She Is the Darkness Read online

  With a reluctance I did not entirely fathom, so powerful was it, I rode Smoke to my old quarters. They were unoccupied still. Everything lay where I had left it, gathering dust.

  I had Smoke move backward, very gingerly as we approached the time when the evil had occurred. For some reason I felt it was very important that I not encounter my previous self. That if I did so I would get caught back there living the whole thing over again just as I had a number of times with my plunges into the darkness of Dejagore.

  Maybe I could warn Sarie. That woman in the swamp had been aware of me for an instant. Maybe someone who knew me as well as Sahra did, and me wanting to change things as much as I did, could force a warning across the barrier of time.

  It seemed my trips back to Dejagore may have changed a few things, though there was no way to be sure.

  There. Guards and whatnot rushed all over the place. Some chased Stranglers, some headed for my apartment. This would be after I had arrived myself. So I needed to jump maybe another half hour.

  I did so, going down to the entrance the Deceivers had used to penetrate the Palace. I had seen these murders before because I had been curious how men so alert could be taken by surprise. The first couple of Deceivers came disguised as temple prostitutes fulfilling their obligations to their goddess. It had not occurred to the guards to turn the ladies down. That would have been sacrilegious.

  This was before I became involved. I jumped upstairs, to the apartment, where my mother-in-law and Sarie were doing housework, concluding the day. Uncle Doj and To Tan were asleep already. Thai Dei was not, probably because he was waiting for me to return from a job where he had not been welcome. He had his eyes closed and seemed to be trying to shut out his mother’s carping two rooms away.

  How Sarie managed I do not know. Particularly when I was the object of this diatribe.

  Mother Gota was more fierce than usual. She wanted to know when Sahra was going to abandon this headstrong idiocy — a thousand curses upon the head of Hong Tray — and get herself back to the swamps where she belonged. There was still a chance she could marry, though certainly not well, seeing as she was past her best years and she had allowed herself to be defiled by a foreigner.

  Sarie took it with such calm I knew she was accustomed to it and did not let her emotions be touched. She went about her business as though her mother was not speaking at all. Soon they finished what they were about. Sahra went to our room without so much as a “Good night,” which only irritated her mother more.

  I always knew Mother Gota did not approve of me and suspected she talked behind my back but I never guessed it had gotten that virulent. The sound of it told me the only reason Mother Gota had come to Taglios was to get her daughter back home.

  I was aware that she had broken some tribal taboos in coming to me but I had misjudged the true depth of feeling of the Nyueng Bao toward outsiders.

  The apartment became very quiet. To Tan and Uncle Doj were snoring. Sarie fell asleep almost instantly. Mother Gota was too busy complaining to turn in immediately.

  She did not need an audience, apparently.

  I was there hovering when the apartment door opened and the first Strangler slipped inside. He was a black rumel man, an assassin who had killed many times. One after another, a whole troop followed him in. They believed they were going to attack Croaker, the Liberator. The last reliable intelligence they had from inside the Palace had Croaker living in this apartment. He had turned it over to me little more than a week before.

  The results were unfortunate for everyone but the Old Man.

  Moments after they entered they were aware that there were several people in the apartment. They whispered too softly to be heard. Fingers pointed. They split into four teams, three of three men each while another half dozen stayed in the main room, just inside the hall door.

  To Tan, Thai Dei and Uncle Doj were nearest that room. To Tan was nearest of all. Then Uncle Doj. Then Thai Dei.

  To Tan never had a chance. He never woke up. But Thai Dei was not asleep yet and Uncle Doj must have had a guardian angel. He popped up as the Strangler team hit him. The arm-holders, whose task it was to keep the victim from defending himself while the senior Strangler got his rumel around his neck and finished him, were not strong enough for their task. He threw them off, then dropped the master Strangler with a violent smash from an elbow. Before the other two could get back at him he reached Ash Wand.

