The Many Deaths of the Black Company

by Glen Cook

  “Tell me about the Temple of Ghanghesha, then. Both of you. Why would this Key have been kept there?”

  Sahra did not want to talk about it. Her whole body said she was caught up in a ferocious internal struggle.

  “Why is this so hard?” I asked.

  “There is old evil in my people’s past. I’m only vaguely familiar with it. Doj knows the whole truth. The rest of us just understand that our ancestors were guilty of a great sin and until we expiate it, our whole race is condemned to live in bitter destitution in the swamp. The temple was a holy place long before some Nyueng Bao began to adopt Gunni beliefs. It protected something. Possibly the Key you mentioned. The thing Uncle Doj has been looking for.”

  “Where did the Nyueng Bao come from, Sahra?” That question had intrigued me since childhood. Each few years hundreds of those strange people would pass through Jaicur on pilgrimage. They were quiet and orderly and stayed to themselves. And a year after they arrived from the north, they would pass through again, going back that way. Even at the height of the power of the Shadowmasters, that cycle had continued. Nobody knew where they went. Nobody ever cared.

  “Out of the south somewhere, a long time ago.”

  “From beyond the Dandha Presh?” I could not imagine subjecting little children and old folks to the rigors of a journey of that magnitude. The pilgrimage had to be very important indeed.

  “Yes.”

  “But there are no pilgrimages anymore.” The one that had ended up with hundreds of Nyueng Bao dying in Jaicur was the last of which I was aware.

  “The Shadowmaster and the Kiaulune wars made the next few times impossible. There’s supposed to be a pilgrimage every four years. Each Nyueng Bao De Duang has to make the pilgrimage at least once as an adult. For a while the lack was no problem. But now the Protector will not permit the people to meet their obligations,” Banh Do Trang rasped from his wheelchair, having arrived in time to catch the drift of my interrogation. “There are things we do not discuss with those who aren’t Nyueng Bao.”

  I got the feeling he was saying the same thing twice at one time, one way for my benefit and another for Sahra’s. This could be ticklish. We dared not offend Banh Do Trang, whose friendship we needed. If we lost him, we also risked losing Sahra, whose value to the Company could not be calculated.

  Nothing is ever simple and straightforward.

  I told the old man the way I had it figured. Ky Gota waddled in just as I started. My eyes widened as One-Eye gallantly offered her his seat. It is a world just chock-full of wonders. The little wizard went and got another seat, which he set next to Gota’s. The two of them sat there leaning on their canes like a couple of temple gargoyles. A ghost of ancient beauty peeked out of the wide, permanent scowl that Gota used for a face.

  I explained the situation. “But here’s the mystery. Where is the Key today?”

  Nobody volunteered that information.

  “I’d think that if The Thousand Voices still had it, she’d be running down to Kiaulune every month to round up a new gaggle of killer shadows. It if could open the Shadowgate safely. And if Uncle Doj had it, he wouldn’t be roaming around looking for it. He’d be back in the swamp blithely letting the rest of us go to al-Sheil in a handcart. Am I wrong? Mother Gota? You know the man. You must be able to offer something.”

  Able, perhaps. Willing, of course not. The big thing that stands out, to my ear, about the Company’s sojourn in the south, is the stubborn silence of so many people. About everything. Like if we even discovered our own birthdays, that would be something we could use against them. The fact that the Company now consists almost entirely of native soldiers has not helped at all. Our life does not attract the knowledgeable, educated portion of the population. If a priest offered to sign on, we would send him downriver, knowing for certain that he was a spy.

  “You got the damned gimmick?” One-Eye asked.

  “Who?”

  “You, Little Girl. The villainess, you. I didn’t forget that you were Soulcatcher’s guest for a while, when she caught you on the road coming back from running that message for Murgen. I haven’t forgotten that when our sweet old Uncle Doj rescued you it was incidental. He was looking for his missing trinket, the Key. Not so?”

  “That’s all true. But I didn’t bring anything away from that. Except a few new scars and the rags on my back.”

  “What we need to know then is has Soulcatcher been looking for the Key?”

