“None of you need to come with me.”
Relief was obvious.
52
The Nether Taglian Territories:
Lady Made Grumpy Noises
Lady was in a towering rage. I could not recall ever having seen her so close to losing control. “How the hell could they let that happen? Somebody was supposed to stay in that little shit’s pocket every second!”
No one bothered to respond. She did not want answers. Not really. She wanted somebody to hurt.
Tobo was quietly busy talking to things that were there only when you looked away. Big things, little things, human-looking things and things that had escaped from madmen’s nightmares. Goblin was going to be found. Goblin was going to be tracked and harassed and hurt if at all possible, all the live-long day. Insofar as this fragment of the Company was concerned Goblin was going to be the main mission from this day forward. He was to be hunted down and exorcised — or exterminated — before he could engineer any more disasters on Kina’s behalf.
Though long out of practice and definitely out of the habit, Lady hurled a deadly spell at an inoffensive scrub pine. The tree began to wilt almost immediately.
“What the hell was that?” I demanded. “I thought you couldn’t...”
“Be quiet. Let me think.” So astonished was Lady that she forgot to be angry about Goblin.
I was quiet. I gave her all the thinking room a girl could want.
Was there a silver lining inside our latest black cloud?
My at-the-moment not very lucky wife called, “Tobo. Next message you send north, ask if the little shit got away with one of the gate keys. Or anything else unusual.”
Tobo made little gestures to the air, then replied, “I checked on that already. He got away with nothing more than two horses and one saddle. Not even a sausage. He’s probably eating bugs. The only unusual thing mentioned is that nobody noticed him. An eventuation almost certainly artificial in origin.”
“Because?”
“Because he’s being damned hard to notice right now. The Black Hounds shouldn’t be having trouble finding and following him. But they are. He’s as elusive as a ghost. Each time they do make contact it’s because he’s been following the road, without deviating, and they can just wait for him to show up.”
“Following the road where?”
“North. Toward the junction with the Rock Road. Though because he isn’t talking his plans are unclear.”
Tobo still had a sense of humor about what was going on.
I asked Lady, “How did you manage to murder that tree?”
She mused, “A good question. Without a good answer. I never felt any sharpened Kina presence.”
“You think it might have to do with Goblin? We know Kina must’ve put a piece of herself into him or he wouldn’t even be alive.”
“I would’ve sensed something before. I think. Tobo. Did you feel anything weird about Goblin?”
“Of course.” The boy was curt. He was trying to work. Old folks kept interrupting. “He wasn’t Uncle Goblin anymore. But he wasn’t any more powerful than he was before, either.”
I said, “Maybe it was something that didn’t come out until he got the chance to kill Narayan.”
Debate on the why increasingly focused on the fact that crippled old Narayan had been in no shape to run or do anything on behalf of his Goddess and, if left in our hands, would have been compelled to reveal whatever he knew eventually. And while most of us would view his murder as a betrayal by his Goddess, what we knew of Deceiver doctrine suggested that he might actually see it as a reward. Having been strangled for the Goddess, Narayan would go directly to Deceiver paradise where, no doubt, his rewards would be commensurate with his service.
I tend toward the cynical view where religion is concerned.
After a silence so extended I decided she was not listening, my beloved responded, “You might just be smarter than you look. She’d expect us to be suspicious enough to watch every breath Goblin took. So she’d want him to seem as normal as possible until he got a solid chance to get away.” She began to pace. “Poor Goblin. That would’ve been mostly him, maybe even really trying to help his old friends as much as he could. And he’ll still be partly Goblin, but a prisoner inside his own body.” The hollowness of her voice indicated that she might have been through that herself, once upon a time.
“Which tells us nothing of his purpose. Or of Kina’s.”
“She’s in prison. She wants out. That doesn’t take any special figuring.”
“But there’ll be a grand plan. Old Goblin didn’t get his soul eaten up just so he could be flung across the pond of the world like a skipping stone. He’s going to go somewhere and he’s going to do something and if he gets away with it all the rest of us are going to end up really sorry.”
Lady grunted. She was still mostly angry.
I said, “He headed north. What’s up there that would interest Kina?”
Tobo interrupted his sweet talk with his pets. “Booboo.” He sounded as unhappy as I felt. “He’s going to take Narayan’s place watching over the Daughter of Night.”
“Yeah. Only there’ll be a big chunk of Goddess in him so he’ll be a lot more dangerous than Narayan ever was.”
Lady glared around her with an expression that made me think she did not have much trouble seeing Tobo’s friends. “Do you think my sister can be made to hear one of those?”
You could have heard a stack of pans drop. Even the animals quieted down.
I asked, “You have something in mind?”
“Yes. We send her a message. Tell her what’s going on with Goblin. It’s as much in her interest to stop him as it is in ours.”
“And she has a personal interest,” Tobo reminded us.
I understood immediately but Lady needed it explained. “Goblin is the reason Soulcatcher has a bad leg.”
“Oh. Of course. I remember now.”
