Bleak Seasons (17 page)

He could not control the occasional scream. He was the Howler, one of the
world’s oldest and most wicked sorcerers. The carpet was his creation. The gaunt
man hated him.

The gaunt man hated everybody. He had little love for himself. He mastered his
hatreds for short periods only, entirely through the implacable exercise of
will. He had a powerful will as long as he was not threatened physically. The
ragball gurgled as it stifled a scream. Howler’s nearest companion was a short,

skinny, filthy little man in a ragged loincloth and grubby turban. He was
frightened. His name was Narayan Singh, living saint of the Deceiver cult, alive
only because of Howler’s intercession.

Longshadow considered Singh less than a flop of buffalo dung. Nevertheless, he
had potential as a tool. The reach of his cult was long and lethal.

Singh’s opinion of his own new ally was of no supreme elevation, either.

Beyond Singh was a child, a pretty little thing, though filthier than the
jamadar. She had huge brown eyes. Eyes like the windows of hell. Eyes that knew
all evil of old and would revel in it now and forever more.

Those eyes troubled even Longshadow.

They were whirlpools of darkness that pulled, pulled, twisted, hypnotized . . .

A sudden, sharp pain in my left knee sent wires of agony searing through my
flesh. I groaned. I shook my head. The stink of an alleyway penetrated my
awareness. I seemed blind. But my eyes, apparently, were adapted to brilliant
sunlight. Hands gripped my left arm, pulling, lifting. My vision began to
return.

I looked up.

A gaunt face looked back, startling me. I retained a legacy of fear from my
vision, though what that had been was fading already. I tried to hang on but the
pain in my knee and Thai Dei talking shattered my concentration.

“I’m all right,” I said. “Just hurt my knee.” I tried to stand. When I took a
step the knee almost folded. “I’ll manage, damn it!” I pushed his hands away.

The vision was gone except for a memory that it had happened.

Had it been the same with my other blackouts? Were there visions that flew away
so thoroughly that I could not recall having had them? Did they have any
connection with reality? Vaguely, I recalled seeing lots of familiar faces.

I would discuss it with Goblin and One-Eye. They ought to know what to make of
it. They picked up a little loose change interpreting dreams.

Thai Dei started gabbling the moment we entered the Speaker’s presence. Ky Dam
considered me speculatively, his expression deepening oddly as Thai Dei
chattered.

The old man appeared to be alone when we walked in but as Thai Dei talked and Ky
Dam became unusually attentive other Nyueng Bao came out of the shadows to study
me. Hong Tray and Ky Gota were the first. The old woman settled by her husband.

Ky Dam said, “I hope you do not mind. Sometimes she is able to part the veil of
time.”

Gota said nothing. I suspected that that was unusual.

The beautiful woman appeared. She got right onto the tea service business. Tea
is a big thing with the Nyueng Bao. Did she serve any other function in the
family?

The guy in the shadows wasn’t moaning and groaning today. Had he left us?

“Not yet,” the Speaker said, reading my glance. “But soon.” Again, he sensed a
question. “We sustain our share of the marriage vow even though he betrayed his.

We will stand before the Judges of Time without stain on our karma.”

I had a notion what he meant only because I was studying the Jaicuri scriptures.

“You are a good people.”

Ky Dam was amused. “Some might argue. We do strive to be an honorable folk.”

“I understand. We so strive in the Black Company.”

“Excellent.”

“I came because Thai Dei said you want to talk.”

“I did.”

I waited. My gaze kept straying to the woman making tea.

“Standardbearer.”

I started . . . “No,” I said softly, unaware that I was speaking aloud. I had
not fallen into one of those black fugues. I’d just become distracted
momentarily. Couldn’t blame a man for that. Not with a woman like that to
distract him.

I said, “Thank you, Speaker. For not labelling me with one of those unappealing
names you tend to employ.”

I could not resist a small smile that told him I knew he wanted something badly
enough to keep me in a generous mood.

He nodded in turn, acknowledging my awareness.

