The White Rose

by Glen Cook

  Bomanz had spent a lifetime sorting out which mound was which, who lay where, and where each menhir and fetish stood. His master chart, his silken treasure, was nearly complete. He could, almost, thread the maze. He was so close he was tempted to try before he was truly ready. But he was no fool. He meant to try nursing sweet milk from the blackest of cows. He dared make no mistake. He had Besand on the one hand, the poisonous old wickedness on the other. But if he succeeded … Ah, if he succeeded. If he made contact and nursed away the secrets … Man’s knowledge would be extended dramatically. He would become the mightiest of living mages. His fame would course with the wind. Jasmine would have everything she quarreled about sacrificing. If he made contact.

  He would, by damn! Neither fear nor the infirmity of age would stay him now. A few months and he would have the last key.

  Bomanz had lived his lies so long he often lied to himself. Even in his honest moments he never confessed his most powerful motive, his intellectual affair with the Lady. It was she who had intrigued him from the beginning, she whom he was trying to contact, she who made the literature endlessly fascinating. Of all the lords of the Domination she was the most shadowed, the most surrounded by myth, the least encumbered by historical fact. Some scholars called her the greatest beauty ever to have lived, claiming that simply to have seen her was to have fallen into her thrall. Some called her the true motive force of the Domination. A few admitted that their documentaries were really little more than romantic fantasies. Others admitted nothing while demonstrably embellishing. Bomanz had become perpetually bemused while still a student.

  Back in his attic, he spread his silken chart. His day had not been a complete waste. He had located a previously unknown menhir and had identified the spells it anchored. And he had found the TelleKurre site. That would buy the mutton and beans.

  He glared at the chart, as if pure will might conjure the information he needed.

  There were two diagrams. The upper was a five-pointed star within a slightly larger circle. Such had been the shape of the Barrowland when newly constructed. The star had stood a fathom above the surrounding terrain, retained by limestone walls. The circle represented the outer bank of a moat, the earth from which had been used to build the barrows, the star, and a pentagon within the star. Today the moat was little more than boggy ground. Besand’s predecessors had been unable to keep up with Nature.

  Within the star, drawn off the points where the arms met, was a pentagon another fathom high. It, too, had been retained, but the walls had fallen and become overgrown. Central to the pentagon, on a north-south axis, lay the Great Barrow where the Dominator slept.

  At the points of his chart star, clockwise from the top, Bomanz had penned the odd numbers from one to nine. Accompanying each was a name: Soulcatcher, Shapeshifter. Nightcrawler, Stormbringer, Bonegnasher. The occupants of the five outer barrows had been identified. The five inner points were numbered evenly, beginning at the right foot of the arm of the star pointing northward. At four was the Howler, at eight the Limper. The graves of three of the Ten Who Were Taken remained unidentified.

  “Who’s in that damned six spot?” Bomanz muttered. He slammed a fist against the table. “Dammit!” Four years and he was no closer to that name. The mask concealing that identity was the one remaining substantial barrier. Everything else was plain technical application, a matter of negating wardspells, then of contacting the great one in the central mound.

  The wizards of the White Rose had left volumes bragging about their performances of their art, but not one word of where their victims lay. Such was human nature. Besand bragged about the fish he caught, the bait he used, and seldom produced the veritable piscine trophy.

  Below his star chart Bomanz had drawn a second portraying the central mound. It was a rectangle on a north-south axis surrounded by and filled with ranks of symbols. Outside each corner was a representation of a menhir which, on the Barrowland, was a twelve-foot pillar topped by a two-faced owl’s head. One face glared inward, the other out. The menhirs formed the corner posts anchoring the first line of spells warding the Great Barrow.

  Along the sides were the line posts, little circles representing wooden fetish poles. Most had rotted and fallen, their spells drooping with them. The Eternal Guard had no staff wizard capable of restoring or replacing them.

  Within the mound proper there were symbols ranked in three rectangles of declining size. The outermost resembled pawns, the next knights, and the inner, elephants. The crypt of the Dominator was surrounded by men who had given their lives to bring him down. Ghosts were the middle line between old evil and a world capable of recalling it. Bomanz anticipated no difficulty getting past them. The ghosts were there, in his opinion, to discourage common grave robbers.

