She Is the Darkness: Book Two of Glittering Stone: A Novel of the Black Company (23 page)

The Old Man did not seem surprised to hear that Soulcatcher might be up to
something with Howler. “I wasn’t counting on it but it seemed like a
possibility,” he said. “They’ve worked together for ages. We may have Longshadow
by the nuts.”

“Somebody better have him by something if he controls the Shadowgate. The other
thing is . . . ” How could I put it?

“Other thing?”

“Smoke is showing signs of personality. I think.” I told him what had happened.

“Damn! We don’t want him waking up now.” He thought for a while. “I don’t see
how we can stop it if it’s happening.”

“Better see One-Eye about that.”

“Send him over. Wait! Don’t leave. Tell me about the part of the fortress where
Singh and the girl hide out.”

It turned out this was more than a passing interest. He wanted maps.

I had that part of the place charted already. All I had to do was get the
drawings from One-Eye’s dugout. I brought the little wizard along. He kept
grumbling about being wakened in the middle of the night. Once the Old Man had
what he needed I shut the curtain to Smoke’s alcove and went off to bed, leaving
them to their schemes.

I did not escape Kina just by getting back to my flesh. She was waiting in my
dreams. No sooner did I lie down than I found myself in the place of bones.

Sahra was waiting.

I had no trouble recalling that she was an illusion. She looked nothing like the
Sahra who lived so miserably at the Vinh Gao Ghang temple. This one was too
young, too unworn, despite her pallor and the neck crook characteristic of a
Deceiver victim.

I had begun to suspect that Kina was slow and unimaginative, although extremely
powerful. How had she gotten the angle on Lady?

It was true Lady had not known what she was up against. And ignorance is a chink
in the armor a knowledgeable enemy can exploit at will. And, of course, Kina was
Queen of the Deceivers.

It no longer mattered how Kina had fooled Lady. What mattered now was that she
did not fool me.

That thought left me unable to pretend that I was being deceived. I was not kind
to the false Sahra.

Her flesh corrupted and melted right before me. The perfume of Kina, which was
the stink of dead bodies, assailed me. A shadow in the grey distance coagulated
into a four armed black dancer a hundred feet tall whose pounding feet threw up
clouds of bone dust as she stamped and whirled. Her fangs dripped venom. Her
eyes burned like dark coals. Her jewelry of bones clattered and rattled. Her
breath was the breath of disease.

The Daughter of Night rode upon her shoulder like a small second head. She was
excited as a child making her first trip to the county fair.

Kina was not pleased with Murgen.

Armbones lifted out of the litter, grasping with fleshless fingers. Sahra’s
skeleton stumbled toward me. I willed myself away and, behold!, I drifted up and
backward a few feet. I willed myself again and moved again, not far, amazed that
I had control and bewildered because I had not tried to exercise it before.

Kina stopped dancing and stomped toward me. Her fangs grew longer. Her six
breasts dripped poison. She put on another pair of arms. The Daughter of Night
bounced excitedly on her shoulder, immune to the lure of gravity.

I willed myself away.

I had control but that was not my world. I could not run away faster than the
world’s creator. A great gleaming, taloned black hand swooped down. I dodged. A
claw brushed me. I spun ass over appetite into darkness.

And I was in the cavern filled with old men caught in spiderwebs of ice. I
drifted along past faces I not only knew I knew, I remembered the names that
went with them.

I felt a panic like what you would feel if you were closed up in a small place
in the dark. A buried-alive panic. I did not let it manage me. I tried, again,

to manage myself and found I could move along the cavern if I willed it, like I
did when I was walking with Smoke. I moved a whole lot slower here, though. I
tried moving out through the walls. Like the real world, and unlike riding
Smoke, I was constrained pretty much by physical rules. My only way out of the
cavern would be forward or back. Which did not make much sense if I was dreaming
and had gotten in there without following any complicated route.

Was it possible physical laws operated only when I was in control? Could it be
that I was unable to walk through walls because I never learned the knack in
daily life?

I decided to go forward, up the slope of the cavern floor, because that is what
I always did in the fragments of dream I remembered. As I did so I became aware
of an inchoate anger growing behind me, as of something hunting that was
frustrated. I did my best to speed up.

There was more in those ice caves than old men. There were more old men, none of
them known to me. There were treasures. There was junk, like everything that
ever fell down a crack ended up there. There were books.

