She Is the Darkness: Book Two of Glittering Stone: A Novel of the Black Company (13 page)

Croaker let everybody rest thoroughly before he launched what he hoped would be
the final assault on the Shadowlander defenses. I had an ague or maybe something
I picked up from the proximity of Kina for a while, hot sweats alternating with
cold shakes. Consequently I did not get out to scout our enemies.

No matter. The Old Man was able to gossip with his crows.

There were no living Shadowlanders anywhere in the defensive works that
Longshadow had deemed so critical. While we were being soft, sitting around on
our behinds resting, Mogaba and his captains had gotten their soldiers moving.

They had even tried to destroy the stores they could not drag with them but were
forestalled in that by the efforts of an alert Shadar cavalry detachment.

Death is eternity. Eternity is stone. Stone is silence. Stone is broken.

In the night, when the wind no longer moans and the small shadows go into
hiding, stone sometimes whispers. Stone sometimes speaks. Stone sometimes sends
its children plunging into the abyss. Sometimes a tendril of colorful mist rises
to caress the figure pinned to the tilting throne.

Shadows scamper playfully about the plain glittering in the moonlight, devouring
one another and growing stronger. Their memories are as old as stone. They
remember freedom.

Sometimes the leaning throne slips a millionth of an inch, tilting farther. This
happens more and more frequently now.

Stone shudders. Eternity sneers as it devours its own tail. This cold feast is
almost finished.

Even death is restless.

I could hear One-Eye cursing fate in general and several Vehdna Taglians in
particular. One wheel of the wagon had become pinched between boulders and the
soldiers were not getting it pried out fast enough to suit the little wizard. He
had been in a foul temper all morning. I do believe he thought we would not
continue on south after we won at Charandaprash. I do believe he thought the Old
Man would be content to occupy the pass, then withdraw to warmer climes and wait
for summer.

Where was Longshadow going to go? Home. And because of the earthquake home was a
house that would not be completed any time soon. So where was the big hurry?

What kind of tunnel-vision fanatic did not even take time out for one good drunk
after winning a battle so huge and obviously unwinnable going in?

One-Eye had been saying all this and a lot more from the minute Croaker had told
him to move out. One-Eye was not a happy trooper.

He was even more unhappy because I got to ride. My fever and chills thing kept
coming and going. The Captain saw that as a good excuse to keep me near Smoke
against whom he continued to caution me regularly. I did not tell him that
walking with the ghost was becoming as unattractive as attractive, that it was
getting scary out there. I had not talked it over with One-Eye yet, either. I
knew I should. I would not like myself much anymore if something happened
because I failed to warn them.

But I did not want to cry wolf, either. One-Eye had not mentioned running into
anything unusual during his occasional trips out. Maybe I was letting my
imagination get the best of me.

I was in pretty good shape for the moment. A little shaken by the ride but
neither feverish nor fighting a chill. Might be an opportune time to take a look
around.

Outside, One-Eye snarled something at Thai Dei. “Not a good idea, One-Eye,” I
snapped in Jewel Cities dialect. “He’d as soon kick your ass as look at you.”

“Ha! That ought to be interesting. See what JoJo does. Might even wake him up.”

Like most Company members One-Eye had a Nyueng Bao bodyguard. His was Cho Dai
Cho, as unobtrusive and unambitious a bodyguard as ever lived. He was around
only because the tribal elders had decreed it. He did not seem to have much
interest in saving One-Eye from himself or anyone else. I had not seen Cho four
times in the last month.

I could not find Soulcatcher. I knew she was there and Smoke was not fighting me
but the woman was operating under a spell that hid her from even this sort of
seeing. I could guess where she was roughly, though, because of the comings and
goings of crows in the mountains west of us.

I looked around for One-Eye’s shapeshifter friend Lisa Bowalk but there was no
trace of her, either. Nor could I pinpoint Mogaba and the couple of Nar who had
chosen to stand by him when he deserted the Company for service to the
Shadowmaster.

This was something to think about. If people had begun to suspect we were
watching . . . But there was Longshadow in his crystal dome atop Overlook’s
tallest tower, seated at a stone desk, calmly giving orders to messengers,

arranging for the defense of his dwindling empire rationally and with vigor and
making no effort to hide himself from me.

And down below, in a private apartment, here was an uncomfortable and weakened
Narayan Singh cringing in a corner while the Daughter of Night, like a dwarf
rather than a child, apparently carried on half of a conversation with her
spiritual mother. There was a smell of Kina in the room but not that terrifying
sense of presence I had encountered before.

I observed for a while. I ran back the hours. There was no doubt. Narayan Singh
was not running anything anymore. He was an adjunct to the Daughter of Night,

useful principally as a voice through which she could communicate with the
Shadowmaster and the Deceivers. But Singh was beginning to suspect that his
usefulness was running its course, that it would not be very much longer at all
before the child would be ready to dispose of him.

When the time came she would do it with no more thought or emotion than she
would discarding a well-gnawed pork rib.