  Thai Dei came to his feet as the door to his room swung inward. The arm-holders hit him as he headed for his swords, flinging him violently across the room but not before he got hold of his shortsword.

  Thai Dei shouted warnings as he lashed out.

  The Stranglers waiting in the main room stormed back to help their brothers. By the time they arrived Mother Gota was up and flailing around with a sword and Sahra, who had no weapon whatsoever and no way out of our room except through the melee, was trying to find some way to block the entrance.

  I studied the next two minutes over and over. During them a dozen people died. All of them Deceivers. Thai Dei managed to get his arm broken. Uncle Doj chased survivors into the hall.

  It did not happen the way I had been told but it was close enough to that point. But afterward no bad guys got in behind Doj and murdered Sahra. Sahra was in bad shape but she was alive. When Doj returned from the chase Mother Gota suggested she be given something to calm her down. Uncle Doj agreed. In minutes Sahra was out, in the bed where I would see her shortly.

  I had to go away for a while. I would be arriving any minute. I came back when I knew I would be out cold, having drunk something offered me by Uncle Doj while I lay down with my beloved.

  I watched them take Sarie and To Tan away. Uncle Doj, Thai Dei and various relatives, as Mother Gota would tell me after I awakened, carrying their bodies off for proper funerals at home.

  I managed a fair amount of anger out there despite the emotion deadening environment.

  I followed the party off to Nyueng Bao land. There were other bodies, too. The Strangler raid had taken the lives of several Nyueng Bao bodyguards.

  Surprise, surprise. Sarie came back to life before the party ever cleared the city. She acted just about the same as I had on wakening and finding her gone. “What’s happening?” she demanded. “Why are we here?” She directed her questions to Uncle Doj but Doj did not respond except to make a gesture toward Thai Dei, who was distracted by the pain of his broken arm.

  Thai Dei mumbled, “We are taking you home, Sarie. There is no longer any reason for you to remain in this evil city.”

  “What? You can’t do this. Take me back to Murgen.”

  Thai Dei stared down at the cobblestones. “Murgen is dead, Sarie. The tooga killed him.”

  “No!”

  “I’m sorry, Sahra,” Uncle Doj said. “Many tooga paid with their lives but it was a price they were willing to pay. Many of our people died, too, and where they failed or they were not present many of the others perished as well.” The word he used as “others” was Nyueng Bao for anyone who was not Nyueng Bao.

  “He can’t be dead,” Sarie cried. She for sure had the wail of grief down pat. “He can’t die without seeing his child!”

  Uncle Doj stopped dead in his tracks, as numb as a poleaxed steer. Thai Dei stared at his sister and began making a whimpering sound. Since I was getting used to Nyueng Bao ways I assumed he was distraught because it would be impossible for him to marry off a sister who carried the child of an outsider.

  Uncle Doj muttered, “I am beginning to believe your mother is wiser than we thought, Thai Dei. She blamed all this on Hong Tray. Now it begins to look like your grandmother was entirely too clever. Or we just misunderstood. Her prophecy may have included Murgen only indirectly. It might be about the child Sahra is carrying.”

  I understood that the woman in the swamp, twice seen already, must be Sarie herself.

  “There will be no place for Sahra, then,” Thai Dei said, pain obvious. “If she bears an
outsider’s bastard...”

  “Take me back,” Sahra said. “If you won’t let me be I will be Nyueng Bao no longer. I will go to my husband’s people. There will be a place for me with the Black Company.”

  This was social heresy of an order so high that both Thai Dei and Uncle Doj were stricken speechless.

  I do not believe I would have been speechless had I been able to get at those two right then. I lifted away. I had heard enough to know where I stood, where Sarie stood and where my faithful companion Thai Dei stood. The Old Man might not be right about the Nyueng Bao but he was for sure not wrong.

