She Is the Darkness: Book Two of Glittering Stone: A Novel of the Black Company (10 page)

I left Smoke. Nobody was anywhere near the wagon except Mother Gota and Thai
Dei. I joined them. They said nothing. I ate without speaking myself, drank a
lot of water, climbed back into the wagon and took a long nap. I dreamed. The
dreams were not pleasant. Soulcatcher was there and she seemed to be having a
wonderful time. Messing with us, no doubt, because that is where she found her
fun.

I woke up and ate again, barely aware that I was devouring some of Mother Gota’s
worst cuisine. I swilled water as though this was my first chance in weeks. I
was vaguely aware that Thai Dei seemed troubled whenever he looked at me. I
tried to figure that out but I could not concentrate.

It was late. The camp itself was quiet. The soldiers were still forward. Night
sentries prowled watchfully, warned that there were Stranglers in the enemy
camp. They gossiped softly as they paused to warm their hands by the fires.

Farther back, some survivors from among the camp followers gathered their
pitiful belongings and stole away before they got rounded up and herded forward
again.

Vicious fighting continued on the heights. Mogaba intended to contest every foot
of ground.

Not all the camp followers had been able to get away. Fires on Lady’s flank once
again began to mask our camp with smoke. Did the Captain have some new devilment
in mind?

I asked him when he turned up a while later. “I hope they think so up there,” he
said. He could not stop grinning. “For the rest of his life I want Mogaba
looking over his shoulder, jumping at shadows, thinking there’s another trap
about to open under his feet. Maybe there’ll be one sometime.” He laughed again.

All the senior officers began gathering at a fire laid like a Gunni festival
bonfire. Politically neutral priests of all faiths performed rites of
thanksgiving. Even Lady came in, accompanied by her officers and admirers. She
looked like a demigoddess, more real than any Taglian deity but the dreaded
Kina. In the modern era only Kina seemed interested in mundane affairs.

But she had a personal interest.

Hard to tell who among the crowd was most boggled. Blade settled beside the Old
Man. He could not stop grinning. He could not stop babbling at his old buddy
Swan. Pity Cordy Mather was back home with the Woman. He would have gotten a
kick out of this, too.

I had not seen Blade for years. Back then he had been a taciturn cynic. Nothing
like this. And One-Eye had not had time to get a still running yet.

Blade bellowed at Croaker. Croaker bellowed right back. Swan told me, “Don’t
mind them two. They haven’t gotten over the hand-holding stage yet.”

“I guess there must have been a lot of strain while the con was running.”

The Old Man heard Swan but ignored him. “Tomorrow it’s good old-fashioned hey
diddle diddle, straight up the middle. The last thing Mogaba will expect from
me. Prince, you get first go. Have your men show us how good they are.”

I took a long drink of water, wishing One-Eye had managed to get something made
for tonight. But that would not have gone over. None of the Taglian religions
tolerated beer, nor did Lady or the Prince, who did not want drunken soldiers
screwing things up. But what they did not see they could not condemn. So I might
just suggest to One-Eye that he get a move on.

I asked, “You’re actually going to tell us what’s going on?”

A lax humor entered the Captain’s eyes. “Nope.” He leaned close, whispered,

“Don’t let this get out. I don’t want anybody easing up. But they’re not sending
shadows out to spy.” He pointed as a fireball headed up the pass. We had not
seen much of Lady’s big magic here yet.

“How come?”

“They’re saving them.” He grinned again. This grin took in everyone around us.

He spoke to the assembly. “I think you all know what you’re expected to do next.

Get some rest.”

How did everybody know what they were expected to do next? The little he had
told anyone had been extremely vague.

Croaker looked at Lady. She seemed at the point of collapse. This was tiring
work but her exhaustion went beyond what you would expect.

Some hard guy, my Captain. Sometimes his feelings were obvious. He hurt for the
woman he loved. “Swan. Hang around. I want to talk to you.”

I was politely invited to move my unwelcome ass along and get some rest of my
own.

I wanted to sleep. I was tired despite having done so little that was physical.

