The Many Deaths of the Black Company (Chronicle of the Black Company)

by Glen Cook

  “Somebody was just plain damned lucky he had a friend as good as me to dig him out. The Old Man just wanted to put up a gravestone.”

  Goblin growled some more. “Not so. And the real truth is, the tunnel never would’ve collapsed if this two-legged, overripe dog turd hadn’t been playing one of his stupid games. You know, I almost forgot. I never did pay you back for that. You should’ve never brought it up, you human prune. Damn! You almost went and died on me before I got you paid off. I knew you were up to no good. You had that stroke on purpose, didn’t you?”

  “Of course I did, you nitwit. Every chance I get, I try to die just so’s you can’t backstab me no more. You want to be that way? I saved your ass and you want to be that way? Ain’t no fool like an old fool. Bring it on, you hairless little toady frog. I maybe slowed down a step the last couple years but I’m still three steps faster and ten torches brighter than any lily-white—”

  “Boys!” I snapped. “Children! We have work to do here.” They must have driven the whole Company crazy when they were young and had the energy to keep it up all the time. “As of this moment, all the slates are clean of anything that happened before I was born. Just open me a hole so I can go see what we have to do next.”

  The two wizards did not stop growling and muttering and threatening and trying to sabotage one another in small ways but they did lend their claimed expertise to the effort to open the gap.

  82

  Once the opening had been expanded enough to use, there was a brief debate about who would use it first. The accord was universal: “Not me.” But when I squatted down to duckwalk forward into the shadows, in hopes I could get a look at what might eat me a few seconds before its jaws snapped shut, several gentlemen turned all noble and chivalrous. I suspect it was significant that two of them, Swan and Suvrin, were not Company brothers.

  Goblin grumbled, “All right. All right. Now you’re making us look bad. All of you, get out of the way.” He bustled forward.

  He did not have to duck.

  I did, just slightly, as I followed him through.

  I did not need anyone to be noble or chivalrous or to go in before me.

  “There is no God but God,” I muttered. “His Works are Vast and Mysterious.” I was five steps inside and had just bumped into Goblin, who had stopped to stare as well. “I presume that’s the golem demon Shivetya.”

  “Or his ugly little brother.”

  Murgen had not kept me posted on the golem’s state. At last report it had been just a single earth tremor short of plunging into a bottomless abyss, still nailed to a huge wooden throne by means of a number of silver daggers. I observed, “It appears the plain has been healing itself in here, too.” I eased forward.

  There was still a vertiginous abyss. I had to close my eyes momentarily while I regained my equilibrium. Shivetya remained poised over it but the gap clearly was narrower than Murgen had described. In closing, the surface had pushed the wooden throne upward somewhat. Shivetya was no longer in momentary peril of falling. It looked like a few decades would see him lying there with his nose pressed into healed stone, the overturned throne on top of him still.

  Willow Swan invited himself to join me. He said, “That thing hasn’t moved since last time.”

  I countered, “Thought you couldn’t remember anything.”

  “Whatever the short farts did, it seems to be working. I recognize things when I see them.”

  Goblin told Swan, “Considering what could still happen if Shivetya starts jumping around, holding still seems like a pretty good idea. Don’t you think?”

  “Could you hold still for fifteen years?”

  I said, “He’s held still a lot longer than that, Swan. He’s been nailed to that throne for hundreds of years. Or even thousands. He has to have been nailed down since before Deceivers fleeing Rhaydreynak came here on their way to other worlds and hid the Books of the Dead.” That observation got me some looks, particularly from Master Santaraksita. I had not yet shared the tales I had gleaned from Murgen. “Else he would’ve stomped them good at the time. They would’ve looked like the kind of thing he was put here to guard against. I think.”

  “Who nailed him down?” Goblin asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Might be a handy piece of information. You’d want to keep an eye on a guy who could do that kind of thing.”

  “I would,” Swan agreed. He grinned nervously.

  “It’s listening,” I said. I moved along the edge of the abyss several steps, squatted. From there I could see the demon’s eyes. They were open a crack. I could also see that there were three of them instead of two, the third being in the center of the forehead above and between the other two. This point had not come up before, though it was the sort of thing you would expect of a Gunni-style demon.

  The oversight became self-explanatory as soon as the demon sensed my scrutiny. The third eye closed and vanished.

  I asked Swan, “That throne look like it’s solidly wedged?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Just wondering if we could move it without losing it down that crack.”

  “I’m no engineer but it looks to me like you’d really have to work at it to dump it down there now. Obviously, it could go. One really stupid move … it’s a hell of a deep hole. But…”

  The curious kept piling up behind us. Their chatter was becoming annoying. Every single whisper turned into a gaggle of echoes that made the place seem more haunted than it was. “Everybody be quiet. I can’t hear myself think.” I must have sounded nastier than I intended. People shut up. And gawked. I asked, “Does anyone see a way to get that thing turned right side up and pushed back away from the gap?”

  “How come you’d want to do that?” One-Eye asked. “Quit shoving, Junior.”

  Suvrin asked, “Using equipment we have on hand?”

  “Yes. And it would have to get done today. I want the majority of these people back on the road south at first light tomorrow.”