  I skipped forward in time rapidly, tracking Sarie. Thai Dei and Uncle Doj took her to that temple where I had spotted her before. They left her in the hands of a great uncle who was a priest. Sahra was, in essence now, an orphan, though she was a grown woman twice married. The temple was where Nyueng Bao without family went. The temple became home. The priests and nuns became family. In return, the orphan was expected to dedicate his or her life to good works and whatever deities the Nyueng Bao worshipped.

  Nobody ever set me straight on that, though the temple where they stashed Sahra boasted several idols that looked a lot like various Gunni gods.

  Shadar have only one god of sufficient magnitude to warrant an idol and Vehdna doctrine proscribes any graven images at all.

  I focused in on Sarie as she was today. I followed her about her duties for an hour. She was helping keep the temple clean, carrying water, helping with cooking, pretty much exactly what she would have done had she been living in one of the hamlets with a Nyueng Bao husband. But the people of the temple shunned her.

  No one spoke to her except a priest to whom she was related. Nothing needed to be said. She had defiled herself. Her only visitor was an elderly gentleman named Banh Do Trang, a commercial factor whose friendship Sahra had won during the siege of Dejagore. Banh had been the interlocutor between us the last time Sahra’s family had tried to keep us apart. He had made it possible for Sahra to slip away and reach me before she could be stopped.

  Banh understood. Banh had loved a Gunni woman when he was young. He spent most of his time trading in the outside world. He did not think everything “other” was purely evil.

  Banh was good people.

  I searched hard and picked my moment carefully, when Sarie was at her afternoon prayer. I brought my point of view down in front of her, right at eye level. I exercised all my will. “Sarie. I am here. I love you. They lied to you. I am not dead.”

  Sarie made a little sound like a puppy whimpering. For an instant she seemed to stare right into my eyes. She seemed to see me. Then she bounced up and fled the room, terrified.

  41

  One-Eye just kept slapping me till I came out of it. “Goddamn, you little shit, quit it!” My face was sore. How long had he been pounding me? “I’m here! What the fuck’s your problem?”

  “You’re doing a lot of yelling, Kid. And if you was talking any language your in-laws could understand you’d be up shit creek. Come on. Get it under control.”

  I got it under control. You have to learn to manage emotion if you are going to survive in our racket. But my heart continued to pound and my mind to race. I shook like I had a bad ague. One-Eye offered me a large cup of water. I drained it.

  He said, “It’s partly my fault. I wandered off. I didn’t think you’d stay out that long. Thought you’d figure it out and get your ass back to see what we plan to do about it.”

  I croaked, “What you plan to do about it?”

  “Don’t got no plans. I think the Old Man was just gonna let it slide and keep his eyes open till he decided you needed to know.”

  “He wasn’t going to tell me?”

  One-Eye shrugged. Which meant probably not.

  Croaker was no more enthralled by my marriage than were Sahra’s people.

  The bastard.

  “I need to see him.”

  “He’ll want to see you. When you’ve got yourself under control.”

  I grunted.

  “You let me know when you can get by without a lot of screaming and carrying on.”

  “I can do that right now, you little shit! What did you guys mean, not telling me?”

  “You let me know when you can get by without a lot of screaming and carrying on.”

  “You little shit.” I was running out of venom. I had been out there a long time. I needed to eat. I had a feeling I would not be allowed a snack till after my interview with Croaker.

  “You ready to talk?” Croaker asked. “Done with screaming and carrying on?”

  “You guys spend the whole time I was ghostwalking rehearsing your act?”

  “So what are your in-laws up to, Murgen?”

  “I don’t have the faintest fucking idea. But I’m thinking maybe I want to put Uncle Doj’s feet in the fire and ask.”

  Croaker was drinking tea. Taglians are big tea drinkers. The Shadowlanders of these parts were bigger tea people. He took a sip. “You want some?”

  “Yeah.” I needed liquids.

  “Think about this. We put him to the question on account of you suddenly know they fucked you over. You think anybody, Nyueng Bao or otherwise, might wonder how you suddenly knew when you’re only like eight hundred miles from the evidence?”

