Glen Cook

 

The Third Chronicle of the Black Company

 

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Chapter One:
THE PLAIN OF FEAR

 

The still desert air had a lenselike quality. The riders seemed frozen in time, moving without drawing closer. We took turns-counting. I could not get the same number twice running.

A breath of a breeze whined in the coral, stirred the leaves of Old Father Tree. They tinkled off one another with the song of wind chimes. To the north, the glimmer of change lightning limned the horizon like the far clash of warring gods.

A foot crunched sand. I turned. Silent gawked at a talking menhir. It had appeared in the past few seconds, startling him. Sneaky rocks. Like to play games.

"There are strangers on the Plain," it said.

I jumped. It chuckled. Menhirs have the most malevolent laughs this side of fairy stories. Snarling, I ducked into its shadow. "Hot out here already." And: "That's One-Eye and Goblin, back from Tanner."

It was right and I was wrong. I was too narrowly focused. The patrol had been away a month longer than planned. We were worried. Lately the Lady's troops have been more active along the bounds of the Plain of Fear.

Another chuckle from the block of stone.

It towered over me, thirteen feet tall. A middle-sized one. Those over fifteen feet-seldom move.

The riders were closer, yet seemed no nearer. Blame nerves. Times are desperate for the Black Company. We cannot afford casualties. Any man lost would be a friend of many years. I counted again. Seemed right this time. But there was a riderless mount… I shivered despite the heat.

They were on the downtrail leading to a creek three hundred yards from where we watched, concealed within a great reef. The walking trees beside the ford stirred, though the breeze had failed.

The riders urged their mounts to hurry. The animals were tired. They were reluctant, though they knew they were almost home. Into the creek. Water splashing. I grinned, pounded Silent's back. They were all there. Every man, and another.

Silent shed his customary cool, returned a smile. Elmo slipped out of the coral and went to meet our brethren. Otto, Silent, and I hurried after him.

Behind us, the morning sun was a great seething ball of blood.

Men piled off horses, grinning. But they looked bad. Goblin and One-Eye worst of all. But they had come back to territory where their wizards' powers were useless. This near Darling they are no greater than the rest of us.

I glanced back. Darling had come to the head of the tunnel, stood like a phantom in its shadow, all in white.

Men hugged men; then old habit took charge. Everybody pretended it was just another day. "Rough out there?" I asked One-Eye. I considered the man accompanying them. He was not familiar.

"Yes." The dried-up little black man was more diminished than first I had thought.

"You all right?"

"Took an arrow." He rubbed his side. "Flesh wound."

From behind One-Eye, Goblin squeaked, "They almost got us. Been chasing us a month. We couldn't shake them."

"Let's get you down in the Hole," I told One-Eye.

"Not infected. I cleared it."

"I still want a look." He has been my assistant since I enlisted as Company physician. His judgment is sound. Yet health is my responsibility, ultimately.

"They were waiting for us, Croaker." Darling was gone from the mouth of the tunnel, back to the stomach of our subterranean fastness. The sun remained bloody in the east, legacy of the change storm's passing. Something big drifted across its face. Windwhale?

"Ambush?" I glanced back at the patrol.

"Not us specifically. For trouble. They were on the ball." The patrol had had a double mission: to contact our sympathizers in Tanner to find out if the Lady's people were coming alive after a long hiatus, and to raid the garrison there in order to prove we could hurt an empire that bestrides half a world. As we passed it the menhir said, "There are strangers on the Plain, Croaker."

Why do these things happen to me? The big stones talk to me more than to anyone else.

Twice a charm? I paid attention. For a menhir to repeat itself meant it considered its message critical. "The men hunting you?" I asked One-Eye. He shrugged. "They wouldn't give up." "What's happening out there?" Hiding on the Plain, I might as well be buried alive.

One-Eye's face remained unreadable. "Corder will tell it." "Corder? That the guy you brought in?" I knew the name though not the man. One of our best informants. "Yeah."

"No good news, eh?" "No."

We slipped into the tunnel which leads down to our warren, our stinking, moldering, damp, tight little rabbit-hole fortress. It is disgusting, but it is the heart and soul of the New White Rose Rebellion. The New Hope, as it is whispered among the captive nations. The Joke Hope to those of us who live here. It is as bad as any rat-infested dungeon-though a man can leave. If he does not mind a venture into a world where all the might of an empire is turned upon him.

Chapter Two:
THE PLAIN OF FEAR

 

Corder was our eyes and ears in Tanner. He had contacts everywhere. His work against the Lady goes back decades. He is one of the few who escaped her wrath at Charm, where she obliterated the Rebel of old. In great part, the Company was responsible. In those days we were her strong right arm. We piloted her enemies into the trap.

A quarter million men died at Charm. Never was there a battle so vast or grim, nor of outcome so definitive. Even the Dominator's bloody failure in the Old Forest consumed but half as many lives.

Fate compelled us to switch sides-once there was no one left to help us in our fight.

One-Eye's wound was as clean as he claimed. I cut him loose, ambled off to my quarters. Word was, Darling wanted the patrol rested before she accepted its report. I shivered with premonition, afraid to hear their tidings.

An old, tired man. That is what I am. What became of the old fire, drive, ambition? There were dreams once upon a time, dreams now all but forgotten. On sad days I dust them off and fondle them nostalgically, with a patronizing wonder at the naivete of the youth who dreamed them.

Old infests my quarters. My great project. Eighty pounds of ancient documents, captured from the general Whisper when we served the Lady and she the Rebel. They are supposed to contain the key to breaking the Lady and the Taken. I have had them six years. And in six years I have found nothing. So much failure. Depressing. Nowadays, more often than not I merely shuffle them, then turn to these Annals.

Since our escape from Juniper they have been little more than a personal journal. The remnant of the Company generates little excitement. What outside news we get is so slim and unreliable I seldom bother recording it. Moreover, since her victory over her husband in Juniper, the Lady seems to be in stasis even more than we, running on inertia.

Appearances deceive, of course. And the Lady's essence is illusion.

"Croaker."

I looked up from a page of Old TelleKurre already studied a hundred times. Goblin stood in the doorway. He looked like an old toad. "Yeah?"

"Something happening up top. Grab a sword."

I grabbed my bow and a leather cuirass. I am too ancient for hand-to-hand. I'd rather stand off and plink if I have to fight at all. I considered the bow as I followed Goblin. It had been given me by the Lady herself, during the battle at Charm. Oh, the memories. With it I helped slay Soulcatcher, the Taken who brought the Company into the Lady's service. Those days now seemed almost prehistoric.

We galloped into sunlight. Others came out with us, dispersed amidst cactus and coral. The rider coming down the trail-the only path in here-would not see us.

He rode alone, on a moth-eaten mule. He was not armed. "All this for an old man on a mule?" I asked. Men scooted through coral and between cacti, making one hell of a racket. The old-timer had to know we were there. "We'd better work on getting out here more quietly."

"Yeah."

Startled, I whirled. Elmo was behind me, one hand shading his eyes. He looked as old and tired as I felt. Each day something reminds me that none of us are young anymore. Hell, none of us were young when we came north, over the Sea of Torments. "We need new blood, Elmo." He sneered.

Yes. We will be a lot older before this is done. If we last. For we are buying time. Decades, hopefully. The rider crossed the creek, stopped. He raised his hands.

Men materialized, weapons held negligently. One old man alone, at the heart of Darling's null, presented no danger.

Elmo, Goblin, and I strolled down. As we went I asked Goblin, "You and One-Eye have fun while you were gone?" They have been feuding for ages. But here, where Darling's presence forbids it, they cannot play sorcerous tricks.

Goblin grinned. When he grins, his mouth spreads from ear to ear. "I loosened him up."

We reached the rider. "Tell me later." Goblin giggled, a squeaking noise like water bubbling in a teakettle. "Yeah."

"Who are you?" Elmo asked the mule rider. "Tokens."

That was not a name. It was a password for a courier from the far west. We had not heard it for a long time. Western messengers had to reach the Plain through the Lady's most tamed provinces.

"Yeah?" Elmo said. "How about that? Want to step down?" The old man eased off his mount, presented his bonafides. Elmo found them acceptable. Then he announced, "I've got twenty pounds of stuff here." He tapped a case behind his saddle. "Every damn town added to the load." "Make the whole trip yourself?" I asked. "Every foot from Oar." "Oar? That's…"

More than a thousand miles. I hadn't known we had anyone up there. But there, is a lot I do not know about the organization Darling has assembled. I spend my time trying to get those damned papers to tell me something that may not be there.

The old man looked at me as though subjecting my soul to an accounting. "You the physician? Croaker?"

"Yeah. So?"

"Got something for you. Personal." He opened his courier case. For a moment everyone was alert. You never know. But he brought out an oilskin packet wrapped to protect something against the end of the world. '"Rains all the time up there," he explained. He gave me the packet.

I weighed it. Not that heavy, oilskin aside. "Who's it from?"

The old man shrugged. "Where'd you get it?" "From my cell captain."

Of course. Darling has built with care, structuring her organization so that it is almost impossible for the Lady to break more than a fraction. The child is a genius.

Elmo accepted the rest, told Otto, "Take him down and find him a bunk. Get some rest, old-timer. The White Rose will question you later."

An interesting afternoon upcoming, maybe, what with this guy and Corder both to report. I hefted the mystery packet, told Elmo, "I'll go give this a look." Who could have sent it? I knew no one outside the Plain. Well… But the Lady would not inject a letter into the underground. Would she?

Twinge of fear. It had been a while, but she had promised to keep in touch.

The talking menhir that had forewarned us about the messenger remained rooted beside the path. As I passed, it said, "There are strangers on the Plain, Croaker."

I halted. "What? More of them?"

It reverted to character, would say no more.

Never will I comprehend those old stones. Hell, I still don't understand why they are on our side. They hate all outsiders separately but equally. They and every one of the weird sentiences out here.

I slipped into my quarters, unstrung my bow, left it leaning against the earth wall. I settled at my worktable and opened the packet.

I did not recognize the hand. I found the ending was not signed. I began to read.

Chapter Three:
STORY FROM YESTERYEAR

 

Croaker:

The woman was bitching again. Bomanz massaged his temples. The throbbing did not slacken. He covered his eyes. "Saita, sayta, suta," he murmured, his sibilants angry and ophidian.

He bit his tongue. One did not make a sending upon one's wife. One endured with humbled dignity the consequences of youthful folly. Ah, but what temptation! What provocation!

Enough, fool! Study the damned chart.

Neither Jasmine nor the headache relented.

"Bloody hell!" He slapped the weights off the corners of the chart, rolled the thin silk around a wisp of glass rod. He slipped the rod inside the shaft of a fake antique spear. That shaft was shiny with handling. "Besand would spot it in a minute," he grumbled.

He ground his teeth as his ulcer took a bite of gut. The closer the end drew, the greater was the danger. His nerves were shot. He was afraid he might crack at the last barrier, that cowardice would devour him and he would have lived in vain.

Thirty-seven years was a long time to live in the shadow of the headsman's axe.

"Jasmine," he muttered. "And call a sow Beauty." He flung the door-hanging aside, shouted downstairs, "What is it now?"

It was what it always was. Nagging unconnected with the root of her dissatisfaction. An interruption of his studies as a payback for what she fancied was his having misspent their lives.

He could have become a man of consequence in Oar. He could have given her a great house overstuffed with fawning servants. He could have draped her in cloth-of-gold. He could have fed her tumble-down fat with meat at every meal. Instead, he had chosen a scholar's life, disguising his name and profession, dragging her to this bleak, haunted break in the Old Forest. He had given her nothing but squalor, icy winters, and indignities perpetrated by the Eternal Guard.

Bomanz stamped down the narrow, squeaky, treacherous stairway. He cursed the woman, spat on the floor, thrust silver into her desiccated paw, drove her away with a plea that supper, for once, be a decent meal. Indignity? he thought. I'll tell you about indignity, you old crow. I'll tell you what it's like to live with a perpetual whiner, a hideous old bag of vapid, juvenile dreams…

"Stop it, Bomanz," he muttered. "She's the mother of your son. Give her her due. She hasn't betrayed you." If nothing else, they still shared the hope represented by the map on silk. It was hard for her, waiting, unaware of his progress, knowing only that nearly four decades had yielded no tangible result.

The bell on the shop door tinkled. Bomanz clutched at his shopkeeper persona. He scuttled forward, a fat, bald little man with blue-veined hands folded before his chest. "Tokar." He bowed slightly. "I didn't expect you so soon."

Tokar was a trader from Oar, a friend of Bomanz's son Stancil. He had a bluff, honest, irreverent manner Bomanz deluded himself into seeing as the ghost of his own at a younger age.

"Didn't plan to be back so soon. Bo. But antiques are the rage. It surpasses comprehension."

"You want another lot? Already? You'll clean me out." Unsaid, the silent complaint: Bomanz, this means replenishment work. Time lost from research.

"The Domination is hot this year. Stop pottering around, Bo. Make hay, and all that. Next year the market could be as dead as the Taken."

