She Is the Darkness: Book Two of Glittering Stone: A Novel of the Black Company (27 page)

I reached for a mug of water even as I sat up. Groggily, it dawned on me that I
had been shoved into the cramped little alcove where the Old Man had been
keeping Smoke since we sneaked him over from One-Eye’s pesthole. There were
voices beyond the ragged hangings concealing me.

I took a long drink, stirred Smoke’s blankets around so he would be hidden, ran
my fingers through my hair, stepped out of hiding.

The voices stopped instantly. Croaker looked about as angry as he could get. I
told him, “It’s that important.” Which left a baffled look on the faces of Swan
and Blade. “Good thing they’re handy. You guys go outside for a minute? Take the
candle.”

“What the fuck are you doing?” Croaker demanded. He had to make a major effort
to keep his voice down.

“Soulcatcher just took over Overlook.”

“Huh?”

“She walked in while Longshadow was cutting the shadows loose. Which he did, by
the way. And she and Singh and the kid and Howler all jumped him. You needed to
know right now. This changes everything. Lady should hear as soon as possible,

too.”

“Uhn!” Croaker was still angry but I could see the changes taking place behind
his eyes, see the focus of his anger shifting like a ship changing course. “The
bitch. The deceitful, conniving, treacherous bitch.”

“Way she talked, she’s planning on moving into Overlook and making it home.”

“The bitch!”

“I wish I could tell you more. Smoke refused to stay around where she was at.

Think you better tell Lady?”

“Of course I’d better tell her. Shut up. Let me think.”

“Hey in there!” Swan yelled from the other side of the hangings keeping the wind
out. “You guys better come and see this.”

“Now what?” Croaker snarled.

“I’ll check it out. Write them a message they can take to Lady.”

“Damn it. It may be too late. She was going to try to sneak up on Longshadow
herself.”

Shit. We were in the brown stuff deep. Maybe.

I made a wobble-legged dash for the open air. I slipped on the steps going up to
ground level. The earth was still soggy, even up here on the hillside.

I did not have to ask Willow what troubled him.

The biggest fireworks show of all time was going on over by the Shadowgate.

Maybe the dustup at Lake Tanji was a match but I got to see that one only from
the inside. “Gods damn!” I swore. There were so many fireballs flying around
that no expletive could do the event justice.

I flung myself back down the muddy steps.

Croaker was wriggling into his Widowmaker costume. I told him, “It’s started at
the Shadowgate. You have to see it to believe it. I hope those guys have enough
bamboo.”

“Lady gave them everything she could. It’ll be a matter of numbers. Which we’ve
known from the beginning. If we have more fireballs than they throw shadows, we
win. If we don’t, we end up sorry. But not for long.”

“Longshadow didn’t seem to do much. If that tells you anything positive.”

“It doesn’t. I don’t have any idea what he would or wouldn’t have to do to
unleash some or all of the shadows. And there’s no way I can guess how he’d
think about it. Except that he wouldn’t want to let go so many that they’d come
after him, too. He’d want to be able to control the survivors after he got rid
of us.”

“He doesn’t know that he doesn’t have any more shadowweavers. Singh and Howler
have been feeding him very selective information lately. The true extent of what
Lady accomplished the other day is a complete mystery to him.”

“More treachery from our friend Soulcatcher, no doubt.”

“I’d bet on it.”

“You need to get back out there. She wouldn’t do just that one thing. It would
leave her too vulnerable.”

“Huh?” My turn to make funny noises.

“She’s got to know we can get in and out of there whenever we want. She has to
cover her sweet little ass. Go see what she’s up to before she really gets
going.”

“On my way, boss.”

I drank some sugar water and went out.

Smoke did not want to go back to Overlook. I got my way. I tricked him, sort of,

by ducking back to before Catcher pushed her way into his awareness. Then I
zipped forward and watched the shadow explode off Longshadow’s pinky.

It went for Howler. It hit Howler. Howler howled. And fought it off somehow. It
darted at Narayan Singh, who shrieked as it struck him. Howler and Catcher
together forced the animate darkness away from the Deceiver. Singh lapsed into
unconsciousness immediately.

