She Is the Darkness: Book Two of Glittering Stone: A Novel of the Black Company (36 page)

“Was I right?” Croaker asked.

“About the standard?”

“What else?” He seemed exasperated. Maybe it was a strain, sharing quarters with
Lady and the loon crew of Smoke, Singh and Longshadow.

“Probably. You could sure feel it. And nothing got by.” I was worn out. My inner
thigh ached again after the long walk over. “But I can’t prove that wasn’t
because of Lady’s gimcrackery.”

“The Lance did something, though?”

“Oh, yeah. Everybody felt something. Some probably even decided it had something
to do with the standard.” Thai Dei had remained outside, as he always did when I
visited the Old Man, so I was not shy about describing the skirmish between
Uncle Doj and Mother Gota.

“Which was about this Noose constellation?”

“That started it. I think that was just an excuse. Their conflict runs a lot
deeper.”

“And this all just started?” He smiled to himself, like me, probably, jumping
straight back to Gota’s business with One-Eye.

“And where is our pet hedge wizard?” I asked. He was not out riding Smoke, which
is what I had expected him to do while I was away. Lady had the little fire
chief all tied up.

Croaker shrugged. “Out of my hair, which is all I want right now.”

Probably off tending his distillery, which had not been found in his dugout when
the rescue crews turned the place inside out, looking more for that than for
poor old One-Eye.

I said, “I had a dream. Or maybe I was out of myself. It almost turned into a
nightmare.”

“Uhm?”

“Catcher’s figured out how to run the shadows. Just like our boy in the cage,

there.” Longshadow, though, was unconscious. More so than Smoke, who insisted on
groaning every few minutes.

Croaker sighed. “I’m disappointed but I’m not surprised. It was a logical step
for her. And she’s had time to work on it.”

“You going to do something about it?”

“Haven’t I already?”

“You lost me, boss.”

“She’s figured out how to manage a few shadows. Close up. But I control the
source of the shadows. And I don’t have to get near her. Though I’m going to.”

“I wouldn’t get overconfident where she’s concerned. You never know with her.

Remember how she planted that demon Frogface on us.”

“I take nothing for granted, Murgen.” He glanced at his woman, lying motionless
beside Smoke. “But I try not to let paranoia cripple me.”

He would get an argument on that from a lot of people. On the other hand,

though, he had overthrown the Shadowmasters and seemed well positioned to have
us survive the perfidy of our allies.

But, Soulcatcher? I did not doubt that Smoke had been right every time he
insisted She is the darkness!

One-Eye caught me outside Croaker’s place. “Her Worship still at it?”

“Uh . . . You mean . . . ?” Thai Dei’s were only one pair of uninitiated ears
nearby.

“You know what I mean, Kid.”

“She is.”

“Damn! I can’t get ten minutes at a time now that she’s started playing. Damned
woman must be worried about her weight.”

Took me a minute to figure that out. Then I laughed, remembering how hungry I
used to get. “That could do it. If she gets totally hooked.”

One-Eye grumbled something and stomped off. He did not go any farther than his
dugout, though. He began fussing around the remains like a dog trying to dig a
rabbit out of its warren, killing time while he waited to walk the ghost. I went
about the business I had, mostly stalling because I had no desire to go back
over to the Shadowgate. After ten minutes of slinging mud and trash One-Eye
stomped back to me. “I found that little shit Goblin yesterday. Last night. He
was just about to jump on the Prahbrindrah Drah. I want to know how that came
out.”

“Uhm.” Yes. I hoped he took the Prince prisoner if they had them an asskicking
contest. I would rather have his sister scared of us than mad at us. Mad she
would be if we sent her little brother to his funeral ghat.

She was not the kind to jump into the flames after him.

“That bastard was getting pretty good when he turned on us,” One-Eye said.

“There’s no guarantee the runt can take him.”

“You worried about Goblin? You?”

“Worried? Me? Hell, no. I don’t care what happens to the little shit. But if he
croaks the Prahbrindrah Drah we’re gonna be in shit so deep we’ll have to look
up to see the horizon.”

“I don’t think we can get in much deeper than we already are. They can only kill
us once. And they’ve already let us know they intend to try.”

One-Eye snorted. No way would he admit that he was worried about Goblin though
Goblin’s absence obviously made him crazy. He had not been able to feud with
anyone for ages. Nobody else would play.