Three huge tomes bound in worn, cracked dark leather rested on a large, long
stone lectern, as though waiting for three speakers to step up and read at the
same time. The first book was open to a page three-quarters of the way through.

I caught only a glimpse of the page before some compelling force pushed me away.

It was identical to the page the Daughter of Night had been transcribing when
Narayan Singh interrupted her so they could go visit Soulcatcher. The
calligraphy was superior, more colorful and ornate, but the child had missed
nothing important, I was sure.

The anger behind me grew stronger. It seemed to be looking for a focus. I
learned early never to volunteer. I moved on as fast as my will would carry me,

wondering what sort of nightmare this was. Its most bizarre and fantastic
elements were most real. Maybe it was a mirror of the waking world.

The anger kept gaining although I saw nothing when I looked back. It did not
catch me. I do not think. But without actually passing through anything suddenly
I was in another place. There was a full bowl of stars overhead but not even a
sliver of moon. I was high in the air. I could distinguish no features on the
ground below.

It was like ghostwalking without the ghost. Only I could not just tell Smoke
where to go and get there almost instantly. I could move, it seemed, though it
was hard to tell . . . I had to have landmarks, I realized. I pushed back my
panic.

I thought. I did have information. I knew up and down. I had a full field of
stars overhead, so numerous they almost overwhelmed the outstanding
constellations normally used for navigation. Trouble was, I had not studied the
southern skies closely. Any astronomical navigation I did would be only slightly
better than a guess.

I caught a faint whiff of corrupt flesh. That whipstroke got me moving toward a
cluster of stars I vaguely recalled hanging close to the northern horizon during
the spring. There were three of them in a flat triangle, all bright. The star at
the peak of the triangle waxed and waned. Many legends attended it, most of them
unpleasant. I was not intimate with them.

From that altitude I could see a fourth star in the constellation, equally
bright, below the other three. I recalled seeing that formation when the Company
was still far north of Taglios.

How high was I? Or was I somewhere far north of Ki-aulune?

I stopped moving forward and slanted down toward the earth. I found myself over
a region where agriculture was extremely orderly, communal, making the most
efficient use of man, animal and equipment, various operations having been laid
out in a circle around a central manor with hamlets and single dwellings strung
out along the spokes of wheels. Preparations for spring planting had begun
although there were no workers in the fields at night.

I passed over circle after circle. The ground between had been left wild. I
suppose it supported game and provided timber and charcoal and firewood.

I had heard of the region. It was in the Shadowlands west of Kiaulune.

Longshadow had been experimenting with agricultural efficiencies in an effort to
produce more with fewer workers so he could free up manpower to work
construction on Overlook and serve in his armies.

I was not all that far from my own gang.

I worked my way eastward. After what seemed like hours I spied the glow from
fires burning in the ruins of Kiaulune. I found my own part of our encampment,

then my own shelter. I was comfortable enough with my condition to do a little
experimenting now.

It took only moments to learn that while I could not will myself through a wall,

or even the blankets One-Eye had hung for a doorway, or the side of a tent, I
could slide my point of view through a crack or hole too small for a mouse or
snake.

I could not go back or forth in time. I was confined to the now of my sleeping
flesh.

I had control of the dream. It seemed real. What I saw of the camp was exactly
what the camp should have been like while I was sleeping. My imagination was not
good enough to make up a whole dream world that mimicked the real world exactly.

A big question occurred.

Would I be able to do this again? Would getting here always be outside my
control, the way it had been when I kept tumbling off the wall of today into the
horrors of Dejagore?

If this was going to be one-time I had better use it for all it was worth.

I snaked back out into a cold I did not feel. For a second I thought about
heading for the plain but just the thought stirred up an instant, powerful
revulsion. Maybe later.

I went toward the mountains instead.

Spying on Soulcatcher would do. Up close. Without disturbing the crows, I
discovered. They remained asleep. So did their mistress.

Her company had left. I was not going to find out a damned thing.

I could go over to Overlook and see what everybody was doing . . . I saw the
faintest hint of light in the east. Dawn was on its way. And I began to feel a
compulsion to head for the safety of my flesh. That drive grew stronger as the
light did the same.

I headed for my body wondering if I was a dreaming vampire now.