"They're not… Maybe I'm getting too old, Tokar. I don't enjoy the rows with Besand anymore. Hell. Ten years ago I went looking for him. A good squabble killed boredom. The digging grinds me down, too. I'm used up. I just want to sit on the stoop and watch life go by." While he chattered, Bomanz set out his best antique swords, pieces of armor, soldiers' amulets, and an almost perfectly preserved shield. A box of arrowheads with roses engraved. A pair of broad-bladed thrusting spears, ancient, heads mounted on replica shafts.

"I can send you some men. Show them where to dig. I'll pay you commission. You won't have to do anything. That's a damned fine axe, Bo. TelleKurre? I could sell a bargeload of TelleKurre weaponry."

"UchiTelle, actually." A twinge from his ulcer. "No No helpers." That was all he needed. A bunch of young hotshots hanging over his shoulder while he made his field calculations.

"Just a suggestion."

"Sorry. Don't mind me. Jasmine was on me this morning."

Softly, Tokar asked, "Found anything connected with the Taken?"

With the ease of decades, Bomanz dissembled, feigning horror. "The Taken? Am I a fool? I wouldn't touch it if I could get it past the Monitor."

Tokar smiled conspiratorily. "Sure. We don't want to offend the Eternal Guard. Nevertheless… There's one man in Oar who would pay well for something that could be ascribed to one of the Taken. He'd sell his soul for something that belonged to the Lady. He's in love with her."

"She was known for that." Bomanz avoided the younger man's gaze. How much had Stance revealed? Was this one of Besand's fishing expeditions? The older Bomanz became, the less he enjoyed the game. His nerves could not take this double life. He was tempted to confess just for the relief.

No, damnit! He had too much invested. Thirty-seven years. Digging and scratching every minute. Sneaking and pretending. The most abject poverty. No. He would not give up. Not now. Not when he was this close.

"In my way, I love her, too," he admitted. "But I haven't abandoned good sense. I'd scream for Besand if I found anything. So loud you'd hear me in Oar."

"All right. Whatever you say." Tokar grinned. "Enough suspense." He produced a leather wallet. "Letters from Stancil."

Bomanz seized the wallet. "Haven't heard from him since last time you were here."

"Can I start loading, Bo?"

"Sure. Go ahead." Absently, Bomanz took his current inventory list from a pigeonhole. "Mark off whatever you take."

Tokar laughed gently. "All of it this time, Bo. Just quote me a price."

"Everything? Half is junk."

"I told you, the Domination is hot."

"You saw Stance? How is he?" He was halfway through the first letter. His son had nothing substantial to relate. His missives were filled with daily trivia. Duty letters. Letters from a son to his parents, unable to span the timeless chasm.

"Sickeningly healthy. Bored with the university. Read on. There's a surprise."

"Tokar was here," Bomanz said. He grinned, danced from foot to foot.

"That thief?" Jasmine scowled. "Did you remember to get paid?" Her fat, sagging face was set in perpetual disapproval. Generally her mouth was open in the same vein.

"He brought letters from Stance. Here." He offered the packet. He could not contain himself. "Stance is coming home."

"Home? He can't. He has his position at the university." "He's taking a sabbatical. He's coming for the summer." "Why?"

"To see us. To help with the shop. To get away so he can finish a thesis."

Jasmine grumbled. She did not read the letters. She had not forgiven her son for sharing his father's interest in the Domination. "What he's doing is coming here to help you poke around where you're not supposed to poke, isn't he?"

Bomanz darted furtive glances at the shop's windows. His was an existence of justifiable paranoia. "It's the Year of the Comet. The ghosts of the Taken will rise to mourn the passing of the Domination."

This summer would mark the tenth return of the comet which had appeared at the hour of the Dominator's fall. The Ten Who Were Taken would manifest strongly.

Bomanz had witnessed one passage the summer he had come to the Old Forest, long before Stancil's birth. The Barrowland had been impressive with ghosts walking.

Excitement tightened his belly. Jasmine would not appreciate it, but this was the summer. End of the long quest. He lacked only one key. Find it and he could make contact, could begin drawing out instead of putting in.

Jasmine sneered. "Why did I get into this? My mother warned me."

"It's Stancil we're talking about, woman. Our only."

"Ah, Bo, don't call me a cruel old lady. Of course I'll welcome him. Don't I cherish him, too?"

"Wouldn't hurt to show it." Bomanz examined the remnants of his inventory. "Nothing left but the worst junk. These old bones ache just thinking of the digging I'll have to do."

His bones ached, but his spirit was eager. Restocking was a plausible excuse for wandering the edges of the Barrowland.

"No time like now to start."

"You trying to get me out of the house?"

"That wouldn't hurt my feelings."

Sighing, Bomanz surveyed his shop. A few pieces of time-rotted gear, broken weapons, a skull that could not be attributed because it lacked the triangular inset characteristic of Domination officers. Collectors were not interested in the bones of kerns or in those of followers of the White Rose.

Curious, he thought. Why are we so intrigued by evil? The White Rose was more heroic than the Dominator or Taken. She has been forgotten by everybody but the Monitor's men. Any peasant can name half the Taken. The Barrowland, where evil lies restless, is guarded, and the grave of the White Rose is lost.

"Neither here nor there," Bomanz grumbled. "Time to hit the field. Here. Here. Spade. Divining wand. Bags… Maybe Tokar was right. Maybe I should get a helper. Brushes.

Help carry that stuff around. Transit. Maps. Can't forget those. What else? Claim ribbons. Of course. That wretched Men fu."

He stuffed things into a pack and hung equipment all about himself. He gathered spade and rake and transit. "Jasmine. Jasmine! Open the damned door."

She peeped through the curtains masking their living quarters.

"Should've opened it first, dimwit." She stalked across the shop. "One of these days, Bo, you're going to get organized.

Probably the day after my funeral." He stumbled down the street grumbling, "I'll get organized the day you die. Damned well better believe. I want you in the ground before you change your mind."

Chapter Four:
THE NEAR PAST: CORBIE

 

The Barrowland lies far north of Charm, in the Old Forest so storied in the legends of the White Rose. Corbie came to the town there the summer after the Dominator failed to escape his grave through Juniper. He found the Lady's minions in high morale. The grand evil in the Great Barrow was no longer to be feared. The dregs of the Rebel had been routed. The empire had no more enemies of consequence. The Great Comet, harbinger of all catastrophes, would not return for decades.

One lone focus of resistance remained, a child claimed to be the reincarnation of the White Rose. But she was a fugitive, running with the remnants of the traitorous Black Company. Nothing to fear there. The Lady's overwhelming resources would swamp them.

Corbie came limping up the road from Oar, alone, a pack on his back, a staff gripped tightly. He claimed to be a disabled veteran of the Limper's Forsberg campaigns. He wanted work. There was work aplenty for a man not too proud. The Eternal Guard were well-paid. Many hired drudgework taken off their duties.

At that time a regiment garrisoned the Barrowland. Countless civilians orbited its compound. Corbie vanished among those. When companies and battalions transferred out, he was an established part of the landscape.

He washed dishes, curried horses, cleaned stables, carried messages, mopped floors, peeled vegetables, assumed any burden for which he might earn a few coppers. He was a quiet, tall, dusky, brooding sort who made no special friends, but made no enemies either. Seldom did he socialize.

After a few months he asked for and received permission to occupy a ramshackle house long shunned because once it belonged to a sorcerer from Oar. As time and resources permitted, he restored the place. And like the sorcerer before him, he pursued the mission that had brought him north.

Ten, twelve, fourteen hours a day Corbie worked around town, then went home and worked some more. People wondered when he rested.

If there was anything that detracted from Corbie, it was that he refused to assume his role completely. Most scutboys had to endure a lot of personal abuse. Corbie would not accept it. Victimize him and his eyes went cold as winter steel. Only one man ever pressed Corbie once he got that look. Corbie beat him with ruthless, relentless efficiency.

No one suspected him of leading a double life. Outside his home he was Corbie the swamper, nothing more. He lived the role to his heart. When he was home, in the more public hours, he was Corbie the renovator, creating a new home from an old. Only in the wee hours, while all but the night patrol slept, did he become Corbie the man with a mission.

Corbie the renovator found a treasure in a wall of the wizard's kitchen. He took it upstairs, where Corbie the driven came up from the deeps.

The scrap of paper bore a dozen words scribbled in a shaky hand. A cipher key.

That lean, dusky, long-unsmiling face shed its ice. Dark eyes sparkled, Fingers turned up a lamp. Corbie sat, and for an hour stared at nothing. Then, still smiling, he went downstairs and out into the night. He raised a hand in gentle greeting whenever he encountered the night patrol.

He was known now. No one challenged his right to limp about and watch the constellations wheel.

He went home when his nerves settled. There would be no sleep for him. He scattered papers, began to study, to decipher, to translate, to write a story-letter that would not reach its destination for years.

Chapter Five:
THE PLAIN OF FEAR

 

One-Eye stopped by to tell me Darling was about to interview Corder and the messenger. "She's looking peaked, Croaker. You been watching her?"

"I watch. I advise. She ignores. What can I do?"

"We got twenty-some years till the comet shows. No point her working herself to death, is there?" "Tell her that. She just tells me this mess will be settled long before the comet comes around again. That it's a race against time."

She believes that. But the rest of us cannot catch her fire. Isolated in the Plain of Fear, cut off from the world, the struggle with the Lady sometimes slips in importance. The Plain itself too often preoccupies us.

I caught myself outdistancing One-Eye. This premature burial has not been good for him. Without his skills he has weakened physically. He is beginning to show his age. I let him catch up.

"You and Goblin enjoy your adventure?"

He could not choose between a smirk or scowl.

"Got you again, eh?" Their battle has been on since the dawn. One-Eye starts each skirmish. Goblin usually finishes.

He grumbled something.

"What?"

"Yo!" someone shouted. "Everybody up top! Alert! Alert!"

One-Eye spat. "Twice in one day? What the hell?"

I knew what he meant. We have not had twenty alerts our whole two years out here. Now two in one day? Improbable.

I dashed back for my bow.

This time we went out with less clatter. Elmo had made his displeasure painfully apparent in a few private conversations.

Sunlight again. Like a blow. The entrance to the Hole faces westward. The sun was in our eyes when we emerged.

"You damned fool!" Elmo was yelling. "What the hell you doing?" A young soldier stood in the open, pointing. I let my gaze follow.

"Oh, damn," I whispered. "Oh, double bloody damn."

One-Eye saw it too. "Taken."

The airborne dot drifted higher, circling our hideout, spiral-ing inward. It wobbled suddenly.

"Yeah. Taken. Whisper or Journey?"

"Good to see old friends," Goblin said as he joined us.

We had not seen the Taken since reaching the Plain. Before that they had been in our hair constantly, having pursued us all the four years it had taken us to get here from Juniper.

They are the Lady's satraps, her understudies in terror. Once there were ten. In the time of the Domination, the Lady and her husband enslaved the greatest of their contemporaries, making them their instruments: the Ten Who Were Taken. The Taken went into the ground with their masters when the White Rose defeated the Dominator four centuries ago. And they arose with the Lady, two turns of the comet back. And in fighting among themselves-for some remained loyal to the Dominator-most perished.

But the Lady obtained new slaves. Feather. Whisper. Journey. Feather and the last of the old ones, the Limper, went down at Juniper, when we overcame the Dominator's bid for his own resurrection. Two are left. Whisper. Journey.

The flying carpet wobbled because it had reached the boundary where Darling's null was enough to overpower its buoyancy. The Taken turned away, falling outward, got far enough to recover complete control. "Pity it didn't come straight in," I said. "And come down like a rock."

"They're not stupid," Goblin said. "They're just scouting us now." He shook his head, shuddered. He knew something I did not. Probably something learned during his venture outside the Plain.

"Campaign heating up?" I asked.

"Yep. What're you doing, bat-breath?" he snapped at One-Eye. "Pay attention."

The little black man was ignoring the Taken. He stared at the wild wind-carved bluffs south of us.

"Our job is to stay alive," One-Eye said, so smug you knew he had something to get Goblin's goat. "That means don't get distracted by the first flashy show you see."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Means while the rest of you are eyeballing that clown up there another one sneaked up behind the bluffs and put somebody down."

Goblin and I glared at the red cliffs. We saw nothing.

"Too late," One-Eye said. "It's gone. But I reckon somebody should go collect the spy."

I believed One-Eye. "Elmo! Get over here." I explained.

"Beginning to move," he murmured. "Just when I was hoping they'd forgotten us."

"Oh, they haven't," Goblin said. "They most certainly haven't." Again I felt he had something on his mind.

Elmo scanned the ground between us and the bluffs. He knew it well. We all do. One day our lives may depend on our knowing it better than someone hunting us. "Okay," he told himself. "I see it. I'll take four men. After I see the Lieutenant."

The Lieutenant does not come up for alerts. He and two other men camp in the doorway to Darling's quarters. If ever the enemy reaches Darling, it will be over their bodies.

The flying carpet went away westward. I wondered why it had gone unchallenged by the creatures of the Plain. I went to the menhir that had spoken to me earlier. I asked. Instead of answering, it said, "It begins, Croaker. Mark this day."

"Yeah. Right." And I do call that day the beginning, though parts of it started years before. That was the day of the first letter, the day of the Taken, and the day of Tracker and Toadkiller Dog.

