Bleak Seasons (12 page)

“He’s supposed to be back in town soon. If he’s not here already.”

“That there is my intelligence chief,” Croaker told me, pointing at One-Eye and
shaking his head. “Blind in one eye and can’t see out the other.”

I glanced at the cloth-covered villain. He had begun snoring. A good soldier
seizing his rest when it was available.

Hours passed. Croaker left, then returned. Now he slapped me on the back. “See
how easy it is, Murgen? Ever seen such a big trick that was this simple?”

“Nothing to it,” I agreed. “Like falling off a log.” Or like falling into a
bottomless pit, maybe, which I have had enough involuntary practice doing.

Nothing is ever as simple as somebody tells you it is going to be. I knew this
would be no exception when I tried it myself, amazing as it was. “At least now I
understand how you got so damned spooky, knowing things you shouldn’t.”

Croaker laughed. “Go ahead.” Showing off his astonishing discovery had put him
into a grand mood. “Try it.”

I gave him a look he chose to interpret as my not really understanding what he
meant. Nothing to it. Like falling off a log. Maybe. Only One-Eye is not a very
good teacher.

“Do what One-Eye showed you. Decide what you want to see. Tell Smoke. But be
damned careful how you do that. You have to be precise. Precision is everything.

Ambiguity is deadly.”

“That’s the way the magic goes in every story I ever heard, Captain. The
ambiguities screw you every time.”

“You think so? You might be right.” I must have touched a nerve. He became
thoughtful suddenly. “Go ahead.”

I was reluctant. “This whole thing is too much like what keeps happening to me
when I fall down the rabbit hole to Dejagore. Could Smoke be doing that to me
somehow?”

Croaker shook his head. “No way. It’s not the same. Go ahead. I insist. You’re
wasting time. Go look at something you always wanted to know about for the
Annals. We’ll be right here to cover you.”

“How about I go look for Otto and Hagop ?”

“I know where they are. They just passed the First Cataract. They’ll be here in
a few days. Try something else.” Hagop and Otto had spent the last three years
travelling back north with a Taglian delegation and letters from Lady to those
she had left behind. Their mission was to learn anything possibly known there
about the Shadowmaster, Longshadow. One of the dead Shadowmasters, Stormshadow,

had turned out to be a refugee from Lady’s old empire, Stormbringer, previously
thought dead. And two other big and nasty sorcerers long believed perished also
have turned up and remain burrs under our saddles, the Howler and Lady’s mad
sister, Soulcatcher. And there was Shapeshifter, too, but we took care of him.

That Otto and Hagop managed to survive so incredible a journey was, to me, a
major miracle. But Otto and Hagop are blessed.

“I expect they’ll have whole new collections of scars to talk about.”

Croaker nodded. He seemed a little grim now. A little anxious. Time to get on
with my training.

An unexplained tragedy of the past caught my imagination. There had been some
grotesque, horrible, senseless killings in a village called Bond that never got
connected with anyone or anything, to my recollection. I was sure they had to be
important somehow and was baffled that, even today, the slaughter remained
unsolved and unresolved.

I gripped Smoke’s hand, blanked my mind, spoke careful instructions in a
whisper. And away I went, out of my body, so suddenly I almost panicked. For a
moment I thought I recalled doing all this before. But I could not remember what
was going to happen.

The Old Man was right. This was not the same as my unwanted plunges into my own
past. In this nightmare I was aware and in control. I was a disembodied vision
racing toward Bond but my mission remained clear in my mind. That was a big
distinction. When I floated over Dejagore I lacked identity and control till I
merged with my self of the past. Then I forgot the future.

Bond is a hamlet on the south bank of the River Main, facing the Vehdna-Bota
ford. For centuries the Main has been the traditional boundary of the Taglian
heartland. The peoples who live below the river share the languages and
religions of Taglios but are considered only tributary cousins by the Taglians
themselves.

The nonagrarian part of Bond’s economy revolved around a small remount station
for the military courier post. A minimal garrison of Shadar cavalrymen managed
the station and kept watch on ford traffic. Bond was the kind of duty soldiers
dream about. There were no officers and very little work. The river was low
enough to ford only about three months a year. But the garrison got paid all
year round.

Smoke’s soul slipped back to that long ago disaster. I stayed with him, carrying
a load of fear despite all of Croaker’s reassurances.

It was very dark that night in that Bond gone by. Horror stalked out of the
night and those nightmares where men are more often prey than predator. A
monster padded through the hamlet, headed toward the army stable. I watched from
a place where I could offer no warning.

