I think
this’s as far as I can take you,” Swan told me. He
spoke slowly, as though having trouble sorting out his thoughts.
“I don’t get it. Stuff keeps going away. I know I was
farther inside than this. I know all the things we did. But when I
try to remember anything specific, I lose everything between the
time I got to this point until sometime during the gallop back.
Stuff comes to me all the time when I’m not trying. I do
remember that. Maybe Catcher messed up my brain somehow.”
“There’s an all-time understatement,” Goblin
muttered.
Swan ignored Goblin. He complained, “We were actually off
the plain before I realized that we were the only ones who would be
coming out.”
I was not sure I believed that but it did not matter now. I
grunted, suggested, “How about you make a guess? Maybe your
soul will remember what your brain can’t.”
“First you need to get some light in here.”
“What do I have wizards for?” I asked the gloom.
“Certainly not anything useful or practical like providing a
light. They wouldn’t need one. They can see in the
dark.”
Goblin muttered something unflattering about the sort of woman
who indulges in sarcasm. He told Swan, “Sit down and let me
look at your head.”
“Let me!” Tobo enthused at the same time. “Let
me try to make a light. I can do this one.” He did not wait
for permission. Filaments of lemon and silver light crawled over
his upraised hands, swift and eager. The darkness surrounding us
retreated, I thought reluctantly.
“Wow!” I said. “Look at him.”
“He has the strength and enthusiasm of youth,”
One-Eye conceded. I glanced back. He was still astride the black
stallion, wearing a smug look but obviously exhausted. The white
crow was perched in front of him. It studied Tobo with one eye
while considering our surroundings with the other. It seemed
amused. Then One-Eye began to chuckle.
Tobo squealed in surprise. “Wait! Stop! Goblin!
What’s happening?”
The worms of light were snaking up his arms. They would not
respond to his insistence that they desist. He started slapping
himself. One-Eye and Goblin began to laugh.
Meantime, the two of them had done something to Swan to clarify
his mind. The man looked like he had just sucked down a tall,
frosty mug of self-confident recollection.
Sahra saw nothing funny in Tobo’s situation. She screamed
at the wizards to do something. She was almost incoherent. Which
betrayed how much stress she inflicted upon herself.
Doj told her, “He isn’t in any danger, Sahra. He
just let himself get distracted. It happens. It’s part of
learning,” or words to that effect, several times, before
Sahra calmed down and began to look defiant and sheepish at the
same time.
Goblin told Tobo, “I’ll take it till you get your
concentration back.” And in a moment there was light enough
to see the walls of the huge chamber. Someone who is skilled at
something always makes it look easy. The little bald wizard was no
exception. He told One-Eye, “Help Swan keep his head
clear.”
I thought the place looked like a nice change from sleeping out in the weather. I wished there was fuel we could burn to
heat it.
“Whither now?” I asked Swan. For some time I had
been silently regretting not having caught Murgen while I was
dreaming so I could have gotten reliable directions.
The white crow squawked and launched itself, leaving One-Eye
cursing because it had swatted him in the face with its wings.
I was starting to understand the beast. “Somebody see
where it goes. One of you sorcerer geniuses want to send a light
with it?” Tobo had received control of his light again and
had it working in good form but it took all his attention to manage
it. I hoped he outgrew this more-confidence-than-sense stage before
he took a really big bite of disaster.
Uncle Doj trailed the crow at a dignified pace. I supposed I
ought to contribute something more than executive decisions, so I
followed him. A ball of leprous green light from behind overtook me
and made a nest in my tangled hair. My scalp began to itch. I had a
suspicion One-Eye might be sneering at my personal hygiene, which,
I confess, sometimes became the victim of a negligent attitude.
Sort of. “This’ll teach me to take my darn helmet
off,” I grumbled. I refused to allow him to flash me his
smug, toothless grin by not looking back.
I had not been wearing an actual helmet. God save me, that would
have been cold. I had been wearing a leather helmet liner, which
had kept my ears from getting frostbitten. Barely. Winter. It was
one of those things the planning team had not foreseen.
