Dread Brass Shadows

by Glen Cook

  I was in a foul enough temper to accept it. “You come to TunFaire this way?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “There’s a big curve in the road a couple miles ahead. Runs around the end of that ridge yonder, to a town called Switchback.”

  “I remember.”

  “If somebody was to go over the ridge, they could save a mile and a half, get ahead, arid come back this way. We could come at them from two directions. My guess is they’ll jump her at the knee of the ridge, Maiden Angel Shrine, or the spring just past there.”

  “Does somebody mean me?”

  “There’s a thought.”

  “Here’s another one. She going to be watching behind her or ahead? She running to or from? Who’s she going to recognize?”

  Damn her black heart. She was right Carla Lindo would recognize me in a second. I bellyached a lot, but when the time came I headed uphill, cussing all the way.

  It wasn’t so bad going down the far side. I tripped and rolled part of the way. No work at all, that. But I didn’t make the time I should have. I was late getting to the Shrine of the Maiden Angel.

  The bad boys had had time to catch Carla Lindo and Winger had had time to catch them in an indelicately exposed posture. When I came puffing along, one was dead and another working on it while the third was unconscious. Winger had just finished tying a half-naked Carla Lindo to a sapling. “You stop for a couple of beers, Garrett?”

  “My pins aren’t short enough for running down hills.” A westbound peasant family studiously ignored us. They would report us at Hellwalker Station, the cavalry barracks two miles beyond Switchback. Riders would come to investigate. Highwaymen aren’t tolerated the way criminals are in the city.

  Carla Lindo had gotten batted around some. It took her a while to recognize me and turn on the heat. I gaped. Winger spat, shook her head, grabbed Carla Lindo’s pack in one hand and my arm in the other. “You going to stand there drooling or are you going to haul ass?”

  I shuddered and shivered and broke the spell. “Haul ass. One minute.” I squatted, told Carla Lindo, “The cavalry will be here soon, sweetheart. They’ll turn you loose. If you don’t want to spend the rest of your life explaining to every firelord and stormwarden there is, tell the soldiers that these guys jumped you, then some travelers came along and broke it up. But they took off before anybody thought of cutting you loose.”

  “Garrett! Please.” Could she ever turn on the heat. She wasn’t human. I turned to hot wax. “I have to have the book. I can’t go home without it.”

  I repeated my shudder-and-shiver routine. I can withstand them when I have to. “No way, darling. It’s too wicked. It’s killed too many people already. It’s got to be destroyed. And I don’t trust anybody to do that. Maybe not even me.” I wasn’t tempted anymore, though. I’d suffered too much. I Just wanted to put an end to the damned thing.

  I touched Carla Lindo’s cheek. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. It could have been something.”

  “Garrett, you can’t do this to me. You loved me. Didn’t you?”

  “Maybe I did, some. That don’t mean I’ll let you use me. That don’t mean I’m going to go to hell for you. I wouldn’t do that for anybody.” Except maybe Tinnie. I’d skipped through a suburb of hell for her trying to get this straightened out. I had to go see her again . . .

  Carla Lindo changed. She stopped being that delicious little morsel, turned into a wildcat with a mouth like a dock walloper, speaking the true shadows in her heart. She became the real Carla Undo Ramada, no better than the other two who’d worn her face.

  Winger grumbled, “You ready now? Or you want to hang around and put yourself through some more punishment?”

  Right. I put a cap on my hurt, turned my back on Carla Lindo Ramada, walked toward TunFaire Winger and I didn’t talk much. Wasn’t much to say. I told myself it could have been worse. I could have gotten involved with Carla Lindo. That wouldn’t have been hard. But events had conspired to keep me distanced. Lucky me, I’d ended up just getting another lesson revealing the basic blackness lying below the human heart. Once again I’d seen that, given incentive and opportunity, most anybody will jump at the chance to turn wicked. And the wicked will turn wickeder still.

  Priests of a thousand cults proclaim the essential goodliness of Man. They must be fools. All I see is people flinging themselves at the chance to do evil.

  I said a lot of that out loud. Winger told me, “You’re depressing.”

  “So they tell me. If they run into me at a time like this. Afterwards. Hang around me much longer, you’ll see me really black.”

  I wondered how black it would get. She had Carla Lindo’s pack. She might get a notion to cash in off Easterman.

  I’m not sure where the idea came from. Maybe it was spur-of-the-moment. Maybe it was in there all along because the route I picked through the west end was not the fastest. Whatever, suddenly we were at the corner of Blaize and Eldoro. Across the way, alone, hunched, as though shunned by its neighbors, aware of that, cringing, stood a building of ocher brick. Most TunFaire brick is red. Smoke wisped from a stack. The idea hit me. “Come on over here.”

  I pushed through the front door of that place. A cowbell arrangement announced me. A wizened kobold appeared. A squirrel on two feet. His hands permanently washed one another over his heart. “How may I help you, sir and madam?” His smirk told us he knew. All his kind have a fawning companionship with death.

  “I saw smoke from your chimney. You all fired up?”

  Puzzled, he replied, “No sir. We keep the fire burning so we don’t have to spend time preheating the kiln.”

