“No matter how deep?”
A nod. Exactly. “A mine is the only way.”
“That sucks.” I pointed. “No way am I looking forward to going through that.”
Silent sneered, signed, “Pussy.” There is nothing wrong with his hearing. He caught the note of panic.
I confessed, “I am a bit claustrophobic. And I’m no fan of wet feet or of having cold water drip down the back of my neck.”
Silent’s sneer expanded. His opinion was that it was time for Croaker to man up.
Firefly leaned back against a branch as thick as she was, stared at the heavens. “You have to remember that you aren’t all that special, Dad.” Then, before I could take offense, she added, “What you’ve got going, big-time, is that Mom has a massive thing for you, which baffles not only her but all the rest of creation, in every dimension that matters.”
She stopped.
That was plenty too much for me already, too.
Silent seconds dribbled away into the ocean of eternity. Then Firefly sat up straight, scooted over, leaned against my arm and grabbed hold. “But I understand.”
And then she cried.
And I found myself inclined to do the same, if only out of frustration because I did not have a clue as to what was happening.
Silent looked confused, too.
Sisters and whores.
* * *
Suppertime. Mischievous Rain was so close that I feared I might melt from the heat of her proximity. Kuro and Shiro smirked, surely thinking mocking thoughts. A certain old Company physician considered drowning himself because he might be turning into the kind of madman who begins believing that his fantasies have become objective reality.
Still, something might be going on. Unable to take a swim through the latest Annals, I could not know what had happened more than a few days ago. Only … My memories of life before we came east did remain clean and sharp.
And that left me terrified. Lost and terrified.
Why was I losing my life today?
Still, part of me was content with the loss if the payoff was that I got to be Mischievous Rain’s consort, however disgruntled I might be because I never got to enjoy the full fruits of marriage.
* * *
There were comings and goings amongst the Taken even though it was midnight and there was only a sliver of moon for light. That did not bother me. I did not need the light. I was the mushroom man, entirely in the dark again.
Small units had been slipping away since nightfall. The logical suspicion was that the tunnel was set to go—only, those men were not moving to the tunnel head. They went off into the wilderness like maybe Mischievous Rain wanted the castle surrounded so nobody could get away after the final hammer came down. Which suspicion gained credence because the Limper got sent to hover above the granite fortress.
Last order delivered, Mischievous Rain came to me where I waited with Kuroneko and Shironeko.
The hunters girls were nervous in the extreme. Not terror nervous but like first-time-for-sex nervous.
My honey told us all, “Time to go.”
Kuroneko said, “Yes, ma’am.” Both girls headed for her carpet.
Mischievous Rain asked me, “Have you put down roots, then, husband? Do you want to miss it all?”
“Uh … No. All right.”
* * *
We were fifty feet above the tallest surviving trees and headed toward the granite castle when I thought to ask, “What about the kids? Where are the kids?”
“They’re working.”
Shadow walking, then.
Mischievous Rain halted so near the barrier that it made everyone uncomfortable. A single light shone feebly high up in the castle. It looked like nobody over there was concerned about any possible attack.
I could see nothing but what was happening right where I was watching.
Out there somewhere Taken and soldiers were moving, the former darting hither and yon to keep one another informed.…
“Here it comes!” Mischievous Rain murmured. “Cover your eyes! Three … two … and now!”
A blast of white light ruined my night vision even though I had a hand over my eyes.
One of the hunter girls cursed. Amazing in itself, that.
“It begins,” my love said.
The light blast was the signal.
The earth erupted a hundred yards behind the barrier. Venomous crimson light welled up, turning the world all red and black. The light totally betrayed preparations made to greet invaders.
What emerged from the earth was no band of soldiers. It was Ankou in demon form, fast and violent and spinning off shadow pots, murdering ambushers wholesale.
I saw that in moments only, unclearly, because so much other stuff was happening, like further explosions at other points that opened the way for other invading gangs.
Mushroom man was as surprised as was any defender of the granite fortress. He had not caught any hint that there might be supplementary tunnels.
In six minutes everything inside the barrier, excepting the granite castle itself, had become a prefecture of the Lady’s empire, controlled by her legate, Mischievous Rain. Several formidable Resurrectionist sorcerers got transitioned on to the next world because they were unprepared for what befell them.
I saw no fine details from my vantage point but I needed no close-up to see that my wife had executed another coup, this one far more important than Honnoh.
“Excellent,” she whispered, I think to herself. “Most excellent indeed.”
She moved the carpet sideways, downward, away from the barrier. In minutes I was chin-to-chin with the nightmare that I had known was coming for days.
We settled at the head of the tunnel that I had been watching. Mischievous Rain left the carpet. Kuro and Shiro followed her. All three turned to wait on me.
All right. Those girls were barely adolescents but neither was scared of a little darkness and stinky muck. My wife did not think the passage would be any big deal, either. So who was the whiny little girl in this picture?
Croaker dared not even think of wimping out.