But when I retired to One-Eye’s wagon I lay there tossing and turning. Outside
Mother Gota was engaged in an endless litany of complaint. Evidently I was only
a minor character in her cast of troubles. Uncle Doj was a star. Hong Tray was a
star. Sahra was a star for having gone along with Hong Tray. Or for having
gotten Hong Tray on her side. Witches, both of them. Thai Dei did not say much
more than usual. He might have wanted to enter a fact or two but his mother
never gave him the chance.

Same old same old where Mother Gota was concerned. Most of the time I did not
hear her anymore. I wondered if she could be insulted into silence.

She did get me thinking about the woman I loved.

I turned and tossed and wrestled with the pain. I thought it might be getting a
little less potent. And, of course, I had to worry about that. Was it right? Was
it a betrayal of Sarie?

I reminded me that I am a grown man used to a hard life and should not be
getting caught up in this sort of obsessing, however great a treasure Sahra had
been.

I did drift off into that state where you are not entirely asleep but you are
not awake, either. Where you can rewrite your dreams as you go along.

Suddenly I was back in the past, whipped through time by a gust of laughter and
a mocking voice that asked me where I had been. I was not expecting this after
all this time but it did not take me off guard, either. I was experienced at
this sort of thing now.

Not surprised, I was not lost or disoriented. I had walked with the ghost enough
to have developed some resilience. I tried to take hold just as I would have had
I been out with Smoke.

The aura of amusement surrounding me gave way to startlement. I did a sort of
transdimensional fast spin and right there caught a glimpse of the prime
suspect, Soulcatcher, kneeling over some array of sorcerous objects near a fire
somewhere in the gorsy approaches to Charandaprash. My turn to be amused. Even
if I was not in control I now knew who was manipulating me.

Now, how could I put another move on her and find out why?

The laughter of crows enveloped me. Like it did not matter if I knew who was
doing what.

That sounded like Soulcatcher, the way she was described in Croaker’s Annals. A
force for chaos, seldom giving one rat’s ass what happened as long as something
did.

I tried to recall where those Annals were right now. Another look at Soulcatcher
might be worthwhile. Or maybe even a long heart-to-heart with the Old Man. He
knew Soulcatcher better than anyone alive, her sister included. I do not believe
Lady had a clue about her sister’s thinking anymore. Maybe she did not care.

Maybe I was seeing things that were not there. What did I know about what Lady
was thinking, really? I had not exchanged a hundred words with her in the past
three years. Before that our exchanges were limited to information destined for
the Annals.

The laughter of crows became the laughter of Soulcatcher. A voice said, “I do
not think I want to play today after all.”

A great invisible hand grabbed me and threw me into a windy darkness. I spun
like a thrown walnut even though I was nothing but a dream.

I tried controlling it same as I would have had I been walking with the ghost.

Once again I was able to take a measure of control. The sensation of spinning
went away. As it faded a feeling of place and time returned, along with an
ability to see. It was not good seeing. It was fuzzing and short range, like
Hagop talked about his vision getting as he got older. But I was in a jungle.

Was it familiar? It was a jungle. I have seen a few and they are all pretty much
the same if you cannot see more than twenty feet clearly. Bugs out the wazoo.

Muted, the screeching of a thousand birds. A couple of those were inside my
circle of vision. I noted that they seemed to see me just fine. I was the reason
for all the excitement.

I rotated quickly. Jungle for sure. But not short on water. A nasty black pool
lay only inches from where my heels would have rested had I had any heels.

Monkeys scampered along a branch overhead, rattled by the screeching of the
birds but, apparently, unable to see me. At least not at that range. One came
swinging past a foot from my point of view. She saw me. She was so startled she
lost her grip, shrieked in surprise, fell into the black pool, where she started
hollering in terror.

The crocodile almost got her. Almost. She got out of the water an instant before
the jaws snapped. Nothing like some big teeth moving fast to motivate you.

The crocodile’s effort, however, betrayed it to the crocodile hunters who
materialized an instant later, casting barbed spears.

Life is cruel.