One solitary soldier had the watch. He was nodding. Neither he nor the horses
sensed their danger, The latch rose inside the stable door. No animal mind knew
enough to pull a string. The soldier started awake just in time to see a dark
shape with scarlet eyes hurtling toward him.

The monster fed, then padded into the night. It killed again. Screams wakened
the garrison. The soldiers seized their arms. The monster, like an oversize
black panther, loped to the river, swam to the northern shore.

I knew something now. The killer was a shapeshifter, the acolyte of the sorcerer
Shapeshifter, whom we had destroyed the night we captured Dejagore. She got
away, trapped in the animal shape.

Why just this one incident in more than four years?

I wanted to follow the panther, to discover what had become of it, but Smoke
could not be coaxed to go. The comatose wizard had no will or ego I could detect
but, apparently, he did have limits or constraints.

Funny, though. I felt no real emotion until I returned to the reality of the
Palace. Then it hit me in a wave, hard, leaving me breathless. I asked, “Is
whatever I see out there true?”

“We haven’t seen any evidence otherwise.” Croaker’s caution meant he had
reservations. Always suspicious, our Captain. “You look bad. You see something
nasty?”

“Very.” One-Eye was gone. And the Strangler had fouled himself. I wrinkled my
nose. “I can use Smoke to look anywhere?”

“Almost. Some places he can’t or won’t go. And he can’t go back to any time
before he went into the coma. You can catch the Annals up now, eyewitness style,

if you will. But always remember to be careful about pointing him right.”

“Wow.” The implications had begun to sink in. “This is worth more than a veteran
legion.” Now I knew how we had pulled off some really startling coups lately. If
you can perch on your enemy’s shoulder nothing is going to go his way.

“It’s worth a lot more. And that’s why you’re going to keep your mouth shut even
around your dearly beloved.”

“Does the Radisha know?”

“No. You, me and One-Eye. Maybe Goblin if One-Eye just had to share it with
somebody. And that’s the limit. One-Eye found it by accident when he was trying
to pull Smoke out of his coma. Smoke has been to Overlook. He’s walked around
inside. He’s actually met Longshadow. We wanted to ask him some questions. We
decided they could wait. You don’t tell anybody. Understand?”

“There you go being suspicious of my in-laws again.”

“I’d cut your throat.”

“I get the message, boss. Don’t brag it up to my Deceiver drinking buddies.

Shit. This could win us the war.”

“It won’t hurt. As long as it’s secret. I have business with the Radisha.

Practice using him. Don’t worry about working him too hard. You can’t.” He
squeezed my shoulder, left the room with a stride that seemed both determined
and fatalistic. Must be facing another budgetary conference. Depending on
whether you were the Liberator or the Radisha the military either never had
enough or always wanted too much.

So. There was just me and one halfway-dead wizard and one stinky Strangler under
a linen rag. I considered using Smoke to find out what Stinky’s buddies were up
to in Taglios but reasoned that the Captain would not have had him interrogated
if Smoke had been able to provide useful answers. Maybe you not only had to be
precise in your instructions, you had to have some idea what you were seeking.

You could not find your own elbow if you could not guess what directions to give
to get you there.

The point? Old Smoke was a miracle but he had major limitations. And most of
those would exist right inside our own heads. We would become the beneficiaries
or victims of our own imaginations.

What should I go see, then?

I was excited now. I was up for an adventure. So, what the hell? Why not go
straight for the biggie? How about taking a peek at the Shadowmaster himself,

Longshadow, number one boy on the Black Company shit list?

Longshadow could have pranced right out of my fantasies. He was a deadly freak.

He was tall and thin and twitchy, given to flights of rage and subject to sudden
spells resembling malarial shakes. He wore a sort of loose black floor-length
chemise that concealed a deathly gauntness. He ate infrequently and then only
picked. He could have been a famine victim.

Threads of silver and gold and glistening black, embroidered or woven into his
robe, protected him with dozens of static sorceries. At first blush he seemed a
hundred times more paranoid than Croaker. But he did have reason. There was just
a whole world full of folks who wanted to roast his skinny ass and he had no
friends closer than Mogaba and Blade.

The Howler was not a friend. He was an ally.

One of Longshadow’s obsessions was the Black Company. I did not understand. The
kind of enemies we were should not have troubled him at all. We were no
world-killers.