The menhir had a final remark. "There are strangers on the Plain." It would not defend the various flyers for not resisting the Taken.

Elmo returned. I said, "The menhir says we might have more visitors."

Elmo raised an eyebrow. "You and Silent have the next two watches?"

"Yep."

"Be careful. Goblin. One-Eye. Come here." They put their heads together. Then Elmo picked four youngsters and went hunting.

Chapter Six:
THE PLAIN OF FEAR

 

I went up top for my watch. There was no sign of Elmo and his men. The sun was low. The menhir was gone. There was no sound but the voice of the wind.

Silent sat in shadow inside a reef of thousand-coral, dappled by sunlight come through twisted branches. Coral makes good cover. Few of the Plain's denizens dare its poisons. The watch is always in more danger from native exotica than from our enemies.

I twisted and ducked between deadly spines, joined Silent. He is a long, lean, aging man. His dark eyes seemed focused on dreams that had died. I deposited my weapons. "Anything?"

He shook his head, a single miniscule negative. I arranged the pads I had brought. The coral twisted around us, branches and fans climbing twenty feet high. We could see little but the creek crossing and a few dead menhirs, and the walking trees on the far slope. One tree stood beside the brook, taproot in the water. As though sensing my attention, it began a slow retreat.

The visible Plain is barren. The usual desert life-lichens and scrub brush, snakes and lizards, scorpions and spiders, wild dogs and ground squirrels-is present but scarce. You encounter it mainly when that is inconvenient. Which sums up Plain life generally. You encounter the real strangeness only when that is most inopportune. The Lieutenant claims a man trying to commit suicide here could spend years without becoming uncomfortable.

The predominant colors are reds and browns, rust, ochre, blood- and wine-shaded sandstones like the bluffs, with here and there the random stratum of orange. The corals lay down scattered white and pink reefs. True verdance is absent. Both walking trees and scrub plants have leaves a dusty grey-green, in which green exists mainly by acclamation. The menhirs, living and dead, are a stark grey-brown unlike any stone native to the Plain.

A bloated shadow drifted across the wild scree skirting the cliffs. It covered many acres, was too dark to be the shadow of a cloud. "Windwhale?"

Silent nodded.

It cruised the upper air between us and the sun, but I could not spot it. I had not seen one in years. Last time Elmo and I were crossing the Plain with Whisper, on the Lady's behalf… That long ago? Time does flee, and with little fun in it. "Strange waters under the bridge, my friend. Strange waters under."

He nodded, but he did not speak. He is Silent.

He has not spoken in all the years I have known him. Nor in the years he has been with the Company. Yet both One-Eye and my predecessor as Annalist say he is quite capable of speech. From hints accumulated over the years, it has become my firm conviction that in his youth, before he signed on, he swore a great oath never to speak. It being the iron law of the Company not to pry into a man's life before he enlisted, I have been unable to learn anything about the circumstances.

I have seen him come close to speaking, when he was angry enough, or amused enough, but always he caught himself at the last instant. For a long time men made a game of baiting him, trying to get him to break his vow, but most abandoned the effort quickly. Silent had a hundred little ways of discouraging a man, like filling his bedroll with ticks.

Shadows lengthened. Stains of darkness spread. At last Silent rose, stepped over me, returned to the Hole, a darkly clad shadow moving through darkness. A strange man, Silent. Not only does he not talk; he does not gossip. How can you get a handle on a guy like that?

Yet he is one of my oldest and closest friends. Go explain that.

"Well, Croaker." The voice was as hollow as a ghost's. I started. Malicious laughter rattled through the coral reef. A menhir had slipped up on me. I turned slightly. It stood square on the path Silent had taken, twelve feet tall and ugly. A runt of its kind.

"Hello, rock."

Having amused itself at my expense, it now ignored me. Stayed as silent as a stone. Ha-ha.

The menhirs are our principal allies upon the Plain. They interlocute for the other sentient species. They let us know what is happening only when it suits them, however.

"What's happening with Elmo?" I asked.

Nothing.

Are they magic? I guess not. Otherwise they would not survive inside the nullity Darling radiates. But what are they? Mysteries. Like most of the bizarre creatures out here.

"There are strangers on the Plain."

"I know. I know."

Night creatures came out. Dots of luminescence fluttered and swooped above. The windwhale whose shadow I saw came far enough eastward to show me its glimmering underbelly. It would descend soon, trailing tendrils to trap whatever came its way. A breeze rose.

Sagey scents trickled across my nostrils. Air chuckled and whispered and murmured and whistled in the coral. From farther away came the wind-chimes tinkle of Old Father Tree.

He is unique. First or last of his kind, I do not know. There he stands, twenty feet tall and ten thick, brooding beside the creek, radiating something akin to dread, his roots planted on the geographical center of the Plain. Silent, Goblin, and One-Eye have all tried to unravel his significance. They have gotten nowhere. The scarce wild human tribesmen of the Plain worship him. They say he has been here since the dawn. He does have that timeless feel.

The moon rose. While it lay torpid and pregnant on the horizon I thought I saw something cross it. Taken? Or one of the Plain creatures?

A racket rose round the mouth of the Hole. I groaned. I did not need this. Goblin and One-Eye. For half a minute, uncharitably, I wished they had not come back. "Knock it off. I don't want to hear that crap."

Goblin scooted up outside the coral, grinned, dared me to do something. He looked rested, recuperated. One-Eye asked, "Feeling cranky, Croaker?" "Damned straight. What're you doing out here?" "Needed some fresh air." He cocked his head, stared at the line of cliffs. So. Worried about Elmo. "He'll be all right," I said.

"I know." One-Eye added, "I lied. Darling sent us. She felt something stir at the west edge of the null." "Ah?"

"I don't know what it was, Croaker." Suddenly he was defensive. Pained. He would have known but for Darling. He stands where I would were I stripped of my medical gear. Helpless to do what he has trained at all his life. "What're you going to do?" "Build a fire." "What?"

That fire roared. One-Eye got so ambitious he dragged in enough deadwood to serve half a legion. The flames beat back the darkness till I could see fifty yards beyond the creek. The last walking trees had departed. Probably smelled One-Eye coming.

He and Goblin dragged in a fallen tree of the ordinary sort. We leave the walkers alone, except to right clumsies that trip on their own roots. Not that that happens often. They do not travel much.

They were bickering about who was dogging his share of work. They dropped the tree. "Fade," Goblin said, and in a moment there was no sign of them. Baffled, I surveyed the darkness. I saw nothing, heard nothing.

I found myself having trouble remaining awake. I broke up the dead tree for something to do. Then I felt the oddness.

I stopped in midbreak. How long had the menhirs been gathering? I counted fourteen on the verges of the light. They cast long, deep shadows. "What's up?" I asked, my nerves a bit frayed.

"There are strangers on the Plain."

Hell of a tune they played. I settled near the fire, back to it, tossed wood over my shoulder, building the flames. The light spread. I counted another ten menhirs. After a time I said, "That's not exactly news."

"One comes."

That was new. And spoken with passion, something I had not witnessed before. Once, twice, I thought I caught a flicker of motion, but I could not be sure. Firelight is tricky. I piled on more wood.

Movement for sure. Beyond the creek. Manshape coming toward me, slowly. Wearily. I settled in pretended boredom. He came nearer. Across his right shoulder he carried a saddle and blanket held with his left hand. In his right he carried a long wooden case, its polish gleaming in the firelight. It was seven feet long and four inches by eight. Curious.

I noticed the dog as they crossed the creek. A mongrel, ragged, mangy, mostly a dirty white but with a black circle around one eye and a few daubs of black on its flanks. It limped, carrying one forepaw off the ground. The fire caught its eyes. They burned bright red.

The man was over six feet, maybe thirty. He moved lithely even in his weariness. He had muscles on muscles. His tattered shirt revealed arms and chest crisscrossed with scars. His face was empty of emotion. He met my gaze as he approached the fire, neither smiling nor betraying unfriendly intent.

Chill touched me, lightly. He looked tough, but not tough enough to negotiate the Plain of Fear alone.

First order of business would be to stall. Otto was due out to relieve me soon. The fire would alert him. He would see the stranger, then duck down and rouse the Hole. "Hello," I said.

He halted, exchanged glances with his mongrel. The dog came forward slowly, sniffing the air, searching the surrounding night. It stopped a few feet away, shook as though wet, settled on its belly.

The stranger came forward just that far. "Take a load off," I invited.

He swung his saddle down, lowered his case, sat. He was stiff. He had trouble crossing his legs. "Lose your horse?"

He nodded. "Broke a leg. West of here, five, six miles. I lost the trail."

There are trails through the Plain. Some of them the Plain honors as safe. Sometimes. According to a formula known only to its denizens. Only someone desperate or stupid hazards them alone, though. This fellow did not look like an idiot.

The dog made a whuffling sound. The man scratched its ears.

"Where you headed?" "Place called the Fastness."

That is the legend-name, the propaganda name, for the Hole. A calculated bit of glamor for the troops in faraway places. "Name?"

"Tracker. This is Toadkiller Dog." "Pleased to meet you, Tracker. Toadkiller." The dog grumbled. Tracker said, "You have to use his whole name. Toadkiller Dog."

I kept a straight face only because he was such a big, grim, tough-looking man. "What's this Fastness?" I asked. "I never heard of it."

He lifted hard, dark eyes from the mutt, smiled. "I've heard it lies near Tokens."

Twice in one day? Was it the day of twos? No. Not bloody likely. I did not like the look of the man, either. Reminded me too much of our one-time brother Raven. Ice and iron. I donned my baffled face. It is a good one. "Tokens? That's a new one on me. Must be somewhere way the hell out east. What are you headed there for, anyway?"

He smiled again. His dog opened one eye, gave me a baleful look. They did not believe me.

"Carrying messages."

"I see."

"Mainly a packet. Addressed to somebody named Croaker."

I sucked spittle between teeth, slowly scanned the surrounding darkness. The circle of light had shrunk, but the number of menhirs remained undiminished. I wondered about One-Eye and Goblin. "Now there's a name I've heard," I said. "Some kind of sawbones." Again the dog gave me that look. This time, I decided, it was sarcastic.

One-Eye stepped out of the darkness behind Tracker, sword ready to do the dirty deed. Damn, but he came quiet. Witchery or no.

I gave him away with a flicker of surprise. Tracker and his dog looked back. Both were startled to see someone there. The dog rose. Its hackles lifted. Then it sank to the ground again, having twisted till it could keep us both in sight.

But then Goblin appeared, just as quietly. I smiled. Tracker glanced over. His eyes narrowed. He looked thoughtful, like a man discovering he was in a card game with rogues sharper than he had expected. Goblin chuckled. "He wants in, Croaker. I say we take him down."

Tracker's hand twitched toward the case he had carried. His animal growled. Tracker closed his eyes. When they opened, he was in control. His smile returned. "Croaker, eh? Then I've found the Fastness."

"You've found it, friend."

Slowly, so as not to alarm anyone, Tracker took an oilskin packet from his saddlebag. It was the twin of that I had received only half a day before. He offered it to me. I tucked it inside my shirt. "Where'd you get it?"

"Oar." He told the same story as the other messenger.

I nodded. "You've come that far, then?"

"Yes."

"We should take him in, then," I told One-Eye. He caught my meaning. We would let this messenger come face to face with the other. See if sparks flew. One-Eye grinned.

I glanced at Goblin. He approved.

None of us felt quite right about Tracker. I am not sure why.

"Let's go," I said. I hoisted myself off the ground with my bow.

Tracker eyed the stave. He started to say something, shut up. As though he recognized it. I smiled as I turned away. Maybe he thought he had fallen foul of the Lady. "Follow me."

He did. And Goblin and One-Eye followed him, neither helping with his gear. His dog limped beside him, nose to the ground. Before we went inside, I glanced southward, concerned. When would Elmo come home?

We put Tracker and mutt into a guarded cell. They did not protest. I went to my quarters after wakening Otto, who was overdue. I tried to sleep, but that damned packet lay on the table screaming.

I was not sure I wanted to read its contents.

It won the battle.

Chapter Seven:
THE SECOND LETTER

 

Croaker:

Bomanz peered through his transit, sighting on the prow of the Great Barrow. He stepped back, noted the angle, opened one of his crude field maps. This was where he had unearthed the TelleKurre axe. "Wish Occules' descriptions weren't so vague. This must have been the flank of their formation. The axis of their line should have paralleled the others, so. Shifter and the knights would have bunched up over there. I'll be damned."

The ground there humped slightly. Good. Less ground water to damage buried artifacts. But the overgrowth was dense. Scrub oak. Wild roses. Poison ivy. Especially poison ivy. Bomanz hated that pestilential weed. He started scratching just thinking about it.

"Bomanz."

"What?" He whirled, raising his rake.

"Whoa! Take it easy, Bo."

"What's the matter with you? Sneaking up like that. Ain't funny, Besand. Want me to rake that idiot grin off your face?"

"Ooh! Nasty today, aren't we?" Besand was a lean old man approximately Bomanz's age. His shoulders slumped, following his head, which thrust forward as though he was sniffing a trail. Great blue veins humped the backs of his hands. Liver spots dotted his skin.

