The ugly
dreamwalkers returned after dark. They were more energetic in their
efforts tonight. The rain returned, too. It was more energetic and
was accompanied by thunder and lightning that made sleeping
difficult. As did the cold rainwater, all of which seemed
determined to collect inside the circle where we were camped. The
stone did not appear to slope but water sure behaved as though it
did. The animals drank their fill. Likewise, the human members of
the band. Runmust and Riverwalker directed everyone to fill
waterbags and top off canteens. And as soon as someone raised his
voice to bless our good fortune, the first snowflakes began to
fall.
What sleep I did manage was not pleasant. A full-blown tumult
was underway in the ghostworld and it spilled over into my dreams.
Then Iqbal’s daughter decided this would be a wonderful time
to cry all night. Which got the dog started howling. Or maybe that
happened the other way around.
Shadows swarmed over the face of our protection. They were more
interested in us than they had been in the interlopers of
Murgen’s time. He told me so himself.
The shadows remembered ages past. I was able to eavesdrop on
their dreams.
On their nightmares. All they remembered were horrors from a
time when men resembling Nyueng Bao tortured them to death in
wholesale lots while sorcerers great and small spanked the demented
souls until, when they were released eventually, they were so
filled with hatred of every living thing that even a creature as
slight as a roach was subject to instant attack, with great
ferocity. Some shadows, already evilly predatory by nature, became
so wicked they even attacked and devoured other shadows.
There had been millions so victimized. And the only virtue in
their creators was that they manufactured the horrors from invaders
who arrived in countless waves from a world where an insane
sorcerer king had elevated himself to near godhood, then had set
out to take full mastery of all the sixteen worlds.
Uncounted tens of thousands of corpses littered the glittering
plain before the shadows stemmed that tide. Scores of the monsters
escaped into neighboring worlds. They spread terror and havoc until
the gates could be modified to prevent their passage. For centuries
no traffic crossed the plain. Then came another age of halfhearted
commerce, once some genius devised the protection now shielding the
roads and circles.
The shadows saw everything. They remembered everything. They saw
and remembered the missionaries of Kina, who had fled my own world
at the pinnacle of Rhaydreynak’s fury. In every world they
reached, the goddess’s dark song fell upon a few eager ears,
even amongst the children of those who had created the shadows.
Commerce on a plain so constrained and dangerous perforce
remained light. It took determined people to hazard the crossing.
Traffic peaked when the world we recalled as Khatovar launched a
flurry of expeditions to other worlds to determine which would be
best suited to host the cosmic ceremony called the Year of the
Skulls.
Followers of Kina from other worlds joined that quest. Companies
marched and countermarched. They argued and squabbled. They
accomplished very little. Eventually a consensus took shape. The
sacrifice ought to be the world that had treated the Children of
Kina so abominably in the first place. Rhaydreynak’s
descendants should reap what he had sown.
The companies sent out were not swarms of fanatics. The plain
was dangerous. Few men wanted to cross it. Most of the soldiers
were conscripts, or minor criminals under the rule of a few
dedicated priests. They were not expected to return. It became
the custom for the conscripts’ families to hold a wake for
their Bone Warriors or Stone Soldiers before they departed—even
though the priests always promised they would be back in a matter
of months.
The few who did return usually came back so drained and changed,
so bitter and hard, they came to be known as Soldiers of
Darkness.
Kina’s religion was never popular anywhere it took root.
Always a minority cult, it lost what power it did have as
generations passed and the early fervor faded into the inevitable,
tedious rule of functionaries. One world after another abandoned
Kina and turned away from the plain. Dark Ages took shape
everywhere. One gate after another failed and was not restored.
Those that did not fail fell into disuse. The worlds were old,
worn, tired, desperately in need of renewal. The ancestors of the
Nyueng Bao may have been the last large party to travel from one
world to another. They seemed to have been Kina worshippers fleeing
persecution at a time when the rest of their people had become
insanely xenophobic and determined to expunge all alien influences.
The ancestors of the Nyueng Bao, the Children of the Dead, had
vowed to return to their Land of Unknown Shadows in blazing
triumph. But, of course, because they were safe on the far side of
the plain, their descendants soon forgot who and what they were.