Well, he could think of it, plenty, but he could not act on what he thought. If he did he would hear about it every damned day for the next thousand years, or at least until he passed into the hands of Outsweeper.
Croaker sucked it up and stormed the filthy dark.
* * *
Swear to the gods, crickets were barking when I dragged my grubby ass up out of the ground. For several seconds I was so surprised that I forgot to turn and help the girls. I forgot that I was covered in filth and slime. This was not cricket season.
There were no seasons inside the castle’s protective dome. That made for a gigantic greenhouse wherein it was always a growing season.
Amazing, yes, but the passage under the earth still had me by the imagination. I needed time to notice that nothing much was happening. My wife was surrounded by our cat and kids. I did not try to understand what that meant. I barely noticed Kuro and Shiro pointing at the castle while babbling in that language that no modern kid ought to recognize let alone speak.
I wanted a bath. Oh, so badly, I wanted me a good long soak in steaming hot water. Only … The only way to get that would require another slither through that tunnel. Unless …
“Honey, why don’t you and me and the kids just retire here? It’s a great place, out of the way, and nobody would ever bother us.” A claim unlikely to fly because we ourselves were right now hard at it bothering the crap out of the current tenants.
Instead of chuckles or snide comments I got odd looks from Mischievous Rain and the hunter girls, like I had rubbed up against something without noticing.
Then I sat down and went to sleep, wet, dirty, and instantly.
I might have had help from an outside agency.
The eastern sky showed traces of orange when I wakened. Day was on its way. We would soon get a better look at what we had captured.
We would now move on th
e granite castle. Formidable as that looked, there on its granite peak, I did not doubt that Mischievous Rain could crack it.
So. While I had napped Ankou had clambered up the outside of the castle with a sack of shadow pots that he deposited in hidden places.
Meantime, Feather and Journey brought their disassembled carpets in through one of the tunnels and were reassembling them when I awakened.
Mischievous Rain gathered her favorites. “Several strong sorcerers await us in there. We should capture them if we can. There’ll be other people in there, too. They aren’t our enemies. Anyone who doesn’t resist is not to be treated cruelly. So. Get set. We start when Feather and Journey are ready.”
She beckoned me, then. I joined her where the hunter girls, clearly agitated, were helping Firefly produce a rough breakfast.
Some poor schlub had had to drag the fixings through one of the tunnels. Maybe a gang of schlubs since our whole mob was tucking in.
Firefly seemed distracted.
Everybody had something nagging them.
I asked Mischievous Rain, “What’s bugging the kids?”
“Kuroko and Shiroko? They’re about to see where they were born. They might even meet their mothers. Firefly is just aggravated because she can’t get her own way.” She laughed. “I pray to the gods that I don’t smell as bad as you do. But I suspect that my prayer will be in vain.”
This was where a guy should get all chivalrous. I went curmudgeonly instead, though I did retain sense enough to say nothing out loud.
Anyway, I was distracted by the suggestion that the hunter girls might be about to meet their mothers.
Was this strange castle where the copy girls originated?
Would that not mean that this was where my beautiful wife first saw light herself?
She did the mind-reading thing. “No. I was not born here.”
I believed her without understanding why I believed. Somebody inside that place was mass-producing Mischievous Rains and Tides Elbas, then scattering them wherever orphans were welcome. Looked like the frog-eggs-laying strategy. Lay enough, some will survive and reproduce.
I took Mischievous Rain’s right hand with my left, then Shironeko’s left with my right, checking their pulses. My wife was excited. Shiro’s heart was pounding so hard that I feared for her health. Kuroneko appeared to be equally stressed.
The sun cleared the horizon.
A boundary between light and shadow began to descend the castle’s east face. Once it touched the castle’s foundations my honey pointed and shouted what sounded like an order in that old language she favored lately.
Several granite blocks extracted themselves from the wall. The loving call of gravity brought a dozen more tumbling after, but the rest stood firm.
Kuro said, “There is our way inside.”
I told her, “You girls be careful. The rest might not be stable.”
My beloved mumbled on as the noise and dust settled, apparently proud of herself while, at the same time, being irked by some obscure failure.
She grumbled at two nearby Taken, then turned to me. “Have you seen the children, dear?”
“I thought you had them working.”
“So I did. But I expected them to be back by now. Well. Whatever. Let’s go on up there and see what’s what.” She said something more to Whisper, who nodded unhappily.
Whisper went off and collected the rest of the Taken, spoke to them briefly. Then they all got busy forming up the troops.
Nothing made sense but I kept quiet. This was no time for Croaker’s big mouth. It was time for Croaker to shut the fuck up and try to remember so he could get stuff written down before it faded.
Going on up there meant climbing a lot of granite steps built at an odd pitch, taller than most stair steps are. We got to the breach, still forty feet below the regular entrance. My calves ached. Obviously sorcery had been needed to build the castle and to maintain and supply it once it had been built.
I did survive the climb, fourth in the procession. And although I was hurting I could not fail to notice the sweet fundaments waggling in front of me. And I did not feel embarrassed or guilty about noticing them.
