She Is the Darkness: Book Two of Glittering Stone: A Novel of the Black Company (2 page)

It is a long trail from that postern to the apartment I call home. On the way I
stopped by Croaker’s cell to let him know what had happened while we were
getting Smoke out of the house. He asked, “You see anything besides the Shadar?”

“No. But the uproar is going to attract attention. If they hear that One-Eye was
involved people interested in us will start poking around. They’ll be sure
something was going on even if One-Eye sells his story to the watchmen.”

Croaker grunted. He stared at the papers he had been trying to read. He was
bone-tired. “Nothing we can do about it now. Go get some sleep. We’re going
ourselves in a day or two.”

“Uhn.” I did not look forward to traveling, especially during wintertime. “I’m
not really looking forward to this.”

“Hey. I’m older and fatter than you are.”

“But you’ll be going toward something. Lady is down there.”

He grunted unenthusiastically. Any more you had to wonder about his commitment
to his woman. Ever since the trouble with Blade . . . None of my business. “Good
night, Murgen.”

“Yeah. Same to you, chief.” He did not want to be civil, that was fine with me.

I headed for my apartment, though there was nothing for me there but a bed that
would give me no rest. With Sarie gone the place was a wasteland of the heart.

I closed the door behind me, looked around like maybe she would jump out
laughing and tell me it was all a bad joke. But the joke was not over yet.

Mother Gota still had not finished cleaning up the mess left by the Strangler
raid. And, pushy though she was, she had not touched anything in my work area,

where I was still sorting the burned remains of several of these Annals.

I must have gone drifting with my thoughts. Suddenly I was aware that I was not
alone. I got a knife out in half a heartbeat.

I was not in trouble. The three people staring at me belonged by family right.

They were my in-laws, Sarie’s brother Thai Dei with his arm in a sling, Uncle
Doj and Mother Gota. Of the three only the old woman ever said much. And nothing
she said was ever anything I wanted to hear. She could find the bad side of
anything and complain about it forever. “What?” I asked.

Uncle Doj countered, “Did you drift away again?” He sounded troubled. “When did
you go? Dejagore?”

“It wasn’t that. That hasn’t happened for a while.” All three continued to stare
at me like I had something hanging out of my nose. “What?”

Uncle Doj said, “There is something different about you.”

“Shit. Goddamned right there is. I lost a wife that meant more to me than—” I
clamped down on the rage. I turned toward the door. No good. Smoke was in a
wagon headed south. They continued to stare at me.

It was like this every time I came back after going out without letting Thai Dei
tag along. They did not like me getting out of their sight.

That and their stares gave me a little shiver of the sort of feeling Croaker got
every time he looked at one of the Nyueng Bao. Sarie being gone left a vacuum
bigger than the one that emptied my heart. She had been the soul that made this
weird bunch work.

Uncle Doj asked, “Do you wish to walk the Path of the Sword?”

The Path of the Sword, the complex of ritualized exercises associated with his
two-handed longsword style of fighting could become almost as restful and free
of pain as was walking with the ghost. Although Uncle Doj has been teaching me
since I became part of the family, it is still difficult for me to get into the
sort of trance the Path requires.

“Not now. Not tonight. I’m tired. Every one of my muscles aches.” Yet another
way I was going to miss Sarie. That green-eyed angel had been an artist at
massaging out the accumulated tensions of the day.

We were speaking Nyueng Bao, which I use fairly well.

Now Mother Gota demanded, “What you doing, you, you hide from your own?” in her
abominable Taglian. She refuses to believe she does not speak the language like
a native.

“Work.” Even without the Old Man’s paranoia I would have kept Smoke to myself.

Hell, I’m taking a huge risk just mentioning him in these pages even though I’m
scribbling them in a language hardly anyone down here even speaks, let alone
reads.

Soulcatcher is out there somewhere. Our precautions against her discovering
Smoke are more elaborate than those keeping the Radisha and the Shadowmaster
away.

Catcher was in the Palace not long ago. She stole those Annals that Smoke hid
before his disaster. I am pretty sure she did not notice Smoke himself. The
network of confusion spells around him is supposedly extremely subtle on its
fringes, so that even a player as powerful as Soulcatcher would not notice the
misdirection unless she was really focused on finding something like it.

I told them, “I just talked to the Captain. He said the headquarters group will
leave tomorrow or the next day. You’re still determined to go?”

