She Is the Darkness: Book Two of Glittering Stone: A Novel of the Black Company (14 page)

Men moved to let me through. Things like that happen when you can leave someone
as a good taste or foul odor in history’s mouth. Croaker really made the
importance of the Annals an article of faith with everyone in the Company.

Lady looked around. Her ordinarily impassive expression betrayed an instant of
irritation. I said, “Looks like we’re going to be stalled here till Bucket’s
crew convince Mogaba’s people they’d really rather go home and get in out of
this weather.”

That was looking kind of bleak. A wind was building. It was colder than the wind
had been for days. Heavy clouds were piling up overhead. Looked as if we were
going to get some snow.

“Yeah. Let’s hope,” Swan said. “We need to get down out of these rocks.” He was
not talking to me, really. “I hate mountains.”

“I’m not too fond of cold and snow, either,” I said. Of Lady I asked, “You
really need to keep avoiding me?”

“What do you want to know?”

“How can you be getting your powers back? I thought that business in the
Barrowland stripped you forever.”

“I’m a thief. Otherwise, none of your business.”

Her entourage sneered at me, mostly because they thought that would make points
with her.

“Have you been dreaming again?”

She thought about that one before admitting, “Yes.”

“I thought so. You’ve been looking a little ragged.”

“You want to play you have to pay the price. What about you, Annalist?”

I found I was reluctant to reveal anything. Especially in front of those guys. I
forced myself. “Yeah. Something that might have been Kina turned up in my dreams
a couple times. Almost like an intrusion from outside. I wondered if that might
have been the same time she was bothering you.”

That interested her. You could see the thoughts begin moving behind her eyes,

the consideration, the calculation. She told me, “If it happens again, note the
time. If you can.”

“I’ll try. How did you manage to go head-to-head with Kina the other night and
come out in one piece?”

Without missing a beat Lady shifted to Groghor, a language on its last death
rattle. “That was not Kina.” I learned it from my grandmother, whose people had
all been wiped out in the consolidation wars that had built the Lady’s empire.

Granny was dead and so was my mother and I had not used the tongue except to
cuss people out since I signed on with the Company.

“How do you . . . ?” I sputtered. “How could you know that I . . . ?”

“The Captain has been kind enough to have your work copied and forwarded to me.

You mentioned Groghor somewhere. I am a little rusty. I have not spoken this
language in more than a century. Pardon my lapses.”

“You’re doing fine. But why bother?”

“My sister never learned the language. Nor did this bunch, half of whom are
probably spies for someone.”

“What’s the deal? You said that wasn’t Kina. Sure fooled me if it wasn’t. Sure
fit the description.”

“That was my beloved sister. Pretending to be Kina. I expect she surprised
Kina’s worshippers as much as she surprised the rest of us.”

“But . . . ” The Daughter of Night had seemed happy enough.

“I can touch the real Kina, Murgen. Believe me. It’s why I don’t sleep well. The
real Kina is still in her trance. She can only touch the world in dreams. And I
have to stay a part of those dreams.”

“So Kina is definitely real, then?”

“There is something that fits the bill of particulars, Murgen. I’m not sure that
when it’s awake it thinks of itself as Kina or as a goddess. It does want to
bring on the Year of the Skulls. It does want to get free of its chains. But
these are just emotions I have gained from it over the years. It is far too
alien for me to know it well.”

“Like Old Father Tree?”

She had to think to remember the tree-god thing that had ruled the Plain of Fear
and defied her when she was still the Lady.

“I never touched that mind.”

“Why would your sister pretend to be Kina?”

“I have never known why my sister does any of the things she does. She has never
been rational. Two does not follow One in her scheme, nor does Three come before
Four. She is capable of spending incredible energies and vast fortunes on the
execution of a prank. She is capable of destroying cities without ever being
able to explain why. You can know what she is doing but not why or you can know
why she is doing something but not what. She was that way when she was three
years old, before anyone knew she was cursed with the power, too.”

“You believe you’re cursed?”

She actually smiled. When she did her beauty shone through. “By an insane
sister, for sure. I wish I had even the foggiest notion why she’s just out
there, doing nothing but watching and constantly reminding us that she’s there.”

“Reminding us?”

“Don’t you get a little tired of those damned crows?”

“Yes, I do. I thought revenge was her thing.”

“If that was all she wanted she would have squashed me a long time ago.”

There was a stir behind me. Scores of eyes were staring at us as everyone in
earshot tried to figure out what was going on. It had to be some secret if we
were going to talk it over in a language nobody knew.

Willow Swan looked like his feelings were hurt.

“Excuse me, sir,” said a voice from behind me. “The Liberator’s compliments and
would you be so good as to get your ass on about the job he gave you? He said to
suggest that he wants the answer before sundown.”

That was not in a language no one else understood. It cheered Swan right up.

Even Lady chuckled.