The shadow was not whipped yet. It struck at the Daughter of Night.

The instant she screamed the ghostworld began to fill with the stench of Kina. A
cyclone of rage roared toward Overlook. Smoke squeaked she is the darkness and
away we went, streaking out of there like a shaft from a ballista. We went high
and we went north and we went fast. The fireworks at the Shadowgate vanished
behind the Dandha Presh. We were north of Dejagore before I could exert any
control.

The ghostworld had become one protracted whimper from my steed. He was fleeing
somewhere where he expected to be safe. Somewhere that the deepest part of him
recalled from days when he was still an ordinary mortal.

He had only just begun to respond to directions when we drifted into the Palace.

The place was a beehive. Priests and Guards and functionaries rushed everywhere.

There was excitement out on the city streets, too. Shadar watchmen roamed in
packs, making arrests by the score.

This bore closer examination.

I checked the prisoners. A few seemed vaguely familiar. I dipped around in time
and discovered that they were being collected in the empty Black Company
barracks. I found some definitely familiar faces in the crowd there.

They were all people who had been friendly to the Company.

I zipped around for a look at the Radisha, ran back in time to the beginning . .

. Near as I could tell her adventure had been going on for only a short while,

though she had spent hours earlier getting her assets positioned. Actual arrests
commenced just about the time Soulcatcher strolled into Longshadow’s chamber at
Overlook.

Sleepy!

Shit! I sped to Banh Do Trang’s warehouse.

Sleepy had not been arrested. Not yet. Several Shadar were in the neighborhood.

They were looking for Sleepy. Their curses left me no doubt that they were after
him specifically. But they could not find his hiding place.

I went after the kid. I gave it everything I could. If it worked in the swamp it
ought to work in the city. I got right down there in his face and screamed. I
tried to mess his hair and pull his ears.

He spooked.

So he did happen to be out of the way when the watchmen arrived, though he was
still close enough to overhear and understand.

I did not wait around. He had sense enough to saddle up and get out of town and
never mind waiting for an answer from Sarie.

I grabbed Smoke by the ectoplasmic short hairs and headed south. He was not even
a little bit eager to go.

I returned to my flesh. The Old Man was waiting for me. “What’s the word?”

“Kina was coming. Smoke spooked. He headed north. I just got back. The shit’s
flying up there, too.”

“Oh? How so?”

“The Radisha is rounding up anybody who ever smiled at one of us. She started at
almost exactly the same minute that Soulcatcher jumped on Longshadow.”

He did not ponder that. “We’ve got a problem, then. Get back out there. I want
to know if anything else is going wrong.”

I sucked some sugar water and went.

What else was going wrong? Right here in Kiaulune the Prahbrindrah Drah was
trying to disarm Lady’s troops. She was inside Overlook. She did not know yet. I
did not know how to get word to her quickly. I decided to try the same tack I
had with Sleepy. Maybe I could startle her into doing something.

I found her already in the stairwell leading up to Longshadow’s crystal chamber.

Several of our best Company brothers were with her.

I dropped down in front of her and screeched, “Booga! Booga! Booga! Get your ass
back outside!”

She jumped. She squinted into the darkness right about where the eyes of my
viewpoint floated. “Murgen?”

“Get your butt out of here, woman. It’s a trap. And the Prince’s troops are
trying to disarm your men.”

She turned and barked orders.

Damn! She was a whole lot more sensitive than the others.

I whipped out of there. The stink of Kina had begun to fill the stairwell.

A dark nimbus clutched itself to Longshadow’s crystal tower. Kina had little
strength she could project into this world but it was all focused now. I made
Smoke move higher so I could look down into the chamber.

The Daughter of Night had recovered from the attack of the shadow. She used the
strength lent her by her goddess to drive the thing back at the Shadowmaster.

Longshadow, of course, had been completely mad from the beginning, as paranoid
as they come. He never trusted Howler. About all he and the little stinker had
in common was their hatred of the Company. Mutual hatred for somebody else never
has been sound grounds for a marriage.

The Shadowmaster had planned for a moment like this though he had not
anticipated Soulcatcher being there to help the turncoat, nor had he expected
the Strangler and his brat to contribute distractions of their own.

