Shadow Games: The Fourth Chronicles of the Black Company: First Book of the South (3 page)

“What?”

“Are you crazy, Croaker?”

“Knew we should have kept an eye on him after the sun went down.” Knowing
glances Lady’s way. She stayed out of it.

“I thought she was going with us. Not the other way around.”

Only Murgen did not snap up a membership in the bitch-of-the-minute club. Good
lad, that Murgen.

Lady, of course, already knew a stopover was needed.

“I’m serious, guys,” I said.

If I wanted to be serious, One-Eye would be, too. “Why?” he asked.

I sort of shrank. “To pick up the Annals I left behind at Queen’s Bridge.” We
got caught good, there. Only because we were the best, and desperate, and
sneaky, had we been able to crack the imperial encirclement. At the cost of half
the Company. There were more important concerns at the time than books.

“I thought you already got them.”

“I asked for them and was told I could have them. But we were busy at the time.

Remember? The Dominator? The Limper? Toadkiller Dog? All that lot? There wasn’t
any chance to actually lay hands on them.”

Lady supported me with a nod. Getting really into the spirit, there.

Goblin pasted on his most ferocious face. Made him look like a saber-toothed
toad. “Then you knew about this clean back before we ever left the Barrowland.”

I admitted that that was true.

“You goatfu-lover. I bet you’ve spent all this time concocting some half-assed
off-the-wall plan that’s guaranteed to get us all killed.”

I confessed that that was mostly true, too. “We’re going to ride up there like
we own the Tower. You’re going to make the garrison think Lady is still number
one.”

One-Eye snorted, stomped off to the horses. Goblin got up and stared down at me.

And stared some more. And sneered. “We’re just going to strut in and snatch
them, eh? Like the Old Man used to say, audacity and more audacity.” He did not
ask his real question.

Lady answered it for him, anyway. “I gave my word.”

Goblin did not mouth the next question, either. No one did. And Lady left it
hanging.

It would be easy for her to job us. She could keep her word and have us for
breakfast afterward. If she wanted.

My plan (sic), boiled down, depended entirely on my trust in her. It was a trust
my comrades did not share.

But they do, however foolishly, trust me.

The Tower at Charm is the largest single construction in the world, a
featureless black cube five hundred feet to the dimension. It was the first
project undertaken by the Lady and the Taken after their return from the grave,

so many lifetimes ago. From the Tower the Taken had marched forth, and raised
their armies, and conquered half the world. Its shadow still fell upon half the
earth, for few knew that the heart and blood of the empire had been sacrificed
to buy victory over a power older and darker still.

There is but one ground-level entrance to the Tower. The road leading to it runs
as straight as a geometrician’s dream. It passes through parklike grounds that
only someone who had been there could believe was the site of history’s
bloodiest battle.

I had been there. I remembered.

Goblin and One-Eye and Hagop and Otto remembered, too. Most of all, One-Eye
remembered. It was on this plain that he destroyed the monster that had murdered
his brother.

I recalled the crash and tumult, the screams and terrors, the horrors wrought by
wizards at war, and not for the first time I wondered, “Did they really all die
here? They went so easily.”

“Who you talking about?” One-Eye demanded. He did not need to concentrate on
keeping Lady englamored.

“The Taken. Sometimes I think about how hard it was to get rid of the Limper.

Then I wonder how so many Taken could have gone down so easy, a whole bunch in a
couple days, almost never where I could see it. So sometimes I get to suspecting
there was maybe some faking and two or three are still around somewhere.”

Goblin squeaked, “But they had six different plots going, Croaker. They was all
backstabbing each other.”

“But I only saw a couple of them check out. None of you guys saw the others go.

You heard about it. Maybe there was one more plot behind all the other plots.

Maybe . . . ”

Lady gave me an odd, almost speculative look, like maybe she had not thought
much about it herself and did not like the ideas I stirred now.

“They died dead enough for me, Croaker,” One-Eye said. “I saw plenty of bodies.

Look over there. Their graves are marked.”