She ought. She was there, spying on everything through the eyes of a white crow, during the kidnapping of the Radisha. That same night Goblin managed to trick Soulcatcher into springing a booby trap. The result had been serious and irreversible damage to her right heel.
Tobo said, “She gets around pretty well now. She wears a special boot and brace and is supported by several specialized spells. She only limps when she’s really tired.”
“Ah. She’ll definitely want to chat with Goblin, then. She’s always been a sore loser.”
“Just a thought,” I offered. “What happens if Soulcatcher turns Goblin into her own version of the Taken? And maybe Booboo, too? Word is, there were times when she showed a few powers of her own.”
“Make a slave out of a Goddess?” Lady was incredulous. I raised an eyebrow. She protested, “What I did wasn’t the same thing at all. What I did was pure parasitism. I wormed in so she couldn’t get me out without hurting herself.”
“And now you’re getting a little of that back?”
“But it doesn’t feel the same. Tobo. Can you send a message to my sister or not?”
“I can try. In fact, I can do it. Easily. The real question would be whether or not she’d listen.”
“She’ll listen or I’ll kick her butt.”
It took all of us a moment to realize she was joking. She did so so rarely.
Tobo began concentrating on the task of getting an extended message to Soulcatcher.
Again I cautioned, “There’s a risk in this.”
Lady just made one of her grumpy noises. She was turning into a cranky old witch.
53
The Taglian Territories:
A Haunted Wood
Soulcatcher glanced back before entering the wood. “So where are they all?” And in a firm male voice she demanded, “What happened to all the suck-ups?”
Another voice, “Somebody should’ve wanted to kiss up.”
A puzzled voice asked, “They always do, don’t they?”
“Are we losing it here?”
&n
bsp; “I don’t like it.”
“This isn’t fun anymore.” Petulant, spoiled child voice.
“Most of the time we’re just going through the motions. There aren’t any challenges here.”
“Even when there are it’s almost impossible to get impassioned enough to care.”
Most of those voices were businesslike but jaded.
“It’s hard to keep going on fuel like hunger for revenge alone.”
“It’s hard to be alone, period.”
That remark brought on an extended silence. Soulcatcher did not have a voice for expressing the emotional costs of being who she was. Not out loud. Ferocious mad-killer sorcerers do not whine because nobody likes them.
The growth along the creek had a sharp boundary. In another time the land must have been groomed by human occupation. Soulcatcher listened. The wood, which was a little more than a mile wide, seemed remarkably silent. There should have been a racket from work parties harvesting firewood and timber for use around the camp. But there was nothing. And she did not recall authorizing a holiday. Something had frightened the soldiers away.
Yet she sensed no danger.
After a moment, though, she did detect a supernatural presence.
She glanced upward. Those vultures continued to circle. They were lower now. They seemed to be wheeling above the presence she sensed.
Warily, she probed farther and deeper. She had remarkably well-honed senses when she cared to concentrate.
This presence was like nothing in her experience. Something like a powerful shadow, yet with a strong implication of working intelligence. Not a demon or some such otherworldly entity, though. Something that felt like it was a part of nature but still having about it a hint of not belonging to this world. But how? Not of this world but not otherworldly?... Something very powerful but not driven by malice. At the moment. Something timeless, accustomed to patience, mildly impatient right now, again a smart-shadow thing like those stalkers down south had been.
Soulcatcher extended her senses to their maximum. This thing was waiting for her. For her alone. It had repulsed everything but those vultures. She had to be careful. Despite her ennui she did not want to trigger a fatal ambush.
There was nothing.
She stepped forward.
She did so while assembling a quiver of sudden and deadly spells. She squinted behind her mask, looking for this thing that wanted to see her.
It grew stronger but less focused as she moved toward it. For a moment it seemed that it was all around her — even while being in one place somewhere ahead of her. When she did arrive where her senses told her it ought to be, she saw nothing.
That place was a small clearing just off the Rock Road, across the shallow stream. She saw several Vehdna grave markers and a few Gunni memorial posts with time-gnawed prayer wheels on top. This must be where her sister fought the Shadowlander cavalry during her flight from Dejagore. In a time so long ago that she still had believed Narayan Singh to be her friend and champion.
Sunlight tumbled through the leaves overhead. It dappled the clearing. Soulcatcher settled on a rotten log that protruded from what might once must have been an earthwork. “I’m here. I’m waiting.”
Something large moved at the edge of her vision. She got the impression of a black feline. But when she turned she saw nothing.
“So that’s the way it’s going to be, eh?”
“Thus it must be. Ever.” The response seemed to come from nowhere in particular and it was not clear whether she heard it with her ears or inside her head.
“What do you want from me?” Soulcatcher used a deep masculine voice heavy with menace.
The presence was amused, not intimidated. “I bring a message from your old friend Croaker.”
Croaker was no friend. In fact, she was distinctly piqued with that man. He had not been entirely cooperative when she had tried to seduce him and now he had refused to stay buried after she had tried to kill him. Still, he was the reason she had a head on her shoulders these days. And that tiny edge would be why this communication was arriving in his name.
“Go ahead.”