Those crocodile hunters were unusually nervous. They wondered why the birds were
going crazy. They wondered why the monkeys had gone berserk, why one had fallen
into the black pool. Understanding them was no problem. They spoke Nyueng Bao as
though it was their native tongue. Which it was.

I was somewhere in the delta.

Faintly, faintly, behind the raucous birds I could sense the amusement of crows.

I had no sense of direction.

There was no Smoke to take me home.

I was not just dreaming. I had control but did not know what to do with it . . .

Up. Up was always good with Smoke. The higher you went the more the earth looked
like an incredibly detailed map. Then you needed only find a landmark you knew.

I went up.

I was in the nastiest, most untamed part of the delta. The whole world was black
water, bugs and densely packed trees. That was very nearly my idea of hell.

I had to go way up above where the buzzards soar to see anything else. In the
meantime psychic chills twisted the imaginary me; fear gnawed hard and deep.

Rising with me was a momentary certainty that I would never find any landmark.

The sun was a landmark. If you had eyes to see it.

I could not see much very well. Not even the birds that shied away.

So I could not find a landmark the logical way. Well, there was a different
green over that way.

The different green proved to be empty rice paddies. I zigged this way, zagged
that, found a village, found the path that ran out of the village and followed
it. I moved at wild speeds. Still, I knew, it was going to take me a long time
to get back to where I started.

Damned Soulcatcher!

I heard the voices mocking crows.

I saw a village that looked familiar.

Some would say all Nyueng Bao hamlets look alike. They do, pretty much, from
what I have seen. But their temples vary radically according to the wealth and
status and age of the town. I had seen this temple before, weeks ago when I was
searching for Goblin. I had, in fact, glimpsed a girl who looked so much like
Sahra that I wanted to cry when I left Smoke’s world.

I paused there, drifted around, watched the villagers about their early morning
business. Everything seemed typical of a Nyueng Bao hamlet, from all I had
heard. Even though it was the middle of winter there was work to do. People were
getting set to do it.

It was a very prosperous town. Very old, too, probably. The temple was large and
looked like it had been there for ages. A pair of mighty two-headed elephants
formed pillars to either side of a door as tall as three Nyueng Bao men. The
two-headed elephant represented the god of luck among the Gunni. I recall
One-Eye saying luck took that form because it was powerful and two-faced.

Oh. That must be the girl I had seen before. The ringer for Sarie. She came out
of the temple looking exhausted, sad. Could this be the same woman? The earlier
one had looked like a slightly younger version of Sarie. This one looked like an
older one, after having gained ten pounds and several years. She had that
incredible face but both her hips and breasts were slightly heavier than Sahra’s
had been and she was ill-kempt, something Sarie never was, even in the worst of
times. This woman was dirty, ragged, in despair.

But she did look so much like Sarie that I wanted to go to her and take her pain
away, whatever it might be.

I drifted closer, almost enjoying my own self-pitying pain, wondering why the
woman wore white when almost all Nyueng Bao except priests dressed in black.

Except on special occasions.

I could ask Thai Dei when I got back. If I ever found the way.

I was so near the woman I could have taken her into my arms and kissed her had I
been in flesh. I wanted to, she resembled Sarie so much in her face.

Had Sarie had cousins? I know she had uncles because at least one died during
the siege of Dejagore. She might have had aunts who stayed behind, too. The
party of pilgrims had included only a fraction of the delta population.

The woman in white looked square where my eyes would have been. Her eyes
widened. Her skin went pale. She let out a shriek, then collapsed. Several old
men in colored robes rushed out of the temple. They began trying to bring the
woman around, gabbling at one another too fast for me to follow. She regained
her composure as they helped her to her feet. “I thought I saw a ghost,” she
said in response to insistent questions. “It must be the fasting.”

Fasting? It did not look like she had been missing many meals to me.

So she had sensed my presence, eh? Worth remembering. But I had a battle to get
back to. I was no use to anyone down here, all but lost. I found the road out of
town, followed it in a direction I believed would eventually bring me to
Taglios. From Taglios it would be an easy course to chart south.