The Many Deaths of the Black Company (Chronicle of the Black Company) (47 page)

“I’m trying to open my mind but I’m having trouble. I feel like I’m about to plunge into an abyss.”

“Just hang on. I’ve been out here forever and I still have trouble with it. I think the way to start is, I should outline the history of the plain.”

“Yes. Why don’t you do that? That might be interesting.”

“You still have that edge on your tongue, don’t you? Maybe Swan is right and what you really need is a good … all right. All right. Listen closely. The plain was created so far back in antiquity that nobody on any of the worlds has any idea who built it, how, or why, though you have to believe that it was meant to be a pathway between the worlds.”

“Why the shadows and standing stones and—”

“I can’t tell you anything if I’m not the one doing the talking.”

“Sorry.”

“In the beginning there was the plain. Just the plain, with its network of roads that have to be walked a certain way to get to other worlds. For example, every traveler has to enter the great circle at the center of the plain before he can leave the plain again. Back then there were no shadows, no Shadowgates, no standing stones, no great fortress inside the great circle, no caverns beneath the stone, no sleeping gods, no Captured, no Books of the Dead. There was nothing but the plain. The crossroads of worlds. Or possibly of time. One rogue school of thought insists the gates all open into the same world but at times which are separated by tens of thousands of years.

“At some time still in unimaginable antiquity, human nature asserted itself and would-be conquerers began to charge back and forth across the plain. During a period of exhaustion the wise men of a dozen worlds combined to make the first modifications to the plain. They built a fortress in the great circle and garrisoned it with a race of created immortal guardians whose task it would be to prevent armies from passing from world to world.

“Then we pass to the edge of proto-history, the age now recalled poorly as it is distorted in Gunni myth.

“Those driven to conquer will try to do so, whatever the obstacles. Kina apparently started out as your run-of-the-mill, dark-lord type that arises every few centuries, as Lady’s first husband was, only she was another in a line and association of many such, some of whom are now recalled as gods because of the impact they had on their times. The whole cabal decided to beef Kina up until she could overcome the ‘demons’ on the plain. In the process she did become what, for want of a better descriptive, we would have to call a god. And she behaved every bit as badly as her associates should have expected, with results more or less like those recalled in the mythology. Once Kina was asleep, her associates opened the maze of caverns under the plain and buried her way down deep somewhere. Then they created Shivetya, the Steadfast Guardian, to keep watch. Or they conscripted a surviving demon of the same name and strengthened him and bound him to do the job, if you prefer a less common version of the story. Then, apparently too exhausted to recover their greatness, they faded away. So Kina came out on top even if she ended up imprisoned.”

“Why didn’t they just kill her? That’s something I’ve never understood about these squabbles amongst the gods. There’s only one version of the Kina myth where her enemies do anything but just tuck her in. And in that one, even after she’s all chopped up and scattered around, they leave the pieces alive and trying to get back together.”

“My guess would be she had some kind of deadman spell that entwined the fates of the other gods with her own. Those people wouldn’t have trusted one another for a second. All of them would have had some protective mechanism like Longshadow used when he tied his fate into the well-being of the Shadowgate.”

“But the Shadowgate doesn’t depend on his health anymore. Not as long as he stays inside.”

“I was just posing an example, Sleepy. Let’s stick to the history of the plain. What followed Kina’s downfall isn’t documented at all, but more conquerers came and went and further efforts were made to dissuade them while keeping the plain open for commerce. The gates and Keys were created. One world gathered its sorcerers and had them steal the souls of millions of prisoners of war, creating the shadows and endowing them with a bitter hatred of everything living. They meant to close down the plain entirely. Which naturally led some other race to create the shields that protect the circles and roads. Nobody knows for sure how or when the standing stones began to appear but they’re the most recent addition to the plain, probably put out by the precursors of the multiple-worlds’ religious movement that produced the Free Companies. I understand that the stones aren’t quarried, they’re created things. They’re immune to the shadows and indifferent to the protective shields but they’re attuned to the various Keys carried away during the Free Companies’ age.”