  “That means using brute force. Right now. Some of us would have to get on the other side of the fissure and lift the top of the throne enough so people and animals on this side could get the leverage to pull it on up. Using ropes.”

  Swan said, “You try to stand it up the way it is there, the bottom end will just slide off the edge. Then it’s a grand ride off to the entrails of the earth.”

  “How come you’d want to do that?” One-Eye demanded again. I ignored him again.

  I concentrated on the argument spreading outward from Suvrin and Swan. I let it run for several minutes. Then I announced, “Suvrin seems to be the only one here with a positive view. So he’s in charge. Suvrin, draft anybody you want. Help yourself to any resources you need. Sit Shivetya back up for me. You hear that, Steadfast Guardian? Gentlemen, if you have any ideas, feel free to share them with Mr. Suvrin.”

  Suvrin said, “I can’t … I don’t … I shouldn’t … I guess the first thing we’d better do is get a solid idea of how much weight we’re dealing with. And we’ll have to rig up some way to get across the gap. Mr. Swan, you handle that. Young Mr. Tobo, I understand you’re skilled at mathematics. Suppose you help me calculate how much mass we’re dealing with here?”

  Tobo grinned and headed for the throne, not at all intimidated by the demon.

  “One adjustment,” I said. “I need Swan with me. He’s been here before. Runmust, you and Iqbal figure out how to get across. Willow. Come with me.”

  Out of earshot of the others, Swan asked, “What’s going on?”

  “I didn’t want to remind anybody that the Company got this far once before. Somebody might recall a grudge against the man who made it impossible for our predecessors to go any farther.”

  “Oh. Thanks. I guess.” He glanced at the clot of Nyueng Bao. Mother Gota continued to nurture her grudge. She had a son somewhere down under this stone.

  “I may just have a strange perspective. I do believe all of us should accept responsibility for our act
ions but I’m not sure we ever understand why we do some things. Do you know why you cut Soulcatcher loose? I’d bet you’ve spent the odd minute here and there trying to figure that out.”

  “You’d win. Except it’d be more like the odd year here and there. And I still can’t explain it. She did something to me, somehow. Just with her eyes. All the way across the plain. Probably manipulating my feelings about her sister. When the time came it seemed like the right thing to do. I never had a doubt until it was all over and we were on the run.”

  “And she kept her word.”

  He understood. “She gave me everything her eyes promised. Everything I could never have from the sister I really wanted. Whatever her failings, Soulcatcher keeps her word.”

  “Sometimes we get what we want and find out that it wasn’t what we needed.”

  “No shit. Story of my life, Sleepy.”

  “Around fifty people came onto the plain. Two of you got away. Thirteen died on the road, trying. The rest are still out here somewhere. And you helped put them where they are. So I’m going to need you to show me. Are you still blind in the memory or have you started to remember?”

  “Oh, those spells took. It’s coming back. But not necessarily organized the same way that it happened. So bear with me when I seem a little confused.”

  “I understand.” I kept an eye on the others as we talked. Sahra seemed to be putting herself under a lot of unnecessary stress. Doj looked ferociously ready to seize the day should an opportunity pop up. Gota was nagging One-Eye about something while keeping one grim eye aimed Swan’s way. Goblin was trying to get the mist projector set up amidst a jostling crowd. I noted, “There seems to be more light than Murgen reported.”

  “Tons more. And it’s warmer, too. If I was allowed a guess, mine would be that it has something to do with the healing that’s going on.”

  I did feel overdressed for the indoor weather. It was not hot but it was warmer than the plain outside and there was no wind biting.

  “Where are the Captured?”

  “There was a stairway over there. We must have gone a mile down into the earth.”

  “You carried thirty-five unconscious people down there and got back in time to get away from the evening shadows? Without killing yourself?”

  “Catcher did most of it. She has a spell that makes things float through the air. We roped the people together and pulled them along like a string of sausages. She did the pulling, actually. I stayed on the uphill end. More or less. At first. Because the stair has some twists and turns. We had trouble getting them around the corners. But a lot less trouble than if we’d carried them one at a time.”

  I nodded. I knew of other instances when Catcher had used the same sorcery. Seemed like a handy one to have. We could use it right here, right now, to hoist my future buddy Shivetya.

  Curious. Once upon a time Murgen said that name meant “Deathless,” although more recently I had been given the meaning “Steadfast Guardian.” But I had been provided with whole new sets of creation myths and whatnot, too.

  I fought off an urge to charge off and plunge down the stairway right then. I hustled back to talk it over with the others. Most of the crowd were preoccupied with an effort to get Shivetya’s throne turned right side up by the power of talking about it. Suvrin told me, “It’s a way to keep warm.” And a way to work off some tension, no doubt. I heard plenty of traditional-style grumbling questioning the intelligence of any leader who wanted to play around with something like that great ugly thing over there on that throne.

  I gathered everyone interested. “Swan knows the way down to the caverns. His memory is getting better all the time.” Goblin and One-Eye preened. I gave them no chance to congratulate themselves publicly. “I’m going down there to scout. I want the rest of you to get camp set up. I want you to work out specifically how we’ll divide up tomorrow so the majority can scoot on across the plain to safety.” We had discussed this time and again—how we could break up the party, leaving the minimum number of people with the maximum stores to bring out the Captured while the rest moved on to, it was hoped, a more congenial clime.

