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

by Glen Cook

  “Are you sure you want to go out of your way?”

  “I’m sure, Willow.” I could tell it was a matter of life or death. For a whole world. Or maybe for multiple worlds. But why be melodramatic? “Can you get these two moving again? And headed toward the top?” I did not think Master Santaraksita could bear seeing what I intended to do next.

  “I’ll get them moving. But I’m sticking with you.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “Yes, it will. You can hardly stand up.”

  “I’ll work it out.”

  “You go right ahead and talk. It’ll get the kinks out of your jaw. But I’m staying.”

  I stared at him hard for some time. He did not back down. Neither did he betray any motive but concern for a brother he suspected of failing to be in her right mind. I closed my eyes for half a minute, then opened them to peer down the stairs. “God was listening.”

  Swan was working on Suvrin. The Shadowlander officer had his eyes open but seemed unable to move. He murmured, “I must be alive. Otherwise I wouldn’t hurt so much.” Panic flooded his eyes. “Did we get away?”

  I said, “We’re getting away. We’ve still got a long way to climb.”

  “Goblin’s dead,” Swan said. “The crow told me when it came up to get something to eat.”

  “Where is that thing?”

  “Down there. Watching.”

  I felt a chill. Paranoia touched me. There had been a connection between Lady and Kina ever since Narayan Singh and Kina had used Lady as a vessel to produce the Daughter of Night. That had created a connection, a connection Lady had hammered into place cleverly, unbreakably, so that she could steal power from the goddess indefinitely. “Forgive me, O Lord. Drive these infidel thoughts from my heart.”

  Swan said, “Huh?”

  “Nothing, part of the ongoing dialog between me and my God. Suvrin! Sweety. You ready to do some jumping jacks?”

  Suvrin offered me an old-fashioned, storm-cloud glower. “Smack her, Swan. At a time like this, cheerful ought to be against the laws of heaven and earth.”

  “You’ll be cheerful in a minute, too. As soon as you figure out that you’re still alive.”

  “Humph!” He began to help Swan waken Master Santaraksita.

  Upright now, I did a few small exercises to loosen up even more.

  “Ah, Dorabee,” Santaraksita said softly. “I have survived another adventure with you.”

  “I’ve got God on my side.”

  “Excellent. Do keep him there. I don’t think I can survive another of your adventures without divine assistance.”

  “You’ll outlive me, Sri.”

  “Perhaps. Probably, if I do get out of this and I don’t tempt fate ever again. You, you’ll probably graduate to snake-dancing with cobras.”

  “Sri?”

  “I’ve decided. I don’t want to be an adventurer anymore, Dorabee. I’m too old for it. It’s time to wrap myself up in a cozy library again. This just hurts too much. Ow! Young man—”

  Swan grinned. He was not that much younger than the librarian. “Let’s get going, old-timer. You keep lying around here and whatever adventure you found down there is going to catch up and have you all over again.”

  A possibility that posed a fine motivation for us all.

  When we finally got moving again, I brought up the rear. Swan wrangled my companions. I gripped the golden pickax so tightly my knuckles ached.

  Goblin was dead.

  That did not seem possible.

  Goblin was a fixture. A permanent fixture. A cornerstone. Without its Goblin, there could be no Black Company.… You are mad, Sleepy. The family will not cease to exist simply because one member, unexpectedly, has been plucked out by evil fortune. Life would not end because of Goblin’s absence. It would just get a lot harder. I seemed to hear Goblin whisper, “He is the future.”

  “Sleepy. Snap out of it.”

  “Huh?”

  Swan said, “We’re at the cave. You two. Keep climbing. We’ll catch up with you.”

  Suvrin started to ask. I shook my head, pointed upward. “Go. Now. And don’t look back.” I waited until I saw Suvrin actually guide Master Santaraksita over the tumbled stones and onto the stairs. “We’ll catch up.”

  “What’s that?” Swan asked. He cupped an ear.

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  He shrugged. “It’s gone now. Something from upstairs.”