  Within the three rectangles Bomanz had drawn a dragon with its tail in its mouth. Legend said a great dragon lay curled round the crypt, more alive than the Lady or Dominator, catnapping the centuries away while awaiting an attempt to recall the trapped evil.

  Bomanz had no way of coping with the dragon, but he had no need, either. He meant to communicate with the crypt, not to open it.

  Damn! If he could only lay hands on an old Guardsman’s amulet … The early Guards had worn amulets which had allowed them to go into the Barrowland to keep it up. The amulets still existed, though they were no longer used. Besand wore one. The others he kept squirreled away.

  Besand. That madman. That sadist.

  Bomanz considered the Monitor his closest acquaintance-but a friend, never. No, never a friend. Sad commentary on his life, that the man nearest him would be one who would jump at a chance to torture or hang him.

  What was that about retirement? Someone outside this forsaken forest had recalled the Barrowland?

  “Bomanz! Are you going to eat?”

  Bomanz muttered imprecations and rolled his chart.

  The Dream came that night. Something sirenic called him. He was young again, single, strolling the lane that passed his house. A woman waved. Who was she? He didn’t know. He didn’t care. He loved her. Laughing, he ran toward her … Floating steps. Effort took him no nearer. Her face saddened. She faded … “Don’t go!” he called. “Please!” But she disappeared, and took with her his sun.

  A vast starless night devoured his dream. He floated in a clearing within a forest unseen. Slowly, slowly, a diffuse silver something limned the trees. A big star with a long silver mane. He watched it grow till its tail spanned the sky.

  Twinge of uncertainty. Shadow of fear. “It’s coming right at me!” He cringed, threw his arm across his face. The silver ball filled the sky. It had a face. The woman’s face …

  “Bo! Stop it!” Jasmine punched him again.

  He sat up. “Uhn? What?”

  “You were yelling. That nightmare again?”

  He listened to his heart hammer, sighed. Could it take much more? He was an old man. “The same one.” It recurred at unpredictable intervals. “It was stronger this time.”

  “Maybe you ought to see a dream doctor.”

  “Out here?” He snorted disgustedly. “I don’t need a dream doctor anyway.”

  “No. Probably just your conscience. Nagging you for luring Stancil back from Oar.”

  “I didn’t lure … Go to sleep.” To his amazement, she rolled over, for once unwilling to pursue their squabble.

  He stared into the darkness. It had been so much clearer. Almost too crisp and obvious. Was there a meaning hidden behind the dream’s warning against tampering?

  Slowly, slowly, the mood of the beginning of the dream returned. That sense of being summoned, of being but one intuitive step from heart’s desire. It felt good. His tension drained away. He fell asleep smiling.

  Besand and Bomanz stood watching Guardsmen clear the brush from Bomanz’s site. Bomanz suddenly spat, “Don’t bum it, you idiot! Stop him, Besand.”

  Besand shook his head. A Guard with a torch backed away from the brush pile. “Son, you don’t burn poison ivy.
The smoke spreads the poison.”

  Bomanz was scratching. And wondering why his companion was being so reasonable. Besand smirked. “Get itchy just thinking about it, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s your other itch.” He pointed. Bomanz saw his competitor Men fu observing from a safe distance. He growled, “I never hated anybody, but he tempts me. He has no ethics, no scruples, and no conscience. He’s a thief and a liar.”

  “I know him, Bo. And lucky for you I do.”

  “Let me ask you something, Besand. Monitor Besand. How come you don’t aggravate him the way you do me? What do you mean, lucky?”

  “He accused you of Resurrectionist tendencies. I don’t shadow him because his many virtues include cowardice. He doesn’t have the hair to recover proscribed artifacts.”

  “And I do? That little wart libeled me? With capital crimes? If I weren’t an old man …”

  “He’ll get his, Bo. And you do have the guts. I’ve just never caught you with the inclination.”

  Bomanz rolled his eyes. “Here we go. The veiled accusations …”

  “Not so veiled, my friend. There’s a moral laxness in you, an unwillingness to accept the existence of evil, that stinks like an old corpse. Give it its head and I’ll catch you, Bo. The wicked are cunning, but they always betray themselves.”

