Water Sleeps (44 page)

S leepy?”

My soul wanted to leap up and flail around in terror. My flesh was incapable and
quite possibly indifferent. I was so stiff and I hurt so much that I just could
not move.

My mind still worked fine. It ran as sparkling swift as a mountain stream.

“Huh?” I continued trying to get the muscles unlocked.

“Easy. It’s Willow. Just open your eyes. You’re safe.”

“What’re you doing way down here?”

“Way down where?”

“Uh—”

“You’re one landing downstairs from the cave of the ancients.”

I kept trying to get up. Muscle by muscle my body gradually yielded to my will.

I looked around, vision foggy. Suvrin and Master Santaraksita were still asleep.

Swan said, “They were tired, guaranteed. I heard you snoring all the way up in
the cave.”

Twinge of fear. “Where’s Tobo?”

“He went on up top. Everyone went. I made them go. I stayed in case . . . The
crow told me not to come down. But what’s one landing? You think you can get
moving again? I can’t carry anybody. I can barely keep going myself.”

“I can manage one flight. Up to the cave. That’s far enough for now.”

“The cave?”

“I still have something to do there.”

“Are you sure you want to go out of your way?”

“I’m sure, Willow.” I could tell him it was a matter of life or death. For a
whole world. Or maybe for multiple worlds. But why be melodramatic? “Can you get
these two moving again? And headed toward the top?” I did not think Master
Santaraksita could bear seeing what I intended to do next.

“I’ll get them moving. But I’m sticking with you.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Yes, it will. You can hardly stand up.”

“I’ll work it out.”

“You go right ahead and talk. It’ll get the kinks out of your jaw. But I’m
staying.”

I stared at him hard for some time. He did not back down. Neither did he betray
any motive but concern for a brother he suspected of failing to be in her right
mind. I closed my eyes for half a minute, then opened them to peer down the
stairs. “God was listening.”

Swan was working on Suvrin. The Shadowlander officer had his eyes open but
seemed unable to move. He murmured, “I must be alive. Otherwise I wouldn’t hurt
so much.” Panic flooded his eyes. “Did we get away?”

I said, “We’re getting away. We’ve still got a long way to climb.”

“Goblin’s dead,” Swan said. “The crow told me when it came up to get something
to eat.”

“Where is that thing?”

“Down there. Watching.”

I felt a chill. Paranoia touched me. There had been a connection between Lady
and Kina ever since Narayan Singh and Kina had used Lady as a vessel to produce
the Daughter of Night. That had created a connection, a connection Lady had
hammered into place cleverly, unbreakably, so that she could steal power from
the goddess indefinitely. “Forgive me, O Lord. Drive these infidel thoughts from
my heart.”

Swan said, “Huh?”

“Nothing, part of the ongoing dialog between me and my God. Suvrin! Sweety. You
ready to do some jumping jacks?”

Suvrin offered me an old-fashioned, storm-cloud glower. “Smack her, Swan. At a
time like this, cheerful ought to be against the laws of heaven and earth.”

“You’ll be cheerful in a minute, too. As soon as you figure out that you’re
still alive.”

“Humph!” He began to help Swan waken Master Santaraksita.

Upright now, I did a few small exercises to loosen up even more.

“Ah, Dorabee,” Santaraksita said softly. “I have survived another adventure with
you.”

“I’ve got God on my side.”

“Excellent. Do keep him there. I don’t think I can survive another of your
adventures without divine assistance.”

“You’ll outlive me, Sri.”

“Perhaps. Probably, if I do get out of this and I don’t tempt fate ever again.

You, you’ll probably graduate to snake-dancing with cobras.”

“Sri?”

“I’ve decided. I don’t want to be an adventurer anymore, Dorabee. I’m too old
for it. It’s time to wrap myself up in a cozy library again. This just hurts too
much. Ow! Young man . . . ”

Swan grinned. He was not that much younger than the librarian. “Let’s get going,

old-timer. You keep lying around here and whatever adventure you found down
there is going to catch up and have you all over again.”

A possibility that posed a fine motivation for us all.

When we finally got moving again, I brought up the rear. Swan wrangled my
companions. I gripped the golden pickax so tightly my knuckles ached.

Goblin was dead.

That did not seem possible.

Goblin was a fixture. A permanent fixture. A cornerstone. Without its Goblin,

there could be no Black Company . . . You are mad, Sleepy. The family will not
cease to exist simply because one member, unexpectedly, has been plucked out by
evil fortune. Life would not end because of Goblin’s absence. It would just get
a lot harder. I seemed to hear Goblin whisper, “He is the future.”

“Sleepy. Snap out of it.”

“Huh?”

Swan said, “We’re at the cave. You two. Keep climbing. We’ll catch up with you.”

Suvrin started to ask. I shook my head, pointed upward. “Go. Now. And don’t look
back.” I waited until I saw Suvrin actually guide Master Santaraksita over the
tumbled stones and onto the stairs. “We’ll catch up.”