“That don’t mean there’s anybody in them. Raven died on us twice. Turn around
and there he was again. On the hoof.”

Lady said, “You have my permission to dig them up if you like, Croaker.”

A glance showed me she was chiding me gently. Maybe even teasing. “That’s all
right. Maybe someday when I’m good and bored and got nothing better to do than
look at rotten corpses.”

“Gah!” Murgen said. “Can’t you guys talk about something else?” Which was a
mistake.

Otto laughed. Hagop started humming. To his tune Otto sang, “The worms crawl in,

the worms crawl out, the ants play the bagpipes on your snout.” Goblin and
One-Eye joined in. Murgen threatened to ride over and puke on somebody.

We were distracting ourselves from the dark promise looming ahead.

One-Eye stopped singing to say, “None of the Taken were the sort who could lie
low all these years, Croaker. If any survived we would have seen the fireworks.

Me and Goblin would have heard something, anyway.”

“I guess you’re right.” But I did not feel reassured. Maybe some part of me just
did not want the Taken to be all dead.

We were approaching the incline that led up to the doorway into the Tower. For
the first time the structure betrayed signs of life. Men clad as brightly as
peacocks appeared on the high battlements. A handful came out of the gateway,

hastily preparing a ceremonial in greeting to their mistress. One-Eye hooted
derisively when he saw their apparel.

He would not have dared last time he was there.

I leaned over and whispered, “Be careful. She designed the uniforms on them
guys.”

I hoped they wanted to greet the Lady, hoped they had nothing more sinister in
mind. That depended on what news they had had from the north. Sometimes evil
rumors travel swifter than the wind.

“Audacity, guys,” I said. “Always audacity. Be bold. Be arrogant. Keep them
reeling.” I looked at that dark entrance and reflected aloud, “They know me
here.”

“That’s what scares me,” Goblin squeaked. Then he cackled.

The Tower filled more and more of the world. Murgen, who’d never seen it before,

surrendered to openmouthed awe. Otto and Hagop pretended that that stone pile
did not impress them. Goblin and One-Eye became too busy to pay much attention.

Lady could not be impressed. She had built the place when she was someone both
greater and smaller than the person she was now.

I became totally involved in creating the persona I wanted to project. I
recognized the colonel in charge of the welcoming party. We had crossed paths
when my fortunes had led me into the Tower before. Our feelings toward one
another were ambiguous at best.

He recognized me, too. And he was baffled. The Lady and I had left the Tower
together, most of a year ago.

“How you doing, Colonel?” I asked, putting on a big, friendly grin. “We finally
made it back. Mission successful.”

He glanced at Lady. I did the same, from the edge of my eye. Now was her chance.

She had on her most arrogant face. I could have sworn she was the devil who
haunted this Tower—Well, she was. Once. That person did not die when she lost
her powers. Did she?

It looked like she would play my game. I sighed, closed my eyes momentarily,

while the Tower Guard welcomed their liege.

I trusted her. But always there are reservations. You cannot predict other
people. Especially not the hopeless.

Always there was the chance she might reassume the empire, hiding in her secret
part of the Tower, letting her minions believe she was unchanged. There was
nothing to stop her trying.

She could go that route even after keeping her promise to return the Annals.

That, my companions believed, was what she would do. And they dreaded her first
order as empress of shadow restored.

Lady kept her promise. I had the Annals in hand within hours of entering the
Tower, while its denizens were still overawed by her return. But . . .

“I want to go on with you, Croaker.” This while we watched the sun set from the
Tower’s battlements the second evening after our arrival.

I, of course, replied with the golden tongue of a horse seller. “Uh . . . Uh . .

. But . . . ” Like that. Master of the glib and facile remark. Why the hell did
she want to do that? She had it all, there in the Tower. A little careful faking
and she could spend the rest of her natural life as the most powerful being in
the world. Why go riding off with a band of tired old men, who did not know
where they were going or why, only that they had to keep moving lest
something—their consciences, maybe—caught them up?

“There’s nothing here for me anymore,” she said. As if that explained anything.