"What the hell do you expect? Come jumping out of the bushes at a man."

"Bushes? What bushes? Your conscience bothering you, Bo?"

"Besand, you've been trying to trap me since the moon was green. Why don't you give up? First Jasmine gives me a hard way to go, then Tokar buys me out so I have to go digging fresh stock, and now I have to dance with you? Go away. I'm not in the mood."

Besand grinned a big, lopsided grin, revealing pickets of rotten teeth. "I haven't caught you, Bo, but that don't mean you're innocent. It just means I never caught you."

"If I'm not innocent, you must be damned stupid not to catch me in forty years. Damn, man, why the hell can't you make life easy for both of us?"

Besand laughed. "Real soon now I'll be out of your hair for good. They're putting me out to pasture."

Bomanz leaned on his rake, considered the Guardsman. Besand exuded a sour odor of pain. "Really? I'm sorry."

"Bet you are. My replacement might be smart enough to catch you."

"Give it a rest. You want to know what I'm doing? Figuring where the TelleKurre knights went down. Tokar wants spectacular stuff. That's the best I can do. Short of going over there and giving you an excuse to hang me. Hand me that dowser."

Besand passed the divining rod. "Mound robbing, eh? Tokar suggest that?"

Icy needles burrowed into Bomanz's spine. This was more than a casual question. "We have to do this constantly? Haven't we known each other long enough to do without the cat-and-mouse?"

"I enjoy it, Bo." Besand trailed him to the overgrown hummock. "Going to have to clear this out. Just can't keep up anymore. No; enough men, not enough money."

"Could you get it right away? That's where I want to dig, I think. Poison ivy."

"Oh, 'ware poison ivy, Bo." Besand snickered. Each summer Bomanz cursed his way through numerous botanical afflictions. "About Tokar…"

"I don't deal with people who want to break the law. That's been my rule forever. Nobody bothers me anymore."

"Oblique but acceptable."

Bomanz's wand twitched. "I'll be dipped in sheep shit. Right in the middle."

"Sure?"

"Look at it jump. Must've buried them in one big hole."

"About Tokar…"

"What about him, dammit? You want to hang him, go ahead. Just give me time to hook up with somebody else who can handle my business as good."

"I don't want to hang anybody, Bo. I just want to warn you. There's a rumor out of Oar that says he's a Resurrectionist. "

Bomanz dropped his rod. He gobbled air. "Really? A Resurrectionist?"

The Monitor scrutinized him intently. "Just a rumor. I hear all kinds. Thought you might want to know. We're as close as two men get around here."

Bomanz accepted the olive branch. "Yeah. Honestly, he's never dropped a hint. Whew! That's a load to drop on a man." A load which deserved some heavy thinking. "Don't tell anybody what I found. That thief Men fu…"

Besand laughed yet again. His mirth had a sephulchral quality.

"You enjoy your work, don't you? I mean, harassing people who don't dare fight back."

"Careful, Bo. I could drag you in for questioning." Besand spun, stalked away.

Bomanz sneered at his back. Of course Besand enjoyed his job. It let him play dictator. He could do anything to anyone without having to answer for it.

Once the Dominator and his minions fell and were buried in their mounds behind barriers wrought of the finest magicks of their day, the White Rose decreed that an eternal guard be posted. A guard beholden to none, charged with preventing the resurrection of the undead evil beneath the mounds. The White Rose understood human nature. Always there would be those who would see profit in using or following the Dominator. Always there would be worshippers of evil who wished their champion freed.

The Resurrectionists appeared almost before the grass sprouted on the barrows.

Tokar a Resurrectionist? Bomanz thought. Don't I have enough trouble? Besand will pitch his tent in my pocket now.

Bomanz had no interest in reviving the old evils. He merely wanted to make contact with one of them so as to illuminate several ancient mysteries.

Besand was out of sight. He should stomp all the way back to his quarters. There would be time for a few forbidden observations. Bomanz realigned his transit.

The Barrowland did not have the look of great evil, only of neglect. Four hundred years of vegetation and weather had restructured that once marvelous work. The barrows and mystical landscaping were all but lost amidst the brush covering them. The Eternal Guard no longer had the wherewithal to perform adequate upkeep. Monitor Besand was fighting a desperate rearguard action against time itself.

Nothing grew well on the Barrowland. The vegetation was twisted and stunted. Still, the shapes of the mounds, and the menhirs and fetishes which bound the Taken, were often concealed.

Bomanz had spent a lifetime sorting out which mound was which, who lay where, and where each menhir and fetish stood. His master chart, his silken treasure, was nearly complete. He could, almost, thread the maze. He was so close he was tempted to try before he was truly ready. But he was no fool. He meant to try nursing sweet milk from the blackest of cows. He dared make no mistake. He had Besand on the one hand, the poisonous old wickedness on the other. But if he succeeded… Ah, if he succeeded. If he made contact and nursed away the secrets… Man's knowledge would be extended dramatically. He would become the mightiest of living mages. His fame would course with the wind. Jasmine would have everything she quarreled about sacrificing. If he made contact.

He would, by damn! Neither fear nor the infirmity of age would stay him now. A few months and he would have the last key.

Bomanz had lived his lies so long he often lied to himself. Even in his honest moments he never confessed his most powerful motive, his intellectual affair with the Lady. It was she who had intrigued him from the beginning, she whom he was trying to contact, she who made the literature endlessly fascinating. Of all the lords of the Domination she was the most shadowed, the most surrounded by myth, the least encumbered by historical fact. Some scholars called her the greatest beauty ever to have lived, claiming that simply to have seen her was to have fallen into her thrall. Some called her the true motive force of the Domination. A few admitted that their documentaries were really little more than romantic fantasies. Others admitted nothing while demonstrably embellishing. Bomanz had become perpetually bemused while still a student.

Back in his attic, he spread his silken chart. His day had not been a complete waste. He had located a previously unknown menhir and had identified the spells it anchored. And he had found the TelleKurre site. That would buy the mutton and beans.

He glared at the chart, as if pure will might conjure the information he needed.

There were two diagrams. The upper was a five-pointed star within a slightly larger circle. Such had been the shape of the Barrowland when newly constructed. The star had stood a fathom above the surrounding terrain, retained by limestone walls. The circle represented the outer bank of a moat, the earth from which had been used to build the barrows, the star, and a pentagon within the star. Today the moat was little more than boggy ground. Besand's predecessors had been unable to keep up with Nature.

Within the star, drawn off the points where the arms met, was a pentagon another fathom high. It, too, had been retained, but the walls had fallen and become overgrown. Central to the pentagon, on a north-south axis, lay the Great Barrow where the Dominator slept.

At the points of his chart star, clockwise from the top, Bomanz had penned the odd numbers from one to nine. Accompanying each was a name: Soulcatcher, Shapeshifter. Nightcrawler, Stormbringer, Bonegnasher. The occupants of the five outer barrows had been identified. The five inner points were numbered evenly, beginning at the right foot of the arm of the star pointing northward. At four was the Howler, at eight the Limper. The graves of three of the Ten Who Were Taken remained unidentified.

"Who's in that damned six spot?" Bomanz muttered. He slammed a fist against the table. "Dammit!" Four years and he was no closer to that name. The mask concealing that identity was the one remaining substantial barrier. Everything else was plain technical application, a matter of negating wardspells, then of contacting the great one in the central mound.

The wizards of the White Rose had left volumes bragging about their performances of their art, but not one word of where their victims lay. Such was human nature. Besand bragged about the fish he caught, the bait he used, and seldom produced the veritable piscine trophy.

Below his star chart Bomanz had drawn a second portraying the central mound. It was a rectangle on a north-south axis surrounded by and filled with ranks of symbols. Outside each corner was a representation of a menhir which, on the Barrowland, was a twelve-foot pillar topped by a two-faced owl's head. One face glared inward, the other out. The menhirs formed the corner posts anchoring the first line of spells warding the Great Barrow.

Along the sides were the line posts, little circles representing wooden fetish poles. Most had rotted and fallen, their spells drooping with them. The Eternal Guard had no staff wizard capable of restoring or replacing them.

Within the mound proper there were symbols ranked in three rectangles of declining size. The outermost resembled pawns, the next knights, and the inner, elephants. The crypt of the Dominator was surrounded by men who had given their lives to bring him down. Ghosts were the middle line between old evil and a world capable of recalling it. Bomanz anticipated no difficulty getting past them. The ghosts were there, in his opinion, to discourage common grave robbers.

Within the three rectangles Bomanz had drawn a dragon with its tail in its mouth. Legend said a great dragon lay curled round the crypt, more alive than the Lady or Dominator, catnapping the centuries away while awaiting an attempt to recall the trapped evil.

Bomanz had no way of coping with the dragon, but he had no need, either. He meant to communicate with the crypt, not to open it.

Damn! If he could only lay hands on an old Guardsman's amulet… The early Guards had worn amulets which had allowed them to go into the Barrowland to keep it up. The amulets still existed, though they were no longer used. Besand wore one. The others he kept squirreled away.

Besand. That madman. That sadist.

Bomanz considered the Monitor his closest acquaintance- but a friend, never. No, never a friend. Sad commentary on his life, that the man nearest him would be one who would jump at a chance to torture or hang him.

What was that about retirement? Someone outside this forsaken forest had recalled the Barrowland?

"Bomanz! Are you going to eat?"

Bomanz muttered imprecations and rolled his chart.

 

 

The Dream came that night. Something sirenic called him. He was young again, single, strolling the lane that passed his house. A woman waved. Who was she? He didn't know. He didn't care. He loved her. Laughing, he ran toward her… Floating steps. Effort took him no nearer. Her face saddened. She faded… "Don't go!" he called. "Please!" But she disappeared, and took with her his sun.

A vast starless night devoured his dream. He floated in a clearing within a forest unseen. Slowly, slowly, a diffuse silver something limned the trees. A big star with a long silver mane. He watched it grow till its tail spanned the sky.

Twinge of uncertainty. Shadow of fear. "It's coming right at me!" He cringed, threw his arm across his face. The silver ball filled the sky. It had a face. The woman's face…

"Bo! Stop it!" Jasmine punched him again.

He sat up. "Uhn? What?"

"You were yelling. That nightmare again?"

He listened to his heart hammer, sighed. Could it take much more? He was an old man. "The same one." It recurred at unpredictable intervals. "It was stronger this time."

"Maybe you ought to see a dream doctor."

"Out here?" He snorted disgustedly. "I don't need a dream doctor anyway."

"No. Probably just your conscience. Nagging you for luring Stancil back from Oar."

"I didn't lure… Go to sleep." To his amazement, she rolled over, for once unwilling to pursue their squabble.

He stared into the darkness. It had been so much clearer. Almost too crisp and obvious. Was there a meaning hidden behind the dream's warning against tampering?

Slowly, slowly, the mood of the beginning of the dream returned. That sense of being summoned, of being but one intuitive step from heart's desire. It felt good. His tension drained away. He fell asleep smiling.

Besand and Bomanz stood watching Guardsmen clear the brush from Bomanz's site. Bomanz suddenly spat, "Don't bum it, you idiot! Stop him, Besand."

Besand shook his head. A Guard with a torch backed away from the brush pile. "Son, you don't burn poison ivy. The smoke spreads the poison."

Bomanz was scratching. And wondering why his companion was being so reasonable. Besand smirked. "Get itchy just thinking about it, don't you?"

"Yes."

"There's your other itch." He pointed. Bomanz saw his competitor Men fu observing from a safe distance. He growled, "I never hated anybody, but he tempts me. He has no ethics, no scruples, and no conscience. He's a thief and a liar."

"I know him, Bo. And lucky for you I do."

"Let me ask you something, Besand. Monitor Besand. How come you don't aggravate him the way you do me? What do you mean, lucky?"

"He accused you of Resurrectionist tendencies. I don't shadow him because his many virtues include cowardice. He doesn't have the hair to recover proscribed artifacts."

"And I do? That little wart libeled me? With capital crimes? If I weren't an old man…"

"He'll get his, Bo. And you do have the guts. I've just never caught you with the inclination."

Bomanz rolled his eyes. "Here we go. The veiled accusations…"

"Not so veiled, my friend. There's a moral laxness in you, an unwillingness to accept the existence of evil, that stinks like an old corpse. Give it its head and I'll catch you, Bo. The wicked are cunning, but they always betray themselves."

For an instant Bomanz thought his world was falling apart. Then he realized Besand was fishing. A dedicated fisherman, the Monitor. Shaken, he countered, "I'm sick of your sadism. If you really suspected anything, you'd be on me like a snake on shit. Legalities never meant anything to you Guards. You're probably lying about Men fu. You'd haul your own mother in on the word of a sorrier villain than him. You're sick, Besand. You know that? Diseased. Right here." He tapped his temple. "You can't relate without cruelty."

"You're pushing your luck again. Bo."

Bomanz backed down. Fright and temper had been talking. In his own odd way Besand had shown him special tolerance.

It was as though he were necessary to the Monitor's emotional health. Besand needed one person, outside the Guard, whom he did not victimize. Someone whose immunity repaid him in a sort of validation… I'm symbolic of the people he defends? Bomanz snorted. That was rich.