“What’s that?” Swan asked. He cupped an ear.

“I don’t hear anything.”

He shrugged. “It’s gone now. Something from upstairs.”

We entered the cavern of the ancients. The wonder had been polished off it by
the trampling about of a horde of Company people. I was amazed that they had
managed without damaging any more of the sleepers. As it was, almost all the
wondrous ice webbing and cocooning had broken up and collapsed. A few
stalactites had fallen from the ceiling. “How did that happen?”

Swan frowned. “During the earthquake.”

“Earthquake? What earthquake?”

“You didn’t . . . there was one hell of a shake. I can’t say exactly how long
ago. Probably when you were all the way down. It’s hard to tell time in here.”

“No lie. Oh, yuck.” I had discovered why the white crow had all that energy. It
had been dining on one of my dead brothers.

Some evil part of me tossed up the thought that I could follow the bird’s
example. Another part wondered what would happen if Croaker found out. That man
was obsessed with the holy state of Company brotherhood.

“You never know what you’ll do until you’re in the ring with the bull, do you?”

“What?”’

“A proverb from back home. Means that actually facing the reality is never quite
like preparing to face the reality. You never really know what you’ll do until
you get there.”

I passed the rest of the Captured, not meeting any open eyes. I wondered if they
could hear. I offered up some reassurances that sounded feeble even to me. The
cavern shrank. When it came time to get down and crawl, I crawled. I told Swan,

“Maybe it’s good, you being here after all. I’m starting to have little dizzy
spells.”

“You hear anything?”

I listened. This time I did hear something. “Sounds like somebody singing. A
marching song? Something full of ‘yo-ho-ho’s.’ ” What the devil?

“Down here? We have dwarfs, too?”

“Dwarfs?”

“Mythical creatures. Like short people with big beards and permanent bad
tempers. They lived underground, like nagas, only supposedly big on mining and
metalworking. If they ever did exist, they died out a long time ago.”

The singing was getting louder. “Let’s get this handled before somebody
interrupts.”

T he pessimist in me was sure I would not be able to pull it off. If nothing
else, the earthquake Swan mentioned would in some way have sealed the chamber of
unholy books off from the rest of the world. If the chamber was not sealed off,

then I would trip the only booby trap that Goblin had overlooked. If Goblin had
not overlooked any booby traps, then the pickax would not be a protective key,

it would be a trigger igniting the thousand secret sorceries protecting the
books.

“Sleepy, do you know you talk to yourself when you’re worried about stuff?”

“What?”

“You’re crawling along there muttering about all the bad things that’re going to
happen. You keep on and you’re going to convince me.”

That was twice. I had to get that under control. I did not use to do that.

The place where the Books of the Dead were hidden had not changed visibly. The
pessimist in me worked hard to find a dangerous difference, though.

Swan finally asked, “Are you going to study on it till we pass out from hunger?

Or are you going to go ahead and do something?”

“I always was a better planner than a doer, Willow.” I sucked in a peck of
frigid air, took the pickax out of my waistband, intoned, “O Lord of Heaven and
Earth, let there be no password that has to go with this.”

“Right behind you, boss,” Swan said, making a joke as he nudged me forward.

“Don’t be shy now.”

Of course not. That would belittle Goblin’s sacrifice and memory.

I realized that my breathing had turned to rapid, shallow panting as I reached
the point where Master Santaraksita had achieved flight. I held the pick in
front of me with both hands, muscles protesting its weight, squeezing it so
tight I feared I would leave my fingerprints etched upon it permanently.

A tingling began in my hands. It crept up my arms as I eased forward. My skin
crawled and I developed severe goose bumps. I said, “You’d better hold onto me,

Willow.” In case I needed yanking back. “In case you need the connection to the
pick.” The shield was not rejecting me. Not yet.

Swan rested his hands on my shoulders an instant before the tingling reached my
body. I began to shiver. Suddenly I had the chills and shakes of an autumn
sickness.

“Woo!” Swan said. “This feels weird.”

“It gets weirder,” I promised. “I’ve got one of those agues where the chill goes
all the way to the marrow.”

“Uh . . . yeah. I’m getting there, too. Toss in some joint aches, too. Come on.

Let’s get that fire started and warm ourselves.”

Would fire be enough?

Once we moved forward another ten feet, the miseries stopped getting worse. The
tingling on the outside faded. I told Swan, “I think it’s safe to let go now.”

“You should have seen your hair. It started dancing around when we were halfway
through. It lasted only a couple of steps but it was a sight.”

“I’ll bet.” My hair was a sight anyway, usually. I did not offer it nearly
enough attention and I had not had it trimmed in months. “Got anything to start
a fire with?”