  “We don’t know for sure. But she does fly down south occasionally and patrols the old ground like she’s looking for something.” We knew that, courtesy of Murgen. Though till now, her behavior had made no sense.

  “So who else could’ve snatched this prize?” One-Eye did not press Gota for any information. The way to get around Gota was to ignore her. In time, she would insist that she be noticed.

  I remembered a pale, ragged little girl who, though just four years old, had seemed ageless, silent and patient, confidently unfrightened by her captivity. The Daughter of Night. She never spoke to me once. She acknowledged my existence only when she had to, because if she irritated me too much, I might take all of what little food Soulcatcher allowed us. I should have strangled her then. But at that time I did not know who she was.

  At that time I was having trouble remembering who I was. Soulcatcher had drugged me and gone down inside me and found half what made me me, then had tried being me in order to infiltrate the Company. I still wonder how well she really knows me. Certainly I do not want her to find out that I survived the Kiaulune wars. She might have the emotional weapons to crush me.

  “Narayan came to get the Daughter of Night,” I mused aloud. “But I caught only glimpses of him. An extremely skinny little man in a filthy loincloth who didn’t look anything like the terrible monster he was supposed to be. It didn’t occur to me it was him till I realized I wasn’t going to be released, too. Since I couldn’t see what they were doing, I don’t know if they took anything with them. Murgen, you saw them then. I have it written down that you did. Did they take anything away that might have been this key?”

  “I don’t know. Believe it or not, you really do miss some things out here.” He seemed piqued.

  I realized I had not bothered to hear what he had to report. I asked.

  “Not much useful,” Sahra told me, cutting Murgen off before he could retell everything from the beginning.

  “Can you find them now?” I foresaw trouble. There was an unwilling connection to Kina. If the dark goddess was stirring again, he would have to be careful not to attract divine attention. “We have these priorities regarding the Daughter of Night: Kill her. Failing that: Kill her sidekick. Failing that: Make sure she can’t copy the Books of the Dead, which I’m sure she’ll start doing again as soon as she develops a reliable connection with Kina. Finally: Recapture anything she and Singh might have carried off when Narayan rescued her.”

  One-Eye stopped nodding off long enough to clap his hands lazily. “Tear ’em up, Little Girl. Tear ’em up.”

  “Sarky old reprobate.”

  One-Eye snickered.

  Goblin said, “You want another angle, find out from your library pals who makes bound blank books. Go to them and find out who’s ordered some recently. Or bribe them to let you know when anybody does.”

  “Gosh,” I said. “Somebody who actually uses his brain to think. The delight of the world is that its wonders never cease. Where the devil did Murgen go?”

  Sahra said, “You just told him to find Narayan Singh and the Daughter of Night.”

  “I didn’t mean right this second. I wanted to know if he found out anything about Chandra Gokhale we can use.”

  “Pressure getting to you, Little Girl?” One-Eye’s tone was so sweet I wanted to pop him. “Relax. Now’s the time when you don’t want to force anything.”

  A couple of men from the duty crew, Runmust Singh and a Shadowlander dubbed Kendo Cutter by his squad mates, invited themselves into the staff meeting. Kendo
reported, “There’s all kinds of screaming going on out there tonight. I sent out word everybody should hole up someplace where there’s plenty of light.”

  Sahra said, “The shadows are hunting.”

  I said, “We’ll be all right here. But just to be safe, Goblin, why don’t you make the rounds with Kendo and Runmust? We don’t want any surprise. Sahra, will Soulcatcher let the shadows run completely wild?”

  “To make her point? You’re the Annalist. What do the books say about her?”

  “They say she’s capable of anything. She has no connection with the humanity of anyone else. It must be very lonely to be her.”

  “What?”

  “We agree our next target should be Chandra Gokhale?”

  Sahra eyed me oddly. That had been decided already. Unless some better opportunity fell into our laps, we would eliminate the Inspector-General, without whom the tax system and the bureaucratic side of government would stumble and stagger. He also seemed the most vulnerable of our enemies. And his removal would leave the Radisha more isolated than ever, cut off by the Protector on one hand, the priests on the other, and unable to turn anywhere because she was the Radisha, the Princess unapproachable, in some respects a demi-goddess.

