I haven’t
found them yet!” I snapped at Sahra and the Radisha. “I
don’t want to go any farther if One-Eye can’t assure me
that I’m not going to kill somebody just by being
here.” Against all advice, those two had pushed as far
forward as I would let them go. I could understand that they wanted
to see their husbands and brothers and boyfriends, but they ought
to have sense enough to restrain themselves until we knew what we
could and could not do without risking harm to those very husbands
and brothers and boyfriends.
Sahra gave me a sharp, hurt look.
“Sorry,” I said, insincerely. “Come on. Think.
You can see that the stasis down here didn’t work for
everyone. Swan. How far up this tunnel do we have to go?” I
could see a scatter of eight recumbent forms between myself and the
curve, none of whom were immediately recognizable as the Captain,
Lady, Murgen, Thai Dei, Cordy Mather or
Blade. “From where we stand now, roughly eleven people
still aren’t accounted for.”
“I don’t remember,” Swan grumped. Bass echoes
chased one another around the cavern. They were worse with my
higher pitched voice, though.
“Memory spell wearing off?”
“I don’t think so. This feels more like something I
never knew. I’m still a whole lot confused about what went on
down here.”
One big problem was that none of us really knew exactly how many
Captured there were. Swan was the best witness because he had
ridden with them, but he had not kept track, other than of key
people. Murgen never had been any help because after he had become
one of the Captured, he had apparently become unable to explore the
immediate vicinity where he was confined.
“We need to get Murgen awake first thing. Nobody else will
know all the names and faces.” It seemed probable that some
of the people I did not recognize just were not part of the
Company. “One-Eye. Figure out how to wake these people up. As
soon as I find Murgen, I want to get him into talking condition.
Can I go ahead?” Squabbling echoes reminded me to keep my
voice down.
Crabbily, One-Eye responded, “Yes. Just don’t touch
anybody. Or even anything that you don’t recognize. And stop
trying to rush me.”
“Can you bring them out of stasis?”
“I don’t know yet, do I? I’ve been too damned
busy answering dumb questions. Leave me alone long enough and I
might figure it out, though.”
Tempers were getting short and manners were becoming frayed. I
sighed, rubbed my forehead and temples because I had begun to
develop a headache, listened to the sounds of more people
descending the stair. “Willow, see if you can keep those
fools out of here till One-Eye’s ready.” I looked ahead
without eagerness. Not only did the cavern turn to the right, it
steepened. The water-polished floor was covered with frost. The
footing was going to be treacherous.
“Caw!”
The white crow was up there somewhere. It had been announcing
itself repeatedly, sounding more impatient every time.
I moved forward carefully. When I reached the steeper floor, I
knelt and brushed the frost away to improve the footing. I told
Sahra and the Radisha, “If you have to follow me, you’d
better be even more careful than I am.”
They insisted. They were careful. Not one of us slipped and went
flailing back down the slope. “Here’s Longo and
Sparkle,” I said. “And that wad definitely looks like
the Howler.”
In fact, that wad definitely was that crippled little Master
Sorcerer. He had been one of the Lady’s henchmen in the far
north, then our enemy down here. He had become a prisoner of war
along with his ally Longshadow, and Lady must have foreseen some
use for him or she would not have kept him alive. But he was not
likely to get released while I was in charge. In his way, he was
crazier than Soulcatcher.
The crow chided me for taking so long.
The Howler was awake. His will was such that he could move his
eyes, though nothing more was within his capacity. One glimpse of
the madness within those dark orbs and I knew that this man could
not be permitted to make it back to the world. “Be very
careful around this one,” I said. “Or he’ll nail
you as surely as Soulcatcher nailed Swan. One-Eye. Howler is awake.
He can move his eyes.”
One-Eye repeated my warning, absentmindedly. “Don’t
get too close to him.”
The crow began to nag. Its voice gave birth to a particularly
annoying generation of echoes.
“Ah. Radisha. Here’s your brother. And he seems to
be in pretty good shape. No! Don’t touch! That’s
probably what contaminated the stasis spells protecting the dead
men. You’ll just have to be patient, same as the rest of
us.”
She made a sound like a low growl.
The icy cave ceiling above us made creaking sounds that added to
the volleys of echoes.
I continued, “It’s hard. I know it’s hard. But
right now patience is the best tool we have for getting them out of
here safely.” Once I was sure she would restrain herself I
resumed inching forward. The white crow cawed impatiently. Out loud
I thought, “I do believe I’ll wring that thing’s
neck.”
