Footsteps.
I jumped hip-high to a short elephant before I realized that it had to be Sahra and the Radisha and whoever else had decided not to participate in all those exciting projects that were underway upstairs. “Go keep those people from stomping in here and messing everything up. I’ll get an idea of the layout and try to figure out what we’ll have to do.”
Swan scowled and growled and grunted, then minced carefully back down the slight slope toward the stairwell. He talked to himself all the way. And I did not blame him. Even I thought nothing ever went right for him.
I took a step in the direction the old footprints led. My boots went out from under me. I hit hard, then slid downhill until I caught up with Swan, who did a convincing job of acting amused after he stopped me. “You all right?”
“Bruised my side. Hurt my wrist.”
“I shoulda told you. That floor can be pretty slippery where there’s a lot of frost.”
“You’re lucky I don’t swear.”
“Uhm?”
“You forgot on purpose. You’re as bad as One-Eye or Goblin.”
“Did I just hear my name taken in vain?” One-Eye’s voice, punctuated by rasping panting more suitable to a lunger, came from the shadows down where the stair intercepted the cavern.
“God is Great, God is Good. God is the All-Knowing and All-Merciful. His Plan is Hidden but Just.” And save me from the Mystery of His Plan because all I ever get is the Misery of His Plan. “What is he doing down here?” I asked Swan. “I know. I’ll leave him behind. I know I’m definitely not going to carry him up out of here just so he doesn’t suffer another stroke from the effort. Hit him over the head when he isn’t looking.” I began moving deeper into the cave again. “I’m going to try this one more time.” Beneath my breath I continued my conversation with God. As usual, He did not trouble Himself to defend His Works to me. My fault for being a woman.
I nearly missed the transition from the ancient Nyueng Bao types to Company men because the first few modern bodies belonged to Nyueng Bao bodyguards. I halted only when I reached and recognized a Nyueng Bao bodyguard named Pham Quang. I studied him for a moment.
I backed up carefully.
When you looked for it, the boundary was evident. My brothers and their allies had several centuries’ less frost accumulation upon them. They had only just begun to develop the delicate webbings that encased the older bodies. That seemed awfully fast, actually, considering how long some of the others must have been buried. Possibly Soulcatcher had indulged in a little artistry during her visit.
Interspersed with my brothers were several bodies so ancient that they had become completely cocooned. I intuited them as bodies only because the chrysalises slumped just like the Captured did.
A thought. It might be worthwhile having One-Eye along after all. Down here Soulcatcher might have taken time to set a trap or two, just for the devil of it.
The Nar generals Isi and Ochiba sat against the cave wall opposite Pham Quang. Ochiba’s eyes were open. They did not move but did seem fixed on me. I hunkered down, got as close as I could without touching him.
Those brown pools were moist. There was no dust on their surfaces, nor any frost. They had opened quite recently.
A chill crawled down my spine. A very creepy feeling came over me. I felt like I was walking among the dead. In the far north, whence Swan came carrying travelers’ tales, some religions supposedly pictured Hell as a cold place. My imagination, running with the terror that my brothers’ situation sparked, had no trouble picturing this cave as a suburb of Hell.
I rose carefully and moved away from Ochiba. Now the cave floor was almost perfectly level. My brothers were not crowded together. The rest seemed to be scattered along the next several hundred feet, not all immediately visible because of a turn in the cave. A few old cocoon men were interspersed with them. “I see the Lance!” I announced. Which was wonderful. Now we could split into two parties and have both retain their capacity for accessing the plain.
My voice echoed like there was a chorus of me all talking at the same time. Hitherto, Swan and I had tried to speak softly. The echoes had been little more than ghostly whispers although extremely busy even at that level.
“Keep it down,” One-Eye said. “What are you doing, Little Girl? You don’t have any idea what you’re dealing with here.” He had gotten past Swan somehow and was headed my way. He was awfully damned spry for a two-hundred-year-old stroke victim. This business had him truly excited.
That left me suspicious. But I had no time to try reasoning out what angle the man might have.
I looked into another pair of eyes, these belonging to a long, bony, pallid man who had to be the sorcerer Long shadow. Longshadow was a prisoner of the Company. He had been brought along because neither Croaker nor Lady trusted anyone else to guard him and he could not be exterminated because the health of the Shadowgate, insofar as they had known, was dependent upon his continued well-being. And well that they had been so distrustful. It would be a much different and more terrible world if the Shadow-master had been left behind to tinker at whatever wickedness took his fancy. Soulcatcher’s evil was capricious and unfocused. Longshadow’s malice and insanity were deep and abiding.
That insanity stared out of his eyes right then. On my mental checklist I made a tick that meant this one would stay right where he was. Others might have plans for him but they were not in charge. If we could work out how to strengthen our world’s Shadowgate, maybe we could even execute him.
I continued moving, working my silent triage, constantly bemused because there were so many faces that I did not recognize. A lot of men who had enlisted while I was away from the center of the action. “Oh, darn!”
“What?” One-Eye was only a few steps behind me, gaining ground fast. His voice seemed to rattle as it echoed.
“It’s Wheezer. The stasis didn’t take for him.”