  For an instant Bomanz thought his world was falling apart. Then he realized Besand was fishing. A dedicated fisherman, the Monitor. Shaken, he countered, “I’m sick of your sadism. If you really suspected anything, you’d be on me like a snake on shit. Legalities never meant anything to you Guards. You’re probably lying about Men fu. You’d haul your own mother in on the word of a sorrier villain than him. You’re sick, Besand. You know that? Diseased. Right here.” He tapped his temple. “You can’t relate without cruelty.”

  “You’re pushing your luck again. Bo.”

  Bomanz backed down. Fright and temper had been talking. In his own odd way Besand had shown him special tolerance.

  It was as though he were necessary to the Monitor’s emotional health. Besand needed one person, outside the Guard, whom he did not victimize. Someone whose immunity repaid him in a sort of validation … I’m symbolic of the people he defends? Bomanz snorted. That was rich.

  That business about being retired. Did he say more than I heard? Is he calling off all bets because he’s leaving? Maybe he does have a sense for scofflaws. Maybe he wants to go out with a flash.

  What about the new man? Another monster, unblinkered by the gossamer I’ve spun across Besand’s eyes? Maybe someone who will come in like the bull into the corrida? And Tokar, the possible Resurrectionist … How does he fit?

  “What’s the matter?” Besand asked. Concern colored his words.

  “Ulcer’s bothering me.” Bomanz massaged his temples, hoping the headache would not come too.

  “Plant your markers. Men fu might jump you right here.”

  “Yeah.” Bomanz took a half dozen stakes from his pack. Each trailed a strip of yellow cloth. He planted them. Custom dictated that the ground so circumscribed was his to exploit.

  Men fu could make night raids, or whatever, and Bomanz would have no legal recourse. Claims had no standing in law, only in private treaty. The antique miners exercised their own sanctions.

  Men fu was under every sanction but violence. Nothing altered his thieving ways.

  “Wish Stancil was here,” Bomanz said. “He could watch at night.”

  “I’ll growl at him. That’s always good for a few days. I heard Stance was coming home.”

  “Yeah. For the summer. We’re excited. We haven’t seen him in four years.”

  “Friend of Tokar, isn’t he?”

  Bomanz whirled. “Damn you! You never let up, do you?” He spoke softly, in genuine rage, without the shouts and curses and dramatic gestures of his habitual semi-rage.

  “All right, Bo. I’ll drop it.”

  “You’d better. You’d damned well better. I won’t have you crawling all over him all summer. Won’t have it, you hear?”

  “I said I’d drop it.”

  Chapter Eight: THE BARROWLAND

  Corbie came and went at will around the Guard compound. The walls inside the headquarters building boasted several dozen old paintings of the Barrowland. He studied those often while he cleaned, shivering. His reaction was not unique. The Dominator’s attempt to escape through Juniper had rocked the Lady’s empire. Stories of his cruelties had fed upon themselves and grown fat in the centuries since the White Rose laid him down.

  The Barrowland remained quiet. Those who watched saw nothing untoward. Morale rose. The old evil had shot its bolt.

  But it waited.

  It would wait throughout eternity if need be. It could not die. Its apparent last hope was no hope. The Lady was immortal, too. She would allow nothing to open her husband’s grave.

  The paintings recorded progressive decay. The latest dated from shortly after the Lady’s resurrection. Even then the Barrowland had been much more whole.

  Sometimes Corbie went to the edge of town, stared at the Great Barrow, shook his head.

  Once there had been amulets which permitted Guards safely within the spells making the Barrowland lethal, to allow for upkeep. But those had disappeared. The Guard could but watch and wait now.

  Time ambled. Slow and grey and limping, Corbie became a town fixture. He spoke seldom, but occasionally enlivened the lie sessions at Blue Willy with a wooly anecdote from the Forsberg campaigns. The fire blazed in his eyes then. No one doubted he had been there, even if he saw those days a little walleyed.