  “I don’t care —”

  “Exactly. You’re not thinking about anything but you. But anything you do is going to touch every member of the Company. It might touch every man who came over those mountains with us. It might change the course of this war.”

  I wanted to belittle his claims because I was hurting bad and very much wanted to do some hurting of my own. I could not. Time enough had passed for reason to begin rearing its reasonable head. I bit down on the words that rose in my throat. I drank my tea. I thought. I said, “You’re right. So what do we do?”

  Croaker poured me some more tea. “I don’t think we do anything. I think we go right on the way we have been. I think we do the trap-door spider thing. I think only three guys know what an incredible tool we’ve got and nobody else needs to know.”

  I grunted. I drank some tea. I said, “She thinks I’m dead. She’s living her whole life based on that lie.”

  Croaker fiddled with his fire. He looked into his bag of liberated tea. One-Eye finally caught on. “Oh. Yeah. I figured you was familiar with that book of the Annals that was written by the Captain’s woman.” He showed me a sneer with a couple of teeth missing.

  “Right. You just keep on being reasonable. See if I care. Shithead.”

  “I got a great idea, Kid. Come on back to the wagon with me. Something I found the other day you might be interested in.”

  Croaker said, “You guys don’t wander too far. We’re getting enough people in here now, it’s time to start harassing Longshadow.”

  “Of course,” One-Eye said. He ducked out the doorflap grumbling, “Just can’t leave shit alone.” I ducked out behind him. He did not stop. “We could sit out here for the next hundred years and not hurt nobody. Set up our own damned kingdom. Starve the son of a bitch out. But no! We got to do some kind of...” One-Eye glanced back. We were out of earshot of the Old Man. “Enough of that shit. You dickhead. You never told me about Goblin.”

  “What’s to tell?”

  “You knew where he was all along, didn’t you? He wasn’t dead or nothing. You got around the commands Croaker laid on Smoke and found the worthless little shit.”

  I did not say anything. Goblin was still out there on his own somewhere, presumably continuing his mission. Presumably still needing secrecy.

  “Ha! I was right. You never could lie for shit. Where is he, Kid? I got a right to know.”

  I started to back away. It might be time to take my act elsewhere. “You’re wrong. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know if he’s even still alive.” Which was true.

  “What you mean, you don’t know?”

  “I got a speech impediment? You’ve had Smoke all month, remember? You. T
he short shit who was loafing around up there in those hills while I was down here dodging shadows and Shadowlander ambushes.”

  “Now I know you’re shitting me. There ain’t been one shadow seen since the night we broke them at... Bullshit! You’re feeding me bullshit.”

  “Yeah. I guess I forgot the first rule.”

  “Huh? What’s that?”

  “Never confuse you with facts.”

  “You smartass. I hung on in this world two hundred years so I could put up with this shit.” He jumped up on the tongue of his wagon and leaned inside. I began to put a little more distance between us. He dug around in some rags behind his driver’s seat. He glanced over his shoulder, saw me moving. “You just hang on right there, you peckerhead.”

  He jumped down, started waving his arms around while he went to squeaking and squealing in one of those languages wizards use so the rest of us will think there is something terribly strange and mystical about what they do, kind of like lawyers. One-Eye sometimes flew off into unprovoked fits of lawyer-ism, too.

  Blue sparks began to crackle between the tips of his fingers. His lips stretched into an evil grin. I would not give him Goblin so I would have to take Goblin’s place.

  Damn, I wished Goblin would come back.

  “What’s this?”

  I whirled. The Captain had followed us. One-Eye gulped air. I scooted a few fast steps, which brought the Old Man into the field of fire, too.

  One-Eye shoved his hands into his pockets to hide them.

  “Ouch!” he said with sudden, quiet fervor. The sparks had not stopped.

  Croaker asked me, “He been drinking again?”

  “I don’t know when. Unless it was before he got me up. But he’s acting like it.”