The Many Deaths of the Black Company (Chronicle of the Black Company) (76 page)

Ghopal glanced around nervously, completely failing to note Mogaba’s intense examination. He blurted, though in a whisper, “She has to go. The Greys have believed that for a long time. The Year of the Skulls couldn’t be much more terrible than what we’ve suffered from her. But we don’t know how to get rid of her. She’s too powerful. And too smart.”

Mogaba relaxed. So the Greys were
not
enamored of their benefactor. Interesting. Excellent.

“But we’ll never get rid of her. She always knows what everyone around her is thinking. And we’ll never be able not to think about it because we’ll be so scared. She’ll sniff it out in about ten seconds. Really, we’re walking dead men now, just for having considered it.”

“Then get your family out of town now,” Mogaba told him. It was Soulcatcher’s habit to exterminate her enemies root and branch. “I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. I think that the only way it could be managed would be to have everything in place and strike before she has a chance to look around and pick up clues. We might engineer it so that she arrives exhausted. That might give us the edge we need.”

Aridatha mused, “Whatever it is, it will have to be sudden and massive and a complete surprise.”

“She’ll begin to suspect,” Ghopal said. “There are too many people loyal to her, because without her they’ll be dead themselves. They’ll warn her.”

“Not if we don’t get carried away. If just us three know what’s happening. We’re in charge. We can give any orders we want. People won’t question us. There’s trouble on the streets and it’s getting worse. People will expect us to do something about it. Plenty of others hate the Protector. They’ll feel free to act up while she’s away. That gives us an excuse to do almost anything we want. If we mainly use people whose loyalty to the Protector is absolute, letting them do most of the work and carry the messages, there’s no reason she should suspect anything until it’s too late.”

Ghopal looked at him like he was whistling in the dark. Maybe he was. Mogaba said, “I’ve opened my mouth here. I’ve committed myself. And I have nowhere to run.” They were natives. They could vanish into the territories. There was nowhere he could hide. And a return to Gea-Xle had been out of the question for twenty-five years. The Nar back home knew all about what he had done.

Aridatha mused, “Then every day in every way we should do our jobs to the utmost on the Protector’s behalf—until we create a rattrap we can close like this.” He clapped his hands.

“We’ll only get one chance,” Mogaba said. “Five seconds after we fail we’ll all be praying for death.” He waited a moment during which he checked the smoke. Its usefulness was almost exhausted. “Are you in?”

Both Singhs nodded but neither showed an unbound eagerness. The truth was, it was a poor bet that any of them would survive this adventure.

*   *   *

Mogaba sat in his quarters staring out at a full moon. He wondered if it had been too easy. Were the Singhs genuinely interested in ridding Taglios of the Protector? Or had they just played along, sensing that he was the more deadly threat at the moment?

If they were not committed he would learn the truth only when Soulcatcher sank her teeth into his throat.

He was going to be an intimate acquaintance of fear for a long time to come.

22

Khatovar: Invasion

Swan volunteered to slither down to the Shadowgate with me. I demurred. “I think I’ll take my sweetheart. We don’t get many chances to get away together.” And she would have a steadier hand than I would when it came to working on the Shadowgate. Which, even from the head of the slope, could be seen to need restoration.

After examining the Shadowgate from a closer vantage, I told my beloved, “Bowalk really tore it up getting through.”

“She had shadows gnawing on her. According to what Sleepy says Shivetya showed her. Tell me you’d be gentle and not slam the door if you had those things after you.”

“I don’t even want to think about it. Are we safe? Is anything out there watching?”

“I don’t know.”

“What?”

“I have a little power here on the plain. A dim one-hundredth of what used to be. But outside the Shadowgates I might as well be deaf, dumb and blind. All I can do is pretend.”

“So Kina is alive, then?”

“Possibly. If I’m not just tapping Shivetya or some residual, ambient power. The plain is a place of many strange energies. They leak in from the different worlds.”

“But you believe you’re bleeding Kina again. Don’t you?”

“If I am, she’s not just sleeping, she’s in a coma.”

“There!”

“There what?”