Only a handful of priests remembered, not entirely correctly.
A voice that did not speak aloud tickled my consciousness.
Sister, sister, it said. I saw nothing, felt only that
featherweight touch. But it was enough to spin my soul sideways and
toss it into another place where, when I caught my spiritual
breath, the stench of decay filled my nostrils. A sea of bones
surrounded me. Unknown tides stirred its surface.
There was something wrong with my eyes. My vision was warped and
doubled. I raised a hand to rub them . . . and
saw white feathers.
No! Impossible! I could not be following Murgen’s path. I
could not be losing my moorings in time. I would not stand for it!
I willed myself— Caw! Not from my beak.
A black shape popped into sight in front of me, wings spread,
slowing. Talons reached toward me.
I spun, hurled myself off the dead branch where I had been
perched. And was sorry instantly.
I found myself just yards from a face five feet tall. It boasted
more fangs than a shark does teeth. It was darker than midnight.
The odor of its breath was the stench of decaying flesh.
The triumphant grin on those wicked ebony lips faded as I evaded
the swat of a gigantic, clawed hand. I, Sleepy, was in a
trousers-soiling panic but something else was inside the bird with
me. And it was having fun. Sister, sister, that was close. The
bitch is getting sneakier. But she will never surprise me. She
cannot. Nor will she understand that she cannot.
Who is “me?”
The exercise was over. I was in my body on the plain, in the
rain, shuddering while my mind’s eye observed the capering
dreamwalkers. I examined what I had experienced and concluded that
I had been given a message, which was that Kina knew we were
coming. The dreaming goddess had been pretending quiescence of
recent decades. She knew patience intimately, by all its secret
names. And I may have been given another message as well.
Kina still was the Mother of Deceit. Quite possibly nothing I
had learned recently was entirely or even partially true if Kina
had found a way to wander the shadowed reaches of my mind. I had no
doubt that she could. She had managed to inform entire generations
and regions with a hysterical fear of the Black Company before the
advent of the Old Crew.
I swear I sensed her amusement over having quickened in me a
deeper and more abiding distrust of everything around me.
The ugly
dreamwalkers returned after dark. They were more energetic in their
efforts tonight. The rain returned, too. It was more energetic and
was accompanied by thunder and lightning that made sleeping
difficult. As did the cold rainwater, all of which seemed
determined to collect inside the circle where we were camped. The
stone did not appear to slope but water sure behaved as though it
did. The animals drank their fill. Likewise, the human members of
the band. Runmust and Riverwalker directed everyone to fill
waterbags and top off canteens. And as soon as someone raised his
voice to bless our good fortune, the first snowflakes began to
fall.
What sleep I did manage was not pleasant. A full-blown tumult
was underway in the ghostworld and it spilled over into my dreams.
Then Iqbal’s daughter decided this would be a wonderful time
to cry all night. Which got the dog started howling. Or maybe that
happened the other way around.
Shadows swarmed over the face of our protection. They were more
interested in us than they had been in the interlopers of
Murgen’s time. He told me so himself.
The shadows remembered ages past. I was able to eavesdrop on
their dreams.
On their nightmares. All they remembered were horrors from a
time when men resembling Nyueng Bao tortured them to death in
wholesale lots while sorcerers great and small spanked the demented
souls until, when they were released eventually, they were so
filled with hatred of every living thing that even a creature as
slight as a roach was subject to instant attack, with great
ferocity. Some shadows, already evilly predatory by nature, became
so wicked they even attacked and devoured other shadows.
There had been millions so victimized. And the only virtue in
their creators was that they manufactured the horrors from invaders
who arrived in countless waves from a world where an insane
sorcerer king had elevated himself to near godhood, then had set
out to take full mastery of all the sixteen worlds.
Uncounted tens of thousands of corpses littered the glittering
plain before the shadows stemmed that tide. Scores of the monsters
escaped into neighboring worlds. They spread terror and havoc until
the gates could be modified to prevent their passage. For centuries
no traffic crossed the plain. Then came another age of halfhearted
commerce, once some genius devised the protection now shielding the
roads and circles.