That business about being retired. Did he say more than I heard? Is he calling off all bets because he's leaving? Maybe he does have a sense for scofflaws. Maybe he wants to go out with a flash.

What about the new man? Another monster, unblinkered by the gossamer I've spun across Besand's eyes? Maybe someone who will come in like the bull into the corrida? And Tokar, the possible Resurrectionist… How does he fit?

"What's the matter?" Besand asked. Concern colored his words.

"Ulcer's bothering me." Bomanz massaged his temples, hoping the headache would not come too.

"Plant your markers. Men fu might jump you right here."

"Yeah." Bomanz took a half dozen stakes from his pack. Each trailed a strip of yellow cloth. He planted them. Custom dictated that the ground so circumscribed was his to exploit.

Men fu could make night raids, or whatever, and Bomanz would have no legal recourse. Claims had no standing in law, only in private treaty. The antique miners exercised their own sanctions.

Men fu was under every sanction but violence. Nothing altered his thieving ways.

"Wish Stancil was here," Bomanz said. "He could watch at night."

"I'll growl at him. That's always good for a few days. I heard Stance was coming home."

"Yeah. For the summer. We're excited. We haven't seen him in four years."

"Friend of Tokar, isn't he?"

Bomanz whirled. "Damn you! You never let up, do you?" He spoke softly, in genuine rage, without the shouts and curses and dramatic gestures of his habitual semi-rage.

"All right, Bo. I'll drop it."

"You'd better. You'd damned well better. I won't have you crawling all over him all summer. Won't have it, you hear?"

"I said I'd drop it."

Chapter Eight:
THE BARROWLAND

 

Corbie came and went at will around the Guard compound. The walls inside the headquarters building boasted several dozen old paintings of the Barrowland. He studied those often while he cleaned, shivering. His reaction was not unique. The Dominator's attempt to escape through Juniper had rocked the Lady's empire. Stories of his cruelties had fed upon themselves and grown fat in the centuries since the White Rose laid him down.

The Barrowland remained quiet. Those who watched saw nothing untoward. Morale rose. The old evil had shot its bolt.

But it waited.

It would wait throughout eternity if need be. It could not die. Its apparent last hope was no hope. The Lady was immortal, too. She would allow nothing to open her husband's grave.

The paintings recorded progressive decay. The latest dated from shortly after the Lady's resurrection. Even then the Barrowland had been much more whole.

Sometimes Corbie went to the edge of town, stared at the Great Barrow, shook his head.

Once there had been amulets which permitted Guards safely within the spells making the Barrowland lethal, to allow for upkeep. But those had disappeared. The Guard could but watch and wait now.

Time ambled. Slow and grey and limping, Corbie became a town fixture. He spoke seldom, but occasionally enlivened the lie sessions at Blue Willy with a wooly anecdote from the Forsberg campaigns. The fire blazed in his eyes then. No one doubted he had been there, even if he saw those days a little walleyed.

He made no true friends. Rumor said he did share the occasional private chess game with the Monitor, Colonel Sweet, for whom he had done some special small services. And of course, there was the recruit Case, who devoured his tales and accompanied him on his hobbling walks. Rumor said Corbie could read. Case hoped to learn.

No one ever visited the second floor of Corbie's home. There, in the heart of the night, he slowly unravelled the treacherous mare's nest of a tale that time and dishonesty had distorted out of any parallel with truth.

Only parts were encrypted. Most was hastily scribbled in TelleKurre, the principal language of the Domination era. But scattered passages were in UchiTelle, a TelleKurre regional vulgate. Times were, when battling those passages, Corbie smiled grimly. He might be the only man alive able to puzzle through those sometimes fragmentary sentences. "Benefit of a classical education," he would murmur with a certain sarcasm. I Then he would become reflective, introspective. He would take one of his late night walks to shake revenant memory. One's own yesterday is a ghost that will not be laid. Death is the only exorcism.

He saw himself as a craftsman, did Corbie. A smith. An armorer cautiously forging a lethal sword. Like his predecessor in that house, he had dedicated his life to the search for a fragment of knowledge.

The winter was astonishing. The first snows came early, after an early and unusually damp autumn. It snowed often and heavily. Spring came late.

In the forests north of the Barrowland, where only scattered clans dwelt, life was harsh. Tribesmen appeared bearing furs to trade for food. Factors for the furriers of Oar were ecstatic.

Old folks called the winter a harbinger of worse to come. But old folks always see today's weather as more harsh than that of yore. Or milder. Never, never the same.

Spring sprung. A swift thaw set the creeks and rivers raging. The Great Tragic, which looped within three miles of the Barrowland, spread miles beyond its banks. It abducted tens and hundreds of thousands of trees. The flood was so spectacular that scores from town wandered out to watch it from a hilltop.

For most, the novelty faded. But Corbie limped out any day Case could accompany him. Case was yet possessed of dreams. Corbie indulged him.

"Why so interested in the river, Corbie?"

"I don't know. Maybe because of its grand statement."

"What?"

Corbie swung an encompassing hand. "The vastness. The ongoing rage. See how significant we are?" Brown water gnawed at the hill, furious, fumbling forests of driftwood. Less turbulent arms hugged the hill, probed the woods behind.

Case nodded. "Like the feeling I get when I look at the stars."

"Yes. Yes. But this is more personal. Closer to home. Not so?"

"I guess." Case sounded baffled. Corbie smiled. Legacy of a farm youth.

"Let's go back. It's peaked. But I don't trust it with those clouds rolling in."

Rain did threaten. Were the river to rise much more, the hill would become an island.

Case helped Corbie cross the boggy parts and up to the crest of the low rise which kept the flood from reaching cleared land. Much of that was a lake now, shallow enough to be waded if some fool dared. Under grey skies the Great Barrow stood out poorly, reflecting off the water as a dark lump. Corbie shuddered. "Case. He's still there."

The youth leaned on his spear, interested only because Corbie was interested. He wanted to get out of the drizzle.

"The Dominator, lad. Whatever else did not escape. Waiting. Filling with ever more hatred for the living."

Case looked at Corbie. The older man was taut with tension. He seemed frightened.

"If he gets loose, pity the world."

"But didn't the Lady finish him in Juniper?"

"She stopped him. She didn't destroy him. That may not be possible… Well, it must be. He has to be vulnerable somehow. But if the White Rose couldn't harm him…"

"The Rose wasn't so strong, Corbie. She couldn't even hurt the Taken. Or even their minions. All she could do was bind and bury them. It took the Lady and the Rebel…"

"The Rebel? I doubt that. She did it." Corbie lunged forward, forcing his leg. He marched along the edge of the lake. His gaze remained fixed on the Great Barrow.

Case feared Corbie was obsessed with the Barrowland. As a Guard, he had to be concerned. Though the Lady had exterminated the Resurrectionists in his grandfather's time, still that mound exerted its dark attraction. Monitor Sweet remained frightened someone would revive that idiocy. He wanted to caution Corbie, could think of no polite way to phrase himself.

Wind stirred the lake. Ripples ran from the Barrow toward them. Both shivered. "Wish this weather would break," Corbie muttered. "Time for tea?"

"Yes."

The weather continued chill and wet. Summer came late. Autumn arrived early. When the Great Tragic did at last recede, it left a mud plain strewn with the wrecks of grand trees. Its channel had shifted a half mile westward.

The woodland tribes continued selling furs.

Serendipity. Corbie was near done renovating. He was restoring a closet. In removing a wooden clothes rod he fumbled. The rod separated into parts when it hit the floor.

He knelt. He stared. His heart hammered. A slim spindle of white silk lay exposed… Gently, gently, he put the rod back together, carried it upstairs.

Carefully, carefully, he removed the silk, unrolled it. His stomach knotted.

It was Bomanz's chart of the Barrowland, complete with notes about which Taken lay where, where fetishes were located and why, the puissance of protective spells, and a scatter of known resting places of minions of the Taken who had gone into the ground with their captains. A cluttered chart indeed. Mostly annotated in TelleKurre.

Also noted were burial sites outside the Barrowland proper. Most of the ordinary fallen had gone into mass graves.

The battle fired Corbie's imagination. For a moment he saw the Dominator's forces standing firm, dying to the last man. He saw wave after wave of the White Rose horde give themselves up to contain the shadow within the trap. Overhead, the Great Comet seared the sky, a vast flaming scimitar.

He could only imagine, though. There were no reliable histories.

He commiserated with Bomanz. Poor foolish little man, dreaming, seeking the truth. He had not earned his dark legend.

Corbie remained fixed over the chart all night, letting it seep into bone and soul. It did little to help him translate, but it did illuminate the Barrowland some. And even more, it illuminated a wizard so dedicated he had spent his entire adult life studying the Barrowland.

Dawn's light stirred Corbie. For a moment he doubted himself. Could he become prey to the same fatal passion?

Chapter Nine:
THE PLAIN OF FEAR

 

The Lieutenant himself stirred me out. "Elmo's back, Croaker. Eat some breakfast, then report to the conference room." He was a sour man getting sourer every day. Sometimes I regret having voted for him after the Captain died in Juniper. But the Captain wished it. It was his dying request.

"Be there soonest," I said, piling out without my customary growl. I grabbed clothing, stirred papers, silently mocked myself. How often did I doubt voting for the Captain himself? Yet when he wanted to resign, we did not let him.

My quarters look nothing like a physician's den. The walls are floor to ceiling with old books. I have read most, after having studied the languages in which they are written. Some are as old as the Company itself, recounting ancient histories. Some are noble genealogies, stolen from widely dispersed old temples and civil offices. The rarest, and most interesting, chronicle the rise and growth of the Domination.

The rarest of all are those in TelleKurre. The followers of the White Rose were not gentle victors. They burned books and cities, transported women and children, profaned ancient works of art and famous shrines. The customary afterglow of a great conflagration.

So there is little left to key one into the languages and thinking and history of the losers. Some of the most plainly written documents I possess remain totally inaccessible.

How I wish Raven were with us still, instead of dwelling among the dead men. He had a passing familiarity with written TelleKurre. Few outside the Lady's intimate circle do.

Goblin stuck his head in. "You coming or not?"

I cried on his shoulder. It was the old lament. No progress. He laughed. "Go blow in your girlfriend's ear. She might help."

"When will you guys let up?" It had been fifteen years since I wrote my last simpleminded romance about the Lady. That was before the long retreat which led the Rebel to his doom before the Tower at Charm. They do not let you forget.

"Never, Croaker. Never. Who else has spent the night with her? Who else goes carpet-flying with her?"

I would rather forget. Those were times of terror, not romance.

She became aware of my annalistic endeavors and asked me to show her side. More or less. She did not censor or dictate, but did insist I remain factual and impartial. I recall thinking she expected defeat, wanted an unbiased history set down somewhere.

Goblin glanced at the mound of documents. "You can't get any handle on it?"

"I don't think there is a handle. Everything I do translate turns out a big nothing. Somebody's expense record. An appointment calendar. A promotions list. A letter from some officer to a friend at court. Everything way older than what I'm looking for."

Goblin raised an eyebrow.

"I'll keep on trying." There was something there. We took them from Whisper, when she was a Rebel. They meant a lot to her. And our mentor then, Soulcatcher, thought them of empire-toppling significance.

Thoughtfully, Goblin remarked, "Sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Maybe you should look for what ties it all together."

The thought had occurred to me. A name here, there, elsewhere, revealing the wake of someone through his or her earlier days. Maybe I would find it. The comet would not return for a long time.

But I had my doubts.

Darling is a young thing yet, just into her middle twenties. But the bloom of youth has abandoned her. Hard years have piled on hard years. There is little feminine about her. She had no chance to develop in that direction. Even after two years on the Plain none of us think of her as Woman.

She is tall, maybe two inches under six feet. Her eyes are a washed-out blue that often seems vacant, but they become swords of ice when she is thwarted. Her hair is blonde, as from much exposure to the sun. Without continuous attention it hangs in straggles and strings. Not vain, she keeps it shorter than is stylish. In dress, too, she leans toward the utilitarian. Some first-time visitors are offended because she dresses so masculine. But she leaves them with no doubts that she can handle business.

Her role came to her unwanted, but she has made peace with it, has assumed it with stubborn determination. She shows a wisdom remarkable for her age, and for one handicapped as she is. Raven taught her well during those few years he was her guardian.

She was pacing when I arrived. The conference room is earth-sided, smokey, crowded even when empty. It smells of long occupation by too many unclean men. The old messenger from Oar was there. So were Tracker and Corder and several other outsiders. Most of the Company were present. I finger-signed a greeting. Darling gave me a sisterly hug, asked if I had any progress to report.

I spoke for the group and signed for her. "I am sure we don't have all the documents we found in the Forest of Cloud. Not just because I can't identify what I'm looking for, either. Everything I do have is too old."

Darling's features are regular. Nothing stands out. Yet you sense character, will, that this woman cannot be broken. She has been to Hell already. It did not touch her as a child. She will not be touched now.

She was not pleased. She signed, "We will not have the time we thought."

My attention was half elsewhere. I had hoped for sparks between Tracker and the other westerner. On a gut level I had responded negatively to Tracker. I found myself with an irrational hope for evidence to sustain that reaction.

Nothing.