“I thought I saw something move.”

“That was just the breeze stirring the branches.”

“You think so? I’m not inclined to take chances.”

The sarky witch said, “You stand guard. I’ll work on the gate.”

If she did I could not tell. She was less active than I would have been.

*   *   *

We were through. Into Khatovar. I did not feel like I had found my way into paradise. I did not feel like I had come home. I felt the letdown I had expected almost from the moment I had become aware that my lust to find Khatovar had been imposed upon me from without. Khadi’s Gate was a wasteland.

Clete and Loftus started laying out a camp close enough to the gate that we could make a quick getaway if that became necessary. I was still at the gate itself, surveying this world where the Black Company had been born.

Definitely the disappointment I had anticipated. Maybe even worse.

Something stirred the hair on the back of my neck. I turned. I saw nothing but had a distinct feeling that something had just come through the Shadowgate.

I caught movement in the edge of my vision. Something dark. A shape both large and ugly.

One of the Black Hounds.

The back of my neck went cool again. Then again.

Maybe Tobo was coming after all.

The darker of my two ravens settled onto a nearby boulder. After a shower of hisses directed nowhere in particular, it cocked a big yellow eye my way and said, “There are no occupied human dwellings within fifty miles. The ruins of a city lie under the trees below the rocky prominence to the northeast. There are signs that humans visit it occasionally.”

I gaped. That damned bird was better-spoken than most of my companions. But before I could strike up a conversation, it took to the air again.

So there were people in this world. But the closest were at least three days away.

The promontory the bird mentioned was the place where the fortress Overlook had stood in our own world. The ruins likely occupied the same site as Kiaulune.

Another chill on the neck. The Unknown Shadows continued to come through.

I went down to camp. The engineer brothers were old but efficient. It was livable right now—as long as we got no rain.

The rain would be along before long. It was clear it rained often here.

Fires were burning. Somebody had killed a wild pig. It smelled heavenly, roasting. Shelters were going up. Sentries were out. Uncle Doj had appointed himself sergeant of the guard and was making a circuit of the four guardposts.

I waited till Murgen found something to occupy him, beckoned Swan and Lady. “Let’s think about what we do now.” I looked my wife in the eye. She understood what I wanted to know. She shook her head.

There was no Khatovaran source of magical power she could parasitize.

I grumped, “I didn’t expect towers of pearl and ruby beside streets of gold, but this is ridiculous.” I checked Doj and Murgen. They showed no interest in us yet.

“Sour grapes.” Swan sneered, heading straight for the critical point. “That’s a whole world out there. Damned near empty, it looks like. How do you expect to find one insane killer monster?”

“I got to thinking about that while I was standing up there looking at all this. Amongst other things. And I think I’ve had an evil epiphany.”

Lady contributed to the Annals and tried to keep up with her successors. She shook her head, said, “There isn’t much in what she wrote.”

Swan glanced around. Nobody was close. In a soft voice he said, “She hasn’t been writing the histories since you came back, has she?”

I asked, “What’s that mean?”

“Over the years Tobo and Suvrin and some of their cronies have visited most of the Shadowgates. They visited the Khatovar gate several times.”

“How do you know?”

“I sneak around. I listen when I’m not supposed to hear. I know Suvrin and Tobo came out here while you were wounded. Just the two of them. And later, while we were in Khang Phi, Suvrin went out again. Alone.”

“Then I’m right. We’ve been jobbed. How come you didn’t mention this before?”

“It had to do with Khatovar. I figured you were behind whatever was going on.”

Lady made a growling, chuckling sound that told me she had a handle on the truth. “That devious little witch. You really think so?”

Swan asked, “What am I missing?”

I told him, “I think we’re out here raiding Khatovar not because I’m so damned clever but because Sleepy wants us old farts out from under foot when she breaks out into the homeworld. I’ll bet the whole damned force is moving right now. And Sleepy won’t have a single one of us asking questions or giving advice or trying to do things our own way.”

Swan took a while to think about it. Then he took a while to look around at the gang who had elected to defy the command authority to pursue revenge on One-Eye’s killer. He said, “Either she is
really
an astute little bitch or we’ve been around so many sneaky people so long that we see machinations everywhere we look.”