The shadows saw everything. They remembered everything. They saw
and remembered the missionaries of Kina, who had fled my own world
at the pinnacle of Rhaydreynak’s fury. In every world they
reached, the goddess’s dark song fell upon a few eager ears,
even amongst the children of those who had created the shadows.
Commerce on a plain so constrained and dangerous perforce
remained light. It took determined people to hazard the crossing.
Traffic peaked when the world we recalled as Khatovar launched a
flurry of expeditions to other worlds to determine which would be
best suited to host the cosmic ceremony called the Year of the
Skulls.
Followers of Kina from other worlds joined that quest. Companies
marched and countermarched. They argued and squabbled. They
accomplished very little. Eventually a consensus took shape. The
sacrifice ought to be the world that had treated the Children of
Kina so abominably in the first place. Rhaydreynak’s
descendants should reap what he had sown.
The companies sent out were not swarms of fanatics. The plain
was dangerous. Few men wanted to cross it. Most of the soldiers
were conscripts, or minor criminals under the rule of a few
dedicated priests. They were not expected to return. It became
the custom for the conscripts’ families to hold a wake for
their Bone Warriors or Stone Soldiers before they departed—even
though the priests always promised they would be back in a matter
of months.
The few who did return usually came back so drained and changed,
so bitter and hard, they came to be known as Soldiers of
Darkness.
Kina’s religion was never popular anywhere it took root.
Always a minority cult, it lost what power it did have as
generations passed and the early fervor faded into the inevitable,
tedious rule of functionaries. One world after another abandoned
Kina and turned away from the plain. Dark Ages took shape
everywhere. One gate after another failed and was not restored.
Those that did not fail fell into disuse. The worlds were old,
worn, tired, desperately in need of renewal. The ancestors of the
Nyueng Bao may have been the last large party to travel from one
world to another. They seemed to have been Kina worshippers fleeing
persecution at a time when the rest of their people had become
insanely xenophobic and determined to expunge all alien influences.
The ancestors of the Nyueng Bao, the Children of the Dead, had
vowed to return to their Land of Unknown Shadows in blazing
triumph. But, of course, because they were safe on the far side of
the plain, their descendants soon forgot who and what they were.
Only a handful of priests remembered, not entirely correctly.
A voice that did not speak aloud tickled my consciousness.
Sister, sister, it said. I saw nothing, felt only that
featherweight touch. But it was enough to spin my soul sideways and
toss it into another place where, when I caught my spiritual
breath, the stench of decay filled my nostrils. A sea of bones
surrounded me. Unknown tides stirred its surface.
There was something wrong with my eyes. My vision was warped and
doubled. I raised a hand to rub them . . . and
saw white feathers.
No! Impossible! I could not be following Murgen’s path. I
could not be losing my moorings in time. I would not stand for it!
I willed myself— Caw! Not from my beak.
A black shape popped into sight in front of me, wings spread,
slowing. Talons reached toward me.
I spun, hurled myself off the dead branch where I had been
perched. And was sorry instantly.
I found myself just yards from a face five feet tall. It boasted
more fangs than a shark does teeth. It was darker than midnight.
The odor of its breath was the stench of decaying flesh.
The triumphant grin on those wicked ebony lips faded as I evaded
the swat of a gigantic, clawed hand. I, Sleepy, was in a
trousers-soiling panic but something else was inside the bird with
me. And it was having fun. Sister, sister, that was close. The
bitch is getting sneakier. But she will never surprise me. She
cannot. Nor will she understand that she cannot.
Who is “me?”
The exercise was over. I was in my body on the plain, in the
rain, shuddering while my mind’s eye observed the capering
dreamwalkers. I examined what I had experienced and concluded that
I had been given a message, which was that Kina knew we were
coming. The dreaming goddess had been pretending quiescence of
recent decades. She knew patience intimately, by all its secret
names. And I may have been given another message as well.
Kina still was the Mother of Deceit. Quite possibly nothing I
had learned recently was entirely or even partially true if Kina
had found a way to wander the shadowed reaches of my mind. I had no
doubt that she could. She had managed to inform entire generations
and regions with a hysterical fear of the Black Company before the
advent of the Old Crew.
I swear I sensed her amusement over having quickened in me a
deeper and more abiding distrust of everything around me.