Not surprising. The cell structure of the movement keeps our sympathizers insulated from one another.

Darling wanted to hear from Goblin and One-Eye next. Goblin used his squeakiest voice. "Everything we heard is true. They are reinforcing their garrisons. But Corder can tell you better. For us, the mission was a bust. They were ready. They chased us all over the Plain. We were lucky to get away. We didn't get no help, either."

The menhirs and their weird pals are on our side, supposedly. Sometimes I wonder. They are unpredictable. They help or don't according to a formula only they understand.

Darling was little interested in details of the failed raid. She moved on to Corder. He said, "Armies are gathering on both sides of the Plain. Under command of the Taken."

"Taken?" I asked. I knew of only the two. He sounded like he meant many.

A chill then. There is a longtime rumor that the Lady has been quiet so long because she is raising a new crop of Taken. I had not believed it. The age is sorrowfully short of characters of the magnificently villainous vitality of those the Dominator took in olden times: Soulcatcher, the Hanged Man, Nightcrawler, Shapeshifter, the Limper, and such. Those were nastymen of the grand scope, nearly as wild and hairy in their wickedness as the Lady and Dominator themselves. This is the era of the weak sister, excepting only Darling and Whisper.

Corder responded shyly. "The rumors are true, Lord."

Lord. Me. Because I stand near the heart of the dream. I hate it, yet eat it up. "Yes?"

"They may not be Stormbringers or Howlers, these new Taken." He smiled feebly. "Sir Tucker observed that the old Taken were wild devils as unpredictable as the lightning, and the new ones are the predictable tame thunder of bureaucracy. If you follow my meaning."

"I do. Go on."

"It is believed that there are six new ones, Lord. Sir Tucker believes they are about to be unleashed. Thus the great buildup around the Plain. Sir Tucker believes the Lady has made a competition of our destruction."

Tucker. Our most dedicated agent. One of the few survivors of the long siege of Rust. His hatred knows no bounds.

Corder had a strange look. A green-around-the-edges look. A look that said there was more, and all bad. "Well?" I said. "Spit it out."

"The names of the Taken have been enscribed on stellae raised in their respective demenses. At Rust the army commander is named Benefice. His Stella appeared after a carpet arrived by night. He has not actually been seen."

That bore investigation. Only the Taken can manage a carpet. But no carpet can reach Rust without crossing the Plain of Fear. The menhirs have reported no such passage. "Benefice? Interesting name. The others?"

"In Thud the Stella bears the name Blister."

Chuckles. I said, "I liked it better when the names were descriptive. Like the Limper, Moonbiter, the Faceless Man."

"At Frost we have one called the Creeper."

"That's better." Darling gave me a cautionary look.

"At Rue there is one called Learned. And at Hull, one called Scorn."

"Scorn. I like that, too."

"The western bounds of the Plain are held by Whisper and Journey, both operating from a village called Spit."

Being a natural mathematical phenom, I summed and said, "That's five new ones and two old. Where is the other new one?"

"I don't know. The only other is the commander over all. His Stella stands in the military compound outside Rust."

The way he said that abraded my nerves. He was pale. He started shaking. A premonition gripped me. I knew I would not like what he said next. But, "Well?"

"That Stella bears the sigil of the Limper."

Right. So right. I did not like it at all.

The feeling was universal.

"Oh!" Goblin shrieked.

One-Eye said, "Holy shit," in a soft awed tone that was all the more meaningful for its reserve.

I sat down. Right there. Right in the middle of the floor. I folded my head in my hands. I wanted to cry. "Impossible," I said. "I killed him. With my own hands." And saying it, I did not believe it anymore, though I had had faith in that fact for years. "But how?"

"Can't keep a good man down," Elmo chided. That he was shaken was evidenced by the smart remark. Elmo says nothing gratuitously.

The feud between the Limper and the Company dates to our arrival north of the Sea of Torments, for it was then that we enlisted Raven, a mysterious native of Opal, a man of former high estate who had been done out of his titles and livings by minions of the Limper. Raven was as tough as they come, and utterly fearless. The robbery sanctioned by Taken or not, he struck back. He slew the villains, among them the Limper's most competent people. Then our path kept crossing the Limper's. Each time something worsened the weather between us…

In the confusion after Juniper, Limper thought to settle with us. I engineered an ambush. He charged in. "I would have bet anything I killed him." I tell you, at that moment I was as rattled as ever I have been. I was on the precipice of panic.

One-Eye noticed. "Don't get hysterical, Croaker. We survived him before."

"He's one of the old ones, idiot! One of the real Taken. From times when they had real wizards. And he's never really been allowed to go full speed at us before. And with all that help." Eight Taken and five armies to assault the Plain of Fear. Seldom were there more than seventy of us here in the Hole.

My head filled with terrible visions. Those Taken might be second-rate, but they were so many. Their fury would fire the Plain. Whisper and the Limper have campaigned here before. They are not ignorant of the Plain's perils. In fact, Whisper battled here both as a Rebel and as Taken. She won most of the most famous battles of the eastern war.

Reason reasserted itself but did little to brighten tomorrow. Once I thought, I reached the inescapeable conclusion that Whisper knows the Plain too well. Might even have allies out here.

Darling touched my shoulder. That was more calming than any words from friends. Her confidence is contagious. She signed, "Now we know," and smiled.

Still, time has become a hanging hammer about to fall. The long wait for the comet has been rendered irrelevant. We have to survive right now. Trying for a bright side, I said, "The Limper's true name is somewhere in my document collection."

But that recalled my problem. "Darling, the specific document I want is not there."

She raised an eyebrow. Unable to speak, she has developed one of the most expressive faces I've ever seen.

"We have to have a sit-down. When you have time. To go over exactly what happened to those papers while Raven had them. Some are missing. They were there when I turned them over to Soulcatcher. They were there when I got them back from her. I am sure they were there when Raven took them. What happened to them later?"

"Tonight," she signed. "I will make time." She seemed distracted suddenly. Because I mentioned Raven? He meant a lot to her, but you'd think the edge would be off by now. Unless there was more to the story than I knew. And that was plenty possible. I really have no idea what their relationship became in the years after Raven left the Company. His death certainly bothers her still. Because it was so pointless. I mean, after surviving everything the shadow threw his way, he drowned in a public bath.

The Lieutenant says there are nights she cries herself to sleep. He does not know why, but he suspects Raven is at the root.

I have asked her about those years when they were on their own, but she will not tell the tale. The emotional impression I get is one of sorrow and grave disappointment.

She pushed her troubles away now, turned to Tracker and his mutt. Behind them, the men Elmo caught on the bluff squirmed. Their turn was coming. They knew the reputation of the Black Company.

But we did not get to them. Nor even to Tracker and Toadkiller Dog. For the watch above shrieked another alert.

This was getting tiresome.

 

 

The rider crossed the stream as I entered the coral. Water splashed. His mount staggered. It was covered with foam. Never again would it run well. It hurt me to see an animal so broken. But its rider had cause.

Two Taken darted about just beyond the bound of the null. One flung a violet bolt. It perished long before it reached us. One-Eye cackled and raised a middle finger. "Always wanted to do that."

"Oh, wonder of wonders," Goblin squeaked, looking the other way. A number of mantas, big blue-blacks, soared off the rosy bluffs, caught updrafts. Must have been a dozen, though they were hard to count, maneuvering as they did to avoid stealing one another's wind. These were giants of their kind. Their wings spanned almost a hundred feet. When they were high enough, they dove at the Taken in pairs.

The rider halted, fell. He had an arrow in his back. He remained conscious just long enough to gasp, "Tokens!"

The first manta pair, seeming to move with slow stately grace, though actually they streaked ten times faster than a man can run, ripped past the nearer Taken just inside Darling's null. Each loosed a brilliant lightning bolt. Lightning could speed where Taken witchery would not survive.

One bolt hit. Taken and carpet reeled, glowed briefly. Smoke appeared. The carpet twisted and spun earthward. We sent up a ragged cheer.

The Taken regained control, rose clumsily, drifted away.

I knelt by the messenger. He was little more than a boy. He was alive. He had a chance if I got to work. "A little help here! One-Eye."

Manta pairs ripped along the boundary of the null, blasting away at the second Taken. This one evaded effortlessly, did nothing to fight back. "That's Whisper," Elmo said.

"Yeah," I said. She knows her way around.

One-Eye grumbled, "You going to help this kid or not, Croaker?"

"All right. All right." I hated to miss the show. It was the first I had seen so many mantas, the first I had seen them support us. I wanted to see more.

"Well," said Elmo, while calming the boy's horse and going through his saddlebags, "another missive for our esteemed annalist." He proffered another oilskin packet. Baffled, I tucked it under my arm, then helped One-Eye carry the messenger down into the Hole.

Chapter Ten:
BOMANZ'S STORY

 

Croaker:

Jasmine's squeal rattled the windows and doors. "Bomanz! You come down here! Come down right now, you hear me?"

Bomanz sighed. A man couldn't get five minutes alone. What the hell did he get married for? Why did any man? You spent the rest of your life doing hard time, doing what other people wanted, not what you wanted.

"Bomanz!"

"I'm coming, dammit! Damned woman can't blow her nose without me there to hold her hand," he added sotto voce. He did a lot of talking under his breath. He had feelings to vent, and peace to maintain. He compromised. Always, he compromised.

He stamped downstairs, each footfall a declaration of irritation. He mocked himself as he went: You know you're getting old when everything aggravates you.

"What do you want? Where are you?"

"In the shop." There was an odd note in her voice. Suppressed excitement, he decided. He entered the shop warily.

"Surprise!"

His world came alive. Grouchiness deserted him. "Stance!" He flung himself at his son. Powerful arms crushed him. "Here already? We didn't expect you till next week."

"I got away early. You're getting pudgy, Pop." Stancil opened his arms to include Jasmine in a three-way hug.

"That's your mother's cooking. Times are good. We're eating regular. Tokar's been…" He glimpsed a faded, ugly shadow. "So how are you? Back up. Let me look at you. You were still a boy when you left."

And Jasmine: "Doesn't he look great? So tall and healthy. And such nice clothes." Mock concern. "You haven't been up to any funny business, have you?"

"Mother! What could a junior instructor get up to?" He met his father's eye, smiled a smile that said "Same old Mom."

Stancil was four inches taller than his father, in his middle twenties, and looked athletic despite his profession. More like an adventurer than a would-be don, Bomanz thought. Of course, times changed. It had been eons since his own university days. Maybe standards had changed.

He recalled the laughter and pranks and all-night, dreadfully serious debates on the meaning of it all, and was bitten by an imp of nostalgia. What had become of that mentally quick, foxy young Bomanz? Some silent, unseen Guardsman of the mind had interred him in a barrow in the back of his brain, and there he lay dreaming, while a bald, jowly, potbellied gnome gradually usurped him… They steal our yesterdays and leave us no youth but that of our children…

"Well, come on. Tell us about your studies." Get out of that self-pitying mindset, Bomanz, you old fool. "Four years and nothing but letters about doing laundry and debates at the Stranded Dolphin. Stranded he would be in Oar. Before I die I want to see the sea. I never have." Old fool. Dream out loud and that's the best you can do? Would they really laugh if you told them the youth is still alive in there somewhere?

"His mind wanders," Jasmine explained.

"Who are you calling senile?" Bomanz snapped.

"Pop. Mom. Give me a break. I just got here."

Bpmanz gobbled air. "He's right. Peace. Truce. Armistice. You referee, Stance. Two old warhorses like us are set in their ways."

Jasmine said, "Stance promised me a surprise before you came down."

"Well?" Bomanz asked.

"I'm engaged. To be married."

How can this be? This is my son. My baby. I was changing his diapers last week… Time, thou unspeakable assassin, I feel thy cold breath. I hear thine iron-shod hooves…

"Hmph. Young fool. Sorry. Tell us about her, since you won't tell us about anything else."

"I would if I could get a word in."

"Bomanz, be quiet. Tell us about her, Stance."

"You probably know something already. She's Tokar's sister, Glory."

Bomanz's stomach plunged to the level of his heels. Tokar's sister. Tokar, who might be a Resurrectionist.

"What's the matter now, Pop?"

"Tokar's sister, eh? What do you know about that family?"

"What's wrong with them?"

"I didn't say anything was. I asked you what you know about them."

"Enough to know I want to marry Glory. Enough to know Tokar is my best friend."

"Enough to know if they're Resurrectionists?"

Silence slammed into the shop. Bomanz stared at his son. Stancil stared back. Twice he started to respond, changed his mind. Tension rasped the air. "Pop…"

"That's what Besand thinks. The Guard is watching Tokar. And me, now. It's the time of the comet, Stance. The tenth passage. Besand smells some big Resurrectionist plot. He's making life hard. This thing about Tokar will make it worse."

Stancil sucked spittle between his teeth. He sighed. "Maybe it was a mistake, coming home. I won't get anything done wasting time ducking Besand and fighting with you."

"No, Stance," Jasmine said. "Your father won't start anything. Bo, you weren't starting a fight. You're not going to start one."

"Uhm." My son engaged to a Resurrectionist? He turned away, took a deep breath, quietly berated himself. Jumping to conclusions. On word no better than Besand's. "Son, I'm sorry. He's been riding me." He glanced at Jasmine. Besand wasn't his only persecutor.