  It had to be lonely to be her, too.

  Subtlety and finesse.

  I asked, “What did we do today to frighten the world?” Then I realized that I knew the answer. It had been part of the plan for capturing Swan. All the brotherhood would have avoided any risks. Tonight there would be shows from buttons previously planted. There would be more again tomorrow night. Smoke-and-light shows proclaiming “Water sleeps,” or “My brother unforgiven,” or “All their days are numbered.” There would be more, somewhere, every evening from now on.

  Sahra mused, “Someone who wasn’t one of us brought in another prayer wheel and mounted it on a memorial post outside the north entrance. It hadn’t been noticed yet when I left.”

  “Same message?”

  “I presume.”

  “That’s scary. That could be a potent one. Rajadharma.”

  “It has the Radisha thinking already. That monk burning himself definitely got her attention.”

  Story of my life. Here I spend months working out every tiny detail of a marvelous plan and I get upstaged by a lunatic with a fire fetish.

  “So those Bhodi nuts found a good message. You think we could steal some of their thunder?”

  One-Eye chuckled evilly.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “Sometimes I amaze myself.”

  Goblin, about to leave with Runmust and Kendo, observed, “You been amazed at yourself for two hundred years. Mainly ’cause nobody else bothers to get interested in insects.”

  “You better not go to sleep any time soon, Frogface—”

  “Gentlemen?” Sahra said. Gently. Yet she grabbed the attention of both wizards. “Can we stick to business? I need some sleep.”

  “Absolutely!” Goblin said. “Absolutely! If the old fart has an idea, let’s get it out here before it dies of loneliness.”

  “You may continue your assignment.”

  Goblin stuck out his tongue but left.

  “Amaze the rest of us, One-Eye,” I suggested. I did not want him dozing off before he shared his wisdom.

  “Next time one of those Bhodi loons lights himself up, we have the smoke and flames carry our message. ‘Water Sleeps.’ And a new one I thunk up, ‘Nor Even Death Destroy.’ You got to admit, that’s got a nice religious ring to it.”

  “Indeed,” I agreed. “What the heck does it mean?”

  “Little Girl, don’t you start in on me—”

  The ghost of evils past whispered, “I found them.”

  Murgen was back.

  I did not ask who. “Where?”

  “The Thieves’ Garden.”

  “Chor Bagan? The Greys have it under siege.”

  And they were still serious about getting the place cleaned out, Murgen said.

  17

  Sahra wakened me well before dawn, which is not my best time of day. When I opted for a military career, we were besieged in my hometown. I just knew that once we got out of there, we would sleep till noon, we would eat fresh food all the time and there would be plenty of it and never, ever, would we have to go out in the rain again. In the meantime, I took the best I could get, which was the Black Company during the siege, with the water fifty feet deep. The only thing resembling fresh food was the long pig Mogaba and his Nar friends were enjoying. Unless you counted the occasional lame rat or slow-witted crow.

  “What?” I grumbled. Personally, I am convinced that even the priests of happy-go-lucky old Ghanghesha are not required to be pleasant before an hour much closer to noon than this was.

  “I have to go to the Palace. You have to appear at the library. If we want to snatch Narayan and the girl right in front of the Greys, we need to start planning right now.”

  She was right. But that did not mean I had to accept it gracefully.

  Every Company member inside Do Trang’s complex, and Banh himself, gathered over a crude breakfast. Only Tobo and Mother Gota were absent. But they would have no part in any of this. I thought.

  Nobody from outside could be included now, because shadows were on the prowl.

  “We got a plan all worked out,” One-Eye announced proudly.

  “I’m sure it’s one stroke of genius after another,” I replied as I made a groggy effort to collect a bowl of cold rice, a mango and a bowl of tea.