  Doj’s position, so perfectly rational, was that we should ignore the Captured until we had crossed the plain, had gotten ourselves established in the Land of Unknown Shadows, and were capable of mounting a more thoroughly prepared and supplied expedition. But none of us knew what we would face at that end of this passage, and way too many of us were emotionally incapable of walking away from our brothers again now that we were this close.

  I should have gotten more information out of Murgen while we still had some flexibility. Time was winnowing our options rapidly.

  Sahra’s response to Uncle’s repeating his suggestion was blistering enough to melt lead. She might be reluctant to have her husband back but she was not going to delay any crisis.

  Swan leaned over my shoulder and whispered, “If you hang around here waiting for all these people to agree on something, we’re going to get very old and very hungry before anything happens.”

  The man had a point. A definite point.

  83

  I got my daily constitutional in before we reached the stairway. I began to appreciate just how vast the hall at the heart of that fortress was. My party dwindled into the distance. I observed, “This thing has got to be a mile across.”

  “Almost exactly. It’s a few yards under, according to Soulcatcher. I don’t know why. I wish we had a torch. I saw patterns in the flooring last time I was here, when there wasn’t quite so much dust, but she wouldn’t let me waste time looking at them.”

  There was a lot of dust. There had been none outside. The plain tolerated nothing alien except the corpses of invaders, evidently. Even here, we had yet to discover any sign of the animals or equipment that had accompanied the Captured south.

  “How much farther?”

  “Almost there. Watch for a drop-off.”

  “A drop-off?”

  “A step down. It’s only about eighteen inches but you could break a leg if it surprises you. I turned an ankle last time.”

  We found the drop-off. I stopped to look back once I stepped down. All sorts of genius was being invested in the assignments I had given. Closer, Sahra and the Radisha and several others to whom I had not given specific assignments had decided to follow me. I said, “You’re right. It does look like there’re some kind of inlays. If we have time, maybe we can take a closer look.” I considered the edge of the stone. “This curves. And it’s polished.”

  “That part of the floor is a circle. And it’s almost exactly one-eightieth of the diameter of the plain. According to Soulcatcher. The raised part where the demon’s throne used to sit is one-eightieth the size of this.”

  “That’s probably got to mean something. It have anything to do with the Captured?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Then we’ll worry about it later.”

  “The stairs start over here.”

  They did indeed, right next to the wall. The crack in the floor had extended clear through that. The wall’s partial collapse had filled the gap there, then the material from the wall had been pushed back up as the fissure healed itself.

  The stairs simply started. There was a rectangular hole in the floor. Steps went down, roughly paralleling the outer wall, away from the crack in the floor, which had healed almost completely. There was no handrail.

  Twenty steps down we reached a landing eight feet by eight. The descending steps led off from our right. This flight appeared to go downward forever. Faint light crept up it, just strong enough so you could see where to put your feet.

  Sahra and the Radisha had caught up close enough that I could hear them talking without being able to pick up specific words. Both women sounded frightened by the immediate future.

  I could sympathize. I was nervous about achieving my life’s ambition myself. Just a little.

  “You want to go first?” Swan asked. He lacked considerable enthusia
sm, I thought.

  “Are there booby traps or something?”

  “No. She probably wanted to, just in case somebody passed this way someday, just for the sheer mean fun of it, but there wasn’t enough time. She piddled around so much, for so long, I didn’t really believe we’d ever get away. I’m sure we wouldn’t have if she hadn’t been who she was. She spun spells that chased the shadows away. She’d been in there before. And she’d practiced.”

  “There it is!”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just remembering something.” Stupid me. All those years I wondered how Swan and Soulcatcher had found time to bury the Captured without getting gobbled up by shadows and I had overlooked the obvious, the fact that Soulcatcher was a major sorceress and already had some experience manipulating shadows. You can be screamingly blind to the obvious if you don’t realize that you have not opened up all the doors of your mind.

  Forgive me, O Lord of the Hours. Be Merciful. Be Compassionate. I shall close the borders of my soul as soon as my brothers are free.

  At this point Swan had no incentive to steer me into danger. I started downstairs.

  The architects, engineers and stonemasons responsible had not been determined to achieve geometric perfection. Though this portion of the stairwell continued downward in a specific general direction, it tended to meander from side to side of a straight line. Nor were the steps of a uniform height. The builders had been thoughtful enough to provide landings every little way, though. I had a feeling those would seem to be miles apart once I started climbing up again.

  “If we have to bring One-Eye down here, we’re going to have to carry him back up. He won’t survive the climb otherwise.”

  “You might want to organize what you’re going to do before we go down there, then.”

  “I can’t decide what has to be done until I see what I’m dealing with.”

  “You might call up your genie in a bottle. Get him to tell you.”

  “He’s never said much about the place where he’s at. Not since he’s been in there himself. It’s like he’s constrained against that. I dreamed about it a few times but I don’t know how accurate my dreams were.”