  We entered the cavern of the ancients. The wonder had been polished off it by the trampling about of a horde of Company people. I was amazed that they had managed without damaging any more of the sleepers. As it was, almost all the wondrous ice webbing and cocooning had broken up and collapsed. A few stalactites had fallen from the ceiling. “How did that happen?”

  Swan frowned. “During the earthquake.”

  “Earthquake? What earthquake?”

  “You didn’t … there was one hell of a shake. I can’t say exactly how long ago. Probably when you were all the way down. It’s hard to tell time in here.”

  “No lie. Oh, yuck.” I had discovered why the white crow had all that energy. It had been dining on one of my dead brothers.

  Some evil part of me tossed up the thought that I could follow the bird’s example. Another part wondered what would happen if Croaker found out. That man was obsessed with the holy state of Company brotherhood.

  “You never know what you’ll do until you’re in the ring with the bull, do you?”

  “What?”

  “A proverb from back home. Means that actually facing the reality is never quite like preparing to face the reality. You never really know what you’ll do until you get there.”

  I passed the rest of the Captured, not meeting any open eyes. I wondered if they could hear. I offered up some reassurances that sounded feeble even to me. The cavern shrank. When it came time to get down and crawl, I crawled. I told Swan, “Maybe it’s good, you being here after all. I’m starting to have little dizzy spells.”

  “You hear anything?”

  I listened. This time I did hear something. “Sounds like somebody singing. A marching song? Something full of ‘yo-ho-ho’s.’” What the devil?

  “Down here? We have dwarfs, too?”

  “Dwarfs?”

  “Mythical creatures. Like short people with big beards and permanent bad tempers. They lived underground, like nagas, only supposedly big on mining and metalworking. If they ever did exist, they died out a long time ago.”

  The singing was getting louder. “Let’s get this handled before somebody interrupts.”

  92

  The pessimist in me was sure I would not be able to pull it off. If nothing else, the earthquake Swan mentioned would in some way have sealed the chamber of unholy books off from the rest of the world. If the chamber was not sealed off, then I would trip the only booby trap that Goblin had overlooked. If Goblin had not overlooked any booby traps, then the pickax would not be a protective key, it would be a trigger igniting the thousand secret sorceries protecting the books.

  “Sleepy, do you know you talk to yourself when you’re worried about stuff?”

  “What?”

  “You’re crawling along there muttering about all the bad things that’re going to happen. You keep on and you’re going to convince me.”

  That was twice. I had to get that under control. I did not use to do that.

  The place where the Books of the Dead were hidden had not changed visibly. The pessimist in me worked hard to find a dangerous difference, though.

  Swan finally asked, “Are you going to study on it till we pass out from hunger? Or are you going to go ahead and do something?”

  “I always was a better planner than a doer, Willow.” I sucked in a peck of frigid air, took the pickax out of my waistband, intoned, “O Lord of Heaven and Earth, let there be no password that has to go with this.”

  “Right behind you, boss,” Swan said, making a joke as he nudged me forward. “Don’t be sh
y now.”

  Of course not. That would belittle Goblin’s sacrifice and memory.

  I realized that my breathing had turned to rapid, shallow panting as I reached the point where Master Santaraksita had achieved flight. I held the pick in front of me with both hands, muscles protesting its weight, squeezing it so tight I feared I would leave my fingerprints etched upon it permanently.

  A tingling began in my hands. It crept up my arms as I eased forward. My skin crawled and I developed severe goose bumps. I said, “You’d better hold onto me, Willow.” In case I needed yanking back. “In case you need the connection to the pick.” The shield was not rejecting me. Not yet.

  Swan rested his hands on my shoulders an instant before the tingling reached my body. I began to shiver. Suddenly I had the chills and shakes of an autumn sickness.

  “Woo!” Swan said. “This feels weird.”

  “It gets weirder,” I promised. “I’ve got one of those agues where the chill goes all the way to the marrow.”

  “Uh … yeah. I’m getting there, too. Toss in some joint aches, too. Come on. Let’s get that fire started and warm ourselves.”

