Dreams of Steel (22 page)

I had trouble pretending calm and indolence.

If the rocks and twigs and such were significant, so must be the creatures of grass and bark. I stood up for a better view.

One thing jumped right out.

A leaf lay at the foot of the stump. A tiny figure sat upon it. A lot of care had gone into creating that figure. More than enough to make the message clear. The Howler, my then master of the flying carpet, was supposed to have been killed by a fall from the heights of the Tower. I had known that was not true for some time now. The message had to be that the Howler was somehow involved in current events.

Whoever set this up knew me and expected me to visit the grove. That should mean that someone knew what I was doing. That someone must have access to what the crows reported but was not their master. Else there was no reason for such an elaborate and iffy means of passing a message. There was more.

Many great sorcerers had been involved in the battle where the Howler was supposed to have died. Most of them were supposed to have been killed. Since then I have discovered that several had fled after faking their deaths. I checked the figures again. Some were identifiable as representing some of those sorcerers. Three had been crushed underfoot. Those known to have been destroyed?

I gave it all the time it needed and still nearly missed the critical message. It was almost dark when I spied the clever little figure carrying what appeared to be a head under its arm. It took a while after that to understand the significance of the figure.

I had told Narayan that we do not see what we do not expect to see.

A lot of things fell into place once I realized that the impossible was not impossible at all. My sister was alive. I saw a whole new picture of what was going on. And I was frightened.

And, frightened, I missed the most important message of all.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Narayan was not in a pleasant mood. "The whole temple has to be purified. Everything has been defiled. At least they committed no willful sacrilege, no desecration. The idol and relics remain undisturbed."

I had no idea what he was talking about. All the men had long faces. I looked at Narayan over our cookfire. He took my look for a question.

"Any unbeliever who found the holy relics or the idol would have plundered them."

"Maybe they were afraid of the curse."

His eyes got big. He glanced around, made a gesture urging silence. He whispered, "How did you know that?"

"These things always have curses. Part of their rustic charm." Pardon my sarcasm. I did not feel good. I did not want to spend any more time hanging around the grove. It was not a pleasant place. A lot of people had died there, none of them of old age. The earth was rich with their blood and bones and screams. It had a smell, psychic and physical, probably pleasing to Kina.

"How much longer, Narayan? I'm trying to cooperate. But I'm not going to hang around here the rest of my life."

"Oh. Mistress. There will be no Festival now. The purification will take weeks. The priests are distraught. The ceremonies have been moved to Nadam. It's only a minor holiday usually, when the bands break up for the off season, and the priests remind them to invoke the Daughter of Night in their prayers. The priests always say the reason she hasn't come yet is we haven't prayed hard enough."

Was he going to dole it out in driblets forever? I guess no one of any religion would have spent much time explaining holidays and saints and such, though. "Why are we still here, then? Why aren't we headed south?"

"We came for more than the Festival." We had indeed. But how was I supposed to convince these men I was their messiah? Narayan kept the specifications to himself. How could the actress act without being told her role?

There was the trouble. Narayan believed I was the Daughter of Night. He wanted me to be. Which meant that he would not coach me if I asked. He expected me to know instinctively. And I did not have a clue.

The jamadars seemed disappointed and Narayan nervous. I was not living up to expectations and hopes, even if I had discovered that their temple had been profaned.

In a whisper, I asked, "Am I expected to do holy deeds in a place no longer holy?"

"I don't know, Mistress, We have no guideposts. It's all in the hands of Kina. She will send an omen." Omens. Wonderful. I had had no chance to bone up on omens the cult considered significant. Crows were important, of course. Those men thought it wonderful that Taglian territory was infested by carrion birds. They thought that presaged the Year of the Skulls. But what else was significant?

"Are comets important to you?" I asked. "In the north, last year, and once earlier, there were great comets. Did you see them down here?"

"No. Comets are bad omens."

"They were for me."

"They have been called Sword of Sheda, or Tongue of Sheda, Shedalinca, that shed the light of Sheda upon the world."

