he was up here but that
was at a different time of year and the circumstances of the
incursion were different.” I was willing to bet that seldom
in its history had the plain ever experienced the crying of a
colicky baby or the barking of a dog. One of the children had
sneaked the dog along and now it was too late to change
anyone’s mind.
“How long will we be up here?”
“Ah. The question nobody’s had the nerve to ask.
You’re more familiar with the early Annals than I am anymore.
You’ve had months and months to study them while I
haven’t had time to keep my own up to date. What did they
tell you about the plain?”
“Nothing.”
“Not who built it? Not why? By implication Kina is
involved somehow. So are the Free Companies of Khatovar and the
golem demon Shivetya. At least we think the thing in the fortress
up ahead is the demon who’s supposed to stand guard over
Kina’s resting place. Not very effectively, apparently,
because the ancient king Rhaydreynak drove the Deceivers of his
time into the same caverns where Soulcatcher trapped the Captured.
And we know that the Books of the Dead are down there somewhere. We
know that Uncle Doj says—without offering any convincing evidence—the Nyueng Bao are the descendants of another Free Company, but we
also know that Uncle and Mother Gota sometimes mention things that
aren’t part of the usual lore.”
“Dorabee?”
Santaraksita I found wore that expression he always put on when
I surprised him. I grinned, told him, “I rehearse all this
every day, twenty times a day. I just don’t usually do it out
loud. I believe I was hoping you would add something to the mix. Is
there anything? By direct experience we know that it takes three
days to get to the fortress. I assume that stronghold is located at
the heart of the plain. We know there’s a network of
protected roads and circles where those roads intersect. Where
roads exist there must be someplace to go. To me that says there
must be at least one more Shadowgate somewhere.” I looked up.
“You think?”
“You bet our survival on the possibility that
there’s another way off the plain?”
“Yep. We didn’t have anywhere left to run back
there.”
There was that look again.
Suvrin, plodding along and listening in silence, had that look,
too.
I said, “Although I’ve been surrounded by Gunni all
my life, I’m still unfamiliar with the more obscure legendry.
And I know even less about that of the older, less well-known,
non-proselytizing cults. What do you know about The Land of Unknown
Shadows? It seems to be tied in with aphorisms like ‘All Evil
Dies There an Endless Death’ and ‘Calling the Heaven
and the Earth and the Day and the Night.’“
“The last one is easy, Dorabee. That’s an invocation
of the Supreme Being. You might also hear it as the formula
‘Calling the Earth and the Wind and the Sea and the
Sky,’ or even ‘Calling Yesterday and Today and Tonight
and Tomorrow.’You spout those off thoughtlessly because
they’re easy and you have to deliver a certain number of
prayers every day. I’m sure Vehdna who actually keep up with
their prayers take the same shortcuts.”
Twinges of guilt. My duties of faith had suffered abominably the
past six months. “Are you sure?”
“No. But it sure sounded good, didn’t it? Easy! You
asked about Gunni. I could be wrong in a different religious
context.”
“Of course. How about Bone Warrior, Stone Soldier, or
Soldier of Darkness?”
“Excuse me? Dorabee?”
“Never mind. Unless something related occurs to you.
I’d better trot up the line and get Tobo slowed down
again.”
As I passed the black stallion and white crow, the latter
chuckled and whispered that “Sister, sister“ phrase
again. The bird had heard the entire conversation. Chances were
that it was not Murgen, nor was it Soulcatcher’s creature,
but still, it was extremely interested in the doings of the Black
Company, to the point of trying to give warnings. It seemed quite
pleased that we were headed south and were unable to turn back.
Behind me, Master Santaraksita’s group paused. He and
Baladitya studied the face of the first stone column, where golden
characters still sparked occasionally. It is immortality of a sort.