The whatever-it-was did as she bid. As she listened she poked around in an effort to fathom its true nature. While searching for some handle she could grasp to make it over into an agent of her own.
It sensed what she was doing. It was amused. Not troubled. Not frightened. Not inclined to react. Just amused.
Soulcatcher reviewed the story carefully once the spook had finished relating it. It sounded plausible. If incomplete. But why expect those people to be entirely forthcoming in such a situation?
Try as she might she could discover no obvious trap. They sounded worried down there. This news could explain their sudden shift of strategy.
Goblin possessed by Kina. Narayan Singh dead. The Daughter of Night running loose... Not running loose at all! In the hands of her troops, on the Rock Road somewhere south of Dejagore, very probably looking for an opportunity to get loose.
Goblin might arrange that.
She bounced up off the rotten log, ennui gone. “Tell Croaker he can consider communications opened. I’ll take steps to deal with the situation. Go! Go!”
A flicker. Like a shadow passing through and deserting at the same time. It left a deeply felt chill and one more uncertain glimpse of an impossibly large, catlike form moving away at an impossible pace.
From the nearby Rock Road came the rattle and clop of a large party headed south. Camels seemed to be involved. That meant civilians. There were no camels in her armies. She hated camels. They were filthy animals with nasty tempers even on their best days.
She leapt across the creek and hurried to the edge of the woods, emerging not a hundred feet from where a caravan was doing the same. Civilian it was, but most of the wagons and camels and mules would discharge their cargo in her camp.
The caravaners spied her. They were startled. And frightened.
Her blood was moving again. She always enjoyed the impact she made when she appeared unexpectedly.
As she turned and raised her gaze to the circling vultures she thought she glimpsed a familiar face among the merchants and teamsters. Aridatha Singh? Here? How? Why? But when she looked more closely she saw no Aridatha. Maybe it was just someone who looked like Singh. Maybe it was her reawakened zest reminding her that it had been a long time since she had enjoyed a man. Aridatha Singh had a definite masculine allure. Few women failed to notice that, though he seemed entirely unaware of the effect he had.
Time enough to think about that after she alerted Dejagore and got troops of cavalry out to round up her niece, that willful, difficult child.
There must be some way to gain control of her and add her talents to the arsenal of the Protectorate. Possibly she might even take Goblin — despite the fact of his possession.
Goblin never had been much of a wizard.
How sweet revenge was when it arrived after a long delay.
Then let that bitch Ardath and all her dogs come on! A lot of ancient debts would get paid off.
As she approached the encampment ditch she glanced back to consider the vultures again.
The carrion birds had broken their circle. Only a few remained in sight, cruising the sky in search of something rank and tasty again.
Soulcatcher found a voice she had not used since she was young. With it she began to sing a song of springtime and young love, in a language recalled from the springtime of life, when love still lived in the world.
The sentries were extremely frightened.
54
The Taglian Territories:
The Thing in the Cesspit
I have a question,” Murgen said. The stronghold at Nijha was in sight. “Who’s going to tell Sleepy we’re in bed with the Protector?”
I replied, “I don’t reckon anybody has to. Not putting it that way, anyhow.”
“She’s a reasonable woman,” Lady opined. “She’ll understand what we did and why.”
&
nbsp; Tobo laughed. Murgen just grinned weakly. The boy wizard said, “You must not have been paying attention. Or you must’ve mistaken the Sleepy I know for somebody else.”
I told him, “She’ll get over it. How’s Soulcatcher doing on cutting Booboo off?”
“She has pickets out in a line south of Dejagore. The line keeps spreading out wider, to either side of the Rock Road. She doesn’t entirely trust me to send her solid information. And I’m not giving her everything I know because I don’t want her guessing how well I can keep an eye on her. She’s not talking about this to her captains, by the way. My guess is she’s afraid she’ll start losing them if they begin worrying about Kina.”
What a bold lot we were. When first the Company arrived in the Taglian Territories a fixed part of Taglian culture was that the Goddess was never named lest her attention be attracted. If a name just had to be used people would reference the watered-down avatar from Gunni myth, Khadi.
The fact that the name Kina is now widely used in daily speech is one more indication of the magnitude of the impact the Company has had these past few decades.
Maybe those old-timers had been right to be terrified of us. We have shaken a civilization to its foundations. And its future does not look bright.
They asked for it. All we ever wanted was to pass on through.
“We won’t have to deal with Sleepy for a few days yet,” Tobo told us. “She’s moving out of the highlands onto the plain, following the south bank of the Viliwash right now. She’s only moving a few miles a day. The countryside there has enough of a surplus to support her easily. She’s started trying to recruit. In the name of the Prahbrindrah Drah. The Prince and his sister are showing themselves off.”
I had a feeling they would not sell well in those parts. That was territory that had been conquered by the Black Company in Taglios’ name. “What about Booboo?”
“Almost up to the Protector’s picket line now. Sticking to the Rock Road. The Black Hounds have instructions to make sure she gets caught.”
Lady grumped, “I thought she was caught already. That she was a prisoner.”