“It’s too much to grasp. It’ll take a long time to digest. Kina is real, though?”

“Absolutely. Buried right down here under me somewhere. I’ve never been tempted to go look for her. I wouldn’t want to accidentally cut her loose. I don’t know how I could manage that but I definitely don’t want to find out the hard way.”

“What about Rhaydreynak and the Books of the Dead? Where do they fit?” Rhaydreynak’s war on the cult of Kina antedated the appearance of the Free Companies by several centuries supposedly, yet there were scary similarities suggesting shared origins.

“The rise of the Free Companies is actually one of the least well known despite its being closest in time. There were many Companies over several hundred years. They came from several different worlds and went off into several more, representing almost as many different sects of Kina worshippers. Most seem to have been sent out to explore, not conquer or to serve as mercenaries or even to bring on the Year of the Skulls. What their true mission seems to have been was to determine which world should be awarded the honor of being sacrificed in order to bring on the Year of the Skulls.”

“Then a bunch of worlds decided to gang up on ours?”

“Kina spanned many worlds. Her deviltry was almost universal, apparently.”

“And we lost the toss and got to bury her in ours?”

“You’re not in our world anymore, Sleepy. This’s the in-between. Where you are depends on what gate you walk out. And these days you have only one choice. Its Shadowgate lies straight ahead, on the far side of the plain. It’s as if the plain itself is closing down the alternate ways.”

“I don’t get it. Why would it do that? And how?”

“Sometimes its seems like the plain itself is alive, Sleepy. Or at least that it can think.”

“Is it where we came from? Is it where the Captain spent most of his life trying to go?”

“No. The Company can’t go back to Khatovar. Croaker will never reach the promised land. That Shadowgate is dead. The world where you’re headed is very much like our own. To other worlds it’s known by a name that translates into Taglian somewhat vaguely as The Land of Unknown Shadows.”

Without thinking I responded, “All Evil Dies There an Endless Death.”

“What?” Startled. “Yes. How did you know? They were the people who committed the murders that produced the shadows.”

“I heard it somewhere. From a Nyueng Bao.”

“Yes. Nyueng Bao De Duang. In current Nyueng Bao usage that means something like ‘The Chosen Children’ colloquially and nothing whatsoever that’s sensible literally. In the days when their forebears were sent out from The Land of Unknown Shadows it meant, roughly, ‘the Children of the Dead.’”

“You’ve been busy,” I observed.

“Hardly, considering how long I’ve been trapped here. Try it for a decade, Sleepy. You won’t have to put up with any of the distractions you complain about when you aren’t getting everything you want to do done.”

“No kidding? Seems to me I’m all of a sudden having to work even while I’m sleeping.”

“Not for long. Whoever has control of that mist-making thing is trying to get me to answer him. Why don’t you sneak around there and smash that sucker so I don’t have to get dragged into it every time somebody wants my view on how to crack a walnut or whatever else the crisis of the moment happens to be.”

“Not hardly, former boss. I’m carrying a whole bag of nuts myself.”

“You would—” Murgen departed as though yanked away.

I could have sworn I heard the laughter of an eavesdropping white crow.

77

“How come you’re so crabby?” Willow Swan demanded when I snapped at him for no good reason. “Rag time again already?”

I blushed. Me, after twenty years among the crudest men on two hooves. “No, jerk. I didn’t sleep very well last night.”

“What?”

It exploded out of him like the shriek of a stomped rat.

“I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Oh, yeah. Not our sweet little Sleepy. Guys, anybody, Ro, River, whoever, you want to step up and remind us about the Roar in the Rain last night?”

Riverwalker told me, “Boss, your snoring made more noise than a tiger in heat. We had people get up and move back up the road toward home to get away from the racket. There were people wanted to strangle you or at least put your head in a sack. I bet if anybody else knew what the hell we were doing and where we were going, you’d be on that travois with General Sindawe.”