I asked, “Why don’t you play a few tricks on Uncle Doj if you’re suffering some
compulsion to mess with somebody who can mess right back?”

Thai Dei developed a sudden interest in our banter. One-Eye did not cheer up. He
did ask, “You figure Lady was right about him? He don’t look the part.”

“And you do?” Like a derelict in a slum alley does. “You think she’s ever been
wrong about something like that?”

“She’s still healthy,” One-Eye grumped.

Thai Dei wanted to know what we were talking about but could see no way to get
anything out of us without giving something away himself. If he’d just been the
kind who chatters incessantly he could have asked anything and nobody would have
thought anything about it.

I chuckled.

Puzzled, One-Eye asked, “You going back over there?”

“Got to. Boss says.”

One-Eye glared at the distant plateau. “Damned Tals! Just had to stab us in the
back. I was all set to retire as soon as we finished Longshadow. But they just
had to fuck me up. And now I got to go on up there. Which I’m looking forward to
like I’m looking forward to getting a hot poker shoved up my poop chute. Whoa!

Here’s my chance.” He scampered toward Croaker’s dugout.

Lady had come up to the light. She looked more haggard than ever. She must have
been walking the ghost for all she was worth. She leaned on a post while she
spoke softly to one of the messengers waiting for an assignment. He hurried off
toward her camp. She looked at me, frowned as though she was having trouble
remembering who I was. Maybe she was. I was supposed to be somewhere else.

I decided to go there even though it was no resort for tired professional
soldiers.

Mother Gota would not talk to Uncle Doj. Mother Gota would not talk to her
darling baby boy. But Mother Gota and silence had been strangers for decades. So
Mother Gota talked to me.

She was not happy about the way her life was going, though she refused to get
specific in front of a Soldier of Darkness, family or not.

I was in a karma-building cycle, apparently. I endured her crabbing, nodding and
grunting in the right places while I made notes concerning recent events. I
said, “You could always go home. Just pack up and go back to the swamp. Let
Uncle boil his own bitterroot.” The root was a recent discovery. Shadowlander
fugitives had been caught eating it. It was a common weed that was not
completely inedible if you boiled its roots for six or eight hours before you
ground them into meal that tasted like soggy white oak sawdust. A lot was
getting eaten because there was little else to be found close by. Croaker still
had not authorized anyone to begin exploiting Overlook.

Uncle Doj had discovered bitterroot long ago. He had not eaten much else since
Charandaprash. How had he found that much time to spend sitting in one place?

Maybe he cured twenty pounds of root at a time.

“You, Bone Warrior, you would have me abandon my duty?”

Hell, yes. Anything to get you out of my hair. But I did not say that aloud. I
just asked, “What duty is that?”

She opened her mouth to tell me but Nyueng Bao caution took over. She gulped
like a fish out of water, then, as always when pressed, told me, “I go get some
wood.” That in Taglian instead of Nyueng Bao, which was good enough for me as
long as I asked no questions.

“Good idea.”

Thai Dei came to stand by me as I watched her go. I said, “Soon the Company will
return to the road to Khatovar. Your people need to decide what to do when that
happens.” I reached for a rock.

I thought I made no giveaway motion but the crow was ready. It just hopped over
the whistling stone and offered me one mocking caw for my trouble. The black
birds remained scarce but there was always one near me and a dozen around
Croaker’s headquarters. Catcher was lying low but she had not stopped watching.

A nearby Taglian, maybe thinking he could curry favor, aimed a bamboo pole at
the crow. “Save that for a shadow!” I snapped. “We’re not out of this yet.”

Interesting. The would-be sniper wore a ragged, crudely drawn Company badge. I
saw no one armed with bamboo who did not sport some version of our badge. The
management had stopped pretending to be fair.

Red Rudy wandered over, stood leaning on a spear. He stared northward, silently
watching something. Nobody else said anything, either. I took advantage of the
silence to scribble a few more notes. Finally, Rudy mused, “Ever notice how,

when the light is right, you can see where everybody’s going over there?”

“No.” I looked up.

He was right. Just now the light had every piece of metal beyond Overlook
reflecting right at us. And a whole lot of metal was headed up the road I had
walked with that useless One-Eye . . . ”Oh, no. Whose bright idea was this?”

Somebody wanted to call on Soulcatcher.

“Thought you’d be interested.” Rudy collected his spear and strolled off.

Probably to find a deep hole to pull in after him.

“What is happening?” Thai Dei asked.