"Thanks, Pop. How's the research coming?"

Jasmine grumbled and muttered. Bomanz said, "This conversation is crazy. We're all asking questions and nobody is answering."

"Give me some money, Bo," Jasmine said.

"What for?"

"You two won't say hello before you start your plotting. I might as well go marketing."

Bomanz waited. She eschewed her arsenal of pointed remarks about Woman's lot. He shrugged, dribbled coins into her palm. "Let's go upstairs, Stance."

"She's mellowed," Stancil said as they entered the attic room.

"I hadn't noticed."

"So have you. But the house hasn't changed."

Bomanz lighted the lamp. "Cluttered as ever," he admitted. He grabbed his hiding spear. "Got to make a new one of these. It's getting worn." He spread his chart on the little table.

"Not much improvement, Pop."

"Get rid of Besand." He tapped the sixth barrow. "Right there. The only thing standing in my way."

"That route the only option, Pop? Could you get the top two? Or even one. That would leave you a fifty-fifty chance of guessing the other two."

"I don't guess. This isn't a card game. You can't deal a new hand if you play your first one wrong."

Stancil took the one chair, stared at the chart. He drummed the tabletop with his fingers. Bomanz fidgeted.

A week passed. The family settled into new rhythms, including living with the Monitor's intensified surveillance.

Bomanz was cleaning a weapon from the TelleKurre site. A trove, that was. A veritable trove. A mass burial, with weapons and armor almost perfectly preserved. Stancil entered the shop. Bomanz looked up. "Rough night?"

"Not bad. He's ready to give up. Only came round once."

"Men fu or Besand?"

"Men fu. Besand was there a half dozen times."

They were working shifts. Men fu was the public excuse.

In reality, Bomanz hoped to wear Besand down before the comet's return. It was not working.

"Your mother has breakfast ready." Bomanz began assembling his pack.

"Wait up, Pop. I'll go too."

"You need to rest."

"That's all right. I feel like digging."

"Okay." Something was bothering the boy. Maybe he was ready to talk.

They'd never done much of that. Their pre-university relationship had been one of confrontation, with Stance always on the defensive… He had grown, these four years, but the boy was still there inside. He was not yet ready to face his father man-to-man. And Bomanz had not grown enough to forget that Stancil was his little boy. Those growths sometimes never come. One day the son is looking back at his own son, wondering what happened.

Bomanz resumed rubbing flakes off a mace. He sneered at himself. Thinking about relationships. This isn't like you, you old coot.

"Hey, Pop," Stance called from the kitchen. "Almost forgot. I spotted the comet last night."

A claw reached in and grabbed a handful of Bomanz's guts. The comet! Couldn't be. Not already. He was not ready for it.

"Nervy little bastard," Bomanz spat. He and Stancil knelt in the brush, watching Men fu toss artifacts from their diggings.

"I ought to break his leg."

"Wait here a minute. I'll circle around and cut him off when he runs."

Bomanz snorted. "Not worth the trouble."

"It's worth it to me, Pop. Just to keep the balance."

"All right." Bomanz watched Men fu pop up to look around, ugly little head jerking like that of a nervous pigeon.

He dropped back into the excavation. Bomanz stalked forward. He drew close enough to hear the thief talking to himself.

"Oh. Lovely. Lovely. A stone fortune. Stone fortune. That fat little ape don't deserve it. All the time sucking up to Besand. That creep."

"Fat little ape? You asked for it." Bomanz shed his pack and tools, got a firm grip on his spade.

Men fu came up out of the pit, his arms filled. His eyes grew huge. His mouth worked soundlessly.

Bomanz wound up. "Now Bo, don't be…"

Bomanz swung. Men fu danced, took the blow on his hip, squawked, dropped his burden, flailed the air, and toppled into the pit. He scrambled out the far side, squealing like a wounded hog. Bomanz wobbled after him, landed a mighty stroke across his behind. Men fu ran. Bomanz charged after him, spade high, yelling, "Stand still, you thieving son-of-a-bitch! Take it like a man."

He took a last mighty swing. It missed. It flung him around. He fell, bounced back up, continued the chase sans avenging spade.

Stancil threw himself into Men fu's way. The thief put his head down and bulled through. Bomanz ploughed into Stancil. Father and son rolled in a tangle of limbs.

Bomanz gasped, "What the hell? He's gone now." He sprawled on his back, panted. Stancil started laughing. "What's so damned funny?"

"The look on his face."

Bomanz sniggered. "You weren't much help." They guffawed. Finally, Bomanz gasped, "I'd better find my spade."

Stancil helped his father stand. "Pop, I wish you could have seen yourself."

"Glad I didn't. Lucky I didn't have a stroke." He lapsed into a fit of giggles.

"You all right, Pop?"

"Sure. Just can't laugh and catch my breath at the same time. Oh. Oh, my. I won't be able to move again if I sit down."

"Let's go dig. That'll keep you loose. You dropped the spade around here, didn't you?"

"There it is."

The giggles haunted Bomanz all morning. He would recall Men fu's flailing retreat and his self-control would go.

"Pop?" Stancil was working the far side of the pit. "Look here. This may be why he didn't notice you coming."

Bomanz limped over, watched Stancil brush loose soil off a perfectly preserved breastplate. It was as black and shiny as rubbed ebony. An ornate ornament in silver bossed its center. "Uhm." Bomanz popped out of the pit. "Nobody around. That half-man, half-beast design. That's Shapeshifter."

"He led the TelleKurre."

"He wouldn't be buried here, though."

"It's his armor, Pop."

"I can see that, dammit." He popped up like a curious groundhog. No one in sight. "Sit up here and keep watch. I'll dig it out."

"You sit, Pop."

"You were up all night."

"I'm a lot younger than you are."

"I'm feeling just fine, thank you."

"What color is the sky, Pop?"

"Blue. What kind of question…"

"Hallelujah. We agree on something. You're the most contrary old goat…"

"Stancil!"

"Sorry, Pop. We'll take turns. Flip a coin to see who goes first."

Bomanz lost. He settled down with his pack as a backrest. "Going to have to spread the dig out. Going straight down like this, it'll cave in first heavy rain."

"Yeah. Be a lot of mud. Ought to think about a drainage trench. Hey, Pop, there's nobody in this thing. Looks like the rest of his armor, too." Stancil had recovered a gauntlet and uncovered part of a greave.

"Yeah? I hate to turn it in."

"Turn it in? Why? Tokar could get a fortune for it."

"Maybe so. But what if friend Men fu did spot it? He'll tell Besand out of spite. We've got to stay on his good side. We don't need this stuff."

"Not to mention he might have planted it."

"What?"

"It shouldn't be here, right? And no body inside the armor. And the soil is loose."

Bomanz grunted. Besand was capable of a frame. "Leave everything the way it is. I'll go get him."

 

 

"Sour-faced old fart," Stancil muttered as the Monitor departed. "I bet he did plant it."

"No sense cussing. We can't do anything." Bomanz settled against his pack.

"What're you doing?"

"Loafing. I don't feel like digging anymore." He ached all over. It had been a busy morning.

"We should get what we can while the weather is good."

"Go ahead."

"Pop…" Stancil thought better of it. "How come you and Mom fight all the time?"

Bomanz let his thoughts drift. The truth was elusive. Stance would not remember the good years. "I guess because people change and we don't want them to." He could find no better words. "You start out with a woman; she's magical and mysterious and marvelous, the way they sing it. Then you get to know each other. The excitement goes away. It gets comfortable. Then even that fades. She starts to sag and turn grey and get lined and you feel cheated. You remember the fey, shy one you met and talked with till her father threatened to plant a boot in your ass. You resent this stranger. So you take a poke. I guess it's the same for your mother. Inside, I'm still twenty. Stance. Only if I pass a mirror, or if my body won't do what I want, do I realize that I'm an old man. I don't see the potbelly and the varicose veins and the grey hair where I've got any left. She has to live with it.

"Every time I see a mirror I'm amazed. I end up wondering who's taken over the outside of me. A disgusting old goat, from the look of him. The kind I used to snicker at when I was twenty. He scares me, Stance. He looks like a dying man. I'm trapped inside him, and I'm not ready to go."

Stancil sat down. His father never talked about his feelings. "Does it have to be that way?"

Maybe not, but it always is… "Thinking about Glory, Stance? I don't know. You can't get out of getting old. You can't get out of having a relationship change."

"Maybe none of it has to be. If we manage this…"

"Don't tell me about maybes, Stance. I've been living on maybes for thirty years." His ulcer took a sample nibble from his gut. "Maybe Besand is right. For the wrong reasons."

"Pop! What are you talking about? You've given your whole life to this."

"What I'm saying, Stance, is that I'm scared. It's one thing to chase a dream. It's another to catch it. You never get what you expect. I have a premonition of disaster. The dream might be stillborn."

Stancil's expression ran through a series of changes. "But you've got to…"

"I don't have to do anything but be Bomanz the antiquary. Your mother and I don't have much longer. This dig should yield enough to keep us."

"If you went ahead, you'd have a lot more years and a lot more…"

"I'm scared, Stance. Of going either way. That happens when you get older. Change is threatening."

"Pop…"

"I'm talking about the death of dreams, son. About losing the big, wild make-believes that keep you going. The impossible dreams. That kind of jolly pretend is dead. For me. All I can see is rotten teeth in a killer's smile."

Stancil hoisted himself out of the pit. He plucked a strand of sweetgrass, sucked it while gazing into the sky. "Pop, how did you feel right before you married Mom?"

"Numb."

Stancil laughed. "Okay, how about when you went to ask her father? On the way there?"

"I thought I was going to dribble down my leg. You never met your grandfather. He's the one who got them started telling troll stories."

"Something like you feel now?"

"Something. Yes. But it's not the same. I was younger, and I had a reward to look forward to."

"And you don't now? Aren't the stakes bigger?"

"Both ways. Win or lose."

"Know what? You're having what they call a crisis of self-confidence. That's all. Couple of days and you'll be raring to go again."

That evening, after Stancil had gone out, Bomanz told Jasmine, "That's a wise boy we've got. We talked today. Really talked, for the first time. He surprised me." "Why? He's your son, isn't he?"

The dream came stronger than ever before, more quickly than ever. It wakened Bomanz twice in one night. He gave up trying to sleep. He went and sat on the front stoop, taking in the moonlight. The night was bright. He could make out rude buildings along the dirty street.

Some town, he thought, remembering the glories of Oar. The Guard, us antiquaries, and a few people who scratch a living serving us and the pilgrims. Hardly any of those anymore, even with the Domination fashionable. The Barrowland is so disreputable nobody wants to look at it.

He heard footsteps. A shadow approached. "Bo?"

"Besand?"

"Uhm." The Monitor settled on the next step down. "What're you doing?"

"Couldn't sleep. Been thinking about how the Barrowland has gotten so blighted even self-respecting Resurrectionists don't come here anymore. You? You're not taking the night patrol yourself, are you?"

"Couldn't sleep either. That damned comet."

Bomanz searched the sky.

"Can't see it from here. Have to go around back. You're right. Nobody knows we're here anymore. Us or those things in the ground over there. I don't know what's worse. Neglect or plain stupidity."

"Uhm?" Something was gnawing at the Monitor.

"Bo, they're not replacing me because I'm old or incompetent, though I guess I'm enough of both. They're moving me out so somebody's nephew can have a post. An exile for a black sheep. That hurts, Bo. That really hurts. They've forgotten what this place is. They're telling me I wasted my whole life doing a job any idiot can sleep his way through."

"The world is full of fools."

"Fools die."

"Eh?"

"They laugh when I talk about the comet or about Resurrectionists striking this summer. They can't believe that I believe. They don't believe there's anything under those mounds. Not anything still alive."

"Bring them out here. Walk them through the Barrowland after dark."

"I tried. They told me to quit whining if I wanted a pension."

"You've done all you can, then. It's on their heads."

"I took an oath, Bo. I was serious about it then, and I'm serious now. This job is all I have. You've got Jasmine and Stance. I might as well have been a monk. Now they're discarding me for some young…" He began making strange noises.

Sobs? Bomanz thought. From the Monitor? From this man with a heart of flint and all the mercy of a shark? He took Besand's elbow. "Let's go look at the comet. I haven't seen it yet."

Besand got hold of himself. "You haven't? That's hard to believe."

"Why? I haven't been up late. Stancil has done the night work."

"Never mind. Slipping into my antagonistic character again. We should've been lawyers, you and I. We've got the argumentative turn of mind."

"You could be right. Spent a lot of time lately wondering what I'm doing out here."

"What are you doing here, Bo?"

"I was going to get rich. I was going to study the old books, open a few rich graves, go back to Oar and buy into my uncle's drayage business." Idly, Bomanz wondered how much of his faked past Besand accepted. He had lived it so long that he now remembered some fraudulent anecdotes as factual unless he thought hard.

"What happened?"

"Laziness. Plain old-fashioned laziness. I found out there's a big difference between dreaming and getting in there and doing. It was easier to dig just enough to get by and spend the rest of the time loafing." Bomanz made a sour face. He was striking near the truth. His researches were, in fact, partly an excuse for not competing. He simply did not have the drive of a Tokar.