One-Eye grunted, evidently indifferent. Old Wheezer came from the same tribe One-Eye did, although Wheezer was more than a century younger than the wizard. There had never been any affection between them. “He had a better run than he deserved.” Wheezer had been old and dying of consumption when he joined the Company during its passage southward, decades ago. And he had continued to survive despite his infirmities and despite all the trials the Company had endured.
“Here’re Candles and Cletus. They’re gone, too. And a couple of Nyueng Bao and two Shadar I don’t recognize. Something happened here. This makes seven dead men, all in a clump.”
“Don’t move, Little Girl. Don’t touch anything before I have a chance to look it over.”
I froze. It was time to acknowledge his expertise.
85
“I haven’t found them yet!” I snapped at Sahra and the Radisha. “I don’t want to go any farther if One-Eye can’t assure me that I’m not going to kill somebody just by being here.” Against all advice, those two had pushed as far forward as I would let them go. I could understand that they wanted to see their husbands and brothers and boyfriends, but they ought to have sense enough to restrain themselves until we knew what we could and could not do without risking harm to those very husbands and brothers and boyfriends.
Sahra gave me a sharp, hurt look.
“Sorry,” I said, insincerely. “Come on. Think. You can see that the stasis down here didn’t work for everyone. Swan. How far up this tunnel do we have to go?” I could see a scatter of eight recumbent forms between myself and the curve, none of whom were immediately recognizable as the Captain, Lady, Murgen, Thai Dei, Cordy Mather or
Blade. “From where we stand now, roughly eleven people still aren’t accounted for.”
“I don’t remember,” Swan grumped. Bass echoes chased one another around the cavern. They were worse with my higher pitched voice, though.
“Memory spell wearing off?”
“I don’t think so. This feels more like something I never knew. I’m still a whole lot confused about what went on do
wn here.”
One big problem was that none of us really knew exactly how many Captured there were. Swan was the best witness because he had ridden with them, but he had not kept track, other than of key people. Murgen never had been any help because after he had become one of the Captured, he had apparently become unable to explore the immediate vicinity where he was confined.
“We need to get Murgen awake first thing. Nobody else will know all the names and faces.” It seemed probable that some of the people I did not recognize just were not part of the Company. “One-Eye. Figure out how to wake these people up. As soon as I find Murgen, I want to get him into talking condition. Can I go ahead?” Squabbling echoes reminded me to keep my voice down.
Crabbily, One-Eye responded, “Yes. Just don’t touch anybody. Or even anything that you don’t recognize. And stop trying to rush me.”
“Can you bring them out of stasis?”
“I don’t know yet, do I? I’ve been too damned busy answering dumb questions. Leave me alone long enough and I might figure it out, though.”
Tempers were getting short and manners were becoming frayed. I sighed, rubbed my forehead and temples because I had begun to develop a headache, listened to the sounds of more people descending the stair. “Willow, see if you can keep those fools out of here till One-Eye’s ready.” I looked ahead without eagerness. Not only did the cavern turn to the right, it steepened. The water-polished floor was covered with frost. The footing was going to be treacherous.
“Caw!”
The white crow was up there somewhere. It had been announcing itself repeatedly, sounding more impatient every time.
I moved forward carefully. When I reached the steeper floor, I knelt and brushed the frost away to improve the footing. I told Sahra and the Radisha, “If you have to follow me, you’d better be even more careful than I am.”
They insisted. They were careful. Not one of us slipped and went flailing back down the slope. “Here’s Longo and Sparkle,” I said. “And that wad definitely looks like the Howler.”
In fact, that wad definitely was that crippled little Master Sorcerer. He had been one of the Lady’s henchmen in the far north, then our enemy down here. He had become a prisoner of war along with his ally Longshadow, and Lady must have foreseen some use for him or she would not have kept him alive. But he was not likely to get released while I was in charge. In his way, he was crazier than Soulcatcher.
The crow chided me for taking so long.
The Howler was awake. His will was such that he could move his eyes, though nothing more was within his capacity. One glimpse of the madness within those dark orbs and I knew that this man could not be permitted to make it back to the world. “Be very careful around this one,” I said. “Or he’ll nail you as surely as Soulcatcher nailed Swan. One-Eye. Howler is awake. He can move his eyes.”
One-Eye repeated my warning, absentmindedly. “Don’t get too close to him.”
The crow began to nag. Its voice gave birth to a particularly annoying generation of echoes.
“Ah. Radisha. Here’s your brother. And he seems to be in pretty good shape. No! Don’t touch! That’s probably what contaminated the stasis spells protecting the dead men. You’ll just have to be patient, same as the rest of us,”
She made a sound like a low growl.
The icy cave ceiling above us made creaking sounds that added to the volleys of echoes.
I continued, “It’s hard. I know it’s hard. But right now patience is the best tool we have for getting them out of here safely.” Once I was sure she would restrain herself I resumed inching forward. The white crow cawed impatiently. Out loud I thought, “I do believe I’ll wring that thing’s neck.” ’ The Radisha reminded me, “You’ll build bad kharma. You might come back as a crow or parrot in your next life.”