The Radisha reminded me, “You’ll
build bad kharma. You might come back as a crow or parrot in your
next life.”
“One of the beauties of being Vehdna is that you
don’t have a next life to worry about. And God, the
All-Powerful, the Merciful, has no love at all for crows. Except to
use as plagues upon the unrighteous. Does anybody know if Master
Santaraksita planned to come down here?” My organizational
skills had vanished because of my own eagerness to reach the
Captured. It occurred to me only now that the scholar’s
knowledge might prove especially useful here if he could connect
anything in this cave to known myth.
I got no answer. “I’ll send for him if I have to.
Ah. Sahra, here’s your honey. Don’t touch!” I
said that a little too loudly. The echoes got very boisterous.
Several small icicles broke loose from the ceiling. They shattered
with an almost metallic tinkle when they struck the floor.
The crow spoke, very distinctly, “Come here!”
And I, having finally figured it out, told it, “If your
manners don’t improve dramatically, you might not get out of
here at all.”
The bird was strutting back and forth nervously in front of
Croaker and Lady. Soulcatcher had left those two snuggled up
together, arranged so that the Captain had one arm around
Lady’s waist while she held his other hand with both of hers
in her lap. Additional delicate touches suggested that
Soulcatcher’s wicked sense of play had peaked for this bit of
still life.
If Catcher had left any booby traps at all, this was where they
would be. “One-Eye. I need help.” Any traps that
existed were beyond me.
Lady’s eyes were open. There was no dust on them. She was
angry. And the white crow wanted to tell me all about it.
“Patience,” I counseled, close to becoming
impatient myself. “Swan. One-Eye. Come on up here.”
Swan arrived first despite coming from farther away. I asked,
“You recall anything special she did with these two? Any
little bit of sneakiness?”
“No. I wouldn’t worry about it. By the time she laid
them out, she was worried about what might happen next.
That’s the way she is. When she’s starting something,
it’s her whole world and she has no doubts about any part of
it. But the closer she comes to getting finished, the more trouble
she has keeping her confidence up.”
“Nice to know that she’s human.” I did not
mean a word of that. “One-Eye. Look for booby traps around
here. And make up your mind. Tell me if you can bring these people
back, darn it!” My headache had not gotten any better. But,
thank the God of Mercies, it had grown no worse.
Another icicle fell.
“I know. I know. I heard you the first time you
asked.” He grumbled something about wishing he knew a way to
charm me up a better love life.
I stared past Croaker and Lady. The cavern went on. Pale light
barely illuminated it. There was no gold in that at all now. A
touch of silver, a touch of grey, a lot of blue ice. In fact, the
sedimentary rock seemed to give way to actual ice now, ahead.
“Willow. Did Catcher go up there when you were
here?”
He checked where I was looking. “No. But she could have
during an earlier visit.”
Someone had traveled in that direction recently, in cavern
scales of time. There were still clear tracks in the frost. And I
suspected that I would not enjoy the journey once I began to follow
them. But I would do so. I had no choice. I had failed elsewhere by
letting Narayan and the Daughter of Night get away. That Kina
undoubtedly supplied them with a subtle boost did not sufficiently
signify. I should have been better prepared. “One-Eye. Talk
to me. Can you resurrect these people or not?”
“If you’d stop barking for five minutes I could
probably figure that out.”
“Take your time, sweetness. It’ll take us a while to
starve.” That ice up there must have been what Swan had meant
when he mentioned ice on the plain.
“You’ve had all the fool-around time I’m
willing to give you,” I told One-Eye. “Can you do it?
Yes or no. Right now.”
“The shape I’m in, I need more rest.” His
speech was slow and slurred and had taken on an odd rhythm that
made following him difficult. He was right, of course. All of us
needed rest. But we also needed to finish our business and get off
the plain. Hunger was a reality already. It was not going to go
away. I feared it might become a companion as intimate and dreaded
as it had been during the siege of Jaicur.
I had decided, already, that I would adopt Uncle Doj’s
suggested strategy. We would recover only a few people now. We
would return for the others later. But that meant making cruel
choices. Somebody would end up hating me no matter what I did. If I
was really clever, I would find some good old-fashioned Goblinlike
way of spreading the blame all around me. Those tagged to wait
could not hate everybody.
And there went some good old-fashioned wishful thinking, Sleepy.
We were talking about human beings. If there is any way to be
contrary, unreasonable and obnoxious, human beings are sure to find
and pursue it. With verve and enthusiasm at whatever might be the
most inconvenient time.