I hurried past Doj, who was startled when he saw my hair. Then
he grinned as big as ever I had seen him do. I tossed him a
bloodthirsty scowl. Unfortunately, to do so I had to turn around
far enough to see One-Eye and Goblin suddenly stop exchanging
handslaps and snickers. Even Sahra turned slightly sideways to
conceal her amusement. All right. So suddenly I am the clown
princess of the Company, eh? We would see. Those two
would . . .
I realized that they had lured me into accepting their system of
thought. Before long I would be setting traps so I could get even
first.
The crow cawed. It was down on the cold stone floor. It danced
back and forth, suddenly impatient. Its talons clicked softly. I
dropped to my knees. It let me get almost within touching distance
before it flopped farther into the darkness.
More light took life behind us as people and animals came
inside, making the predictable racket. Every new arrival had to
know what was going on.
The crow became a silhouette if I lowered my head and looked at
it with my cheek against the floor.
I told Doj, “There’s light coming from somewhere.
This must be where the Captured got into the inner fortress.”
I got down on my belly. There was a definite gap in a wall of stone
so dark it seemed unseeable even in the available light. I could
not make out anything on the other side.
Doj got down and placed his own cheek on the floor.
“Indeed.”
I called, “We need some more light over here. And maybe
some tools. River. Runmust. Have those people start setting up some
kind of camp. And see what you can do about shutting out the
cold.” That would be difficult. There were several large gaps
in the outside wall.
Goblin and One-Eye stopped grinning like fools and came forward
dressed in their business faces. They kept Tobo right there with
them, determined to teach him their trade quickly, hands-on.
With more light it was easier to see what the bird meant me to
see, which had to be the crack Soulcatcher had sealed after working
her wicked spells on the Captured. “There any spells or booby
traps here?” I asked.
“The Little Girl’s a genius,” One-Eye
grumbled. His speech had grown a little slurred. He needed rest
badly. “The bird strutted through and didn’t go up in
smoke. Right? That suggest anything?”
“No spells,” Goblin said. “Don’t mind
him. He’s just cranky because him and Gota haven’t had
no privacy for a week.”
“I’m gonna fit you out for all the privacy
you’ll need for a couple of eons, Runt Man. I’m gonna
plant your wrinkled old ass—”
“Enough! Let’s see if we can make the hole any
bigger.”
The crow made impatient noises on the other side. It had to have
some connection with the Captured even if it was not Murgen
operating from some lost corner of time. Certainly I hoped it was
not Murgen from the future. That would imply a less than successful
effort on our part now.
I grumbled and snarled. I stamped back and forth while half a
dozen men expanded the hole, every one of them grousing about the
shortage of light. I did not contribute much as a human candle,
either. Maybe the thing in my hair was Goblin and One-Eye offering
commentary on how bright I was. Though I doubted that after only
two hundred years they could yet have developed that much
cleverness and subtlety.
A larger and larger crowd piled up behind me.
“River,” I growled, “I said you should have these
people do something useful. Tobo, get back from there. You want a
boulder to fall on your head?”
A voice behind me suggested, “You ought to get more light
on it so you can see if you need to do any shoring.”
I turned. “Slink?”
“There were miners in my family.”
“Then you’re as near an expert as we’ve
got.”
One-Eye jabbed a thumb at Goblin. “The dwarf here has
sapper experience. He helped undermine the walls at Tember.”
His face split in an ugly grin.
Goblin squeaked, a definite clue that “Tember” was
an episode he did not recall fondly. I did not remember any mention
of a Tember in the Annals. Reason suggested that the referenced
event must have taken place long before Croaker became Annalist,
which he had done at an early age.
Two of Croaker’s more immediate predecessors, Miller
Ladora and Kanwas Scar, had been so lax in their duties that little
is known about their time—other than what their successors have
reconstructed from oral tradition and the memories of survivors. It
was during that era that Croaker, Otto and Hagop joined the band.
Croaker says little about those days himself.