“But I’m such a sweet, delicate flower. I couldn’t possibly snore.” I had been accused of the crime before but only jokingly, never with such passion.

River snorted. “Swan decided not to marry you.”

“I’m stricken. I’ll see if One-Eye doesn’t have a cure.”

“A cure? The man can’t even take care of himself.”

I scrounged up something to eat. It was barely worth the effort and definitely not filling. We would be on short rations for a long time. Before I finished what morning preparations were possible for me, the forward elements were already moving. The general mood was more relaxed. We had survived the night. And yesterday we had shoved it to the Protector real good.

The relaxation ended when we found Bucket’s remains.

Big Bucket, real name Cato Dahlia, once a thief, once an officer of the Black Company, was almost a father to me. He never said and I never asked but I suspect he knew I was female all along. He was very unpleasant to some of my male relatives, way back when.

You did not want to be the object when Bucket got angry.

I managed not to break down. I had had a long time to get used to the idea that he was gone, though there was always some small, irrational hope that Murgen was wrong, that death had overlooked him and he was buried with the Captured.

The men put Bucket on the travois with Sindawe without having to be told.

I tagged along and became entranced by one of those unaccountably irrelevant trains of thought that often take shape at such times.

We had left a truly nasty mess where we had spent the night, particularly in the line of animal waste. Likely the Captured had done the same during their passage along this same road. However, other than the odd corpse, there was no sign that they had passed through. There were no dung piles now, no gnawed, discarded bones, no vegetable waste, no ashes from charcoal braziers, nothing. Only human bodies lasted and they became thoroughly desiccated.

I would have to take it up with Murgen. Meantime, it was a mental exercise that would keep me from dwelling upon Bucket.

We trudged on southward. The rain came and went, never more than a drizzle, though sometimes the wind brought it stinging in from a sharp angle. I shivered a lot and worried about it getting cold enough to sleet or snow. No other evil found us. Eventually I spied the vague silhouette of our initial destination, that mysterious central fortress.

The wind began to blow steadily.

Some of the men complained about the cold. Some complained about the wet. Quite a few complained about the menu, and a handful insisted on complaining about all the complaining. I sensed few positive feelings concerning what we were doing.

I felt very much alone, almost abandoned, the whole day long despite well-meant efforts from Swan, Sahra and quite a few others. Only Uncle Doj did not bother because even at this late date he remained piqued because I would not enlist as his apprentice. He continued his emotional machinations. Several times I caught myself retreating into my away place and had to remind me that I did not need to go there now. None of those people could hurt me anymore. Not if I did not let them. I controlled their reality. They survived only in my memory.…

Even that is immortality of a sort.

We Vehdna believe in ghosts. And we believe in evil. I wondered if the Gunni might not be onto something after all. For them the pain inspired by the departure of loved ones is less personal and far more fatalistic and is accepted as a necessary stage of life that does not end with this one transformation.

If the Gunni, by some bizarre and remote practical joke of the divine, happen to be in possession of a more accurate theology, I must have been a bad, bad girl in a previous life. I sure hope I had fun.… Forgive me, O Lord of the Hours, Who Art Merciful and Compassionate. I have sinned in my heart. Thou Art God. There Can Be No Other.

78

There were flakes of snow in the air whenever the wind took to loafing. Then each time it found renewed ambition it hurled tiny flecks of ice that stung my face and hands. Though it sounded fearful, the level of grumbling never reached suggestions of mutiny. Willow Swan trotted up and down the column gossiping and dropping reminders that we had nowhere to go but straight ahead. The weather did not hamper him at all. He seemed to find it invigorating. He kept telling everyone how wonderful it would be once we got some real snow, say, four or five feet. The world would look better then, yes sir! He guaranteed it. He grew up in stuff like that and it made a real man out of you.

With equal frequency I overheard some advice—the fulfillment of which was physically impossible for anyone not some select variety of worm—as often the people cried out, offering up impassioned pleas to One-Eye, Goblin, even Tobo, to fill Swan’s mouth with quick-setting mortar.