Uncle Doj nodded. He did not seem emotional when he reminded me, “We too have a
debt to repay.”

The few material possessions the three shared were packed and piled by the
apartment door already. They had been ready to go for days. I was the one who
needed to focus and finalize my preparations. I had lied to Croaker when I had
said I was ready to travel.

“I’m going to bed now. Don’t wake me up for anything but the end of the world.”

Sleep is not an escape from pain. In sleep there are dreams. In sleep I go
places more horrible than those I walk when I am awake.

In dreams I still go back to Dejagore, to the death and disease, the murder and
the cannibalism and the darkness. In dreams Sarie still lives, whatever the
horror of the place she walks.

That night my dreams did not restore me to the wonder of Sarie’s company.

I remember only one. It came first as a shadow, an all enveloping malice full of
playful cruelty, as though I was sinking into the soul of a spider that enjoyed
tormenting its victims. The malice did not take note of me. I passed through to
its other side. And there the dream wrenched sideways, twisted, and took on
life, though it was a life entirely of black and white and greys.

I was in a place of despair and death. The sky was lead. Bodies rotted around
me. The stench was strong enough to drive the buzzards away. The sick vegetation
was coated with what looked like thick grasshopper spit. Only one thing moved, a
distant flock of mocking crows.

Even amidst my horror and revulsion I felt that the scene was familiar. I tried
to hang on to that thought, to pursue it, to sustain my sanity by ferreting out
why I would know a place I had never been. I stumbled and tripped across a plain
of bones. Pyramids of skulls were my milemarks.

My foot slipped on a baby’s skull that spun and went rattling off to the side. I
fell. And fell. And then I was in another place.

I am here. I am the dream. I am the way to life.

Sarie was there.

She smiled at me, then she was gone, but I clung to her smile as the only thing
capable of letting me keep my head above the waters of a sea of insanity.

I was in that other place. It was a place of golden caverns where old men sat
beside the way, frozen in time, alive but unable to move so much as an eyelash.

Their insanity slashed the air like a million dueling razors. Some were covered
with glittering webs of ice, as though a million fairy silkworms had spun them
into cocoons of delicate threads of frozen water. An enchanted forest of icicles
hung from the cavern roof.

I tried to dash forward, past the old men, to get out of that place. I ran as
you run in dreams, slowly going nowhere.

And then the horror worsened as I realized that I knew some of those mad old
men.

I ran harder, into the treacly resistance of animate evil laughter.

I swung wildly at whoever was touching me, flung my hand under my pillow to
recover the dagger hidden there. A powerful blow slammed my wrist as it came
into the light. A strong voice snapped, “Murgen.”

I focused. Uncle Doj stood over me. He looked grave, troubled. Thai Dei stood
near the foot of my bed, where he could take me from behind if I jumped up at
Doj. Mother Gota stood in the doorway, agitated.

Uncle Doj said, “You were screaming in a language none of us knows. We found you
wrestling with the darkness when we arrived.”

“I was having a nightmare.”

“I know.”

“Hunh?”

“That was obvious.”

“Sarie was there.”

For one instant Mother Gota’s face became a mask of rage. She muttered something
softly and too quickly for me to follow, but I did catch the name Hong Tray and
the word “witch.” Sahra’s grandmother Hong, long dead, was the only reason her
family had accepted our relationship. Hong Tray had given her blessing.

Ky Dam, Sahra’s grandfather, also gone now, had claimed his wife possessed the
second sight. Perhaps. I had seen her forecasts work out during the siege of
Dejagore. Mostly they had been very sybilline, very vague, though.

I had heard Sarie described as a witch, too, on one occasion.

“What is that smell?” I asked. The shakes had left me. Already I could recall
details of the nightmare only through determined effort. “There a dead mouse in
here?”

Uncle Doj frowned. “This was not one of your journeys through time?”

“No. It was more like a trip to hell.”

“Do you wish to walk the Path of the Sword?” The Path was Doj’s religion, his
main reason for being, it sometimes seemed.

“Not right away. I want to get this down while I still remember it all. It might
be important. Some of it seemed familiar.” I swung my feet to the floor, aware
that I was still being scrutinized intently.

There was a lot more of that now that Sarie was gone.

It was not yet time to make a point of it.