“Am I to take it, then, that I shouldn’t invest
unlimited faith in Goblin’s engineering skills?”
One-Eye cawed like a crow. “As an engineer our bitty buddy
makes a wonderful lumberjack. Things fall down wherever he
goes.”
Goblin growled like a mastiff issuing a warning.
“See, this here skinny little bald-egg genius sold the Old
Man the notion of sneaking into this burg Tember by tunneling under
its walls. Deep down. Because the earth was soft. It’d be
easy.” One-Eye snorted as he talked, his laughter barely
under control. “And he was right. It was easy. When his
tunnel caved in, the wall fell down. And the rest of us charged
through the gap and sorted them Temberinos out.”
Goblin grumbled, “And about five days later somebody
remembered the miners.”
“Somebody was just plain damned lucky he had a friend as
good as me to dig him out. The Old Man just wanted to put up a
gravestone.”
Goblin growled some more. “Not so. And the real truth is,
the tunnel never would’ve collapsed if this two-legged,
overripe dog turd hadn’t been playing one of his stupid
games. You know, I almost forgot. I never did pay you back for
that. You should’ve never brought it up, you human prune.
Damn! You almost went and died on me before I got you paid off. I
knew you were up to no good. You had that stroke on purpose,
didn’t you?”
“Of course I did, you nitwit. Every chance I get, I try to
die just so’s you can’t backstab me no more. You want
to be that way? I saved your ass and you want to be that way?
Ain’t no fool like an old fool. Bring it on, you hairless
little toady frog. I maybe slowed down a step the last couple years
but I’m still three steps faster and ten torches brighter
than any lily-white—”
“Boys!” I snapped. “Children! We have work to
do here.” They must have driven the whole Company crazy when
they were young and had the energy to keep it up all the time.
“As of this moment, all the slates are clean of anything that
happened before I was born. Just open me a hole so I can go see
what we have to do next.”
The two wizards did not stop growling and muttering and
threatening and trying to sabotage one another in small ways but
they did lend their claimed expertise to the effort to open the
gap.
I think
this’s as far as I can take you,” Swan told me. He
spoke slowly, as though having trouble sorting out his thoughts.
“I don’t get it. Stuff keeps going away. I know I was
farther inside than this. I know all the things we did. But when I
try to remember anything specific, I lose everything between the
time I got to this point until sometime during the gallop back.
Stuff comes to me all the time when I’m not trying. I do
remember that. Maybe Catcher messed up my brain somehow.”
“There’s an all-time understatement,” Goblin
muttered.
Swan ignored Goblin. He complained, “We were actually off
the plain before I realized that we were the only ones who would be
coming out.”
I was not sure I believed that but it did not matter now. I
grunted, suggested, “How about you make a guess? Maybe your
soul will remember what your brain can’t.”
“First you need to get some light in here.”
“What do I have wizards for?” I asked the gloom.
“Certainly not anything useful or practical like providing a
light. They wouldn’t need one. They can see in the
dark.”
Goblin muttered something unflattering about the sort of woman
who indulges in sarcasm. He told Swan, “Sit down and let me
look at your head.”
“Let me!” Tobo enthused at the same time. “Let
me try to make a light. I can do this one.” He did not wait
for permission. Filaments of lemon and silver light crawled over
his upraised hands, swift and eager. The darkness surrounding us
retreated, I thought reluctantly.
“Wow!” I said. “Look at him.”
“He has the strength and enthusiasm of youth,”
One-Eye conceded. I glanced back. He was still astride the black
stallion, wearing a smug look but obviously exhausted. The white
crow was perched in front of him. It studied Tobo with one eye
while considering our surroundings with the other. It seemed
amused. Then One-Eye began to chuckle.
Tobo squealed in surprise. “Wait! Stop! Goblin!
What’s happening?”
The worms of light were snaking up his arms. They would not
respond to his insistence that they desist. He started slapping
himself. One-Eye and Goblin began to laugh.
Meantime, the two of them had done something to Swan to clarify
his mind. The man looked like he had just sucked down a tall,
frosty mug of self-confident recollection.