“I want . . . I just want to find out what it’s like to be ordinary people.”

“You wouldn’t like it. Not near as much as you like being the Lady.”

“But I never liked that very much. Not after I had it and found out what I
really had. You won’t tell me I can’t go, will you?”

Was she kidding? No. I would not. It had been the surface understanding, anyway.

But it was an understanding I expected to perish once she reestablished herself
in the Tower.

I was disconcerted by the implications.

“Can I go?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“There’s a problem.”

Isn’t there always if there’s a woman involved?

“I can’t leave right now. Things have gotten confused here. I need a few days to
straighten them out. So I can leave with a clear conscience.”

We had not encountered any of the troubles I expected. None of her people dared
scrutinize her closely. All the labors of One-Eye and Goblin were wasted effort
with that audience. The word was out: the Lady was at the helm again. The Black
Company was in the fold once more, under her protection. And that was enough for
her people.

Wonderful. But Opal was only a few weeks away. From Opal it was a short passage
over the Sea of Torments to ports outside the empire. I thought. I wanted to get
out while our luck was holding.

“You understand, don’t you, Croaker? It’ll only be a few days. Honest. Just long
enough to shape things up. The empire is a good machine that works smooth as
long as the proconsuls are sure someone is in charge.”

“All right. All right. We can last a couple days. As long as you keep people
away. And you keep out of the way yourself, most of the time. Don’t let them get
too good a look at you.”

“I don’t intend to. Croaker?”

“Yeah?”

“Go teach your grandmother to suck eggs.” Startled, I laughed. She kept getting
more human all the time. And more able to laugh at herself.

She had good intentions. But he—or she—who would rule an empire becomes slave to
its administrative detail. A few days came and went. And a few more. And a few
more still.

I could entertain myself skulking around the Tower’s libraries, digging into
rare texts from the Domination or before, unravelling the snarled threads of
northern history, but for the rest of the guys it was rough. There was nothing
for them to do but try to keep out of sight and worry. And bait Goblin and
One-Eye, though they did not have much luck with that. To those of us without
talent the Tower was just a big dark pile of rock, but to those two it was a
great throbbing engine of sorcery, still peopled by numerous practitioners of
the dark arts. They lived every moment in dread.

One-Eye handled it better than Goblin. He managed to escape occasionally, going
out to the old battlefield to prowl among his memories. Sometimes I joined him,

halfway tempted to take up Lady’s invitation to open a few old graves.

“Still not comfortable about what happened?” One-Eye asked one afternoon, as I
stood leaning on a bowstave over a marker bearing the name and sigil of the
Taken who had been called the Faceless Man. One-Eye’s tone was as serious as it
ever gets.

“Not entirely,” I admitted. “I can’t pin it down, and it don’t matter much now,

but when you reflect on what happened here, it don’t add up. I mean, it did at
the time. It all looked like it was inevitable. A great kill-off that rid the
world of a skillion Rebels and most of the Taken, leaving the Lady a free hand
and setting her up for the Dominator at the same time. But in the context of
later events . . . ”

One-Eye had started to stroll, pulling me along in his wake. He came to a place
that was not marked at all, except in his memory. A thing called a forvalaka had
perished there. A thing that had slaughtered his brother—maybe—way back in the
days when we first became involved with Soulcatcher, the Lady’s legate to Beryl.

The forvalaka was a sort of vampirous wereleopard originally native to One-Eye’s
own home jungle, somewhere way down south. It had taken One-Eye a year to catch
up with and have his revenge upon this one.

“You’re thinking about how hard it was to get rid of the Limper,” he said. His
voice was thoughtful. I knew he was recalling something I thought he had put out
of mind.

We were never certain that the forvalaka which killed Tom-Tom was the forvalaka
that paid the price. Because in those days the Taken Soulcatcher worked closely
with another Taken called Shapeshifter and there was evidence to suggest Shifter
might have been in Beryl that night. And using the forvalaka shape to assure the
destruction of the ruling family so the empire could take over on the cheap.