I haven’t
found them yet!” I snapped at Sahra and the Radisha. “I
don’t want to go any farther if One-Eye can’t assure me
that I’m not going to kill somebody just by being
here.” Against all advice, those two had pushed as far
forward as I would let them go. I could understand that they wanted
to see their husbands and brothers and boyfriends, but they ought
to have sense enough to restrain themselves until we knew what we
could and could not do without risking harm to those very husbands
and brothers and boyfriends.
Sahra gave me a sharp, hurt look.
“Sorry,” I said, insincerely. “Come on. Think.
You can see that the stasis down here didn’t work for
everyone. Swan. How far up this tunnel do we have to go?” I
could see a scatter of eight recumbent forms between myself and the
curve, none of whom were immediately recognizable as the Captain,
Lady, Murgen, Thai Dei, Cordy Mather or
Blade. “From where we stand now, roughly eleven people
still aren’t accounted for.”
“I don’t remember,” Swan grumped. Bass echoes
chased one another around the cavern. They were worse with my
higher pitched voice, though.
“Memory spell wearing off?”
“I don’t think so. This feels more like something I
never knew. I’m still a whole lot confused about what went on
down here.”
One big problem was that none of us really knew exactly how many
Captured there were. Swan was the best witness because he had
ridden with them, but he had not kept track, other than of key
people. Murgen never had been any help because after he had become
one of the Captured, he had apparently become unable to explore the
immediate vicinity where he was confined.
“We need to get Murgen awake first thing. Nobody else will
know all the names and faces.” It seemed probable that some
of the people I did not recognize just were not part of the
Company. “One-Eye. Figure out how to wake these people up. As
soon as I find Murgen, I want to get him into talking condition.
Can I go ahead?” Squabbling echoes reminded me to keep my
voice down.
Crabbily, One-Eye responded, “Yes. Just don’t touch
anybody. Or even anything that you don’t recognize. And stop
trying to rush me.”
“Can you bring them out of stasis?”
“I don’t know yet, do I? I’ve been too damned
busy answering dumb questions. Leave me alone long enough and I
might figure it out, though.”
Tempers were getting short and manners were becoming frayed. I
sighed, rubbed my forehead and temples because I had begun to
develop a headache, listened to the sounds of more people
descending the stair. “Willow, see if you can keep those
fools out of here till One-Eye’s ready.” I looked ahead
without eagerness. Not only did the cavern turn to the right, it
steepened. The water-polished floor was covered with frost. The
footing was going to be treacherous.
“Caw!”
The white crow was up there somewhere. It had been announcing
itself repeatedly, sounding more impatient every time.
I moved forward carefully. When I reached the steeper floor, I
knelt and brushed the frost away to improve the footing. I told
Sahra and the Radisha, “If you have to follow me, you’d
better be even more careful than I am.”
They insisted. They were careful. Not one of us slipped and went
flailing back down the slope. “Here’s Longo and
Sparkle,” I said. “And that wad definitely looks like
the Howler.”
In fact, that wad definitely was that crippled little Master
Sorcerer. He had been one of the Lady’s henchmen in the far
north, then our enemy down here. He had become a prisoner of war
along with his ally Longshadow, and Lady must have foreseen some
use for him or she would not have kept him alive. But he was not
likely to get released while I was in charge. In his way, he was
crazier than Soulcatcher.
The crow chided me for taking so long.
The Howler was awake. His will was such that he could move his
eyes, though nothing more was within his capacity. One glimpse of
the madness within those dark orbs and I knew that this man could
not be permitted to make it back to the world. “Be very
careful around this one,” I said. “Or he’ll nail
you as surely as Soulcatcher nailed Swan. One-Eye. Howler is awake.
He can move his eyes.”
One-Eye repeated my warning, absentmindedly. “Don’t
get too close to him.”
The crow began to nag. Its voice gave birth to a particularly
annoying generation of echoes.
“Ah. Radisha. Here’s your brother. And he seems to
be in pretty good shape. No! Don’t touch! That’s
probably what contaminated the stasis spells protecting the dead
men. You’ll just have to be patient, same as the rest of
us.”
She made a sound like a low growl.
The icy cave ceiling above us made creaking sounds that added to
the volleys of echoes.
I continued, “It’s hard. I know it’s hard. But
right now patience is the best tool we have for getting them out of
here safely.” Once I was sure she would restrain herself I
resumed inching forward. The white crow cawed impatiently. Out loud
I thought, “I do believe I’ll wring that thing’s
neck.”