Sheda was an archaic form of the name of the chief Gunni god, one of whose titles was Lord of Lords of Light. I suspected the Deceiver cult's beliefs had taken a left turn off the trunk of Gunni beliefs a few thousand years ago.

He said, "The priests say Kina is weakest when a comet is in the sky, for then light rules heaven day and night."

"But the moon..."

"The moon is the light of darkness. The moon belongs to Shadow, put up so Shadow's creatures may hunt."

He rambled off into incomprehensibility. Local religion had its light and dark, right and left, good and evil. But Kina, despite her trappings of darkness, was supposed to be outside and beyond that eternal struggle, enemy of both Light and Shadow, ally of each in some circumstances. Just to confuse me, maybe, nobody seemed to know how things really lay in the eyes of their gods. Vehdna, Shadar, and Gunni all respected one another's gods. Within the majority Gunni cult the various deities, whether identified with Light or Shadow, got equal deference. They all had their temples and cults and priests. Some, like Jahamaraj Jah's Shadar Khadi cult, were tainted by the doctrines of Kina.

As Narayan clarified by making the waters murkier he got shifty-eyed, then would not look at me at all. He fixed his gaze on the cookfire, talked, grew morose. He was good at hiding it. No one else noticed. But I had had more practice reading people. I noted tension in some of the jamadars, too.

Something was about to happen. A test? With this crowd that was not likely to be gentle.

My fingers drifted to the yellow triangle at my belt. I had not practiced much lately. There had been little time. I realized what I had done, wondered why. That was hardly the weapon to get me out of trouble.

There was danger. I felt it now. The jamadars were nervous and excited. I let my psychic sense sharpen despite the aura of the grove. It was like taking a deep breath in a hot room where a corpse had been rotting for a week. I persevered. If I could take the dreams without bending I could take this.

I asked Narayan a question that sent him off on another ramble. I concentrated on form and pattern in my psychic surroundings.

I spotted it.

I was ready when it happened.

He was a black rumel man, a jamadar with a reputation nearly rivalling Narayan's, Moma Sharrael, Vehdna. When we'd been introduced I'd had the feeling he was a man who killed for himself, not for his goddess. His rumel moved like black lightning.

I grabbed the weighted end on the fly. I took it away before he recovered his balance, snapped it around his neck. It seemed I'd played this game always, or as though another hand guided my own. I did cheat a little, using a silent spell to strike at his heart. I wasted no mercy. I sensed that that would be an error as deadly as not reacting at all.

I would have had no chance had I not sensed the wrongness gathering around me.

No one cried out. No one said a word. They were shaken, even Narayan. Nobody looked at me. For no reason apparent at the moment, I said, "Mother is not pleased."

That got me a few startled looks. I folded Moma's rumel as Narayan had taught me, discarded my yellow cloth and took the black. No one argued with my self-promotion.

How to reach these men without hearts? They were impressed now, but not indelibly, not permanently. "Ram."

Ram came out of the darkness. He did not speak for fear of betraying his feelings. I think he might have stepped in if Moma's attack had succeeded, though that would have been the end of him. I gave him instructions.

He got a rope and looped one end around the dead man's left ankle, tossed the rope over a branch, hauled the corpse up so it hung head down over the fire. "Excellent, Ram. Excellent. Everyone gather round."

They came reluctantly as the summons spread. Once they were all there I cut Moma's jugular.

The blood did not come fast but it came. A small spell made each drop flash when it reached the fire. I seized Narayan's right arm, forced him to put his hand out and let a few drops fall on his palm. Then I turned him loose. "All of you," I said.

Kina's followers do not like spilled blood. There is a complex and irrational explanation having to do with the legend of the devoured demons. Narayan told me later. It has a bearing only because it made the evening more memorable for those men once they had the blood of their fellow on their hands.

They did not look at me while they endured my little ceremony. I used the opportunity to hazard a spell that, to my surprise, came off without a hitch. It turned the stains on their hands as indelible as tattoos. Unless I took it back they would go through life with one hand marked scarlet.