I do believe I blushed. “I’ll want to pursue this further,” I told Lady, who did
not seem thrilled by the prospect. To the messenger, who happened to be the
nephew of a prominent Taglian general, I said, “Just for that I think I’ll go do
what the Old Man wants.”

It took me a long time to find Goblin but there was no hurry. The Shadowlanders
up the pass were being particularly stubborn. Big Bucket was having to use a lot
of firebombs to root them out.

I found it hard to believe. Goblin was on the other side of the Dandha Presh.

His Shaded Road was an expedition that had pushed a commando force across the
Shindai Kus. Croaker had talked about the possibility once, ages ago, before we
ever even went after Dejagore, but I always thought it was completely
impractical. So much so that the possibility had not occurred to me even when I
had found Goblin on the shore of the Shindai Kus.

Goblin was still Goblin. The desert only baked it in. “I’m one step and ten
seconds short of exhaustion,” he complained to the man nearest him, a Company
brother named Bubba-do who was not too bright and who, I noted, kept Goblin on
his left side, which was where he had the bad ear. “But I’m here. I’m in place.

I’m on time. And nobody knows we’re here.”

Lights flared in the mountains above. Tiny balls of fire rose over the high
Dandha Presh. Bubba-do said, “Looks like da Captain won his bet.”

“I’m worried. This damned thing’s been going too good. I’ve been fighting these
people for years. I know how they think. I know Mogaba.” So did Bubba-do but
that did not matter in Goblin’s view. “He ain’t going to let himself get whipped
by Croaker. Whole point of him going over to the Shadowmaster was he wanted to
prove he was a better soldier and general.”

Goblin went on and on. His men ignored him most of the time. After he had heard
scouting reports about the surrounding terrain he allowed his men to build
several small, carefully hidden fires. That side of the Dandha Presh was colder
than the northern slope. It was impossible to manage without heat if you were
not moving.

“I should’ve found a farm. Maybe a small town. Someplace where we could get
inside.”

“That would mean killing a bunch of people so they couldn’t rat on us and that
probably wouldn’t do any good anyway because somebody probably would’ve got
away.”

It was almost dark. The excitement in the mountains was getting colorful. I
began to wonder if Mogaba himself was not up there directing the resistance.

“You got company,” somebody said. Instantly everybody at Goblin’s fire found a
chore that had to be handled right away somewhere else. Everyone but Goblin’s
Nyueng Bao bodyguard, who was a man so unobtrusive I had yet to learn his full
name. It was Thane, Trine, something like that. This man merely moved to a place
more comfortable on a taller rock and laid his sword across his lap, ready for
business.

The reason the others wanted to be elsewhere was evident a moment later. I had
found one of my missing targets.

A huge, cruel-looking black panther stalked out of the darkness, settled near
the fire. Goblin reached out and scratched her behind the ears.

What the hell? This particular panther had no love for him. Though her squabble
with One-Eye was an order of magnitude bigger.

“So you decided to help out after all, eh?” Goblin said. “It never was that hard
to get along.” Off he went on an odyssey of the imagination, describing in
fantastic detail why she was a natural ally of the rest of us despite One-Eye’s
having had to do in Shapeshifter. Shifter really had given him no choice, now,

had he? Anyway, it was only a matter of time before they completed their
research into the character of release spells. Last time he saw One-Eye they
were just three terms and a postulate short of putting a wrap on it.

The wind had a real bite as I went looking for Croaker. There were bits of snow
zinging around. Nobody had moved since this afternoon. Fireballs flickered
across the sky up ahead. There were almost no fires. There was nothing to burn.

Men huddled with one another for warmth. Hardly anyone lifted their eyes as I
passed. I could have been the Shadowmaster himself and nobody would have cared.

Had I been carrying hot food I would have been hailed as a messiah.

Croaker did not have a fire, either. But he had a girlfriend to keep him warm.

Something nobody else had. The rat bastard.

“You want to go for a walk?”

Hell, no, he did not. Neither would you if you if you were bundled up in some
blankets with a beautiful woman on a freezing night. “Use your imagination here,

Murgen. Do I look like somebody who wants to be interrupted?”

“All right. Be that way. I’ve finally located the man you asked about. He seems
to be where he’s supposed to be. But—”

“Then go keep an eye on him.”

“There’s a complication.”

“Keep an eye on him. He’s not likely to get into much before I can come check on
him. Later.”

With him and Lady both scowling at me I decided I would take the hint and go
away. Shaking my head. There are things you can accept intellectually but still
not imagine. Those two in the throes of passion fell into the latter category.

If he was in no hurry I was not, either. I had a snack and a nap and a dream
about Sarie before I got back to work. It was not a dream I wanted. It was Sarie
looking aged and haggard and wearing white. But that was a better dream than the
visit to ice hell that followed.

That one did not change much with time, nor did any more details develop. But I
never got comfortable with it.