The Radisha reminded me, “You’ll
build bad kharma. You might come back as a crow or parrot in your
next life.”
“One of the beauties of being Vehdna is that you
don’t have a next life to worry about. And God, the
All-Powerful, the Merciful, has no love at all for crows. Except to
use as plagues upon the unrighteous. Does anybody know if Master
Santaraksita planned to come down here?” My organizational
skills had vanished because of my own eagerness to reach the
Captured. It occurred to me only now that the scholar’s
knowledge might prove especially useful here if he could connect
anything in this cave to known myth.
I got no answer. “I’ll send for him if I have to.
Ah. Sahra, here’s your honey. Don’t touch!” I
said that a little too loudly. The echoes got very boisterous.
Several small icicles broke loose from the ceiling. They shattered
with an almost metallic tinkle when they struck the floor.
The crow spoke, very distinctly, “Come here!”
And I, having finally figured it out, told it, “If your
manners don’t improve dramatically, you might not get out of
here at all.”
The bird was strutting back and forth nervously in front of
Croaker and Lady. Soulcatcher had left those two snuggled up
together, arranged so that the Captain had one arm around
Lady’s waist while she held his other hand with both of hers
in her lap. Additional delicate touches suggested that
Soulcatcher’s wicked sense of play had peaked for this bit of
still life.
If Catcher had left any booby traps at all, this was where they
would be. “One-Eye. I need help.” Any traps that
existed were beyond me.
Lady’s eyes were open. There was no dust on them. She was
angry. And the white crow wanted to tell me all about it.
“Patience,” I counseled, close to becoming
impatient myself. “Swan. One-Eye. Come on up here.”
Swan arrived first despite coming from farther away. I asked,
“You recall anything special she did with these two? Any
little bit of sneakiness?”
“No. I wouldn’t worry about it. By the time she laid
them out, she was worried about what might happen next.
That’s the way she is. When she’s starting something,
it’s her whole world and she has no doubts about any part of
it. But the closer she comes to getting finished, the more trouble
she has keeping her confidence up.”
“Nice to know that she’s human.” I did not
mean a word of that. “One-Eye. Look for booby traps around
here. And make up your mind. Tell me if you can bring these people
back, darn it!” My headache had not gotten any better. But,
thank the God of Mercies, it had grown no worse.
Another icicle fell.
“I know. I know. I heard you the first time you
asked.” He grumbled something about wishing he knew a way to
charm me up a better love life.
I stared past Croaker and Lady. The cavern went on. Pale light
barely illuminated it. There was no gold in that at all now. A
touch of silver, a touch of grey, a lot of blue ice. In fact, the
sedimentary rock seemed to give way to actual ice now, ahead.
“Willow. Did Catcher go up there when you were
here?”
He checked where I was looking. “No. But she could have
during an earlier visit.”
Someone had traveled in that direction recently, in cavern
scales of time. There were still clear tracks in the frost. And I
suspected that I would not enjoy the journey once I began to follow
them. But I would do so. I had no choice. I had failed elsewhere by
letting Narayan and the Daughter of Night get away. That Kina
undoubtedly supplied them with a subtle boost did not sufficiently
signify. I should have been better prepared. “One-Eye. Talk
to me. Can you resurrect these people or not?”
“If you’d stop barking for five minutes I could
probably figure that out.”
“Take your time, sweetness. It’ll take us a while to
starve.” That ice up there must have been what Swan had meant
when he mentioned ice on the plain.
“You’ve had all the fool-around time I’m
willing to give you,” I told One-Eye. “Can you do it?
Yes or no. Right now.”
“The shape I’m in, I need more rest.” His
speech was slow and slurred and had taken on an odd rhythm that
made following him difficult. He was right, of course. All of us
needed rest. But we also needed to finish our business and get off
the plain. Hunger was a reality already. It was not going to go
away. I feared it might become a companion as intimate and dreaded
as it had been during the siege of Jaicur.
I had decided, already, that I would adopt Uncle Doj’s
suggested strategy. We would recover only a few people now. We
would return for the others later. But that meant making cruel
choices. Somebody would end up hating me no matter what I did. If I
was really clever, I would find some good old-fashioned Goblinlike
way of spreading the blame all around me. Those tagged to wait
could not hate everybody.
And there went some good old-fashioned wishful thinking, Sleepy.
We were talking about human beings. If there is any way to be
contrary, unreasonable and obnoxious, human beings are sure to find
and pursue it. With verve and enthusiasm at whatever might be the
most inconvenient time.