Her communions with her divine parent were reshaping her fast.

Kina seemed to be in a hurry, perhaps pressed for time, so that she did not have
time to wait for the child to mature into her role.

I was very uncomfortable around the kid even though she was a hundred miles
away. I got out of there.

I tried tracking Howler down but caught only glimpses as he buzzed here and
there on his raggedy-ass, oft-patched smaller carpet. He seemed to have upped
his level of precaution dramatically, too. I could spot him only when he was in
a really big hurry and, apparently, outrunning his invisibility shield.

Who would he be hiding from? If he did not know about me?

There was still the Radisha, whom I had not spied on for way too long.

In present time she was in the midst of a large audition with the chief priests
of the major temples of the city. The subject was, not surprisingly, the war. In
particular, the sacrilegious, atheistic, anticlerical stance of the men
directing the Taglian effort. The new generation of priests were much less
contentious amongst sects than had been their predecessors, who had paid for
their stubbornly parochial attitudes with their lives.

“There’s no doubt,” the Radisha admitted to a priest of Rhavi-Lemna, a goddess
of brotherly love, “that the Liberator has been sending troops raised among the
devout to pursue his feud with Blade.” News from the war zone was still far
away. “He’s blatant about it, it’s true, but you people keep going along with
it.”

A priest in vermilion grumbled, “Because Blade has been promised the
protectorship here when the Shadowmaster triumphs. He’ll exterminate us all. If
he’s still alive.”

“Which brings us to the crux again, doesn’t it? Even though my brother has
become a competent commander and a corps of experienced officers has developed,

neither the soldiers themselves nor the people believe we can defeat the
Shadowmaster without the guidance of the Black Company. We’re still in a
position where we’re compelled to let darkness wrestle darkness, hoping our kind
of darkness triumphs and we can control it after it does so.”

Rhavi-Lemna was a reasonable goddess. It would not be natural for her priests to
be firebrands. But the Gunni have a hundred gods and goddesses, great and small,

and some of them are a lot less tolerant. Someone shouted, “We should kill them
now! They’re a greater danger to our way of life than any masked sorcerer eight
hundred miles away.”

There were still many Taglians who had not served in the armies nor traveled
south to see what legacy the Shadowmasters had left in the lands retaken from
their rule. Men who did not believe simply because they preferred something else
to be true.

This was an unending squabble that might not be settled in my lifetime. There
was a war on and as long as we did not yet have it won the “Kill them now!”

school of thinking would remain a distinct minority. But the “Kill them later!”

school had plenty of members.

“There aren’t more than fifty or sixty of them,” the Radisha countered. “How
hard can it be to dispose of them once they’ve outlived their usefulness?”

“Pretty damned hard, I imagine. The Shadowmasters haven’t managed. Neither have
the Deceivers.”

“Steps are being taken.”

Interesting. I had not seen any sign of that.

Time to cruise days gone by, then.

Away I went. Skipping like a seven-year-old girl, toes coming down every hour or
so as I headed toward the last time I checked on the Woman. There was not much
there. A lot of the same stuff. One idea after another bounced off Cordy Mather
in the deeps of night, every one rejected by Mather, and the more vigorously so
the better the Woman seemed to like them.

Of more interest was the fact that she had started looking for Smoke. In fact,

she was getting suspicious, though not yet in any major way. Mather kept telling
her we were all right and must have made some arrangement to look out for Smoke.

We would not just let the old boy starve.

“They hate him, dear. He did everything he could to undercut the Black Company.”

“They would find a crueler way to get even. After they woke him up. So he could
appreciate the pain.”

Cordy echoed my thoughts perfectly. Starvation would do fine but I wanted him
conscious while he went.

Waking up to find himself in our hands might just be enough. He would have a
shit hemorrhage.

All the way back to my last visit I found nothing particularly exciting. The
Woman never said anything interesting except when she was finished using Mather
and then she said nothing original. Yet I could not help thinking that something
was going on.

She was the Radisha Drah. Her whole life had been spent aware that everything
she said or did might be observed by someone who did not wish her well.

I skipped back to today but did not find anything to hurry back to the Old Man.

There would be some excitement when the news from Charandaprash arrived. People
would stop thinking as clearly and carefully. I would be back.

I took a dive into Smoke’s old hiding place before I left. The old Annals were
right where I had hidden them.

Interesting to note, though, as I departed, that there were crows all over the
Palace district.

One-Eye was still cursing when I came out. Cursing again, I learned, as I let
myself down from the rear of the wagon. A different wheel was stuck. We had
moved several miles. I was bone dry. I lifted the lid on One-Eye’s waterbarrel.

There was not much there. The little that remained was pretty nasty. I drank it
anyway.

I walked around to where One-Eye was abusing a fresh crew of victims. “You
little shit. Quit barking at the help. They’ll stuff that damned hat down your
throat and I’ll end up having to walk. Where’s the Old Man?”

