by Glen Cook
“We aren’t in good shape. Their last assault nearly overcame us. Where did you get your power? Who are you riding with? Murgen saw Croaker die.”
“The enemies of the Shadowmasters are my friends.” Better to be cryptic than to hand him free information.
“Why don’t you put an end to the Shadowmasters?”
I could not answer without lying. I lied. “My friend is no longer with me.”
“Who was up there today?”
“Anyone can wear armor.”
He smiled tightly, showing a thin strip of sharp teeth. “The Captaincy, then. You don’t plan to let me get out of here. Do you?”
We spoke the language of the Jewel Cities, both disinclined to let our companions in on our conversation.
Men started screaming inside the encampment. I shouted, “Narayan! Come on!” The Shadowlanders west of us would be ready to move any moment. I told Mogaba, “There’s no problem with the Captaincy. The progression was established. When the Captain dies the Lieutenant steps into his shoes.”
“The tradition is for the Captain to be elected.”
We were both right.
Mogaba shouted, “Sindawe! Let’s go! It won’t work.” His archers and artillerymen on the wall were hard at work, laying down fire to cover his withdrawal. “We know where we stand, Lady.”
“Do we? I have no enemies but those who choose to make themselves my enemies. I’m interested only in the destruction of the Shadowmasters.” My men flew past me. Mogaba’s flew past him. A wall of Shadowlanders hurtled toward us.
Mogaba showed me that smile, turned, headed for the city and the safety of ropes hanging down the wall.
Ram gouged me. “Move, Mistress!”
I moved.
A gang of Shadowlanders came after my band, thinking us the easier meat. In the hills some observer had initiative enough to bluff them by sounding trumpets. They slackened the chase. We vanished into the dark ravines.
We assembled. I asked Narayan, “Did we get close?”
“We would have had him if those others hadn’t alerted him. Sindhu wasn’t ten feet from him.”
“Where is he?” Sindhu had not come back. I hated to lose him.
Narayan grinned. “He’s healthy. We lost only two Stranglers. Those you don’t see got caught in the confusion and fled to the city.”
For once I did not mind his grin. “Quick thinking, Narayan. You think he’ll find many friends there?”
“A few. Mostly I wanted him to get to your friends. Those who might not be enchanted with that Mogaba.”
Mogaba was not much of a problem yet. He was in no position to trouble me. The cure for him was to let him rot. I could just pretend to look for ways to relieve the city while actually only training my men till they suffered the illusion they were soldiers. Meantime, Mogaba could wear the enemy down for me.
The flaw, of course, was that Shadowspinner had allies who might decide to help him.
Dejagore and its surroundings were not worth much anymore but the city did have symbolic value. The Shadowlands were more heavily populated down south. The peoples there would be watching. The fate of Dejagore could decide the fate of the Shadowmasters’ empire. If they lost the city and we looked likely to move south again the oppressed might revolt.
All that passed through my mind while I tried to muster strength enough to cross the hills to our camp.
I could not make it. Ram had to help me.
47
The riders paused to consider the hill beside the road. The woman said, “She’s sure gotten them busy.” What had been a bald hilltop a few weeks ago now boasted a maze of stonework. Construction looked like a day and night project.
“She gets things done.” Croaker wondered how Lady was getting on down south. He wondered why they had come here.
“She does. Damn her.” The sorceress touched him gently, like a lover. She did that all the time now. And she looked so much like Lady. He had trouble resisting.
She smiled. She knew what he was thinking. He had his justifications lined up. She had the battle halfway won.
He ground his teeth, stared at the fortress and ignored her. She touched him again. He tried to remark on the layout of the fortress, found nothing would come out. He looked at her again, wide-eyed.
“Just a precaution, my love. You haven’t surrendered your heart. But in time you’ll come around. Come. Let’s visit our friends.” She urged her stallion forward.
Circling crows led the way. Catcher wanted to attract attention. She got it. She was a beautiful and exotic woman.
He understood when she spoke to a man as though she knew him. She meant to pass as Lady. No wonder she wanted him mute.
No one paid him any heed. As they passed through the press of sweating men and animals, dust and clatter, the stench of labor and dung, only the insects noticed him.
In this he might disappear. If her attention lapsed. If the crows became distracted. Could they pick him out of such a mob?
She led the way toward the works atop the hill, already nearing completion. She paused again and again to speak to men, usually about matters of no consequence. She was not playing the role right if she meant to usurp Lady. Lady’s manner was distant and imperious unless she was striving for a specific result … Of course. She wanted word spread that Lady was back.
What was she up to?
His conscience told him he had to do something. But he could think of nothing.
Nobody recognized him. That did his ego no good. Only months ago all Taglios had hailed him Liberator.
Word ran ahead. As they approached the inner fortress a man came out. The Prahbrindrah Drah himself! He was here directing construction? That was not like him. He stayed holed up where the priests could not get to him. The prince said, “I didn’t expect you back right away.”
