The Many Deaths of the Black Company
Page 103
But then he would have to turn Soulcatcher loose just to give balance to the world.
I wonder if he was right when he said a thousand years from now we might be the gods everyone remembers.
And I wonder what he might do about his daughter. His flesh daughter. I think there is no hope for her because she has no hope of her own, but I also think that if there is a hope, Pop will find it.
Suvrin is looking impatient. He wants to hitch a ride down to the Hsien Shadowgate. He is not Aridatha Singh but he may have to do.
I guess it is time to go see our new world. The Abode of Ravens. The Land of Unknown Shadows. Shukrat says the names have a ring. That it sounds like home to her.
I think home is what I carry around inside me. I am a snail with the meat on the outside.
And it is Shukrat’s damned turn to write. The sneaking, slacking little bimbo.
Incessant wind sweeps the plain. It murmurs on across grey stone, carrying dust from far climes to nibble eternally at the memorial pillars. There are a few shadows out there still but they are the weak and the timid and the hopelessly lost.
It is immortality of a sort.
Memory is immortality of a sort.
In the night, when the wind dies and silence rules the place of glittering stone, I remember. And they all live again.
Soldiers live. And wonder why.
TOR BOOKS BY GLEN COOK
An Ill Fate Marshalling
Reap the East Wind
The Swordbearer
The Tower of Fear
THE BLACK COMPANY
The Black Company (The First Chronicle)
Shadows Linger (The Second Chronicle)
The White Rose (The Third Chronicle)
Shadow Games (The First Book of the South)
Dreams of Steel (The Second Book of the South)
The Silver Spike
Bleak Seasons (Book One of Glittering Stone)
She Is the Darkness (Book Two of Glittering Stone)
Water Sleeps (Book Three of Glittering Stone)
Soldiers Live (Book Four of Glittering Stone)
Chronicles of the Black Company
(Comprising The Black Company,
Shadows Linger, and The White Rose)
The Books of the South
(Comprising Shadow Games,
Dreams of Steel, and The Silver Spike)
The Return of the Black Company
(Comprising Bleak Seasons and She Is the Darkness)
The Many Deaths of the Black Company
(Comprising Water Sleeps and Soldiers Live)
THE INSTRUMENTALITIES OF THE NIGHT
The Tyranny of the Night
Lord of the Silent Kingdom
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these novels are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE MANY DEATHS OF THE BLACK COMPANY
Omnibus copyright © 2009 by Glen Cook
Water Sleeps copyright © 1999 by Glen Cook
Soldiers Live copyright © 2000 by Glen Cook
All rights reserved.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN 978-0-7653-2401-6
First Tor Trade Paperback Edition: January 2010
eISBN 9781466831131
First eBook edition: October 2012