  Would fire be enough?

  Once we moved forward another ten feet, the miseries stopped getting worse. The tingling on the outside faded. I told Swan, “I think it’s safe to let go now.”

  “You should have seen your hair. It started dancing around when we were halfway through. It lasted only a couple of steps but it was a sight.”

  “I’ll bet.” My hair was a sight anyway, usually. I did not offer it nearly enough attention and I had not had it trimmed in months. “Got anything to start a fire with?”

  “You don’t? You didn’t prepare for this? You knew it had to be done and you didn’t bring—”

  “All right, we’ll use mine. I just don’t have much tinder left. Didn’t want to use mine up when I could use yours.”

  “Thanks a lot. You’re getting as bad as those two nasty old men.” Chagrined, he recalled that one of the nasty old men he meant had just completed his tenure with the Company.

  “I learned from the best. Listen. I’ve been thinking about this. Even if we are past all the traps, the books themselves might be dangerous. Considering the way the brains of wizards work, it’s probably not a smart thing to peek inside at the pages. One look at the writings and you’re likely to spend the rest of your life standing there reading—even if you don’t recognize a word—out loud. I recall reading about a spell that worked that way, once.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “You notice that all three books are open? We’ll have to come at them from underneath and tip the covers shut. So that they end up face-down. Even then we might want to handle them with our eyes shut when we go burn them. I’ve read about grimoires that had rakshasas bound into their covers.” Although nothing as exciting as that ever turned up in the library where I had worked.

  “A talking book that can read itself to me. That’s what I need.”

  “I thought Soulcatcher made you learn how to read when you were the king of the Greys.”

  “She did. That don’t mean I want to read. Reading is bloody hard work.”

  “I thought managing a brewery was hard work. You never shied away from that.” Being shorter, I took the job of sneaking up on the three lecterns. I used extreme caution. They might have been great actors but I was soon convinced that they could not see me coming.

  “I like making beer. I don’t like reading.”

  He should have been the one getting ready to burn books, then. I was suffering a crisis of conscience as troublesome as any of my crises of faith. I loved books. I believed in books. As a rule I did not believe in destroying books because their contents were disagreeable. But these books contained the dark, secret patterns for bringing on the end of the world. The end of many worlds, actually, for if the Year of the Skulls successfully sacrificed my world, others connected to the glittering plain must follow.

  This was not a crisis that needed immediate resolution. I had my answers worked out already, which was why I was on hands and knees under the lecterns while suffering verbal abuse from an infidel who had no use for my god or for the Deceivers’ merciless Destroyer. I tipped the covers of the books shut while wondering if there was still some way the Children of Night could get to me.

  “The covers appear to be blank,” Swan said.

  “You’re looking at the backs of the books. I’m closing them so they’re face-down. Remember?”

  “Hold it.” He held up a finger, cocked an ear.

  “Echoes.”

  “Uhm. Somebody’s out there.”

  I listened harder. “Singing again. I wish they wouldn’t sing. Nobody in the band but Sahra can carry a tune in a bucket with a lid on it. You can come on up here now. I think it’s safe.”

  “You think?”

  “I’m still alive.”

  “I don’t know if that’s necessarily a recommendation. You’re too sour and bitter for the monsters to eat. I, on the other hand—”

  “You, on the other hand, are plain lucky that my god forbids me to reveal that the only thing interested in eating you would be the kind of beetle that flourishes on a diet of livestock by-product. Right there looks like a good place to start a fire.”

  Swan was up beside me now. “There” was some kind of large brazier-looking thing that still had a few charcoal remnants in it. It was made of hammered brass in a style common to most of the cultures of this end of the world.

  “You want me to tear a few pages out for tinder?”

  “No, I don’t want you to tear pages out. Weren’t you listening when I told you the books might make you want to read them?”

  “I was listening. Sometimes I don’t hear very well, though.”

  “Like most of the human race.” I was prepared. In minutes I had a small fire burning. I lifted one of the books carefully, making sure it faced away from Swan and me. I fanned its pages out slightly and set it down in the flames, spine upward. I burned the last volume first. Just in case.