  “Let me have the pack,” I told Winger. She gave it up reluctantly. She was puzzled, too. She came from an area where they had few nonhumans. If she’d known what was up, she might have resisted. I told the kobold, “I want to run this through.” I let him look at the pack.

  “Sir?”

  “I’ll pay the usual fee.”

  “Very well, sir.” Even kobolds don’t usually argue with money, whether or not they understand. He reached for the pack.

  “I’d rather send it off myself. So I’m absolutely sure. You know?”

  “As you wish.” He didn’t move. Time to show him the color of my money. I did. He smiled, put it into a cash box that appeared magically, and disappeared even more quickly. He washed his hands some more, suggested, “If you’ll follow me, then?”

  “What the hell we doing, Garrett? What is this place? It has a weird smell.”

  “You’ll see.”

  We went down a hall that passed between several small rooms. In one a kobold family kept vigil over an old, still form on a stone table. Winger got it then.

  Many of the races, and even some humans, prefer not to bury their dead. The reasons vary. For kobolds and some others burial supposedly leaves the dead the option of getting up and walking again. Or so they fear. For us humans expense is usually the major consideration. TunFaire is short on cemeteries Burial ground is expensive.

  The kobold took us to the kiln room. He shouted in his own language. More kobolds, likely family, popped up, threw coal into the kiln’s firebox, pumped bellows furiously. In seconds waves of heat beat at us.

  “You’re going to burn it?” Winger asked.

  “Going to chuck it in there and cremate it. Won’t be anything left but slag.” It gets hot in those kilns. Has to, to reduce bone.

  The little folk shoveled coal and pumped. The whole place got toasty warm. Winger argued with herself. She wasn’t much at hiding her thoughts. “Garrett . . . I got to go outside. I can’t handle the smell.” It was a bit thick in there but she just needed an excuse to remove herself from temptation. If she could stand herself, she could stand a crematorium.

  Soon enough the old kobold told me the kiln was ready. I wrestled with myself a little, finally managed to pin the dark side of me long enough. I tossed the bundle in onto the rack were they usually parked the bodies. I leaned my nose against a mica portho
le and watched.

  Carla Lindo’s pack burned quickly, exposing the book. First time I’d seen it. It was pretty much as described, big, thick, bound in leather that went fast. Its brass pages started to curl.

  I’m sure it was imagination. I don’t know what else it might have been. But as those pages yielded to the fire I thought I heard tiny, distant screams. I thought I saw frantic shadows scurrying over the glowing coals.

  48

  I stepped out of the crematorium. “Well, that’s the end of that . . .” A young couple passing spared a wide-eyed look for a goof who carried on conversations with thin air. I clammed. Winger wasn’t there. I hung around half a minute, probably looking as silly as I felt. Then I shrugged. What the hell? She had work to do, Chodo’s plunder to pawn while the pawning was good.

  Now what?

  I figured my best bet was to go home and catch up on my sleep. So naturally I decided to punish myself a little by delaying gratification. I headed for the Tate compound.

  It would be just a quick stop, just a minute to see how Tinnie was doing. If I could weasel my way around the Tate at the gate. After last night they’d be less friendly than ever

  But they did let me inside. I did see Tinnie. She was all better, full of vinegar. The old redhead again. She put on a big, wicked grin and threatened to try visiting again, as soon as I did a little recovering myself. “You might even try getting near some warm water, fella. I think your fleas have all died and started to ripen.”

  I gave her a little peck on the lips, about ten minutes’ worth, on account, and a grin for interest, and said, “I’ll run all the way. Don’t let me get too old before you . . .”

  “You’re already too old but I like you anyway I’ll probably give in to my baser nature . . . You’d better scoot before Uncle Willard finds out you’re here.”

  I scooted I didn’t exactly run home, but I didn’t waste much time. People tell me I was humming. I went straight to bed.

  Which is probably where I ought to stay, and say good-bye to running and redheads and whatever else. If I had the sense to stay in bed and keep my head under the covers, I wouldn’t get into these crazy things.

  About the Author:

  Glen Cook:(Pic by Chaz Boston Baden)

  From The BSFAN - Balticon 31 Program Book (1997):

  Glen Cook was born in New York in 1944. He grew up in northern California and began writing while in seventh grade. He served in the U. S. Navy, spending time with the Force Recon unit of the 3rd Marine Recon Battalion. He attended the University of Missouri and the Clarion Writers' Workshop. He produced his first paid work in 1970.

  Glen says, "Unlike most writers, I have not had a succession of strange jobs like chicken plucking and swamping our health bars. The only full-time employer I've ever had is General Motors." Due to a change of job location in 1988, Glen's writing decreased in volume. Fortunately, he has recently retired and is devoting more time to his writing.

  The long anticipated release of Bleak Seasons in his Black Company series finally occured in 1996. He is also known for his " Garrett Files" detective/fantasy series, his Dread Empire series, and many others.

  Glen's hobbies include stamp collecting, book collecting, and a passing interest in military history. Usually Glen can be found behind a huckster table at those conventions he attends. So, if you are in the dealer's room buying one of his books, and the man behind the table asks if you want it signed, chances are you just met him.