Nevertheless, he had been thorough. He had overengineered by a large factor. It
might be enough. If they had underestimated him.

The towertop chamber became a bizarre pot filled with growls and shrieks, bits
of smoke that came and went too fast for the eye to track, changing colors,

knives of pure energy that slashed stone and crystal and ricocheted off stubborn
protective spells and never considered the loyalty of anyone who got in the way.

Soulcatcher cried out like a child suddenly injured. She dropped to one knee,

whimpering, but did not abandon the fight. Howler howled. The Daughter of Night
babbled passages from the first Book of the Dead. The stench of Kina was awful
in the ghostworld but the child had not finished copying the book before Howler
stole it. She could not bring Kina all the way home without all of it.

Longshadow edged toward the doorway. It looked like he might actually get out.

Presumably once he did the chamber would implode or in some other fashion
destroy everybody still inside. That was the sort of trap I would have set.

They called Singh a living saint. He was, supposedly, the best of his kind of
his generation. A dubious distinction in most of our eyes, but every man should
be lucky enough to discover the one thing he can do better than anyone else
alive.

The Shadowmaster thought no more of Narayan than he did of a mouse. The Deceiver
was just there.

He was there one moment and here the next. His strangling cloth encircled the
Shadowmaster’s throat like black lightning.

A black rumel man becomes a master Strangler in part by mastering his own fear
and excitement in times of stress. Narayan Singh had that knack though he had
had little opportunity to exercise it recently. He had done so now. He remained
calm enough not to break the Shadowmaster’s neck. He understood the cost.

Strangulation is a slow process. Its victim seldom cooperates. Singh shouted, “I
need armholders!” At first he said that in Deceiver cant. Only the child
understood. She did not have the strength to restrain the Shadowmaster.

She told Soulcatcher, “You! Take his right arm and pull. You. The smelly one.

Take hold of his left arm. Now. In the name of my mother.”

Catcher snapped, “In the name of your real mother, who happens to be my
pain-in-the-ass sister, you’re going to get a paddling as soon as we finish with
this piece of shit.” The voice she used was a dead ringer for that of somebody I
used to know who had been a devout believer in not sparing the rod.

Longshadow was one stubborn fish. He thrashed a lot longer than I thought any
human could without air. The kid told the others, “Make sure you don’t kill
him.”

“Go teach your grandma to suck eggs, brat.” This time Catcher’s voice was
identical to Goblin’s. I felt a sudden fear for the little wizard.

Longshadow collapsed. “Tie him and gag him and put him in that chair of his,”

Catcher told Howler. “Fix him good. Then look around for any more surprises he
may have here.” The shadow had vanished, either out the cracked door, into
hiding or destroyed.

Howler, panting, asked, “And what’ll you be doing, O mighty one?”

“Setting the pecking order straight.” She grabbed the Daughter of Night, dropped
to one knee, bent the struggling child over the other, mouthed a spell that
flung Narayan Singh across the room hard enough to knock him cold, then yanked
the kid’s pants down and proceeded to apply a well-deserved tanning.

The child never cried but tears filled her eyes once Catcher finished. She felt
both humiliated and deserted. Again she faced a crisis of faith. The stench of
Kina had faded as soon as the kid got too busy to mess with her incomplete
summoning.

Catcher said, “You give me any more crap, sweetheart, and next time you get
intimately acquainted with a willow switch. You got him tied up good?”

“I’m working on it. You’ve waited this long you don’t need to get in any big
damned hurry now.”

“I want to get control of his shadows. They’re not going to sit still—”

“I know the plan. I helped write it.” Howler screeched. There was a world of
irritation in his cry.

I had to see the Old Man.

“They’re squabbling among themselves already,” I told Croaker after he shooed
everybody outside. “But they definitely have Longshadow on the hook. Catcher
intends to make him do whatever she wants.”

“She going to do a Taking?”

I had not thought of that. That kind of stuff had happened only way, way back.

“Would she know how?”

“She might. But she might not have enough to work with where Longshadow is
concerned. She might need to know his true name. We know he’s got that hidden in
the Shadowgate spell.”

