Water Sleeps (48 page)

T he Great General started south through the Dandha Presh moments after the
Protector abandoned him so she could make more speed. Consequently he met
Soulcatcher on the southern side of the summit just a week later. She talked to
herself continuously in a committee of voices while she was awake and gibbered
in tongues during her brief bouts of sleep. Mogaba thought the Daughter of Night
seemed smugly pleased in the moment before she collapsed from exhaustion.

“Kill them,” Mogaba urged the moment he had Soulcatcher’s ear and a bit of
privacy. “Those two can be nothing but trouble and there’s no way you can profit
from keeping them around.”

“Possibly true.” The Protector’s voice was a sly one. “But if I’m clever enough
I can use the girl to tap into Kina’s power the way my sister did.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from a life noteworthy for its regiments of
disappointments, it’s that you can’t rely on cleverness. You’re a powerful woman
now. Kill them while you can. Kill them before they find a way to turn the
tables. You don’t need to become any stronger. There’s no one in this world
capable of challenging you.”

“There’s always someone, Mogaba.”

“Kill them. They sure won’t waste a second on you.”

Soulcatcher approached the Daughter of Night, who had not moved since her
collapse. “My dear sweet niece wouldn’t harm me.” The voice she chose could have
been that of a naive fourteen-year-old responding to the charge that her
twenty-five-year-old lover was interested in only one thing. Then she laughed
cruelly, kicked the Daughter of Night viciously. “You even think about it,

bitch, and I’ll roast and eat you one limb at a time. And still make sure you
live long enough to see your mother die first.”

The Great General neither moved nor made any remark. His face betrayed nothing,

not even to Soulcatcher’s acute eye. But in his sinking heart he understood that
yet again he had allied himself with complete and unpredictable insanity. And
yet again he had no option but to ride the tiger. He observed, “Perhaps we
should give thought to how to guard our minds against intrusion by the Queen of
Terror and Darkness.”

“I’m ahead of you, General. I’m the professional.” This voice was that of a
self-important little mouse of a functionary. It became that of a self-confident
woman being conversational, the voice Mogaba suspected was Soulcatcher’s own. It
resembled closely the voice of her sister, Lady. “For the last week I’ve had
nothing to do but nurture the blisters on my feet and think. I conceived
marvelous new torments to practice upon the Black Company—too late to enjoy
them. Isn’t that the way it always goes? You always think of the perfect
comeback about an hour too late for it to do any good? I suppose I’ll find other
enemies and my innovation won’t be wasted. Most of the time, though, I
considered how best to circumvent Kina’s power.” She did not fear naming the
goddess directly. “We can do it.”

The Daughter of Night stirred slightly. Her shoulders tightened. She glanced up
for an instant. She looked a little uncertain, a little troubled.

For the first time since her birth she was completely out of touch with her
soul-mother. She had been out of touch for several days. Something was wrong.

Something was terribly wrong.

Soulcatcher eyed Narayan Singh. That old man was not much use anymore. She could
test her new torments on him once she had him back in Taglios, before a suitable
audience.

“General, if I get caught up in one of those byways that distract me so often, I
want you to nudge me back to the business at hand. Which will be empire
building. And, in my spare time, the creation of a new flying carpet. I think I
know enough of the Howler’s secrets to manage. This past week has forced me to
admit to myself that I have no innate fondness for exercise.”

Soulcatcher prodded the Daughter of Night again, then settled on a rotten log
and removed her boots. “Mogaba, don’t ever tell anyone that you’ve seen the
world’s greatest sorceress stumped for a way to handle something as trivial as
blisters.”

Narayan Singh, who had been snoring fitfully, suddenly rose up and gripped the
bars of his cage, his face contorted in terror, its butternut color all but
gone. “Water sleeps!” he screamed. “Thi Kim! Thi Kim is coming!” Then he
collapsed, unconscious again, though his body continued to spasm.

Soulcatcher growled softly. “Water sleeps? We’ll see what the dead can do.” They
were all gone this time. It was her world now. “What else did he say?”

“Something that sounded like a Nyueng Bao name.”

“Uhm. Yes. But not a name. Something about death. Or a murder. Thi Kim. Coming.

Hmm. Maybe a nickname? Murder walker? I should learn the language better.”

The Daughter of Night, she noted, was shaking more than Singh.

The wind whines and howls through fangs of ice. It races furiously around the
nameless fortress but tonight neither the lightning nor the storm has any power
to disturb. The creature on the wooden throne is relaxed. He will rest
comfortably through a night of years for the first time in a long millennium.

The silver daggers are no inconvenience at all.

Shivetya sleeps and dreams dreams of immortality’s end.

Fury crackles between the standing stones. Shadows flee. Shadows hide. Shadows
huddle in terror.

Immortality is threatened.