It was all their fault. Those girls did not have to be so screaming desirable.
Sisters and whores.
* * *
Beloved Shin and Blessed Baku were nowhere to be seen, nor had Ankou been in evidence for some time. I suspected that there were shadows by the thousand up inside that rock pile, some of which had been seeded with stoneware jars. And now Feather and Journey circled the fortress, daring a response, probably serving as a diversion.
The rest of the Taken remained on the flat ground with the troops, all drawn up in neat formations.
The Limper, however, remained outside the barrier, overhead, waiting.
Mischievous Rain paused at the breach, leaned in for a look. From where I stood there was nothing to see but darkness.
She was about to step into that darkness when Firefly called down from above, “Come on up, Mom. The door’s open. It’s all settled inside.”
“More climbing,” I grumbled.
Mischievous Rain chuckled. “You can use the exercise, love. And look on the bright side. This way you won’t have to do it in the darkness down here.” She climbed several steps, then turned to ask, “Should I have Kuroko and Shiroko get behind you and push?”
“I’m not quite that far gone. Yet.”
The normal entrance to the castle was ten feet tall and five feet wide. It opened by lying down to create a bridge over an eight-foot-wide dry moat, which here was just a long fall. The spire the stair climbed to the bridge point was clever but looked like it had not been part of any determined defensive design.
Whoever built the granite castle had not anticipated having to face real enemies. The place was someone’s fantasy that was, only accidentally, hard to crack.
Firefly was excited. She did an excellent imitation of the pee-pee dance while she waited on us.
Mischievous Rain said, “I will lead when we go in.” Behind her, Kuro and Shiro did their own pee-pee dance. Those two had no desire whatsoever to go into the granite castle but they were convinced that they had to do so, compelled by their very existence.
Firefly stuck with me, behind everyone else. She clung to my left arm, shivering, I think not because she was excited.
Mischievous Rain beckoned Feather, then told the rest of us, “I just had a thought. Something to check. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Feather eased her carpet in flush with the bridge and granite pillar. Mischievous Rain stepped aboard. Feather drifted away, climbed, then made a lazy circuit of the castle.
I presumed that Mischievous Rain’s real purpose was to deliver fresh instructions.
Once my honey rejoined us Feather swooped down to the troops and other Taken, who then began getting ready to evacuate.
Why not wait till we took the barrier down?
Oh. Got it. Mischievous Rain had concluded that it could not be taken down.
Shit. That guaranteed me another slither through the dark and flavorful muck.
All of my recent whining about the sad course of my life had begun to seem justified.
Firefly did say, “We’ll have to leave the way that we came in.”
“Don’t think you can trick me with that rat poop, kiddo. This guy can’t walk through the shadows.”
“So you got me there, Dad. But even so, you don’t have to put on all the drama.”
“If I don’t do it, who will?” But she did have a point.
My posing was, likely, yet another symptom of my narrowing focus. Less and less was I able to see anything that did not center on me.
Mischievous Rain spent what seemed an age staring into that doorway. The surface of her yukata crawled. Her tattoos did the same. The stripes in her hair writhed. Then she said, “Here we go.”
So. She was no more eager than the hunter girls now that she was where she wanted to be.
/> The entrance led into a storage area for cured foods and vegetables that had been carefully stowed: garlic, onions, potatoes, and turnips. Military necessity never entered the mind of whoever set this up. This was designed for the comfort of the lazy.
There were lights. They were not torches. They were not magical. They were weak blue flames in fixed sconces. I wished I had time to study them but Mischievous Rain wanted to keep moving.
Firefly told me, “Those lights are everywhere here. They’re weird. They’re always burning and they don’t smell like oil or tallow.”
We were falling behind. I whispered, “Does Mom seem like she’s nervous?”
“Oh, yeah. She’s scared. But don’t ask me why.” Then she added, “Maybe she should be scared.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s really, really, really weird in there. You’ll see.”
* * *
It was really, really, really weird in there. Really.
As I followed her it struck me that Mischievous Rain knew where she was going. She led rather than have Baku show us the way. We left the storage area, headed upstairs through fallow kitchens and on to what in any normal castle would be the great hall.
We arrived there on a platform three feet above the main floor, an architectural choice that made no sense whatsoever. The platform was twelve feet wide, a half-moon in shape, and had descending steps all round.
Mischievous Rain was one step down when Baku and I reached the platform. Kuro and Shiro were crowded up behind the Taken, holding hands and shaking. All three women seemed mesmerized.
I could not blame them.
The great hall was illuminated by dozens of pale blue flames. Only a scatter of tall, narrow, heavily glazed windows let any natural light infiltrate the fortress.
The hall was not huge. It was eighty feet broad and about fifty feet deep. A straight wall with one door sealed off some space opposite where we stood. Furnishings were sparse. Stairs at either side of the hall climbed on up to higher levels. There should be quite a few of those.
The human element provided the odd part, the really, really, truly weird.
There were a lot of people crowded into that hall, certainly more than a hundred. And they were really, really … and so forth.