I shrugged. “Maybe just the end of the world.”

Or maybe not. Maybe somebody in the headquarters bunker was playing mind games
with her sister.

The sun moved on. Light no longer glimmered off the moving force. Nobody but
Rudy seemed to understand what was happening but everybody sensed that something
was. It became very quiet on my far hillside.

Nothing happened for a while. I made notes. I watched Mother Gota dwindle into
the distance. Looked like she planned to do her wood gleaning farther afield.

Afternoon shadows crept across the far foothills. “That’s dark,” I said.

Especially near where Soulcatcher was last seen. That darkness was swelling . .

.

I gaped. That was no shadow. That was a cloud of darkness. It boiled out of the
canyons and forests and masked the foothills . . .

Crows.

All the crows we had not seen for the past several days!

The darkness rose like a blast from a volcano. It began to spread.

“That’s got to be every crow in the world,” I breathed. The cloud just kept
growing. Part seemed headed my way.

Suddenly, lightning sliced inside it. The wind began to blow. I began to lose
track of where and when I was and what I was doing. Somebody asked, “What’s
happening?”

A second voice asked, “What’s that smell?”

Kina. But I could not explain.

More lightnings ripped through the thunderhead of crows. Most of that darkness
rushed my way. The stench of Kina became overpowering. There were sounds around
me, heard as though from a great distance. They did not include the panic that
seemed appropriate.

The darkness bent over and grabbed me, took me up like a mother lifts a
frightened infant. The face of Kina was in the darkness but it was not Kina who
possessed me. She was angry. Again. She was disoriented.

She was not alone.

Lady was there, maybe riding Smoke, maybe in some other fashion. The lightning
was her doing, evidently. She had Kina in one sorcerous hand while trying to
spank her sister with the other.

Catcher was there, too. And she seemed amused, not troubled, although she was
caught between a devil goddess and a sister who would roast her happily.

Soulcatcher would go to the burning stake chuckling at the fire. The woman was
completely mad.

The darkness wrapped me up. It devoured me. It tried to chew me up but found me
unpalatable. It spit me out.

I staggered like a drunk. A voice in my head said, There you are, darling. I
missed you. You have been away too long. Moonlight glinted off the corpse-strewn
black water lapping at Dejagore’s wall. I imagined something stirring in those
waters, something that wanted to grab me and pull me deep into the inky
darkness, down amongst the naked bones. I looked to my left and there stood the
long-dead Speaker of the Nyueng Bao, Ky Dam. His wife Hong Tray was with him.

They smiled. The old woman made a finger sign I knew to be a blessing.

Darkness swallowed me.

Darkness had no stomach for me. It puked me up.

I was in a tree. My eyes saw strangely. I had to turn my head this way and that
to see out of one or the other. Men of half a dozen races were slaughtering men
of several others below me. The trees were repelled. They loved death but hated
the shedding of blood.

I was in the Grove of Doom. In a tree?

I raised a hand to feel my eyes. White feathers blocked my vision.

I lost consciousness.

I went a hundred places. A hundred places came to me. I seemed to visit all
times and all places of the past several years.

I was on the plain of bones. Darkness had come. A black wind blew the bones
about. I tumbled like a leaf. Crows mocked me from the naked trees. I rolled
over into a deeper night and in an instant was strolling up the sloped floor of
the tunnel where the old men rested in their cocoons of spun ice.

A great deep booming thundered in my head. It was pain incarnate, yet seemed to
carry a message. I tried to listen.

Time expanded to encompass the throbbing within me, which became a slow, deep
voice that speeded up until it turned into Thai Dei nagging worriedly in Nyueng
Bao. “Standardbearer! Speak to me.”

I tried but my jaws would not work. I could do nothing but make inarticulate
noises.

“He’s all right.” That was Uncle Doj. I opened my eyes. Doj knelt beside me,

fingers against the side of my neck. “What happened, Bone Warrior?”

I sat up. My muscles were watery. I was drained. But it seemed no time had
passed. I volleyed the question back. “What happened over there?” Crows still
swarmed in the distance, though not in clouds like I had seen.

“Where?” Thai Dei asked.

“There. Where the birds are.”

Thai Dei said. “I do not know. I saw nothing unusual.”

“No cloud of darkness? No lightning?”

After a pause, “None that I saw.”

Uncle Doj considered the distance thoughtfully.

“I need something to eat.” Though I had not been ghost-walking, I was that weak.

The event was troubling.