“You don’t? You didn’t prepare for this? You knew it had to be done and you
didn’t bring—”

“All right, we’ll use mine. I just don’t have much tinder left. Didn’t want to
use mine up when I could use yours.”

“Thanks a lot. You’re getting as bad as those two nasty old men.” Chagrined, he
recalled that one of the nasty old men he meant had just completed his tenure
with the Company.

“I learned from the best. Listen. I’ve been thinking about this. Even if we are
past all the traps, the books themselves might be dangerous. Considering the way
the brains of wizards work, it’s probably not a smart thing to peek inside at
the pages. One look at the writings and you’re likely to spend the rest of your
life standing there reading—even if you don’t recognize a word—out loud. I
recall reading about a spell that worked that way, once.”

“So what do we do?”

“You notice that all three books are open? We’ll have to come at them from
underneath and tip the covers shut. So that they end up face-down. Even then we
might want to handle them with our eyes shut when we go burn them. I’ve read
about grimoires that had rakshasas bound into their covers.” Although nothing as
exciting as that ever turned up in the library where I had worked.

“A talking book that can read itself to me. That’s what I need.”

“I thought Soulcatcher made you learn how to read when you were the king of the
Greys.”

“She did. That don’t mean I want to read. Reading is bloody hard work.”

“I thought managing a brewery was hard work. You never shied away from that.”

Being shorter, I took the job of sneaking up on the three lecterns. I used
extreme caution. They might have been great actors but I was soon convinced that
they could not see me coming.

“I like making beer. I don’t like reading.”

He should have been the one getting ready to burn books, then. I was suffering a
crisis of conscience as troublesome as any of my crises of faith. I loved books.

I believed in books. As a rule I did not believe in destroying books because
their contents were disagreeable. But these books contained the dark, secret
patterns for bringing on the end of the world. The end of many worlds, actually,

for if the Year of the Skulls successfully sacrificed my world, others connected
to the glittering plain must follow.

This was not a crisis that needed immediate resolution. I had my answers worked
out already, which was why I was on hands and knees under the lecterns while
suffering verbal abuse from an infidel who had no use for my god or for the
Deceivers’ merciless Destroyer. I tipped the covers of the books shut while
wondering if there was still some way the Children of Night could get to me.

“The covers appear to be blank,” Swan said.

“You’re looking at the backs of the books. I’m closing them so they’re
face-down. Remember?”

“Hold it.” He held up a finger, cocked an ear.

“Echoes.”

“Uhm. Somebody’s out there.”

I listened harder. “Singing again. I wish they wouldn’t sing. Nobody in the band
but Sahra can carry a tune in a bucket with a lid on it. You can come on up here
now. I think it’s safe.”

“You think?”

“I’m still alive.”

“I don’t know if that’s necessarily a recommendation. You’re too sour and bitter
for the monsters to eat. I, on the other hand—”

“You, on the other hand, are plain lucky that my god forbids me to reveal that
the only thing interested in eating you would be the kind of beetle that
flourishes on a diet of livestock by-product. Right there looks like a good
place to start a fire.”

Swan was up beside me now. “There” was some kind of large brazier-looking thing
that still had a few charcoal remnants in it. It was made of hammered brass in a
style common to most of the cultures of this end of the world.

“You want me to tear a few pages out for tinder?”

“No, I don’t want you to tear pages out. Weren’t you listening when I told you
the books might make you want to read them?”

“I was listening. Sometimes I don’t hear very well, though.”

“Like most of the human race.” I was prepared. In minutes I had a small fire
burning. I lifted one of the books carefully, making sure it faced away from
Swan and me. I fanned its pages out slightly and set it down in the flames,

spine upward. I burned the last volume first. Just in case.

Something might interfere. I wanted the first volume destroyed to be one the
Daughter of Night had not yet seen. The first book, which she had copied parts
of several times and might have partially memorized, I would burn last.

The book caught fire eventually but did not burn well. It produced a
nasty-smelling dark smoke that filled the cavern and forced Swan and me to get
down on our stomachs on the icy floor.

The underground wind did carry some of the smoke away. The rest was no longer
overwhelming when I consigned the second book to the flames.

While waiting to add the final book to the fire, I brooded about why Kina was
doing nothing to resist this blow to her hopes for resurrection. I could only
pray that Goblin’s sacrifice had hurt her so badly she could not look outside
herself yet. I could only pray that I was not a victim of some grand deceit.

Maybe these books were decoys. Maybe I was doing exactly what Kina had planned
for me to do.

There were doubts. Always.

“You’re muttering to yourself again.”

“Uhn.” I possessed not so much as the faintest hope that Goblin’s death had put
Kina out of the misery of the world permanently.

“This feels so nice,” I said. “I could go to sleep right here.” And I did so,

promptly.

Good old Willow’s sense of duty, or self-preservation, or something, kept him
going. He got the last Book of the Dead into the fire for me before he, too,

settled down for a nap.