“We’ve won a small victory north of Dejagore. The Shadowmasters lost four thousand men. Blade planned the operation and carried it out. I decided to leave him in charge. I came back to recruit and train new formations. You’ve done well here. I take it the priests abandoned their obstructionism?”
“You convinced them.” The prince looked troubled. “But you don’t have any friends now. Don’t leave your back unguarded.” His gaze kept drifting to Croaker. He seemed puzzled. “Your man Ram seems odd today.”
“Touch of dysentery. How is the recruiting going?”
“Slow. Most of the volunteers are helping here. Most men are holding off, waiting to have their minds made up for them.”
“Let them know about the victory. Let them know the siege can be broken. Shadowspinner has no strength left. He’s getting no help from Longshadow. He’s on his own with an army so battered only its fear of him holds it together.”
Croaker glanced up at a few clouds sliding east from the sea. Nothing remarkable about them but they did cause thoughts to click. The subtle bitch! He knew exactly what she was doing.
Lady was down there sparring with Shadowspinner, beyond the Main, which became impassable during the rainy season. A touch here, a nudge there, and that contest would go on till it was too late for Lady to get back over the river. The season was not that far away, now. Two months at the most. Lady would be trapped over there with the Shadowmasters. Catcher would have five months to take control here, without interference. Probably without anyone discovering who she was. Her crows would watch the routes north. Messengers would be intercepted.
The bitch! The black-hearted bitch!
The prince frowned at him, sensing his turmoil. But he was preoccupied with the woman. “Maybe we can do the garden again sometime.”
“That would be lovely. But remember, it’s my turn to put on the spread.”
The prince smiled weakly. “If they’ll let you. After last time.”
“I didn’t start it.”
What was that about? Something involving Lady had happened in the gardens? Soulcatcher did not tell him everything. Only what would leave his heart raw.
He sensed someone watching, spied Smoke lurking in shadows. The wizard’s face was a mask of hatred. That faded when he realized he had been spotted. He started shivering, slipped away.
Crows followed, Croaker noted. Of course. Wherever Smoke went he would be watched. Soulcatcher knew all about him.
Catcher asked, “Have my quarters been completed? It’s been a long, dusty road. It’ll take me two hours to get human.”
“They’re not finished but they should do. Shall I have someone take your horses and give you a hand with your things?”
“Yes. Of course. Kind of you.” She did some trick with her eyes. The prince went shy. “There are some men I want to see.” She named names unfamiliar to Croaker. “Send them to my quarters. Ram will entertain them till I’m cleaned up.”
“Of course.” The prince summoned his hangers-on, sent them to find the men she wanted.
At Catcher’s gesture Croaker dismounted and handed his horse over. He followed her as she followed the prince. The crows did a good job scouting, he admitted. Grudgingly. She was pulling it off without a hitch.
In Lady’s quarters he discovered why he could be called “Ram,” why no one knew him. He encountered a mirror. He did not see himself in it. He saw a big, dirty Shadar with hair enough for a gorilla.
She had laid a glamor on him.
* * *
The men Catcher asked for were low caste, skin and bone, nervous little creatures unable to meet her eye. As he introduced himself each added words in cant that Croaker did not recognize. The honorifics were puzzling enough. Daughter of Night? What did that mean? Too much was happening and he had no way of knowing what, nor any control.
Catcher told those men, “I want you to watch the wizard Smoke. At least two of you should be within sight of him all the time. I especially want to know if he goes near the Street of the Dead Lamps. If he enters it, stop him. By whatever means necessary, though I’d rather he didn’t make an early entrance into paradise.”
The men all plucked at bits of colored cloth peeking from their loincloths. One said, “As you will, so shall it be, Mistress.”
“Of course. Get on with it. Find him. Stick tight. He’s dangerous to us.”
The men hurried out, obviously eager to be away from her. “They’re terrified of you,” Croaker observed. His voice came back when he was alone with her.
“Naturally. They think I’m the daughter of their goddess. Why don’t you get cleaned up? I can smell you from here. I’ll have them bring you new clothes.”
The bath and clothes were the only good things that happened that day.
48
I did not get the sleep I needed. The dreams were bad. I wandered the caverns under the earth, awash in the stench of decay. The caverns were no longer cold. The old men were rotting. They were still alive but decaying. When I passed through their line of sight I felt their appeal, their blame. I really tried. But I could get no nearer whatever my destination was supposed to be.
The thing trying to recruit me was getting impatient.
Narayan wakened me. “I’m sorry, Mistress. It’s important.” He looked like he had seen a ghost.
I sat up. And started vomiting. Narayan sighed. His friends moved to mask me from the men. He looked worried. He feared his investment was going to come up short. I was going to die on him.
I was not worried about that. More the opposite, that I would not die and never escape the misery. What was wrong with me? This was getting old, every morning sick—and not that great the rest of the day.
I didn’t have time to be sick. I had work to do. I had worlds to conquer. “Help me up, Ram. Did I mess myself?”
“No, Mistress.”
“Thank the goddess for small favors. What is it, Narayan?”
“Better you see for yourself. Come, Mistress. Please?”