  Something might interfere. I wanted the first volume destroyed to be one the Daughter of Night had not yet seen. The first book, which she had copied parts of several times and might have partially memorized, I would burn last.

  The book caught fire eventually but did not burn well. It produced a nasty-smelling dark smoke that filled the cavern and forced Swan and me to get down on our stomachs on the icy floor.

  The underground wind did carry some of the smoke away. The rest was no longer overwhelming when I consigned the second book to the flames.

  While waiting to add the final book to the fire, I brooded about why Kina was doing nothing to resist this blow to her hopes for resurrection. I could only pray that Goblin’s sacrifice had hurt her so badly she could not look outside herself yet. I could only pray that I was not a victim of some grand deceit. Maybe these books were decoys. Maybe I was doing exactly what Kina had planned for me to do.

  There were doubts. Always.

  “You’re muttering to yourself again.”

  “Uhn.” I possessed not so much as the faintest hope that Goblin’s death had put Kina out of the misery of the world permanently.

  “This feels so nice,” I said. “I could go to sleep right here.” And I did so, promptly.

  Good old Willow’s sense of duty, or self-preservation, or something, kept him going. He got the last Book of the Dead into the fire for me before he, too, settled down for a nap.

  93

  The singing soldiers proved to be Runmust, Iqbal and Riverwalker. They had come to rescue the rest of us when Tobo reached them with news of the disaster that had befallen us down below. They had found us by following the smoke. “At the risk of finding myself goaded into employing unseemly language, how is it that I find anyone singing? How is it that you haven’t taken the road to The Land of the Unknown Shadows? I believe I was pretty insistent on the necessity for that.”

  Runmust and Iqbal giggled like
they were younger than Tobo and knew a dirty joke. Riverwalker managed to maintain a more sober demeanor. Barely. “You’re tired and hungry, so we don’t blame you for being cranky, Sleepy. Let’s do something about that. Settle down and have a snack.” He could not restrain a big, goofy grin as he rummaged in his pack.

  I exchanged glances with Swan. I asked, “You have any clue what’s going on here?”

  “Maybe there’s a stage of starvation where you get lightheaded and silly.”

  “I suppose Jaicur could have been an exception.”

  Riverwalker produced something the shape and color of a puffball mushroom but a good eight inches in diameter. It looked heavier than a mushroom that size ought to be.

  “What the hell is that?” Swan asked. River had several more in his pack. And his henchmen had brought packs, too.

  Riverwalker produced a knife and began slicing. “A gift from our demon friend, Shivetya. Evidently after a day of reflection he decided we deserved a payoff for saving his big ugly ass. Eat.” He offered me an end slice an inch thick. “You’ll like it.”

  Swan started eating before I did. I had an ounce of paranoia left. He leaned my way. “Tastes like pork. Heh-heh-heh.” Then he had no time for joking. He began wolfing the material, which looked exactly the same all the way through.

  It had a heavy, almost cheesy texture. When I surrendered to the inevitable and bit into it, my salivary system responded with a flood. The experience of taste was so sharp it was almost painful. There was nothing comparable in my memory. A touch of ginger, a touch of cinnamon, lemons, sweetness, the scent of candied violets.… After the first shock a sense of well-being gradually spread outward from my mouth, and again from my stomach soon after the first mouthfuls hit bottom.

  “More,” Swan said.

  Riverwalker surrendered another slice.

  “More,” I agreed, and bit into another slice myself. It might be poison but if it was, it was the sweetest poison God ever permitted. “Shivetya really gave you this?”

  “About a ton. Almost literally. Fit for man and beast. Even the baby likes it.”

  Iqbal and Runmust found that news hilarious. Swan snickered, too, though he could not possibly have any idea what the joke might be. In fact, I found that assertion rather amusing myself. Heck, everything was amusing. I had begun to feel relaxed and confident. My aches and pains no longer formed the center of my consciousness. They had become mere annoyances way out on the edge of awareness.