I went to my writing area, settled and got to work. Uncle Doj and Thai Dei found
their wooden practice swords and began to loosen up on the other side of the
room.

Mother Gota continued to talk to herself as she got busy cleaning up. As long as
she was in the mood I even let her help with my mess, offering suggestions from
the corner of my mouth just often enough to keep her simmering.

The great dark ragged square settled slowly through the air, rocking
unpredictably in winter’s icy breath. A screech of pain soared up above the
complaints of the wind. Twice the tattered carpet tried to set down atop the
tower where the Shadowmaster stood waiting. Twice the wind threatened it with
disaster. The carpet’s master howled again and descended fifty feet to a larger
and safer landing area atop Overlook’s massive wall.

The Shadowmaster cursed the weather. This winter gloom was almost as bad as
night. Here, there, shadows came to life in unpredictable corners. All his labor
and genius could not take away every cranny where they might lurk. In his ideal
world he would halt the sun itself directly above the fortress where it could
sear the heart out of the night and slay the terrors that lurked within.

Longshadow did not go down to meet his henchman the Howler. He would make the
deformed little cripple come to him. In conversation he could pretend that they
were equals but that was not true. A day would come when the Howler would have
to be disposed of altogether. But that time was a long way off yet. Those
damnable nuisances from the Black Company had to be buried first. Taglios had to
be chastised with fire and shadow. Its priests and princes had to be expunged.

Senjak had to be taken and milked of her every dark secret, then she had to be
destroyed, utterly and for all time. Her mad, flighty sister Soulcatcher had to
be hunted down, murdered, and her flesh thrown to wild dogs.

Longshadow giggled. Much of that he had said aloud. When he was alone he did not
mind verbalizing his thoughts.

His list of people to be rid of grew almost daily.

Here were two more now.

The first two faces to rise from the stairwell were those of the Strangler
Narayan Singh and the child his Deceivers called the Daughter of Night.

Longshadow met her eye only for a moment. He turned to look out over the
devastation north of Overlook. A few fires still burned in the ruins.

The child was barely four but her eyes were windows to the very heart of
darkness. It seemed almost as if her monster goddess Kina sat behind those
hollow pupils.

She was almost as frightening as those living wisps of darkness that, because he
could command them, gave him the title Shadowmaster. She was a child only in
flesh. The thing inside was ages older and darker than the dirty, skinny little
man who served as her guardian.

Narayan Singh had nothing to say. He stood at the edge of the parapet and
shuddered in the chill wind. The child joined him. She did not speak, either,

but she showed no interest in the ruined city. Her attention was on him.

For half a heartbeat Longshadow feared she could read his mind.

He stirred his long, bony frame toward the stairwell, concerned that Howler was
leaving him alone too long with these bizarre creatures. He was startled to find
the Nar general Mogaba, his leading commander, coming up the steps behind the
little sorcerer, engaged in a vigorous conversation in an unfamiliar tongue.

“Well?”

The Howler was floating in the air, as he often did even when not piloting his
carpet. He spun himself around. “The story is the same from here to the Plain of
Charandaprash. And east and west as well. The quake spared no one. Though the
damage becomes smaller the farther north one travels.”

Longshadow turned instantly, stared south. Even in winter’s advancing gloom that
plain up there seemed to glitter. Now it even seemed to mock him, and for a
moment he regretted the impulse that had led him to challenge it so many years
ago. He had gained all the power he had dreamed of then and had not known a
moment of peace since.

By its very existence the place beyond Shadowgate taunted him. Root of his
power, it was also his bane.

He saw no evidence that the quake had disturbed anything there. The gate, he
believed, should be proof against all disasters. Only one tool could open the
way from the outside in.

He turned back to find the child smiling, one white tooth showing like a
diminutive vampire fang. She combined the scariest effects of both her mothers.

Howler shrieked a shriek he cut short partway through. “The destruction leaves
us no choice but to defer the labors of empire till the populace can sustain
them once more.”

Longshadow raised a bony, gloved hand to his face, to adjust the mask he always
wore in company. “What did you say?” He must have heard wrong.

“Consider the city before you, my friend. A city which exists only to build this
fortress ever taller and stronger. But those who live there must eat in order to
have the strength to work. They must have shelter from the elements, else they
weaken and die. They must have some warmth and water that does not lead them to
their deaths with dysentery.”