Damn. I was turning into an old man myself. Maybe we could sit here grinning and
grunting and nodding and arrange the whole future of the world. “Thank you,” I
said when the pretty woman presented my tea.

That surprised her. She looked me in the eye for a moment, startling me. Her
eyes were green. She neither smiled nor acknowledged me in any other way.

“Remarkable,” I said, to nobody in particular. “Green eyes.” Then I controlled
myself and waited while the Speaker sipped some tea before he started circling
in on his problem.

He told me, “Green eyes are rare and greatly admired among Nyueng Bao.” He took
a ritual sip. “Hong Tray may part the veil occasionally but her visions are not
always true, or not always fixed. Or they may be visions that have not yet come
to pass. She does not see recognizable people so it is hard to determine when
the visions might be taking place.”

“Uhm?” The woman in question sat with eyes downcast, slowly turning a jade
bracelet that hung loose upon her left wrist. Her eyes were green, too.

“She foresaw the flood. We believed that would prove to be a false vision
because we could imagine no way so much water could be brought to Jaicur.”

“But we’re in the middle of a lake now. The world’s widest moat. The
Shadowlanders won’t bother us anymore.”

It took the old man a minute to understand that I was not serious. “Oh.” He
chuckled. Hong Tray looked up and smiled. She had gotten the joke first. “I see.

Yes. But it will serve the Shadowmaster, not us. Any attempt to leave will
require rafts or boats, easily spotted, which cannot move enough men to force a
breakthrough.”

The old boy was a general, too.

“You got it.” Shadowspinner had found an ingenious solution to his manpower
problem. Now he could challenge Lady confident that we would not jump on his
back.

“The reason I wished to confer is that in her vision Hong Tray saw the water
rise to within ten feet of the battlements.”

“That would make seventy feet of water.” I glanced at the old woman. She seemed
to be studying me in a way that had nothing to do with curiosity. “That’s a
shitload.”

“There is another problem.”

“Which is?”

“We tried to calculate how many structures will rise above the waterline.”

“Oh-oh. I see.” I saw. Dejagore enjoyed a vertically oriented architecture, as
walled cities do, but not many buildings overtopped the wall. And most surviving
structures, even many that were partially burned, were occupied by someone.

There would not be much housing available if the city flooded.

Luckily for us Old Crew our quarter boasted a lot of tall tenements.

“Oh-oh indeed. In this area there are enough such structures to house our few
pilgrims. But elsewhere it will go hard for the Jaicuri when the black men and
their soldiers finally understand how much space they will need.”

“No doubt.” I thought a moment. Hell. People could camp out on the wall. Them
getting in the way would not be a problem militarily.

Still, whatever we did, life would become pure hell if the water rose that high.

“Presents a dilemma, doesn’t it?”

“Possibly a larger dilemma than you suspect.”

“How so?”

“If preparations are not initiated immediately much that might prove useful will
be lost. But if you tell Mogaba this then it is likely the strong will rob the
weak and leave them to suffer. There is now no need to exercise restraint
because of potential attack.”

“I see.” Actually, I had foreseen the scramble for stores and high ground. But I
did overlook the fact that Shadowspinner extricating himself also freed Mogaba
to manage internal frictions in a manner more to his liking. “You have something
in mind?”

“I wish to examine the possibility of a temporary alliance. Until Jaicur is
relieved.”

“Has Hong Tray foreseen that as well?”

“No.”

I was surprised by the black despair that collapsed upon me.

“She has seen nothing one way or the other.”

I brightened. A very little.

“I am reluctant to undertake such an obligation,” Ky Dam confessed. “It was not
my idea. It was Sahra’s.” He indicated the beautiful tea server. “But she trusts
you for no reason she will explain and, moreover, her arguments make sense.”

Hong Tray wore a bemused expression. There was, in the way she looked at me, a
hint that she foresaw much that she did not share.

I shivered.

Ky Dam continued, “We have no hope if we assume a traditional Nyueng Bao stance
and depend upon ourselves alone. You have little hope if your Mogaba does not
feel he needs your arms anymore.”