  “First thing, Goblin goes up there in his dervish outfit. Then Tobo comes strutting along.…”

  * * *

  “Good morning, Adoo,” I murmured distractedly as the gateman admitted me to the library grounds. I was worried about leaving Goblin and One-Eye to operate on their own. My mother instinct at work, they said, both showing nasty teeth as they reminded me that every hen has to trust her chicks on their own sometime. A point well made. Though few hens have to worry about their chicks getting drunk, forgetting what they are doing and wandering off in search of adventure in a city where there is not even one other skinny little black man or ugly little white character.

  Adoo nodded his greeting. He never had anything to say.

  Inside the library I went to work immediately, though only a couple of copyists had arrived before me. Sometimes Dorabee focused as intently as Sawa did. That helped turn off the worries.

  * * *

  “Dorabee? Dorabee Dey Banerjae!”

  I started awake, amazed that I had fallen asleep. I had squatted down on my heels in a corner, in a fashion common amongst Gunni and Nyueng Bao but not common among Vehdna, Shadar or many of the ethnic minorities. We Vehdna favor sitting on the floor or on a cushion, cross-legged. Shadar like low chairs or stools. Not owning at least a crude stool is the truest mark of poverty amongst the Shadar.

  I was in character even in my sleep.

  “Master Santaraksita?”

  “Are you ill?” He sounded concerned.

  “Tired. I didn’t sleep well. The skildirsha were hunting last night.” I used the Shadowlander name for the shadows. That did not trouble Santaraksita. It had become part of the language under the Protectorate. “The screams kept waking me up.”

  “I understand. I did not enjoy a sound sleep myself, though not for that reason. I was unaware of the horror till I saw its marks this morning.”

  “The skildirsha show a proper respect for the priestly class, then.”

  The faintest twitch of his lip told me he had not missed the joke. “I am properly appalled, Dorabee. This is evil unlike any we have ever known. The blind misfortune of flood or plague or disaster we must endure stoically. And against the darkness even the gods themselves sometimes contend in vain. But to send out a pack of these shadows to do murder randomly and often, and for no reason even an insane man can comprehend, that is evil of the sort the northerners used to preach.”

  Dorabee managed a credible job of looking slack-jawed.


  “I’m sorry. I’m exercised. You probably never saw any of the outsiders.” He placed the same stress on “outsiders” that many Taglians used when they meant the Black Company specifically.

  “I did. I saw the Liberator himself once when I was little. And I saw the one they called the Lieutenant after she came back from Dejagore. I was pretty far away but I remember it because that was the same day she killed all the priests. And the Protector. I saw her a couple of times.” I was making it up as I went but that was the sort of thing most adult Taglians could claim. The Company had been in and out of the city for years before the final campaign against Longshadow and the fortress Overlook. I rose. “I’ll get back to work now.”

  “You do your job well, Dorabee.”

  “Thank you, Master Santaraksita. I try.”

  “Indeed.” He seemed to be having trouble getting something out. “I have decided that you will be allowed access to any books not in the restricted section.” Restricted books were those not available in multiple copies. Only the most favored scholars were allowed near those. So far, I had been able to determine only a handful of the titles of the books so set aside. “When you have no other obligations.” Part of my day, every day, I spent just waiting to be told about something I needed to do.

  “Thank you, Master Santaraksita!”

  “I’ll expect you to be able to discuss them.”

  “Yes, Master Santaraksita.”

  “We have set our feet upon an unknown road, Dorabee. An exciting and frightening journey lies ahead.” His prejudices were such that he actually meant what he said. Me reading had twisted his universe all out of shape and now he was going to conspire in this perverted vermiculation.

  I took my broom in hand. Exciting and frightening things would be happening elsewhere in my universe. And I hated every second that I was not there to control them.

  18

  The little dervish in brown wool seemed completely lost inside himself. He was busy talking to himself, paying no attention to the surrounding world. Most likely he was quoting to himself from the sacred texts of the Vehdna, as understood by his peculiar splinter sect. Though tired and irritable, the Greys did not challenge him immediately. They had been taught to honor all holy men, not just those already secure within the Shadar truths. Any devoted stalker after wisdom would find his path leading him to enlightenment eventually.