Mother Gota was awake already. Though Soulcatcher had not been able, Ky Gota
seemed to sense me somehow. She turned when I weaseled inside, looked almost
directly at me, frowned when she saw nothing, then shuddered the way you do when
a chill runs down your spine.

She went back to her cooking. I noted that she was preparing more food than she,

Thai Dei and I could possibly eat all day. I supposed she planned to take some
out to Uncle Doj.

You look like shit,” One-Eye told me over breakfast.

“Thanks for the boost.”

“What’s up?”

“Bad dreams last night.” He did not know what I had been going through. I chose
not to share everything now but I did practice my Forsberger long enough to tell
him, “It looks like our friend the crow woman is up to something with her old
pal Howler, our favorite Deceiver and the kid.”

Both Thai Dei and Mother Gota glanced at me sharply. I had used the Taglian for
“Deceiver,” tooga. It was the same in Nyueng Bao.

“And old Longshadow thinks he’s got nothing to worry about.”

“Yeah. The Old Man always says even paranoids sometimes got somebody trying to
stab them in the back.” Usually when I let him know I thought he was overdoing
the paranoia himself.

“That kind of thing is nice to know but how can we use it?”

“Not my problem. I just work here. The Captain gets to make the decisions.

That’s why he’s the Captain.” Just for the fun of it I slipped in the Taglian
for “captain,” jamadar. Thai Dei and Mother Gota looked me over again. In the
context of the Deceivers jamadar means more than just “captain.” It indicates a
leader of a band, which is like a small nation of Deceivers. The only Deceiver
jamadar now known to be alive was Narayan Singh, who had become jamadar of
jamadars before the destruction of his cult.

They would think we were talking about the living legend, the saint who still
walked the earth on his goddess’s behalf.

I tucked the last of my breakfast away, thanked Mother Gota, got up and left the
dugout. Thai Dei followed me. I told him, “I’m just going to see the Captain. If
you want to you can stay and work on the house.” We called our hole in the
ground the house now.

Thai Dei shook his head. He had gotten lax about bodyguarding me lately. I did
not feel neglected.

Time has a way of blunting the sharpest edge of determination.

I waited a moment for One-Eye to join us but he did not come out. More and more
the little shit seemed perfectly willing to invite himself to my family meals
rather than go to any trouble on his own.

I should be surprised after all these years?

Croaker looked about as happy as I felt. His night had been no bed of roses,

either. He grumbled, “What is it this time?”

“Did a little dreaming last night. Went to hell and came back and then went out
roaming without using Smoke at all.” I gave him the unhappy details.

“Could you do that again?”

“I been falling through rabbit holes in space and cracks in time for over a
year. Maybe I’m getting the hang of it.”

“We wouldn’t need Smoke.”

“Especially since he’s threatening to wake up.” I must have had a nasty look on
my face because he raised an eyebrow. I said, “It’d be fun to watch him try to
get used to the new world he’d wake up in.”

Croaker smirked. “You’d want to stand upwind. He’d shit his guts out when he saw
how far we’ve come. By the by, as long as you’re here, it’d be handy if you’d go
see Lady. I sent her your maps. She’s going to pick off Narayan and catch the
girl. If anybody asks you about the maps all you know is that we captured a
couple of Mogaba’s officers who used to belong to Overlook’s garrison.”

I grunted, not entirely thrilled. I would not be able to lie to Lady
convincingly.

“Experiment with this. I have to know if we can get along without Smoke.”

“I already know about one severe handicap.”

“Uhm?”

“I can’t travel back in time when I’m on my own.”

He sucked a bunch of air in, blew it out. “Wouldn’t you know? There had to be a
catch. Smoke’s got job security.”

“You said you’d talk to One-Eye about keeping him from waking up.”

“He wasn’t much help.”

“Is he ever?”

“If you see him, send him over.”

“Right.” I got out of there, paused outside to stare across at the encampment
below Overlook’s wall. I said, “The boss wants me to go over there and show Lady
how to manage her business.”

It was a bright, sunshiny day. There was enough breeze to carry the smoke and
stench away. Thai Dei observed, “Maybe some of the ground will dry up.”

Most of the snow had melted. It was springtime. Around Kiaulune that meant mud
season. Mud would mean bugs eventually.

I wondered if melting snows would cause floods that would chase Soulcatcher out
of her hideout.

It was time spring came to Kiaulune. It had arrived already everywhere else.