The Return of the Black Company (78 page)

The first fireballs up illuminated the carpet well enough for other snipers to take better aim. Hardly had Howler gotten his mouth under control than a fireball winged him. He shrieked again. And lost his concentration.

The carpet began to slide toward the ground. Soulcatcher cursed in a cranky old man’s voice, fought it. A fireball nearly parted her raven hair. Enraged, she opened her mouth to pronounce some deadly retribution.

The carpet began to fall.

Catcher shrieked in frustration, threw out a booted foot and pushed Howler off the edge of the carpet. He yelled angrily. Catcher grumbled an unfriendly goodbye. The carpet stopped falling. Muttering control spells, Catcher got it moving again. The boys on the ground never stopped sniping.

A fireball passed through the carpet between Soulcatcher and the Daughter of Night.

Kina, while unable to catch up and hammer Catcher, seemed to be aware of events. A whirlwind of rage filled the shadow world. A glimmer of the multiarmed idol began to show through on our side. It never coalesced completely but did materialize enough to send the Taglian loyalists running whatever direction they happened to be facing.

Howler howled. He plummeted toward the earth. He always was a lucky little shit and his luck held now. First he plunged through the branches of some heavy evergreens. They whipped the pudding out of him but slowed his fall. Then he smashed into a hillside still covered with unmelted snow. That was deep enough that he vanished into it.

I had not one doubt that he would be up and dancing like a dervish before lunchtime. And likely in a mood to show Soulcatcher just how much he loved her.

I sniffed around for a few minutes, marking the spot. Howler did nothing. I figured I had better go try to wake up. This looked like a once-in-a-lifetime chance either to recruit a first-line wizard or to put him out of our misery forever.

I suspected Croaker would prefer the latter option. We had had too many unfriendly encounters with the Howler over the years.

*   *   *

Did I mention Howler’s luck? I could not wake up. Evidently my spirit had no power over my body when that wanted to sleep. It looked like I had to keep wandering, want to or not.

I recalled last year when I had gone off without even being asleep. When Soulcatcher somehow pried me loose by means unknown and for a purpose I never divined. Which she might do to me again. Particularly if anything I had done lately had caught her attention.

There was a good chance the whole thing had been just a game to her, something to while away some time while fragments of her scheme fell into place. Or maybe she had been experimenting. Or both things, and maybe more. What we know for sure about Catcher is that she walks in chaos and her motives are changeable.

*   *   *

I must be driven. I figured that as long as I had to stay out there I ought to keep scouting around. Working in my sleep. Ought to have the Old Man double my pay. How much is two times a stab in the back?

The Prince was making good time. He was headed straight up the road north, which was the only reason I found him. A whole mob of his guys were running with him. And they did keep moving briskly.

Shadows larked around them like wolves on the hunt for dangerous game. It was a running fight. The Prince’s men did not have many bamboo poles but whenever one of the crowd began shrieking he died of fireballitis before the attacking shadows could finish their cruel work.

I wasted no time looking for Mogaba or Goblin. Too much work to find them. Maybe after it got light. Which it ought to be starting by now, only the clouds were so heavy.

I headed back toward Overlook.

Everywhere I went I saw evidence of the latest earthquake: landslides, toppled trees, a collapsed bridge the southerners had rebuilt after the last quake, then had cast down so we could not use it so Cletus and his brothers had had to put it up again. And lots of shelters knocked over or fallen in. And cracks in the ground. And even some damage to Overlook, up where Longshadow had bickered with his pals and then everybody had quarreled with Kina.

As I closed in a large block of white stone slipped out of Longshadow’s tower and plunged toward the foot of the wall. Several more followed quickly. The tower seemed to wobble slightly, as if made of gelatin instead of stone. Then I realized I was seeing an aftershock in progress. Or maybe a temblor even bigger than the last.

Shit! Was the whole damned fortress going to come tumbling down? Lady and her crew were still inside. No. Not possible. No earthquake was going to lay Overlook low. It was just too massive. Practically speaking, there was hardly anywhere for it to fall since it was more stone than empty volume.