The jamadars and priests were mine, like it or not. They were branded. The world would not forgive them that brand if its meaning became known. Men with red palms would not be able to deny that they had been present at the debut of the Daughter of Night.

Nowhere did I see any doubts, now, that I was what Narayan claimed.

The dreams were powerful that night but not grim. I floated in the warmth of the approval of that other who wanted to make me her creature.

Ram wakened me before there was light enough to see. He and Narayan and I rode out before the sun rose. Narayan did not speak all day. He remained in shock.

His dreams were coming true. He did not know if that was what he wanted anymore. He was scared.

So was I.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Longshadow had fallen into a permanent rage. The wizard Smoke, a trivial little nothing, was stubborn. He was determined not to be enslaved. He might die first.

A howl echoed through Overlook. The Shadowmaster glanced up, imagined mockery in the cry. That bastard Howler. He had pulled a fast one somehow. No one else could have freed Shadowspinner. Treachery. Always treachery. He would pay. How he would pay. His agony would go on for years.

Later. There was damage to be undone. There was that damnable little wizard to be broken.

What had happened at Stormgard?

The obvious assumption was that the Lifetaker character had been her. Dorotea Senjak had been in Taglios. Of that there was no doubt. But she did not have the powers to battle Shadowspinner to a draw while ensuring the defeat of his armies.

Who had that been with her, bearing the Lance? The real power?

A flicker of fear. He dropped his work, climbed to his crystal chamber, looked out on the plain of glittering stone. Forces were moving. Not even he could grasp them all. Maybe that had not been her. Maybe she was gone. The tamed shadows had seen no sign of her for some time. Maybe she had gone north again after taking her revenge. She'd always wanted to rule her sister's empire.

Was there an unknown player in the game? Were Lifetaker and Widowmaker more than phantoms conjured by Senjak? The shadows thought some power was guiding her. Suppose Lifetaker and Widowmaker were real beings? Suppose they had put the notion into her head to create imitations so everyone would believe them unreal, actors, till it was too late?

Grim presentiments. Grim questions. And no answers.

Sunlight danced among the pillars on the plain. The Howler wailed. The wizard's groans echoed through the fortress.

It was closing in.

He had to capture Senjak. She was the keystone. Her head held the keys to power. She knew the Names. She knew the Truths. She contained secrets that could be hammered into weapons capable of stemming even that dark tide waiting to break out of the plain.

But first, the wizard. Before all else, Smoke. Smoke would give him Taglios and maybe Senjak.

He returned to the room where the little man battled his terror and pain. "There will be an end to this foolish resistance. Now. I have lost patience. Now I will find what you fear and feed you to it."

Chapter Forty

Blade's army moved in twenty-mile stages. He scouted heavily, used his cavalry exhaustively. Sindhu's men, who had hurried ahead to discover what had become of the Deceivers watching Dejagore, reported finding no sign of those men.

Blade took the news to Mather. "What do you think?"

Mather shook his head. "Probably killed or captured."

Swan and Mather had their own scouts out, farther south. Swan said, "Word we have is the Shadowlanders really did get whipped bad. Our guys got past their pickets and checked their camp. There's only two-thirds as many of them as there should be. Half of those are dinged up. That character Mogaba keeps hitting them with sorties, too. They never get to relax."

"Are they watching us? Do they know we're coming?"

Mather said, "You have to assume they do. Shadowspinner is a sorcerer. They don't call him a Shadowmaster for nothing. And there's the bats. Croaker thought they controlled the bats. There have been plenty of those around lately."

"Then we should be very careful. How many effectives can they field if they decide to meet us?"

"Listen to this guy, Cordy," Swan said. "He's starting to sound like a pro. Effectives. My, oh my. She's going to turn him into a real ass-kicking warlord."

Blade chuckled.

"Too many of them if you ask me," Swan continued. "If they sneak them away without Mogaba noticing they probably could put eight or ten thousand veterans in our way."