"You haven't had too bad a life. One or two hard winters when Stancil was a pup. But we all went through those. A helping hand here or there and we all survived. There she is." Besand indicated the sky over the Barrowland.

Bomanz gasped. It was exactly what he had seen in his dreams. "Showy, isn't it?"

"Wait till it gets close. It'll fill half the sky."

"Pretty, too."

"Stunning, I'd say. But also a harbinger. An ill omen. The old writers say it'll keep returning till the Dominator is freed."

"I've lived with that stuff most of my life, Besand, and even I find it hard to believe there's anything to it. Wait! I get that spooky feeling around the Barrowland, too. But I just can't believe those creatures could rise again after four hundred years in the ground."

"Bo, maybe you are honest. If you are, take a hint. When I leave, you leave. Take the TelleKurre stuff and head for Oar."

"You're starting to sound like Stance."

"I mean it. Some idiot unbeliever kid takes over here, all Hell is going to break loose. Literally. Get out while you can."

"You could be right. I'm thinking about going back. But what would I do? I don't know Oar anymore. The way Stance tells it, I'd get lost.-Hell, this is home now. I never really realized that. This dump is home."

"I know what you mean."

Bomanz looked at that great silver blade in the sky. Soon now…

"What's going on out there? Who is that?" came from Bomanz's back door. "You clear off, hear? I'll have the Guard after you."

"It's me, Jasmine."

Besand laughed. "And the Monitor, mistress. The Guard is here already."

"Bo, what're you doing?"

"Talking. Looking at the stars."

"I'll be getting along," Besand said. "See you tomorrow."

From his tone Bomanz knew tomorrow would be a day of normal harassments.

"Take care." He settled on the dewy back step, let the cool night wash over him. Birds called in the Old Forest, their voices lonely. A cricket chirruped optimistically. Humid air barely stirred the remnants of his hair. Jasmine came out and sat beside him. "Couldn't sleep," he told her.

"Me either."

"Must be going around." He glanced at the comet, was startled by an instant of deja vu. "Remember the summer we came here? When we stayed up to see the comet? It was a night like this."

She took his hand, entwined her fingers with his. "You're reading my mind. Our first month anniversary. Those were fool kids, those two."

"They still are, inside."

Chapter Eleven:
THE BARROWLAND

 

For Corbie the unravelling came quickly now. When he kept his mind on business. But more and more he became distracted by that old silk map. Those strange old names. In TelleKurre they had a ring absent in modern tongues. Soulcatcher. Stormbringer. Moonbiter. The Hanged Man. They seemed so much more potent in the old tongue.

But they were dead. The only great ones left were the Lady and the monster who started it all, out there under the earth.

Often he went to a small window and stared toward the Barrowland. The devil in the earth. Calling, perhaps. Surrounded by lesser champions, few of them recalled in the legends and few the old wizard identified. Bomanz had been interested only in the Lady.

So many fetishes. And a dragon. And fallen champions of the White Rose, their shades set to eternal guard duty. It seemed so much more dramatic than the struggle today.

Corbie laughed. The past was always more interesting than the present. For those who lived through the first great struggle it must have seemed deadly slow, too. Only in the final battle were the legends and legacies created. A few days out of decades.

He worked less now, now that he had a sound place to live and a little saved. He spent more time wandering, especially by night.

Case came calling one morning, before Corbie was fully wakened. He allowed the youth inside. "Tea?"

"All right."

"You're nervous. What is it?"

"Colonel Sweet wants you."

"Chess again? Or work?"

"Neither. He's worried about your wandering around at night. I told him I go with you and all you do is look at the stars and stuff. Guess he's getting paranoid."

Corbie smiled a smile he did not feel. "Just doing his job. Guess my life looks odd. Getting past it. Lost in my own mind. Do I act senile sometimes? Here. Sugar?"

"Please." Sugar was a treat. The Guard could not provide it.

"Any rush? I haven't eaten."

"He didn't put it that way."

"Good." More time to prepare. Fool. He should have guessed his walks would attract attention. The Guard was paranoid by design.

Corbie prepared oats and bacon, which he shared with Case. For all they were well paid, the Guard ate poorly. Because of ongoing foul weather the Oar road was all but impassable. The army quartermasters strove valiantly but often could not get through.

"Well, let's see the man," Corbie said. And: "That's the last bacon. The Colonel better think about farming here, just in case."

"They talked about it." Corbie had befriended Case partly because he served at headquarters. Colonel Sweet would play chess and talk old times, but he never revealed any plans.

"And?"

"Not enough land. Not enough fodder."

"Pigs. They get fat on acorns."

"Need herdsmen. Else the tribemen would get them."

"I guess so."

The Colonel ushered Corbie into his private quarters. Corbie joked, "Don't you ever work? Sir?"

"The operation runs itself. Been rolling four centuries, that's the way it goes. I have a problem. Corbie."

Corbie grimaced. "Sir?"

"Appearances, Corbie. This is a world that lives by perceptions. You aren't presenting a proper appearance."

"Sir?"

"We had a visitor last month. From Charm."

"I didn't know that."

"Neither did anyone else. Except me. What you might call a prolonged surprise inspection. They happen occasionally." Sweet settled behind his worktable, pushed aside the chess set over which they had contested so often. He drew a long sheet of southern paper from a cubby at his right knee. Corbie glimpsed printing in a crabbed hand.

"Taken? Sir?"

Corbie never sirred anyone except as an afterthought. The habit disturbed Sweet. "Yes. With the Lady's carte blanche. He did not abuse it. But he did make recommendations. And he did mention people whose behavior he found unacceptable. Your name was first on the list. What the hell are you doing, wandering around all night?"

"Thinking. I can't sleep. The war did something. The things I saw… The guerrillas. You don't want to go to sleep because they might attack. If you do sleep, you dream about the blood. Homes and fields burning. Animals and children screaming. That was the worst. The babies crying. I still hear the babies crying." He exaggerated very little. Each time he went to bed he had to get past the crying of babes.

He told most of the truth and wound it into an imaginative lie. Babies crying. The babies who haunted him were his own, innocents abandoned in a moment of fear of commitment.

"I know," Sweet replied. "I know. At Rust they killed their children rather than let us capture them. The hardest men in the regiment wept when they saw the mothers hurling their infants down from the walls, then jumping after them. I never married. I have no children. But I know what you mean. Did you have any?"

"A son," Corbie said, in a voice both soft and strained, from a body almost shaking with pain. "And a daughter. Twins, they were. Long ago and far away."

"And what became of them?"

"I don't know. I would hope they're living still. They would be about Case's age."

Sweet raised an eyebrow but let the remark slide past. "And their mother?"

Corbie's eyes became iron. Hot iron, like a brand. "Dead."

"I'm sorry."

Corbie did not respond. His expression suggested he was not sorry himself.

"You understand what I'm saying, Corbie?" Sweet asked. "You were noticed by one of the Taken. That's never healthy."

"I get the message. Which was it?"

"I can't say. Which of the Taken are where when could be of interest to the Rebel."

Corbie snorted. "What Rebel? We wiped them out at Charm."

"Perhaps. But there is that White Rose."

"I thought they were going to get her?"

"Yeah. The stories you hear. Going to have her in chains before the month is out. Been saying that since first we heard of her. She's light on her feet. Maybe light enough." Sweet's smile faded. "At least I won't be around next time the comet comes. Brandy?"

"Yes."

"Chess? Or do you have a job?"

"Not right away. I'll go you one game."

Halfway through, Sweet said, "Remember what I said.

Eh? The Taken claimed he was leaving. But there's no guarantee. Could be behind a bush someplace watching." "I'll pay more attention to what I'm doing." He would. The last thing he wanted was a Taken interested in him. He had come too far to waste himself now.

Chapter Twelve:
THE PLAIN OF FEAR

 

I had the watch. My belly gnawed, weighted by lead. All day dots had traversed the sky, high up. A pair were there now, patroling. The continuous presence of Taken was not a good omen.

Closer, two manta pairs planed the afternoon air. They would ride the updrafts up, then circle down, taunting the Taken, trying to lure them across the boundary. They resented outsiders. The more so these, because these would crush them but for Darling-another intruder.

Walking trees were on the move beyond the creek. The dead menhirs glistened, somehow changed from their usual dullness. Things were happening on the Plain. No outsider could comprehend their import fully.

One great shadow clung to the desert. Way up there, daring the Taken, a lone windwhale hovered. An occasional, barely perceptible bass roar tumbled down. I'd never heard one talk before. They do so only when enraged.

A breeze muttered and whimpered in the coral. Old Father Tree sang counterpoint to the windwhale.

A menhir spoke behind me. "Your enemies come soon." I shivered. It recalled the flavor of a nightmare I have been having lately. I can recall no specifics afterward, only that it is filled with terror.

I refused to be unsettled by the sneaky stone. Much.

What are they? Where did they come from? Why are they different from normal stones? For that matter, why is the Plain ridiculously different? Why so bellicose? We are here on sufferance only, allied against a greater enemy. Shatter the Lady and see how our friendship prospers.

"How soon?"

"When they are ready."

"Brilliant, old stone. Positively illuminating."

My sarcasm did not go unnoticed, just unremarked. The menhirs have their own flare for sarcasm and the sharp-edged tongue.

"Five armies," said the voice. "They will not wait long."

I indicated the sky. "The Taken cruise at will. Unchallenged."

"They have not challenged." True. But a weak excuse. Allies should be allies. More, windwhales and mantas usually consider appearance on the Plain sufficient challenge. It occurred to me the Taken might have bought them off.

"Not so." The menhir had moved. Its shadow now fell across my toes. I finally looked. This one was just ten feet tall. A real runt.

It had guessed my thought. Damn.

It continued telling me what I already knew. "It is not possible to deal from a position of strength always. Take care. There has been a call to the Peoples to reassess your acceptance on the Plain."

So. This overtalkative hunk was an emissary. The natives were scared. Some thought they could save themselves trouble by booting us out.

"Yes."

"The Peoples" doesn't properly describe the parliament of species that makes decisions here, but I know no better title.

If the menhirs are to be believed-and they lie only by omission or indirection-over forty intelligent species inhabit the Plain of Fear. Those I know include menhirs, walking trees, windwhales and mantas, a handful of humans (both primitives and hermits), two kinds of lizard, a bird like a buzzard, a giant white bat, and an extremely scarce critter that looks like a camel-centaur put together backward. I mean, the humanoid half is behind. The creature runs toward what most would take as its fanny.

No doubt I have encountered others without recognizing them.

Goblin says there is a tiny rock monkey that lives in the hearts of the great coral reefs. He claims it looks like a miniature One-Eye. But Goblin is not to be trusted where One-Eye is concerned.

"I am charged with delivering a warning," the menhir said. "There are strangers on the Plain."

I asked questions. When it did not answer I turned irritably. It was gone. "Damned stone…"

Tracker and his mutt stood in the mouth of the Hole, watching the Taken.

Darling interviewed Tracker thoroughly, I'm told. I missed that. She was satisfied.

I had an argument with Elmo. Elmo liked Tracker. "Reminds me of Raven," he said. "We could use a few hundred Ravens."

"Reminds me of Raven, too. And that's what I don't like." But what good arguing? We cannot always like everyone. Darling thinks he is all right. Elmo thinks so. The Lieutenant accepts him. Why should I be different? Hell, if he is from the same mold as Raven, the Lady is in trouble.

He will be tested soon enough. Darling has something in mind. Something preemptive, I suspect. Possibly toward Rust.

Rust. Where the Limper had raised his Stella.

The Limper. Back from the dead. I did everything but burn the body. Should have done that, I guess. Bloody hell.

The scary part is wondering if he is the only one. Did others survive apparent certain death? Are they hidden away now, waiting to astound the world? "

A shadow fell across my feet. I returned to the living. Tracker stood beside me. "You look distressed," he said. He did show one every courtesy, I must admit.

I looked toward those patroling reminders of the struggle. I said, "I am a soldier, grown old and tired and confused. I have been fighting since before you were born. And I have yet to see anything gained."

He smiled a thin, almost secretive smile. It made me uncomfortable. Everything he did made me uncomfortable. Even his damned dog made me uncomfortable, and it did nothing but sleep. Much as it loafed, how had it managed the journey from Oar? Too much like work. I swear, that dog won't even get in a hurry to eat.

"Be of good faith, Croaker," Tracker said. "She will fall." He spoke with absolute conviction. "She hasn't the strength to tame the world."

There was that scariness again. True or not, the way he expressed the sentiment was disturbing.

"We'll bring them all down." He indicated the Taken. "They aren't real, like those of old."

Toadkiller Dog sneezed on Tracker's boot. He looked down. I thought he would kick the mutt. But instead he bent to scratch the dog's ear.

"Toadkiller Dog. What kind of name is that?"

"Oh, it's an old joke. From when we were both a lot younger. He took a shine to it. Insists on it now."

Tracker seemed only half there. His eyes were vacant, his gaze far away, though he continued to watch the Taken. Weird.

At least he admitted to having been young. There was a hint of human vulnerability in that. It is the apparent invulnerability of characters like Tracker and Raven that rattles me.