“What’s going on here?”

“I’ve ordered the New Division to move over to the Shadowgate and relieve the
Old Division. If I get them entangled with the shadows before they understand
what the Prahbrindrah Drah is doing, they won’t be able to participate. All
they’ll have time for is fighting shadows.”

“What excuse did you give them?”

“The Old Division doesn’t have enough bamboo.”

On a night like tonight no general was going to let his men surrender their
bamboo to another outfit.

“Also, that I want the Old Division to attack Overlook from the south. Those are
the orders I actually sent to get them started. They won’t get their real orders
till after they separate.”

We had rehearsed a move from the Shadowgate to the south wall several times.

Maybe the Old Man was still thinking way ahead of everybody else.

“I think I was able to warn Lady.” I told him what I had done. “It seemed like
the right call in the circumstances. I know she’ll ask questions later.”

“Oh, she will. And she’ll crap bricks when she gets her answers.”

“You don’t seem particularly terrified.”

“I was her prisoner in the Tower at Charm before she learned to love me. I used
up my scared then.”

I would not count on her love if I was him. They had not been much of a loving
couple lately. Guys like me never stop loving their Saries but other people do
fall out of love when there is a lot of stress for a long time. I said, “I have
to check on Goblin. I had a really ugly thought while I was watching them fight
over there. If Catcher was as thorough as I think she’d be, old One-Eye might be
an orphan.”

“Shit,” Croaker said softly. “I overlooked that angle completely. Look, while
you’researching for that little shit tell Smoke ‘white wedding’ and ‘white
knight’ every little bit. Alternate them. That’ll make Goblin easier to spot.”

“I figured there was something—”

“And any time you see crows, anywhere, panic them. We need to blind Catcher as
much as we can.”

“She fooled you, eh?”

“Say I underestimated her ambitions. Obviously, now, she’s up to more than just
getting even with Lady. Go on.”

The “white wedding, white knight” mantra worked wonders. Smoke and I found
Goblin almost immediately. And he was in deep shit, just as I feared, only it
was not nearly as deep as some probably hoped. When Smoke and I got there we
found him and his boys lying very quietly amongst some rough rocks feeling very
nasty. In a very few minutes somebody was going to get hurt. Bad.

I had to dive into the pool of time to find out why.

Goblin is just a minor wizard but he is one. He comes equipped with a normal
Company complement of distrust, too. He could not control shadows or crows, bats
or mice, or any other creature well enough to use it to collect information but
he could manipulate some creatures some ways. His choice was a miniature owl
common on the south side of the Dandha Presh. It did not grow much bigger than
your fist.

He kept the critters posted in the bushes around his camp wherever he went to
ground. And they always fluttered ahead when he was on the march. He moved only
by night except when he chose to attack some of Longshadow’s loyalists.

Goblin suffered no surprises.

He was not surprised when the forvalaka came padding through the darkness and
leapt at him with a thunderous growl. Owls using a call unique to that
particular danger had cried out as the beastwoman passed.

There were no official plans for her to be anywhere nearby tonight.

There had been a lot of unnecessary, unexplained crow activity in the
neighborhood lately, too.

Goblin had become suspicious. He had prepared. Just in case. After a while even
a Company man as lazy as One-Eye will react to signs and portents.

The forvalaka attacked but what she sank claws and fangs into was not Goblin. It
was only vaguely human in shape, sacking stuffed with leaves and straw. A spell
had been put on that so the forvalaka could not let go once it grabbed hold.

That happened at virtually the identical moment that Soulcatcher stepped into
Longshadow’s workplace, when all hell broke loose everywhere else.

A little something that did not look like Goblin at all and probably smelled
even less like him bounced out of the darkness. It awarded the panther an
enthusiastic kick in the ribs. “I knew you were too good to be true. And after I
went to all that trouble to try to fix things for you.” Boom! He kicked her
again. She roared and thrashed.

A voice from the darkness said, “You make her any madder, she’s going to bust
loose and tear you a new asshole.”