“I will not coddle them. Their only purpose is to serve me.”

“Which they can’t do if they’re dead,” the black general observed. “The gods
have taken a dislike to us lately. This earthquake hurts us more than all the
armies of Taglios have in all the years of this war.”

That was a hearty exaggeration, Longshadow knew. His three fellow Shadowmasters
were dead. Their great armies had perished with them. But he got the message.

The situation was grim.

“You came to tell me that?” It was presumptuous of the general to come to
Overlook unbidden. But Longshadow forgave him. He had a soft spot in his heart
for Mogaba, who seemed much like his own younger self. He indulged the Nar where
he would have endured far less from his other captains.

“I came to ask you one more time to reconsider your orders forcing me to remain
immobile at Charandaprash. After this disaster, more than ever, I’ll need
flexibility to buy time.”

It was an old, old argument. Longshadow was weary of it. “If you cannot carry
out your orders as given, General, without questioning everyone and nagging me
continuously, then I’ll find someone who will. That fellow Blade comes to mind.

He’s done wonderful things for us.”

Mogaba inclined his head, said nothing. He particularly did not note that
Blade’s successes came because he was allowed exactly the sort of freedom of
decision and movement that Mogaba had been petitioning for for almost two years.

Longshadow’s outburst was not unexpected. But Mogaba felt obligated to try, for
the sake of his soldiers.

The Strangler Singh took a step toward the Shadowmaster. His odor preceded him.

Longshadow shrank back. The little man said, “They are moving against us. There
is no longer any doubt.”

Longshadow did not believe that because he did not want it to be true. “Winter
has only just begun.” But when he glanced at the Howler the crippled little
sorcerer nodded his rag covered head.

He stifled a shriek stillborn. “It’s true. Everywhere I look Taglian forces are
on the move. None are large but they are everywhere, following every possible
road. Singh’s attempt to assassinate their top people seems to have set them
off.”

Singh’s failed attempt, Longshadow did not say aloud. His own espionage
resources were feeble now but they had gotten that much back to him. The
alliance with the Stranglers was very unpopular and therefore very precarious.

The Deceivers were loved no more in the Shadowlands than they were in the
Taglian Territories.

Mogaba moved his feet but held the remark eager to force its way past his teeth.

Longshadow knew exactly what it was. The general wanted to be allowed to strike
the Taglian bands before they could gather into a large force on the Plain of
Charandaprash.

“Howler. Find Blade. Tell him to deal with as many of these small forces as he
can. General.”

“Sir?” Mogaba had to strain to keep his voice neutral.

“You may send some of your cavalry north to harass the enemy. But only some and
only cavalry. If I find you interpreting me as having turned you loose you will
indeed be turned loose. On the other side of the Shadowgate.” It had been a long
time since he had sent someone through to watch him die a cruel death. He just
had no time for himself anymore. Nor could he open the way these days, without
the Lance. The only other key had been stolen long ago by one of his dead
colleagues. He did not have the necromantic power to call up their shades and
compel the villain to reveal where the thing was buried. “Have I made myself
clear?”

“Absolutely.” Mogaba stood a hair straighter. The concession was not much but it
was something. The terrain north of Charandaprash was not suited to cavalry
maneuvers, though, so he would have to use his horsemen as mounted infantry.

Still, it was an opportunity. “Thank you, sir.”

Longshadow glanced sideways at the child, who almost never spoke. He surprised a
look of complete disdain that vanished even as his gaze shifted, disappearing so
quickly it seemed nothing more than a flicker of imagination.

The Shadowmaster let his gaze travel on to the plain of glittering stone. Once
he had been driven by an obsessive need to learn about that place. Now he just
hated it and wished it would go away, but he needed it, too. Without it he would
be feeble, no match for the likes of Howler or the woman Soulcatcher, whose
madness and enmity were entirely unpredictable. She seemed a complete child of
chaos.

“Where is the one called Soulcatcher?” he asked. “Has there been no sign?”

Howler, who had had a report from a skrinsa shadowweaver whose circle directed a
colony of spy bats, lied, “Nothing. Though there was something strange that
happened in Taglios about the time Jamadar Singh’s brothers infiltrated the
Palace. Could have been her.” A shriek twice as long and piercing as normal
ripped itself from the little sorcerer. He began to shake and shudder and spit.

Even the child took a step back.

Nobody offered to help.