His face, which he kept masked except when he was alone, was skull-like. His
waxy, pallid features were frozen in a permanent expression of fear. There was
no guessing his birth race. His eyes were a washed out grey with splotches of
pink around the edges but I don’t think he was an albino. I exploited Smoke’s
ability, fluttered about through time to find out all the interesting stuff
fast. I did not catch Longshadow completely out of costume once. The man did not
bathe. He did not change clothing. He wore gloves all the time.

The last of the four Shadowmasters, now the Shadowmaster, he was the
unquestioned tyrant of the city Shadowcatch and a demigod within his fortress
Overlook. His slightest whim could set a hundred terrors and ten thousand men
scrambling to appease him. And still he was a prisoner doing life without hope
of parole.

Overlook is, but for one, the southernmost work of Man. I tried pushing past
that fortress. Somewhere in the mists beyond Overlook is Khatovar, toward which
we have marched for years. Just a glimpse would be marvelous.

Smoke refused to go any farther south.

Smoke had been crazy about Khatovar while he was still healthy. Khatovar was the
reason he deserted the Radisha and Prahbrindrah Drah, years ago. His fear of
Khatovar must have impressed itself upon his very flesh and soul.

Longshadow’s fortress was gargantuan. Overlook dwarfed every human construction
I have ever seen, including the Lady’s monstrous tower at Charm. Already two
decades in the building, Overlook’s construction had become the main industry of
Shadowcatch—the city that was called Kiaulune before the coming of the
Shadowmasters. Kiaulune meant Shadow Gate in the local dialect.

The builders worked day and night. They knew no holidays. Longshadow was
determined that his fortress be complete before his enemies overtook him. If he
won that race he believed he would become master of the world. No power of
heaven or hell or earth ought to be able to reach him inside a finished
Overlook. Not even the darkness that brushed him every night with its terror.

Overlook’s outer walls reared a hundred or more feet high. Where are you going
to find a ladder that tall?

Brass and silver and gold characters shone on the steel plates that sheathed the
rude stone of the wall face. Battalions of workmen did nothing but keep those
runes polished and gleaming.

I could not read them but I knew they anchored massive defensive spells.

Longshadow’s spellwork overlaid everything that was part of Overlook, layer upon
layer. If he was allowed enough time every exterior surface of the fortress
would be hidden beneath and behind impenetrable tangles of sorceries.

Once the sun went down Overlook became a conflagration of light. Bright crystal
chambers topped every tower, making the place seem a forest of lighthouses. The
crystal domes were places whence Longshadow could observe safe from his terrors.

The overpowering lights left no places for shadows to hide.

He feared that which he mastered far more than anything else in the world. Even
the Black Company, for him, was a buzzing mosquito of a nuisance.

Even unfinished Overlook daunted me thoroughly. What sort of hubris-driven
madmen were we to chart a course that must run through and beyond that
stronghold?

But Longshadow had enemies not as easily daunted as I. For some of those no
earthly fortress, nor even time itself, meant much. They would devour him now or
later, the moment his guard fell.

He had chosen to play for the ultimate stakes in a game where the risks were as
grim as the potential winnings were great. It was too late to get out. He would
be victor or victim.

Longshadow lived inside the crystal chamber that topped Overlook’s tallest
central tower. He slept seldom, for fear of the night. He spent hours and hours
just staring southward at a plain of glittering stone.

A screech ripped the air over the grim city. The people of Shadowcatch ignored
it. If they thought about their master’s strange ally at all it was, probably,

to hope that a fate would catch up and rob Longshadow of this potent weapon. The
inhabitants of Kiaulune were a broken people, spiritless, without hope, worse
even than the Jaicuri at their lowest ebb during the siege of Dejagore.

Almost all of them were too young to recall a time when there was not a
Shadowmaster there exercising more power over their lives than had their lost
gods.

Even Longshadow could not extirpate rumor. Even at the heart of his empire some
people had to travel and travelers always carry tales. Some stories are even
true. The people of Shadowcatch knew that a doom from the north was coming.

The name of the Black Company lay at the heart of every rumor. That made no one
happy. Longshadow was a very devil but many of his people feared his fall would
be but the precursor to a far bleaker season.

Man, woman and child, the people of Shadowcatch were privy to the one true
secret of the universe: there is always a darker shadow lurking beyond the one
whose face you can see.

Longshadow reached out and inflicted pain and fear because he himself was the
victim of a thousand terrors.

It was ugly out there. So ugly I wanted to go back somewhere where it was warm
and there was someone to hold me and tell me that the dark was not always the
lurking place of terror. I wanted my Sarie, my light in the night that rules the
world. “Smoke, take me home.”