Ram had brought horses. I collected myself, let him help me mount. We headed for the hills. As we left camp I saw Blade and Swan and Mather with their heads together, exercised about something. Narayan did not ride but he could lope along when he wanted.
He was right. Seeing was better than hearing. I might not have believed a verbal report.
The plain had flooded. At the north and south ends water roared out of the hills. The aqueducts had gone mad. I said, “Now we know where those work parties headed. They must have diverted both rivers. How deep is it?”
“At least ten feet already.”
I tried guessing how high it could rise. The hills were deceptive. It was hard to tell. The plain was lower than the land beyond the hills but not much. The water should not get more than sixty feet deep. But that would be enough to flood the city.
Mogaba was in a fix. He had no way out—unless he built boats or rafts. Shadowspinner would not have to waste a man to keep him tied up.
“Good gods! Where did the Shadowlanders go?” I had a bad feeling I had one foot in a bear trap.
Narayan summoned a man on scout duty. He told us the Shadowlanders had pulled out in two forces, north and south, shortly after sunrise.
I consulted maps in my head, told Narayan, “We have to run. Fast. Or we’ll be dead before noon. Get up here behind me. You. Soldier. Get up behind Ram and hang on. Are there other men out here?”
“A few, Mistress.”
“They’ll have to look out for themselves. Let’s go!”
We were a sight, I’m sure, only one of us a competent rider and she so sick she had to stop twice to throw up. But we got back to camp before the hammer fell.
Blade had them ready to march. Now I knew what he’d been up to with Swan and Mather. He had heard about the water and had sensed its significance. He awaited orders.
“Send cavalry north and south to scout and harass.”
“Done already. Two hundred men each direction.”
“Good. You’re a natural.” I’d already recalled, rejected, and reexamined a trick that had been played on my armies in the north. Hurry was essential. I could see what might be dust north of us. “Move the infantry into the hills. I want every horseman to cut brush and drag it behind, headed due east. Get messengers off to the skirmishers. I want contact kept as long as possible. Draw them eastward and keep leading them as long as they’ll follow.”
The ruse would not work after dark—if it worked at all. Then Shadowspinner’s pet shadows would tell him he’d been taken. But that would be time enough to elude him.
If he kept chasing me Mogaba’s men would escape. He would not want that.
Blade wasted no time. Swan and Mather dashed around helping. Our differences would wait.
A new sense of confidence and discipline was apparent as the troops moved into the hills. They trusted me and Blade to get them through this. The horsemen headed out, raising enough dust for a horde on the march.
Blade, Swan, Mather, Narayan, and I watched from a low hill. “That will do it if he can be fooled at all,” I said. “He’ll see us just slipping out, get excited, try to nab us on the run.”
Swan raised crossed fingers to the sky. Blade asked, “What’s our next move?”
“Drift north through the hills.”
“He’s biting,” Mather said.
Blade said, “It occurs to me that, for speed’s sake, he would have left behind anyone not in top condition.”
I told him, “You are learning. And you’re turning nasty.”
“Nasty business.”
“Yes. The rest of you understand?”
Swan wanted it explained. “Spinner would leave his injured and second-line troops behind so they wouldn’t slow him down. They should be up where the north road enters the hills. We can take them by surprise. Narayan, send some scouts ahead.”
Narayan was pleased with me now. There was a lot of killing going on. There was promise of a real Year of the Skulls.
49
Smoke drifted into the darkness, glanced right and left, cursed softly. There they were again. Those men! He could not shake them. They knew where he was goi
ng before he went.
It was disheartening and frightening. The longer he delayed visiting his contacts the stronger Longshadow’s image grew within his mind and the more terrified he became on a level so deep it was a part of his soul. Something terrible had been done to him, something that had reached into him as deeply as a man could be reached. Somehow Longshadow had hidden a fragment of himself inside him, to drive him into executing the Shadowmaster’s will.
The voice within had become a shriek. If he did not shake the watchers he would not be able to avoid betraying his contacts.
He pretended not to notice the men, though they did nothing to remain anonymous. Did she know and just want to scare him away from his contacts? Maybe. Maybe it did not matter if he betrayed them.
He started walking.
His shadows followed.
He tried to elude them, relying on a superior knowledge of the city. He had haunted the shadows and alleys and hidden ways all his life. As he knew the palace better than anyone living, so he knew Taglios. He gave it his best. And when he stepped out of a shanty warren where he got lost twice himself trying to get back out, one of his stalkers was waiting, leaning against a building.
The man grinned.
Longshadow filled Smoke’s mind. The Shadowmaster was angry. His patience was failing.
Smoke stamped across the street. “How the hell do you keep track of me?”
The man spat to one side, smiled again. “You can’t evade the eye of Kina, wizard.”
“Kina!” Another terror to pile atop his fear of Longshadow.
“You can run but you can’t hide. You can twist and wiggle but you can’t get off the hook. You can skulk and whisper in locked rooms but you can’t keep secrets. Each breath you draw is numbered.”
The fear deepened.
“And always has been.”
Smoke turned to run.
“There’s a way out.”
“What?”