“If I didn’t make that spell strong enough to hold four more just like her then
I deserve to get my shit chute rerouted.” The forvalaka roared again. “But I do
need to do something about all this racket.” It could be heard for miles.

Owls hooted. This time they conveyed no sense of alarm. Nevertheless, only the
forvalaka was out in the open when a lone Taglian stepped into the clearing
where the beast still struggled to let go of its prey. The newcomer told the
darkness, “White wedding, white knight.” I would have laughed had Smoke
permitted me that option.

Goblin materialized. “What’s the word, Mowfat?”

“Somebody’s coming. Sneaking. And they know where they’re going.”

“Surprise, surprise.” Goblin gave Lisa Bowalk another kick that would have
broken normal ribs. “When they sell you out they sell you all the way. I ever
tell you what this bitch was doing first time we met her? She was barely old
enough to bleed at the crotch but she was killing people to sell their bodies.”

“We’ve heard it all before, boss,” a voice called from the darkness. “If we’ve
got company coming let’s get ready to have a party.”

“I hate this shit,” Goblin told Mowfat. “I hate this country, I hate these
people, I hate—”

“I hate to tell you this but they’re less than a mile away.”

“Mogaba with them?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t wait around till they got that close.”

Goblin went to work being a wizard. He cooked up some of his favorite wizard
dishes. Those, it was obvious immediately, would include illusions.

One-Eye and Goblin love to make people see things that are not there.

I stole away to take a look at the people approaching.

These events were taking place in rocky, wooded, brushy mountain country in the
dark. The seeing was bad even for me. I could not find Mogaba though I did
confirm that the folks hunting Goblin were Mogaba’s partisans. They were hard
little snots, too, after having spent a winter in the business. They were wary
and they were quiet.

I backtracked them. I had to go all the way back to before sunset to get a
glimpse of Mogaba. I caught him sitting around with his boys not five miles from
Goblin’s camp. He was sharing his venison roast with a big black kitty.

That led me backward again instead of just humping off to see where everybody
went. The mantra that cleared the mists around Goblin also helped disperse those
around Mogaba. But only for a few seconds at a time.

I found out what I wanted to know, then rejoined Goblin’s bunch in time to watch
them ambush the bad boys who were supposed to clean up after sweet Lisa Bowalk.

What looked like a shimmering ghost materialized on the slope opposite the one
where Goblin and most of his gang waited. Although the specter grabbed the
attention of the Shadowlanders that was not its function. It was a signal meant
to warn Goblin’s gang to protect their night vision. Four, three, two, one.

Flash!

I had no eyes to close. For an instant I was as blind as Mogaba’s raiders. Then
I asked myself why I should be blind and decided I was blind only because I
expected to be blind. I could see again as soon as I decided I should. Which was
more proof that lots of things really are a matter of viewpoint and expectation.

The flash not only blinded the Shadowlanders for a while, it splashed them with
something that left them glowing in the dark. They made good targets.

Goblin’s men were outnumbered. They took the opportunity to rectify that. Life
became very unpleasant for the southerners. Short for some of them, too.

Goblin made their situation more unpleasant by conjuring numerous simulacra of
brothers present and past. It was an old device and one of his favorites. He did
not use it so often anyone figured out how to deal with it. The southerners
struggled with spooks and shadows while Goblin’s rangers picked them off. They
did not jump on the option of using antiambush tactics because they took too
long to comprehend the full scope of what had befallen them.

Mogaba never appeared. I could not find him no matter how hard I looked.

Eventually it dawned on his lieutenants that they had taken a bite that was
beyond their ability to chew.

They began to withdraw. They flailed at themselves and one another, trying to
shed the luminescence that made them easy targets. Some tried to strip, though
that meant staying in one place for a length of time definitely not conducive to
continued good health.

The spooks and Goblin’s men kept after them. Organized withdrawal collapsed into
panic. Goblin kept close contact. He had spun Fortune on her ear and tripped his
enemies good. Now he wanted to ride his good luck for all it was worth. He
wanted to catch Mogaba while the Nar remained unaware of the scope of the
disaster.

I wished him luck.

My fears for Goblin having proven unjustified I headed back to report what
looked like the only good thing that had happened all night.