“Crows all over, eh?” Croaker mused. “Interesting. Guess it doesn’t surprise
me.”

“Hers?” There were crows around us right now. Naturally. He would not let Lady
run them off.

“Probably.”

“Are they all nowadays?”

“Take it for granted. You won’t be unpleasantly surprised. Tell me about
Longshadow.” The last sentence was not verbal at all but in the finger speech we
had learned way back when Darling, the White Rose, was with the Company. We
employed it sparingly anymore and I had not thought of using it to get around
the crows. It was so obvious when you considered it. There would be no way for
the critters to relay the signs.

Nobody believed that the birds understood what they relayed now. They just
carried the words.

My fingers were no longer as nimble as once they had been. I had a hard time
telling him that Longshadow had done a turnaround and was all business now, calm
and sane and decisive.

“Interesting,” he said. He looked up the pass. The Prince’s troops, in the
vanguard, had sprung a Shadowlander ambush. The fighting was getting heavy. The
column was crushing up behind it. This could get bad.

I looked at the slopes rising to either hand. If Mogaba had a lot of men up
there he could embarrass us easily.

“He doesn’t,” Croaker said, as though I had spoken my thoughts.

“You’re getting spooky.” He wore most of the fancy Widowmaker armor most of the
time now. There was hardly ever a time when he did not have a crow on his
shoulder. He seemed to know his favorites because he always had tidbits for
them.

“When I have to play a role I try to live it.” He began talking with his fingers
again. “I want you to find Goblin. It is critical.”

“Huh?”

He signed, “I would do it myself but there is no time.” Aloud, he added, “These
delaying tactics are working very well for Mogaba. This pass is just too damned
tight.” He turned away, strode up the stalled column. The Prahbrindrah Drah was
about to get talked to like a new recruit.

Suddenly, over his shoulder, he shot, “Where’re your in-laws, Murgen?”

“What?”

“Where are they? What’re they up to?” He used colloquial Taglian, which meant he
did not care what Thai Dei heard. Or specifically wanted him to know about the
query.

“I haven’t seen them.” I glanced at Thai Dei. He shook his head. “Maybe they
went home.”

“I don’t think so. If that was the case the rest of these clowns would be gone
with them. Wouldn’t they?”

I did not think so but there was no need arguing the point. Croaker would never
be comfortable with the Nyueng Bao. I told him I would keep an eye out and would
let him know if I learned anything, then moved along.

I ran into Sleepy on the way back to One-Eye’s wagon. “Hey, kid. How you doing?”

I had not seen him since I gave him his assignment that night in Taglios. He had
been working with Big Bucket, helping oversee the special forces teams. He
looked tired but still not old enough to be a soldier.

“I’m tired and hungry and beginning to wonder if being buttfucked by my uncles
really was worse than this.”

Anybody who could sustain a sense of humor after what Sleepy had suffered was
all right by me.

I wondered if he would ever go back and kill them. I doubted it. That sort of
thing was acceptable in this bizarre southern culture.

Sleepy asked, “You talk to the Captain yet?”

“I talk to him all the time. I’m the Annalist.”

“I mean about the standardbearer job. You said you might . . . ”

“Oh. Yeah.” His excitement was obvious. But becoming standardbearer meant those
above you thought you were destined for big things in the Company. The
standardbearer often became Annalist. Frequently he became Lieutenant because he
was always near the center of things and knew everything that was going on. The
Lieutenant almost always becomes Captain when the job comes open.

Croaker was an anomaly of epic proportion, elected at a time when there were
only seven of us, none more qualified, and nobody else would take the job.

“I bounced it off him. He didn’t say no. He’ll probably leave it up to me. And
that means it’s a someday sort of thing because right now everybody in this army
is working twenty hours a day. There’s no time to teach you anything.”

“We’re not doing anything. I could just hang around you and—”

Big Bucket’s voice rose above all the other tumult of an army on the move,

telling Sleepy to get his dead ass back up here, they’ve decided nobody else can
crack this nut but us.

“Good luck. And don’t get in a hurry, kid,” I told him. “Hell. Do like I’m doing
with the Annals. Wait till the siege of Overlook. We’ll have plenty of time
then. Including learning to read and write.”

“I’ve been learning. Believe it or not. I know fifty-three common characters
already. I can puzzle out almost anything.”

Written Taglian is fairly complicated because there are more than a hundred
characters in the common alphabet and another forty-two in the High Taglian used
only by Gunni priests. A lot of the characters duplicate what they mean but
distinguish caste. Caste is very important among the Gunni.

“Keep at it,” I told Sleepy. “You’ll make it on determination.”

“Thanks, Murgen.” The kid began scooting uphill, sliding through the press like
he was greased.

“Don’t thank me,” I mumbled. Most standardbearers are not as lucky as I have
been. It is not a job with an extended life expectancy.

I spotted Lady across the pass, as always surrounded by her admirers and most of
the Nar who had not deserted the Company. I headed that way.