  He made no true friends. Rumor said he did share the occasional private chess game with the Monitor, Colonel Sweet, for whom he had done some special small services. And of course, there was the recruit Case, who devoured his tales and accompanied him on his hobbling walks. Rumor said Corbie could read. Case hoped to learn.

  No one ever visited the second floor of Corbie’s home. There, in the heart of the night, he slowly unravelled the treacherous mare’s nest of a tale that time and dishonesty had distorted out of any parallel with truth.

  Only parts were encrypted. Most was hastily scribbled in TelleKurre, the principal language of the Domination era. But scattered passages were in UchiTelle, a TelleKurre regional vulgate. Times were, when battling those passages, Corbie smiled grimly. He might be the only man alive able to puzzle through those sometimes fragmentary sentences. “Benefit of a classical education,” he would murmur with a certain sarcasm. I Then he would become reflective, introspective. He would take one of his late night walks to shake revenant memory. One’s own yesterday is a ghost that will not be laid. Death is the only exorcism.

  He saw himself as a craftsman, did Corbie. A smith. An armorer cautiously forging a lethal sword. Like his predecessor in that house, he had dedicated his life to the search for a fragment of knowledge.

  The winter was astonishing. The first snows came early, after an early and unusually damp autumn. It snowed often and heavily. Spring came late.

  In the forests north of the Barrowland, where only scattered clans dwelt, life was harsh. Tribesmen appeared bearing furs to trade for food. Factors for the furriers of Oar were ecstatic.

  Old folks called the winter a harbinger of worse to come. But old folks always see today’s weather as more harsh than that of yore. Or milder. Never, never the same.

  Spring sprung. A swift thaw set the creeks and rivers raging. The Great Tragic, which looped within three miles of the Barrowland, spread miles beyond its banks. It abducted tens and hundreds of thousands of trees. The flood was so spectacular that scores from town wandered out to watch it from a hilltop.

  For most, the novelty faded. But Corbie limped out any day Case could accompany him. Case was yet possessed of dreams. Corbie indulged him.

  “Why so interested in the river, Corbie?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because of its grand statement.”

  “What?”
>
  Corbie swung an encompassing hand. “The vastness. The ongoing rage. See how significant we are?” Brown water gnawed at the hill, furious, fumbling forests of driftwood. Less turbulent arms hugged the hill, probed the woods behind.

  Case nodded. “Like the feeling I get when I look at the stars.”

  “Yes. Yes. But this is more personal. Closer to home. Not so?”

  “I guess.” Case sounded baffled. Corbie smiled. Legacy of a farm youth.

  “Let’s go back. It’s peaked. But I don’t trust it with those clouds rolling in.”

  Rain did threaten. Were the river to rise much more, the hill would become an island.

  Case helped Corbie cross the boggy parts and up to the crest of the low rise which kept the flood from reaching cleared land. Much of that was a lake now, shallow enough to be waded if some fool dared. Under grey skies the Great Barrow stood out poorly, reflecting off the water as a dark lump. Corbie shuddered. “Case. He’s still there.”

  The youth leaned on his spear, interested only because Corbie was interested. He wanted to get out of the drizzle.

  “The Dominator, lad. Whatever else did not escape. Waiting. Filling with ever more hatred for the living.”

  Case looked at Corbie. The older man was taut with tension. He seemed frightened.

  “If he gets loose, pity the world.”

  “But didn’t the Lady finish him in Juniper?”

  “She stopped him. She didn’t destroy him. That may not be possible … Well, it must be. He has to be vulnerable somehow. But if the White Rose couldn’t harm him …”

  “The Rose wasn’t so strong, Corbie. She couldn’t even hurt the Taken. Or even their minions. All she could do was bind and bury them. It took the Lady and the Rebel …”

  “The Rebel? I doubt that. She did it.” Corbie lunged forward, forcing his leg. He marched along the edge of the lake. His gaze remained fixed on the Great Barrow.

  Case feared Corbie was obsessed with the Barrowland. As a Guard, he had to be concerned. Though the Lady had exterminated the Resurrectionists in his grandfather’s time, still that mound exerted its dark attraction. Monitor Sweet remained frightened someone would revive that idiocy. He wanted to caution Corbie, could think of no polite way to phrase himself.