Longshadow’s workbenches and mystery engines began to shift.

71

A jet of white fire spurted skyward, ripped open the bellies of the low-hanging clouds. Even in the ghostworld I could hear the roar of energy being released. Crystal near the jet vanished in blue puffs. Farther away it melted and ran like candle wax. It dripped. I saw a glob plummet into a pail of water, sizzle. Right then I decided that if I survived I would climb that tower—if it survived—and claim that marble as a souvenir.

The jet faded from white to yellow to red, then went dark, but the heat was still there, squirting away less violently, for a while. The Shadowmaster had had a lot of power stashed atop that tower.

Everything burnable in the remains of the chamber was now on fire. Several small shadows scuttled hither and yon. They seemed unwilling to leave despite the disaster. Maybe they were domesticated.

The first raindrops fell. Those passing through the invisible energy jet sizzled into steam.

I was thinking about going down inside the fortress to check on Lady, and having no luck convincing myself, when one of the shadows decided it might be happier hitting the trail. The trail it chose was the one Lady had to have taken with her prisoners.

An entire section of my mind devoted itself to speculating about the futures of Longshadow and Narayan Singh. Narayan’s prospects, I feared, were particularly bleak.

I followed the shadow.

I did not want to do that. But I felt compelled. It might sneak up on Lady and the guys. It might be devoted to its master. It might want to help him get away.

I sort of chuckled at the image of Longshadow trying to run, busted up the way he was.

I had no sympathy for the guy.

I tried sensing Lady’s presence ahead, could not. And I could not go anywhere in a straight line, of course. I still could not walk through walls. Which meant I suffered the same constraints as shadows. Did that mean I could go anywhere shadows could? Did it mean shadows could go anywhere I could?

That was troubling.

There was no light inside Overlook, nor any sound or landmarks. I changed my mind about finding Lady quickly.

I can have nightmares about darkness and tight places even when I am awake.

I turned back. Insofar as I was aware there had been no branchings to make me lose my way.

I ran into a shadow head-on.

There was no source of light but the forge where the torturer heated his instruments. That flickered, illuminating the creased, weathered bronze face of the frightened little man who had not become a soldier because he wanted to but because he believed he owed his gods a service when they demanded it. Like all his own people (and as their enemies did also), he hoped his own gods were strongest and would prevail.

It was one slice of nightmare two seconds long, filled with information so alien most would never make sense to me. I was not sure I should assume that the shadow I had encountered actually connected with a man who had been tortured to death after having been captured in some religious war. No religion in these parts worked that way. Not even the Deceivers did—though they had tortured some victims, in ages past, in the Grove of Doom, during their Festival of Lights.

My encounter with the shadow had not been that bad, really. I did not think collisions would be troublesome as long as I was ghostwalking. But it probably would have been a fatal meeting had it come while I was in my own body.

The incident did leave me goofy and disoriented. I floated back up to the remnants of the crystal chamber. The place had cooled down. The light had gone dead. But there was another light in the world now, despite the overcast. Daylight was coming at last.

Just as I realized that night’s siege was ending a final small volley of fireballs erupted near the Shadowgate. Then the world went still. And for a few minutes nobody and nothing was killing anybody or anything anywhere within sight.

I looked south and reflected that there was no Smoke to keep me from going over there and taking a peek. And shadows did not bother me in this state. And if they did try, why, they behaved like rodents. No matter how big and ferocious, they stayed close to the surface. They wanted to be able to get into hiding quickly. And I could fly.

I started southward. I really did. But something happened.

The earth shook again.

Lightning struck Overlook only a dozen feet away.

Thai Dei woke me up.

The effect was, I headed south but something grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and I spun northward like a leaf snatched up by a dust devil.

*   *   *

“I don’t want to get up,” I told the hand abusing my repose. “I’m tired. I worked all night.” I
was
tired. I
had
worked all night. Hard. I did want to roll over and snooze for another eight hours.