“Tobo knew,” I said. Tobo had to be part of it. He let his father and Uncle Doj come out here.… “You know, I’m so paranoid I’m going to put a guard on the gate from the other side. And I’ll fill them up with lies about how a demon in the guise of one of our people might try to sabotage the gate so we can’t get back out of Khatovar.”

Neither Lady nor Swan argued. Swan did remark. “You
are
paranoid. You think Sahra would let Sleepy get away with leaving Thai Dei, Murgen and Doj trapped out here?”

“I think it’s a mad universe. I think almost anything somebody can imagine happening can happen. Even the cruelest, blackest sin.”

Lady asked, “And what do you intend to do about it?”

“I’m going to kill the forvalaka.”

Swan said, “Murgen’s noticed that something’s going on. He’s headed this way.”

“I’m going to play the game. Tobo sent a bunch of his pets through after us. Let’s make sure they can’t get back out unless we let them go. We’ll use them to find Bowalk. Then we’ll kill her.”

23

Glittering Stone: Fortress with No Name

Sleepy reached the fortress at the heart of the plain by the expedient of refusing to be steered elsewhere. Shivetya’s helpful shortcuts were not going to divert her from examining the root of her scheme for conquest.

There was one temporal power greater than the greatest sorcery. Greed. And she owned the wellspring of a flood of what the greedy held most dear: gold. Not to mention silver and gems and pearls.

For thousands of years fugitives from many worlds had hidden their treasures in the caverns beneath Shivetya’s throne. Who knew why? Possibly Shivetya. But Shivetya would not tell tales—unless they advanced his cause. Shivetya had the mind and soul of an immortal spider. Shivetya had no remorse, no compassion, knew only his task and his will to end it. He was the Company’s ally but he was not the Company’s friend. He would destroy the Company instantly if that suited an altered purpose and he was in a position to do so.

Sleepy meant to cover her back.

She approached Baladitya. “Where’s Blade?”

Baladitya had begun gushing discoveries he had made since being handed his mission. Sleepy felt a twinge of guilt. She remembered Baladitya’s kind of excitement, long ago and far away. But being responsible for thousands of people, pursuing a timetable with very little slippage built in, left no opportunity for simple pleasures. That made her cranky and curt, sometimes.

“He’s down below. He doesn’t come up much anymore.”

Irked, Sleepy looked around for someone young enough to gallop a mile down into the earth. She spied Tobo and Sahra arguing. Not exactly unusual. But not so frequently lately. They had been butting heads since Tobo entered puberty.

One of Tobo’s djinn could get down there faster than the youngest pair of legs. “Tobo!” Sleepy beckoned.

Exasperation flashed across the boy’s face. Everyone wanted something from him.

He did respond. He showed no defiance. He never did. His calm half-caste face settled into perfect nonexpression. Nor did his stance in any way betray what he might be thinking. Sleepy seldom saw anyone so inscrutable. And yet he was so young.

He just stood waiting for her to tell him what she wanted.

“Blade is down below somewhere. Send one of your messengers to tell him I want him up here.”

“Can’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t have any here. I’ve explained before. The Unknown Shadows hate the plain. It’s very difficult to get them to come up here. Most of those who do come refuse to have anything to do with people. I don’t want them to have anything to do with people. It puts them in a bad temper every time. You have a whole regiment cluttering up the place. There must be a man somewhere who doesn’t have something else to do.”

Sarcastic infidel. There were twelve hundred men cooling their heels around the fortress, waiting to lead the treasure train, doing nothing useful in the interim. “I was looking for something a little faster.” Once the Company was on the barren plain, even with Shivetya working wonders, there was little time to waste.

There had been no good news from Suvrin, either. Tobo should have gone with him. Or Doj or Lady, at the very least. Someone better equipped to deal with the Unknown Shadows. But at the very least there should have been word that a bridgehead had been established.

Baladitya said, “Then you’d better go down there yourself. Because he isn’t going to respond to any lesser authority.”