“One of the beauties of being Vehdna is that you don’t have a next life to worry about. And God, the All-Powerful, the Merciful, has no love at all for crows. Except to use as plagues upon the unrighteous. Does anybody know if Master Santaraksita planned to come down here?” My organizational skills had vanished because of my own eagerness to reach the Captured. It occurred to me only now that the scholar’s knowledge might prove especially useful here if he could connect anything in this cave to known myth.
I got no answer. “I’ll send for him if I have to. Ah. Sahra, here’s your honey. Don’t touch!” I said that a little too loudly. The echoes got very boisterous. Several small icicles broke loose from the ceiling. They shattered with an almost metallic tinkle when they struck the floor.
The crow spoke, very distinctly, “Come here!”
And I, having finally figured it out, told it, “If your manners don’t improve dramatically, you might not get out of here at all.”
The bird was strutting back and forth nervously in front of Croaker and Lady. Soulcatcher had left those two snuggled up together, arranged so that the Captain had one arm around Lady’s waist while she held his other hand with both of hers in her lap. Additional delicate touches suggested that Soulcatcher’s wicked sense of play had peaked for this bit of still life.
If Catcher had left any booby traps at all, this was where they would be. “One-Eye. I need help.” Any traps that existed were beyond me.
Lady’s eyes were open. There was no dust on them. She was angry. And the white crow wanted to tell me all about it.
“Patience,” I counseled, close to becoming impatient
I told myself. “Swan. One-Eye. Come on up here.” Swan arrived first despite coming from farther away. I asked, “You recall anything special she did with these two? Any little bit of sneakiness?”
“No. I wouldn’t worry about it. By the time she laid them out, she was worried about what might happen next. That’s the way she is. When she’s starting something, it’s her whole world and she has no doubts about any part of it. But the closer she comes to getting finished, the more trouble she has keeping her confidence up.”
“Nice to know that she’s human.” I did not mean a word of that. “One-Eye. Look for booby traps around here. And make up your mind. Tell me if you can bring these people back, darn it!” My headache had not gotten any better. But, thank the God of Mercies, it had grown no worse.
Another icicle fell.
“I know. I know. I heard you the first time you asked.” He grumbled something about wishing he knew a way to charm me up a better love life.
I stared past Croaker and Lady. The cavern went on. Pale light barely illuminated it. There was no gold in that at all now. A touch of silver, a touch of grey, a lot of blue ice. In fact, the sedimentary rock seemed to give way to actual ice now, ahead. “Willow. Did Catcher go up there when you were here?”
He checked where I was looking. “No. But she could have during an earlier visit.”
Someone had traveled in that direction recently, in cavern scales of time. There were still clear tracks in the frost. And I suspected that I would not enjoy the journey once I began to follow them. But I would do so. I had no choice. I had failed elsewhere by letting Narayan and the Daughter of Night get away. That Kina undoubtedly supplied them with a subtle boost did not sufficiently signify. I should have been better prepared. “One-Eye. Talk to me. Can you resurrect these people or not?”
“If you’d stop barking for five minutes I could probably figure that out.”
“Take your time, sweetness. It’ll take us a while to starve.” That ice up there must have been what Swan had meant when he mentioned ice on the plain.
“You’ve had all the fool-around time I’m willing to give you,” I told One-Eye. “Can you do it? Yes or no. Right now.”
“The shape I’m in, I need more rest.” His speech was slow and slurred and had taken on an odd rhythm that made following him difficult. He was right, of course. All of us needed rest. But we also needed to finish our business and get off the plain. Hunger was a reality already. It was not going to go away. I feared it might become a companion as intimate and dreaded as
it had been during the siege of Jaicur.
I had decided, already, that I would adopt Uncle Doj’s suggested strategy. We would recover only a few people now. We would return for the others later. But that meant making cruel choices. Somebody would end up hating me no matter what I did. If I was really clever, I would find some good old-fashioned Goblinlike way of spreading the blame all around me. Those tagged to wait could not hate everybody.
And there went some good old-fashioned wishful thinking, Sleepy. We were talking about human beings. If there is any way to be contrary, unreasonable and obnoxious, human beings are sure to find and pursue it. With verve and enthusiasm at whatever might be the most inconvenient time.
86
“Is anybody at all still up topside?” I demanded. I had settled down for a short nap when the timing had seemed appropriate and that had turned into a long nap that might have become a permanent nap had not so many people been around to keep me from drifting too far away. I dreamed while I was out, I knew that, but I remembered none of it.
The smell of Kina remained strong in my nostrils, so I knew where I must have gone, though.
One-Eye was seated beside me, apparently assisting me with my snoring. A worried Goblin appeared, checking to make certain his best friend did not drift too far into sleep. Beyond me, Mother Gota had become engrossed in a protracted debate with the white crow. That must have been a classic dialog to disinterested listeners.
Goblin murmured, “From now on, don’t make any sudden movements, Sleepy. Always look around you. Always make sure that you’re not going to damage any of our friends.”
I heard Tobo talking rapidly, softly, in a businesslike voice. I could not distinguish his words. Somewhere Uncle Doj rattled away, too. “What’s happening?”
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