I stared at the beautiful one, though that was bad manners. She blushed. The
attraction was so powerful, suddenly, that I gasped. I felt as though I had
known her several lifetimes already.

What the . . . ? This did not happen to me. Not anymore, anyway. I was no
sixteen-year-old . . . Hell, I never felt like this when I was sixteen.

My soul was trying to tell me I knew this woman as well as a man ever knew any
woman when, in truth, I had only just heard her name spoken for the first time.

There was something else over there, with her. That was more than one lovely
daydream. I knew another one just like her, somewhere else . . .

The darkness came.

It was sudden and absolute and I had no time to decide if I was running away or
being pulled down.

There was a long, long time in the dreamless dark. A time without an I. A time
neither warm nor cold, a time with no happiness or fear or pain in a place no
tortured soul would want to leave. But a pin pricked a hole in the envelope. The
tiniest thread of light found its way in and fell upon an imaginary eye.

Movement.

A rush toward a point, which swelled and became a passageway into a world of
time and matter and pain.

I knew who I was. I staggered under the crushing weight of a host of congruent
memories surfacing all at once.

A Voice spoke to me but I could not comprehend its words. I floated like
gossamer through golden caverns where old men sat beside the way, frozen in
time, immortal but unable to move an eyelid. Madmen, they, some were covered
with fairy webs of ice as though a thousand winter spiders had spun threads of
frozen water. Above, an enchanted forest of icicles grew downward from the
cavern ceiling.

Because I had memories of memories within memories I recalled having read words
very much like those somewhere in something I did not believe had yet been
written.

“Come!”

The power of the call was like the punch of a thunderbolt.

Darkness came. I tumbled away, ceased being I. Nevertheless, before I faded from
that cavern I sensed a startled presence coming alert and striving to direct its
attention my way.

Somehow I had gone somewhere where no mortal was welcome to travel and still
come away.

Memory fled. But pain went along on the journey.

Light in the darkness, again. I began to be I, though without a name. I shied
from the light. The light was not a pleasant place. The pain would be waiting.

But something farther beneath my surface turned to the light like a drowning man
fighting toward lifesaving air.

I became aware that I was flesh. I felt my muscles, tightened till some were
cramped. My throat was painfully dry. I tried to talk. “Speaker . . . ” I
rasped.

Someone stirred but no one replied. I was slumped in a chair.

The Nyueng Bao had no furniture in their place, which was little more than an
animal den. Had they returned me to my own people?

I forced an eye open.

What the hell? What was this place? A dungeon? A torture chamber? Had Mogaba
snatched me? There was a skinny little Taglian over there, tied into a chair
just like mine, and another man was strapped onto a table.

That was Smoke, the Taglian royal wizard! I levered myself up. That hurt. A lot.

The prisoner in the chair watched me warily. “Where am I?” I asked.

His wariness redoubled. His lips pursed. He said nothing. I looked around. I was
in a dusty, almost barren chamber but the nature of the stone answered my
question. I was in Taglios. This was the Royal Palace. There is no stone like
this stone anywhere else.

How?

Ever seen paint run down a wall? That is what happened to reality. Right in
front of my eyes it ran and dribbled and streaked. The man in the chair
squeaked. He shook. I have no idea what he thought he saw. But reality drifted
away and I was in a grey place, confused, filled with memories of things never
experienced or seen. Then the confusion began to sort itself out and the grey
washed away and in a short time I was in a room somewhere in the Palace at Trogo
Taglios. Smoke lay on his table breathing slowly and shallowly as always. The
Deceiver was in his seat. He earned a narrow-eyed glare because of the way he
was sweating. What was he up to now?

His eyes bugged. What did he see when he looked at me? I rose, aware that I had
to be recovering from one of my spells. But there was no one here who could have
brought me back. Didn’t it take Croaker or One-Eye to drag me up out of the
depths of darkness?

Hints of memory stirred in the deeps of my mind. I snatched at them, tried
desperately to hang on. Something in a cavern. A song of shadow. Waking up once
in a past long ago but still only a moment earlier in this time.

I was weak. This business was debilitating. And thirst was becoming a rage
within me.