Sahra saw nothing funny in Tobo’s situation. She screamed
at the wizards to do something. She was almost incoherent. Which
betrayed how much stress she inflicted upon herself.
Doj told her, “He isn’t in any danger, Sahra. He
just let himself get distracted. It happens. It’s part of
learning,” or words to that effect, several times, before
Sahra calmed down and began to look defiant and sheepish at the
same time.
Goblin told Tobo, “I’ll take it till you get your
concentration back.” And in a moment there was light enough
to see the walls of the huge chamber. Someone who is skilled at
something always makes it look easy. The little bald wizard was no
exception. He told One-Eye, “Help Swan keep his head
clear.”
I thought the place looked like a nice change from sleeping out in the weather. I wished there was fuel we could burn to
heat it.
“Whither now?” I asked Swan. For some time I had
been silently regretting not having caught Murgen while I was
dreaming so I could have gotten reliable directions.
The white crow squawked and launched itself, leaving One-Eye
cursing because it had swatted him in the face with its wings.
I was starting to understand the beast. “Somebody see
where it goes. One of you sorcerer geniuses want to send a light
with it?” Tobo had received control of his light again and
had it working in good form but it took all his attention to manage
it. I hoped he outgrew this more-confidence-than-sense stage before
he took a really big bite of disaster.
Uncle Doj trailed the crow at a dignified pace. I supposed I
ought to contribute something more than executive decisions, so I
followed him. A ball of leprous green light from behind overtook me
and made a nest in my tangled hair. My scalp began to itch. I had a
suspicion One-Eye might be sneering at my personal hygiene, which,
I confess, sometimes became the victim of a negligent attitude.
Sort of. “This’ll teach me to take my darn helmet
off,” I grumbled. I refused to allow him to flash me his
smug, toothless grin by not looking back.
I had not been wearing an actual helmet. God save me, that would
have been cold. I had been wearing a leather helmet liner, which
had kept my ears from getting frostbitten. Barely. Winter. It was
one of those things the planning team had not foreseen.
I hurried past Doj, who was startled when he saw my hair. Then
he grinned as big as ever I had seen him do. I tossed him a
bloodthirsty scowl. Unfortunately, to do so I had to turn around
far enough to see One-Eye and Goblin suddenly stop exchanging
handslaps and snickers. Even Sahra turned slightly sideways to
conceal her amusement. All right. So suddenly I am the clown
princess of the Company, eh? We would see. Those two
would . . .
I realized that they had lured me into accepting their system of
thought. Before long I would be setting traps so I could get even
first.
The crow cawed. It was down on the cold stone floor. It danced
back and forth, suddenly impatient. Its talons clicked softly. I
dropped to my knees. It let me get almost within touching distance
before it flopped farther into the darkness.
More light took life behind us as people and animals came
inside, making the predictable racket. Every new arrival had to
know what was going on.
The crow became a silhouette if I lowered my head and looked at
it with my cheek against the floor.
I told Doj, “There’s light coming from somewhere.
This must be where the Captured got into the inner fortress.”
I got down on my belly. There was a definite gap in a wall of stone
so dark it seemed unseeable even in the available light. I could
not make out anything on the other side.
Doj got down and placed his own cheek on the floor.
“Indeed.”
I called, “We need some more light over here. And maybe
some tools. River. Runmust. Have those people start setting up some
kind of camp. And see what you can do about shutting out the
cold.” That would be difficult. There were several large gaps
in the outside wall.
Goblin and One-Eye stopped grinning like fools and came forward
dressed in their business faces. They kept Tobo right there with
them, determined to teach him their trade quickly, hands-on.
With more light it was easier to see what the bird meant me to
see, which had to be the crack Soulcatcher had sealed after working
her wicked spells on the Captured. “There any spells or booby
traps here?” I asked.
“The Little Girl’s a genius,” One-Eye
grumbled. His speech had grown a little slurred. He needed rest
badly. “The bird strutted through and didn’t go up in
smoke. Right? That suggest anything?”