Thai Dei poked me again. And then there was the other problem. Maybe a bigger problem.

My feet were wet.

I pushed myself up onto one elbow as Thai Dei told me, “You must get up!”

“I hate to admit it. You’re right. I gotta get up.” I had to get up because rainwater was running in in a stream, turning the floor to mud.

I banged my head against a log. “What the hell?” The overhead had fallen halfway in. The far wall had collapsed. The only reason I could see anything was that Thai Dei had brought a candle—the shadow repeller—when he came to visit. “What happened?”

“Earthquake.”

Oh. Yeah. It had not occurred to me that I could become a disaster victim, too.

By the time I got my knees under me I saw that Thai Dei must have done a lot of work just to get to me. I was in a pocket. Most of our dugout must have fallen in. “Mother Gota?” I asked. I had shifted to Nyueng Bao without thinking.

“I don’t know.” He responded in the same language. “She never came home.” His voice had an uncharacteristic edge. The strain was getting to him. Every few years he cracked and stopped being the ice man for minutes at a time.

“How’d you get in?”

“Where the roof fell in.”

I had to duckwalk to look at the hole. Yeah. I could see where he had squeezed his way in. There was some ugly grey sky out there. It was drizzling still. Thai Dei was about half my size, though. “I’m going to have to stay down here for a couple months before I can get through that. I shouldn’t have put on all that weight after we got out of Dejagore.” We had looked bad back then. Like walking skeletons, most of us.

I wondered if that had anything to do with my dreams.

“Take the candle. I’ll go up and make the hole bigger.”

My bodyguard. This was about the first time he ever had a real chance to save my ass and it was from being smothered by a vicious sod roof.

He pushed himself up into the opening. He wiggled. He squirmed. He dropped back down. “You need to push me.”

“Too many snacks while we were sitting around here bullshitting. Go.” I set the candle aside very carefully. It had become very important to me. I did not want to be down there in that tight, cold, wet place without a light.

I grabbed his legs and pushed. There must have been enough water in the hole to lubricate it. He popped through. I chuckled at a mental image of the earth giving birth to that ugly little man, like some clay devil in the Gunni myths.

I heard voices. Something blocked the dirty light. Croaker called, “Hey, deadbeat, you still breathing down there?”

“I’m fine. I was thinking about taking a nap.”

“You might as well. We’re going to be a while getting you out.”

“All right. I’ll be fine.” As long as the candle lasted.

I looked at it. It had a lot of life left. Those things were designed to last.

I began to think about what Thai Dei had had to do to come down into a place where shadows might be hiding just to see how I was doing. And that made me wonder that much more about the landscape of his interior world. Maybe I was a sloppy thinker. Or maybe just not yet experienced enough at being Nyueng Bao. I could not even work out how to treat Thai Dei like he was several different, distinct characters.

He and the Nyueng Bao believed he owed me a debt so great he had devoted his life to protecting me. He would lay that, and maybe even his soul, down for me. But at the same time he would willingly lie to and deceive the foreigner who was a cause for shame on his family. And, certainly, he would tell a Soldier of Darkness nothing that might cast
any
light upon Nyueng Bao attitudes toward the Black Company.

Come to think of it, not even my darling, beloved Sarie had gone that far. She could always change the subject without appearing to have done so.

I said something into the hole but nobody answered. Well, screw them. I was tired.

I sat down in the deepening mud and did go back to sleep.

I did not go anywhere. I did not do anything but sleep.

72

I was a terrible mess when prisoners from the Prince’s division hauled me out of the ground. Otto and Hagop, who belonged with the Old Division and whom I had not seen since Charandaprash, came to stare down at me. “Looks like one a them mole-rat things they got down here,” Otto said.

“Only filthier. It wasn’t raining, Ott, I’d say get a bucket a water and throw it on him.”

“Comics,” I muttered. “You just gave away why you signed on. Your only way to get out of town ahead of an audience turned ugly.”