Goblin had all his illusions in place but he did not bother the first fugitives
to hurry out of the Dandha Presh. Those would be the men least likely to be
trouble in later times. He did have a few individuals captured so he could get a
better idea of what had happened to the north. He told the panther, “A shithead
like Longshadow don’t deserve followers like Mogaba.”

The panther rumbled deep in her throat.

“You got to wonder about Mogaba. Why the hell don’t he just walk?”

Mogaba had everything under control. His fighting withdrawal was going well for
him.

The hundred men with Goblin were all young Taglians interested in becoming part
of the Black Company, I gathered. Clever Goblin had sold them the notion that
this operation was an entrance exam. The nasty little shit.

He had to feel lonely out there. His bodyguard, Thien Due, knew only a few words
of Taglian and had no more inclination to gossip than Thai Dei did. The
panther’s conversational skills were limited. The commandos were all under
twenty-five. Goblin spoke Taglian well enough but did not speak the language of
the young.

In the dialect of the Jewel Cities he muttered, “I miss One-Eye. He may not be
worth two dead flies but . . . Nobody heard that, did they? Us old farts got to
stick together. We’re the only ones who know what it’s all about.

“Or do we?

“Yeah. I think we do.”

“Were you saying something, sir?” one of the young sergeants asked, rushing up.

“Talking to myself, lad. Guaranteed intelligent conversation. I was thinking out
loud about Mogaba. How everybody on the other side’s got their own thing going.

Ten minutes after they whip us everybody over there is going to be measuring
everybody else for a dagger in the back.”

“Sir?” The young Shadar seemed scandalized by the suggestion that our side might
yet lose this war.

“If they blow it, with everything they’ve got going for them, and we come out on
top, the same shit is gonna happen on our side.”

Goblin began using his illusions and commandos to begin picking off Shadowlander
fugitives, to teach job-appropriate skills while the work was still easy, and to
keep the boys from getting bored.

Larger Shadowlander forces began to come down, hurrying, in disarray, walking
into Goblin’s setup like they had rehearsed it. Snipers picked off obvious
officers. Missile fire drenched the troopers. When they organized for a
counterattack they found themselves fighting illusions and shadows.

From my vantage I began to wonder what Goblin was expected to accomplish. He was
causing trouble out of all proportion to his numbers but what he was doing was
unlikely to have any permanent impact. Unless, of course, him being here meant
he was not somewhere else. Which was just the sort of thing that might occur to
Croaker. Cook up some cockamamie mission for Goblin so he would not be around
getting drunk and feuding with One-Eye and generally obstructing progress.

Still . . . The Shadowlanders could not find him. He kept giving them ghosts.

Word rolled back up into the mountains. Panic rode its back. That effect was all
out of proportion to Goblin’s numbers, too.

There was one major theme to Goblin’s ambushes. He was directing his strongest
efforts toward eliminating officers. He seemed to have a way to identify those
in plenty of time to slide his commandos into position.

The forvalaka. The woman in cat form. She was scouting for him. But how was she
communicating?

I spend a lot of time being puzzled by things going on around me.

“I feel like I’m a mushroom on a mushroom farm,” I told Croaker. “Kept in the
dark and fed a diet of horseshit.”

Croaker shrugged, said the famous words. “Need to know.”

“He didn’t get Mogaba, if that was the plan. That son of a bitch must take a
bath in grease every morning, he’s so slick. He did get that Nar Khucho.”

Croaker grunted.

“Not much of a triumph,” I agreed. “He was already on a stretcher with one leg
amputated. But I had to let you know and I’m going to have to put it into the
Annals because he did belong to the Company once.”

Croaker shrugged, grunted. That was how we did it.

“He’s got nobody left, then,” I said. “He’s over there all alone, without one
friend.”

“Don’t cry for him, Murgen. He’s there because he chose to go there.”

“I’m not crying for him. I had to go through the siege of Dejagore with that guy
in charge. Far as I’m concerned anything that happens to him won’t be pain
enough.”

“You thought any more about turning the standard over to somebody else?”

“Sleepy’s been bugging me. I told him we’d look at it once we get set up around
Overlook.”

“You think he’s the right one, go ahead and start breaking him in. See about his
literacy level, too. But I want you staying with the standard for the time
being.”

“He’s learning his Taglian. He says.”

“Good. I’ve got work.”

Son of a bitch was not going to let me in on anything.

Goblin’s efforts were the straw that broke the Shadowlander force. They cracked.

The survivors scattered. Goblin and his crew faded into the wilds, headed south.

Fear spread before them, far exceeding their capacity for creating despair.

I liked how things were going over there now. The little wizard and his boys
were running free in a land not yet prepared to resist. A land not sufficiently
recovered from its earthquake horrors to be able to resist.

Still, I felt like we were rushing toward some great doom.

We had done that before. Everything had fallen into our laps till we found
ourselves decimated and besieged in Dejagore.