“No spells,” Goblin said. “Don’t mind
him. He’s just cranky because him and Gota haven’t had
no privacy for a week.”
“I’m gonna fit you out for all the privacy
you’ll need for a couple of eons, Runt Man. I’m gonna
plant your wrinkled old ass—”
“Enough! Let’s see if we can make the hole any
bigger.”
The crow made impatient noises on the other side. It had to have
some connection with the Captured even if it was not Murgen
operating from some lost corner of time. Certainly I hoped it was
not Murgen from the future. That would imply a less than successful
effort on our part now.
I grumbled and snarled. I stamped back and forth while half a
dozen men expanded the hole, every one of them grousing about the
shortage of light. I did not contribute much as a human candle,
either. Maybe the thing in my hair was Goblin and One-Eye offering
commentary on how bright I was. Though I doubted that after only
two hundred years they could yet have developed that much
cleverness and subtlety.
A larger and larger crowd piled up behind me.
“River,” I growled, “I said you should have these
people do something useful. Tobo, get back from there. You want a
boulder to fall on your head?”
A voice behind me suggested, “You ought to get more light
on it so you can see if you need to do any shoring.”
I turned. “Slink?”
“There were miners in my family.”
“Then you’re as near an expert as we’ve
got.”
One-Eye jabbed a thumb at Goblin. “The dwarf here has
sapper experience. He helped undermine the walls at Tember.”
His face split in an ugly grin.
Goblin squeaked, a definite clue that “Tember” was
an episode he did not recall fondly. I did not remember any mention
of a Tember in the Annals. Reason suggested that the referenced
event must have taken place long before Croaker became Annalist,
which he had done at an early age.
Two of Croaker’s more immediate predecessors, Miller
Ladora and Kanwas Scar, had been so lax in their duties that little
is known about their time—other than what their successors have
reconstructed from oral tradition and the memories of survivors. It
was during that era that Croaker, Otto and Hagop joined the band.
Croaker says little about those days himself.
“Am I to take it, then, that I shouldn’t invest
unlimited faith in Goblin’s engineering skills?”
One-Eye cawed like a crow. “As an engineer our bitty buddy
makes a wonderful lumberjack. Things fall down wherever he
goes.”
Goblin growled like a mastiff issuing a warning.
“See, this here skinny little bald-egg genius sold the Old
Man the notion of sneaking into this burg Tember by tunneling under
its walls. Deep down. Because the earth was soft. It’d be
easy.” One-Eye snorted as he talked, his laughter barely
under control. “And he was right. It was easy. When his
tunnel caved in, the wall fell down. And the rest of us charged
through the gap and sorted them Temberinos out.”
Goblin grumbled, “And about five days later somebody
remembered the miners.”
“Somebody was just plain damned lucky he had a friend as
good as me to dig him out. The Old Man just wanted to put up a
gravestone.”
Goblin growled some more. “Not so. And the real truth is,
the tunnel never would’ve collapsed if this two-legged,
overripe dog turd hadn’t been playing one of his stupid
games. You know, I almost forgot. I never did pay you back for
that. You should’ve never brought it up, you human prune.
Damn! You almost went and died on me before I got you paid off. I
knew you were up to no good. You had that stroke on purpose,
didn’t you?”
“Of course I did, you nitwit. Every chance I get, I try to
die just so’s you can’t backstab me no more. You want
to be that way? I saved your ass and you want to be that way?
Ain’t no fool like an old fool. Bring it on, you hairless
little toady frog. I maybe slowed down a step the last couple years
but I’m still three steps faster and ten torches brighter
than any lily-white—”
“Boys!” I snapped. “Children! We have work to
do here.” They must have driven the whole Company crazy when
they were young and had the energy to keep it up all the time.
“As of this moment, all the slates are clean of anything that
happened before I was born. Just open me a hole so I can go see
what we have to do next.”
The two wizards did not stop growling and muttering and
threatening and trying to sabotage one another in small ways but
they did lend their claimed expertise to the effort to open the
gap.